Body Double

To my beloved granddaughter:
Kaylin Elizabeth

You are my sun and joy, little one,
And I pray I prove worthy of the love for me
I see in your eyes.
Love,
Gran

T
hey were going to kill her.

The odds of her leaving the Middle Eastern desert compound under her own steam grew slimmer by the minute. Her instincts hummed it. And if there was one thing Amanda knew she could count on, it was her instincts.

From the age of three, her instincts had warned her to hide when her dad got tanked up at home in New Orleans and came looking for her to use as a punching bag and then locked her in a wooden box until her bruises faded so looking at her didn’t offend his eyes. Instinct had warned her to protect herself through a year of grueling CIA training at the nine thousand wooded-acre, barbed-wire-fenced hell known as “the farm” and four years of subsequent covert operations. Instinct had warned her it was time to get out of the CIA or wake up dead, and when the U.S. Air Force had recruited her out, instinct had told her to go.

Shortly thereafter, she had been assigned to S.A.S.S., Secret Assignment Security Specialists. On paper, they were a
division of the Office of Special Investigations buried in the Office of Personnel Management along with all the other air force members assigned to paramilitary or covert operations, and had an official name so secret it changed every six months. Keeping up with the changes had everyone in the need-to-know loop dubbing the unit S.A.S.S. for convenience and consistency.

Her instincts had been on target all those times, and a million others, and they were on target now. She had used up her nine lives.

Today, Amanda West had run out of last chances.

“If she moves, shoot her,” the beefy guard whose nose she’d broken told the other guards.

A certain satisfaction rippled through her. He had quickly developed a healthy respect for her and the damage she could inflict, but seriously.
Move?
Absurd. The ropes binding her to the chair cut deeply into her wrists and ankles, scraping her chafed skin, rubbing it raw. Her spine tingled, her ass and legs had been numb for hours. Her shoulders ached, head throbbed, and never in her life had she been more thirsty or tired.

She’d given up illusions. She had no idea what country they’d dragged her to, and during the last two days of intense interrogation by GRID’s second-in-command, Paul Reese, she’d lost any hope that her identity had remained secret. GRID—Group Resources for Individual Development—was the largest intelligence broker in the world on U.S. resources, assets and personnel. Its operatives were experts at gathering and selling information, and masters at torturing to obtain it.

In the worst cases, evil is about ideology shaped by greed. GRID wasn’t just shaped; it was twisted. That elevated GRID’s ranking to worst of the worst. Its leader, Thomas Kunz, resented Germany’s reliance on the U.S. military presence in his country. In his convoluted logic, Germany’s eco
nomic woes were the U.S.’s fault, and he hated Americans for it. Of course, if the U.S. military pulled out of his country and Germany’s economy suffered, Kunz would hate the U.S. for that, too.

Bottom line, Kunz hated the U.S. and what he hated, GRID hated.

Weak sunlight streaked into the cavernous metal building through dirt-smudged windows high overhead. Whether it was dawn or twilight, Amanda couldn’t say. She’d been in and out of consciousness, and had lost track of time. All time. Sweat beaded at her temples, pooled between her breasts. Her once-white blouse clung limp, damp and dirty against her body, and her navy slacks were covered with a thin layer of dust. Her bare feet against the sandy dirt floor were crusted and itched.

They’d taken her shoes.

That had been her first warning that Reese knew who she really was, knew that her hands and feet were lethal weapons.

Through slitted eyelids, she looked over at him, standing with his hip hitched against a folding table, smoking a pungent cigarette that smelled of cloves. Tall, dark and, some would say, gorgeous with black hair and come-hither eyes, Reese was a lady-killer. Figuratively and, she feared, literally.

He exhaled, and smoke rose into obscuring plumes between them. Tossing the butt to the floor, he crushed it under his loafer-shod foot and glanced at the dozen guards circling her, as if reassuring himself of their presence and protection.

Wise move. Amanda wanted to kill him. Given the opportunity, she would kill him. And Reese knew it. He assumed professional necessity drove her, but it didn’t. Her reasons were damn personal. Amanda’s dad had been the last man to hit her and live. That was a record she intended to keep intact.

The guards stood ready, dressed in camouflage gear, look
ing like the skilled mercenaries they had proven to be during her capture. She had only disabled three of them. Only three.

