How Spy I Am (5 page)

The deafening rattle
of bowling pins and machinery made me stuff my fingers in my ears
while we trekked through the dark corridor behind the lanes. At the
opposite side of the building, Richardson produced a key and
unlocked the door to an electrical room. He pulled me inside, and
the closing door mercifully muffled the din.

We assessed each other
from close range for a moment, and my pulse rate picked up. Small
room. Too close.

The backward step I’d
intended to take turned into a skittish hop when he reached for me.
He stepped away instantly, his hands jerking back. “Sorry. I just
need to get past you to that panel.”

“Okay…” I hoped he
didn’t notice me hyperventilating while I sidestepped, trying to
maintain maximum personal space.

After we had circled
each other, Richardson pressed a series of breakers on the panel
and leaned forward for a retinal scan.

Stay calm. Same old,
same old. I could do this.

A section of wall
swung away and I stepped into the cramped time-delay chamber
holding my breath. When the door closed behind us, I let the air
out slowly. I hid my quaking knees as best I could while he
triggered the retinal scan at the next door.

He glanced over.
“Aydan, don’t worry. I promise, I won’t hurt you,” he assured me.
“You’re safe. We’re just going into the secured area under Sirius
Dynamics to meet Stemp.”

I took another deep
breath and held my voice steady. “Thanks, Mark, I know. I’m just
really claustrophobic. This time delay chamber always freaks me
out.”

“Oh.” Relief softened
his face. “I’m sorry this is hard for you, but I’m glad you’re not
afraid of me.”

“No, I trust you,” I
lied.

An eternal thirty
seconds later, the latch released with a muffled click and
Richardson swung the door open to reveal concrete stairs. I drew in
a long breath, trying to ignore the sensation of dark water closing
over my head while I walked down.

A short trip down a
deserted white corridor brought us to a featureless white door. My
back crawled as Richardson opened the door and gestured me ahead of
him.

I took a couple of
long strides to face Stemp where he sat behind a desk.

“What?” I demanded.
“What the hell’s going on?”

“Please sit,” Stemp
said dispassionately.

I squelched the urge
to lunge over his desk and yell. Been there, done that, and it
hadn’t turned out well last time. I dropped into the vacant chair,
trying not to look and feel like a petulant teenager. Slowly
releasing the fist that had clenched in spite of me, I tried for a
poker face while I stared at Stemp.

The silence
lengthened, and I cracked first. “I was told Kane is on vacation.
When did that happen?”

“Kane has been on
active duty 24/7 for the past ten months. He was overdue for a
break, and he has a great deal of unused leave time banked.”

“And…” The word came
out sounding almost like a growl.

Stemp’s snakelike eyes
never flickered. “And he will be on leave until further
notice.”

“
Involuntary
leave.” This time, I didn’t try to conceal the growl.

Stemp shrugged. “That
is none of your concern.”

“Wrong,” I snapped.
“My team. My concern.”

“Very well.” Stemp
appraised me for a moment before flicking his gaze at Richardson.
“You’re dismissed. You never saw Ms. Kelly.”

Richardson withdrew,
and Stemp regarded me briefly before extending his hand across his
desk. “Your weapon, please.”

“Why, are you afraid
I’ll shoot you?”

Stemp’s expressionless
facade never wavered. “Let’s just say I’ve had reason to question
your emotional stability in the past.”

I felt my face twist
into a snarl. “Yeah, well, I’m fresh out of husbands for you to
kill, so you’re probably pretty safe.”

“Nevertheless.” He
curled his fingers in a ‘give’ gesture. “If you please.”

I gritted my teeth and
slid my Glock out of its holster, fighting down a combination of
fury and fear. It must be bad if he was taking precautions like
this. Really, really bad.

I laid the gun on the
desk, ignoring his outstretched hand. “Don’t touch it,” I barked
when he reached to pick it up.

One corner of his
mouth twitched with what might have been the tiniest of smiles, and
he sat back in his chair, steepling his hands in front of him.
“You’re a quick study.”

“Skip the
pleasantries. Tell me.”

He eyed me for another
moment before he spoke. “Kane has been relieved of duty. He has
become personally involved with you, and his judgement is
unreliable. He will be reassigned to a different operation once I’m
convinced he’s fit for duty again.”

As I gaped at him, he
slid a file folder across the desk. “Your car has been destroyed in
an accident, and you have been reported killed in the same
accident. You may select another car from the choices in this
folder, and you’ll be assigned your new cover identity by end of
day. You will be relocated to a safe house…”

A tidal wave of shock
reduced the rest of his words to garbled static.

I sat stunned for a
couple of long seconds while the shards of my shattered life
tumbled and came to rest in silent chaos.

“What…? You… you…” My
breathless stammer resolved itself just below a scream.
“
What
?”

“I thought I had been
abundantly clear,” Stemp said. “Would you like me to repeat
myself?”

“Wha…? No!
Fuck
! You wrecked my car? You told everybody I
died
?
You… you…”

I locked my hands onto
the arms of the chair, willing myself not to snatch up my gun and
shoot him where he sat. My mind shrieked and gibbered.

My beloved farm. My
friends. My car. My bookkeeping business. My identity. Everything I
loved, torn away and discarded with callous indifference.

A wave of dizziness
reminded me breathing was not optional.

An instant later, the
shock transmuted into blind rage. A fine red haze threatened to
obscure Stemp’s face, and a creaking from the vicinity of the chair
arms could have been the chair or the bones of my clenched
fingers.

“You.” The word
rattled dryly in my throat like boulders fracturing in an
avalanche. I swallowed and tried again, achieving a sound slightly
more similar to a human voice. “You. Have made. A serious.
Mistake.”