They were professional warriors, and for all they had known, she was merely a small, fragile woman. They hadn’t yet contended with Captain Amanda West, former CIA operative and current U.S. Air Force paramilitary S.A.S.S. operative—the real her. Now they’d gotten a taste.

Because she’d downed three of them, they hungered for revenge the way starving dogs covet bones: standing at the ready, just hoping she’d give them the slightest excuse to cut loose. All twelve of the men carried M-16s, all twelve aimed directly at her chest.

“Amanda.” Reese sounded exasperated. He stepped over to her but stayed out of striking distance, in case the ropes didn’t hold. “You’re being totally unreasonable.”

Unreasonable was denying her water and sleep. She should feel grateful the bastards hadn’t resorted to rape, but in a sense they had. They hadn’t molested her body, but Reese had done all he could to rape her soul. Fortunately—though it was hard for her to imagine “fortunate” and “her father” in the same breath—she’d been raised by the devil himself. Reese wasn’t nearly so formidable.

She wasn’t a kid anymore. And she damn sure was not helpless, not anymore.

“I wished to avoid this, but you’ve given me no choice.” Reese sighed heavily, a tinge of regret touching his voice. “I’ve called Thomas.”

Thomas Kunz.
Her heart slammed against her chest wall, hammered hard. Reese was dangerous, but Kunz was lethal. The GRID mastermind had united henchmen of all nationalities and from all walks of life with a single, driving goal: to destroy the United States. Under his leadership, GRID had proven so capable at infiltrating U.S. assets, and so elusive at being pinned down long enough to be captured, that Secre
tary of Defense Reynolds had deemed the situation critical and issued a by-name request through Colonel Sally Drake, action officer and commander of S.A.S.S., to gather desperately needed insight on GRID and devise a containment plan.

That by-name request had been for Amanda.

“Answer me, Amanda.” Reese shoved a hand into the pocket of his black slacks. “What have you reported? To whom do you report?”

Reese’s yellow shirt looked fresh and crisp, his tanned skin hydrated, and no dark, exhausted circles marred the skin beneath his eyes. Hating him for that, she stared at him from under her lashes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Reese slapped her.

Her face stinging, she glared into his eyes, smiled, then feigned hurt, preying on his vanity—a tactic that had consistently proven effective with him. “I guess chivalry is dead.”

Unable to hold her gaze, he looked away.

It was a small victory, but at the moment, she’d take any she could get. Paul Reese was clever but shallow, into money and power, with a fondness—and weakness—for pretty women, and an ego the State of Texas couldn’t hold. He had described himself to her as a gallant white knight, chivalrous to women, and she’d come to realize that the deluded fool believed it. Blowing his image by torturing her had gotten to him. He didn’t have the guts to kill her.

That, Reese would leave to Kunz.

Never in her life had she heard of anyone quite as cold-blooded and ruthless as Thomas Kunz. Or as suspicious. Grudgingly, she admitted that those were the very attributes that had kept him alive.

“He’s coming, Amanda.” Reese switched tactics, his voice and expression concerned and urgent. “I don’t want him to hurt you.”

“Hurt me?” Kunz would kill her, and only an idiot wouldn’t
know it. She swallowed a grunt and taunted Reese. “After all we’ve meant to each other, you’re going to allow him to do that?”

Exasperated, Reese forgot caution, grabbed her face and squeezed until her teeth cut into her flesh. “Do you want to die, woman?”

She didn’t. She wanted to live—God, how she wanted to live—and to bring GRID down. When the pressure on her cheeks eased and settled to a dull ache, she softened her voice. “Will you let him kill me, Paul?”

“Let him?” Reese let his head loll back, blew out a sigh. “Don’t you understand? I can’t stop Thomas. No one can stop him.” Reese dropped his voice. “He likes inflicting pain. He
likes
it, Amanda. You won’t die easily.”

In her premission briefing, she’d been warned that Kunz took a sadistic pleasure in torture. If any of his victims ever survived to act as witnesses, he’d be prosecuted for war crimes as a hostile combatant in the war on terror. So far none had made it.

That knotted the muscles in her stomach. Fear and bitterness flooded her throat. “I’m not afraid to die.” It was true. Her fear had always been in living, not dying. In death, there was safety; there was peace. In life, there was brutality and pain. You had to be clever, sly, cunning, always on guard and able to defend yourself. And she had been. Yet in some situations, defeat was inevitable. The realist in her warned that this was one of them.

Stiffening her spine, she watched for an opening. She was going to die, and she wouldn’t get Kunz. But she would take Paul Reese with her.

“You’d better fear it.” Frustration reddened his face, had the veins in his neck sticking out like thumbs. He bent to her. “You’d better fear him.”

“Reese.” Leaning forward, she brushed her lips close to his
ear. “I’ll tell you a secret.” She sank her teeth into him, doing her damnedest to rip the jugular right out of his throat.

He howled, jerked, and she lost her grip, scraped his throat, then clenched her jaw and latched on to his face. Backing away, he dragged her, chair and all, until finally his flesh gave way. Her chair tipped over and her shoulder slammed into the dirt.

Screaming curses, he held the side of his face. Blood streamed between his fingers, over his hand and down his arm. He kicked her in the ribs, then again in the thigh. His guards stood stunned, too surprised to react.

“There’s your secret, darling.” She glared up at him, feeling his wet blood soak her face. “You’d better fear me.”

He took a white handkerchief from one of the guards and pressed it to his face. “Shoot that bitch right between the eyes.”

“Come on, Reese. Be a sport.” She smiled. “I missed your jugular.”

He kicked her again. “Give me a gun!”

Her ribs ached like hell. Still she laughed, hard and deep. So she wouldn’t die with the pleasure of having killed him. Maybe to Reese, screwing up his face was worse than death. There was solace in that.

A guard passed him an M-16. He took aim at her. Adrenaline rocketed through her veins, but she knew how to die. She’d been prepared for this moment since she was three years old and her father first beat her.
No fear. Not from me, you bastard. Never from me. “Ich dien.”

“What did she say?” Reese looked at the guards, wild-eyed.

The response came from the door. “I serve.”

Kunz.
Blinded by the sunlight streaming in around him, she could only see his silhouette.

He walked over to where she lay on the floor, still tied to
the chair. “Captain West. How good of you to visit,” Kunz said. “I wasn’t aware you spoke German. Hmm, I wonder how we missed that. Please note it, Paul.”

Kunz was acting as if he’d missed the fact that she was taunting Paul, letting him know—letting them all know—that they hadn’t broken her and never would. Kunz was younger than she had thought. Forty, tall, blond-haired and blue-eyed. Amazingly, he looked like a good-natured, sunny kind of guy. Certainly not like the devil incarnate that would do his reputation justice. This man didn’t inspire fear, or even alert the senses that danger was near, and Intel had it all wrong on his photos. She didn’t know who was actually in the pictures but it was not the Thomas Kunz standing before her now. “Mr. Kunz.” She nodded, grinding her ear into the dirt. “I would say it’s a pleasure, but at the moment your hospitality lacks a certain, shall we say, charm.”

“Ah, your southern roots are showing. Finally.” His smile didn’t touch his eyes. “Put the gun down, Paul.” He glimpsed toward Reese. “I’ve decided the good captain doesn’t need killing, only burying. But not in a grave. Captain West prefers tombs to graves. They’re more in keeping with her New Orleans heritage.”

Reese’s eyes stretched wide. “You’re going to seal her in there alive?”

“Of course.” Kunz walked over to the table and opened a metal box that had been sitting there untouched for two days. “It’s only civilized to give her time to make her peace, hmm?”

Amanda tried not to shudder, but it was obvious that the real torture was only now to begin.

“I said to put down the gun, Paul. Hostility doesn’t become you.” He nodded toward the door. “Get someone to see to your face.”

Reese walked to the door still cupping the blood-soaked
handkerchief over his wound. “I’m glad you’re going to die a slow death, you bitch.”

“Do think of me, Paul.” She smiled. “Every time you look in the mirror.”

He slammed the door shut. The windows above rattled.

Kunz took her measure. “You’re very astute, Captain. Few things could upset Paul as much as damaging his face.” Kunz’s eyes sparkled respect. “And you’re clearly not a coward.” That seemed to intrigue him. “Few men have refused to respond to Paul’s inquiries, knowing they would next face mine. You’re the first woman to do so, actually.”

She hiked an eyebrow. “What shall we do to celebrate?”

He looked back over his shoulder, saw her defiance, smiled, and filled a syringe. When he tapped it, a small amount of fluid spurted and soaked into the floor. “I have a special treat for you,” he said, walking over and then injecting her. “In honor of the occasion.”