Stemp shrugged. “I did
what was necessary. What should have been done seven months ago.
You will be able to live and work in safety, and our operations
will be secure.”

“Your operations will
be dead in the water,” I snarled. “I want my car back. I want my
life back. I want my handler back. And until I have those things, I
will do nothing. No decryptions. No surveillance in enemy networks.
Nothing. Sweet fuck-all.”

“You know that’s not
true,” Stemp replied calmly. “Your behaviour has been observed and
documented since March. Your psyche profile indicates that your
sense of honour and duty will compel you to continue working for
us. So skip the theatrics, pick out a car, and go and meet your new
team.”

New team. Oh, God. Oh,
shit.

I drew in a long, slow
breath.

After a moment, Stemp
raised an eyebrow. “Ms. Kelly, it’s time for you to go. This
interview is over.”

“Actually, no, it’s
not,” I countered. “Let’s talk for a minute.”

He shot me a look,
clearly mistrusting my pleasant tone. Smart man.

“This is not a
conversation,” he said flatly.

I finally succeeded in
loosening my grip on the chair, and I let the ache in my knuckles
anchor me in the churning sea of rage and rising panic.

“You’re right, it’s
not,” I agreed, holding my voice determinedly steady.

He sighed. “You’re not
going to issue another ultimatum, are you? You know very well it
won’t work.”

I forced myself to
lean back in the chair. “Oh, yes, I’m definitely going to issue
another ultimatum. But first we’re going to talk about Kane. You
have no right to screw him over. You’re the one who ordered him to
fake an attraction to me. Now you’re punishing him for
obeying.”

“The operative word
here is ‘fake’,” Stemp said. “He admitted he let his personal
feelings for you get in the way when he allowed you to escape last
week. Today he exhibited a serious error in judgement in allowing
you to leave. When a top agent starts to make mistakes like that,
it’s a clear sign he’s been compromised.”

I snorted. “No, it’s a
sign he knows his asset well enough to be very convincing. If he’d
tried to stop me today, he’d have had a fight on his hands. Not the
kind of thing you want to do if you’re supposedly in love.”

I stopped to swallow a
queasy sensation. God, please let him be faking that. I continued
with more confidence than I felt.

“You’ll notice he
admitted
…” I made air quotes around the word, “…his
so-called personal feelings in yesterday’s debriefing. Hell of a
funny place for a declaration of love, don’t you think? If you were
fooled, it’s a testament to his abilities, not an indication he’s
been compromised.”

Stemp levelled a
reptilian gaze across the desk. “He knew last week his cover was
blown. If he was faking his feelings for you, he would have
abandoned the charade then.”

“Did you rescind the
order?” I demanded.

“No.”

“Duh.”

He twitched a
shoulder. “I can tell he’s not faking.”

“Yeah, because you’re
such a good judge of character,” I snapped. “You’ve misjudged Kane,
and you’ve misjudged me. I’m not doing any more work for you until
I get what I want.”

“We have reason to
believe an agent has been captured and is being tortured,” Stemp
said. “We need you to decrypt some files so we can retrieve him as
quickly as possible.”

My guts twisted while
the gruesome memories writhed and bled.

I forced my face into
a neutral expression and propped my feet on the edge of Stemp’s
desk, tipping my chair onto its back legs. “You’re full of
shit.”

“No. That agent is
suffering horribly. You’re the only one who can save him.”

I gulped down the
guilt. He was lying. He had to be.

“Oh well.” I did my
best indifferent tone. “I’m very sorry to hear that. I hope you
write a nice letter to his mother when you finally retrieve what’s
left of the body.”

We locked eyes.

“So you’re refusing to
cooperate,” he said after a long moment.

“Damn skippy.”

Stemp sighed. “Then
your usefulness is at an end.”

Suddenly I was looking
into the barrel of his gun.

I rode out the burning
rush of adrenaline with a long sigh of my own. “Put it away, Stemp.
You know damn well you won’t kill me.”

“I wouldn’t have
before. Now, I have several very good reasons to kill you.”

“Okay.” I linked my
hands behind my head and left my feet on his desk. “So kill me.
I’ve got nothing left to lose.”

In the silence, I
could hear the faint ticking of my ancient wristwatch. Maybe the
last thing I’d ever hear. Stemp’s gaze was as unwavering as his
gun, and I was pretty sure he wanted to shoot me just as much or
more than I wanted to shoot him. I was also pretty sure he wouldn’t
do it.

But I wasn’t positive.
My heart thudded so loudly I was afraid he’d hear it and realize
how shit-scared I really was.

About a year later, he
slapped his gun down onto the desk, and I managed to reduce my
involuntary jerk to a twitch.

He blew out an
irritable breath. “Why can’t you be afraid to die like a normal
human being?”

I shrugged and sat up,
letting my chair tip forward onto four legs so it didn’t topple
over from the force of my tremors.

“Why should I be
afraid to die? Are you?” I was pleased my voice was still steady,
and I hid the quivering of my hands by lacing my fingers together
in my lap.

Stemp actually allowed
a frown to form. “Not particularly. It comes with…” His frown
deepened. “…the territory,” he finished quietly. Suddenly his gun
was in his hand again. “Who are you working for?” he demanded.

I hissed pent-up
tension through my teeth. “Fuck
off
with the gun, would you?
You keep messing around like that and you’ll end up shooting me by
accident.”

“Answer the question.
You must be deep undercover. Who are you working for?”

“Christ, not you, too!
I’m working for my own business as a bookkeeper at the moment. If
you’re smart, and if you give me what I want, I’ll be working for
you again. That’s it.”

“You’re lying. You’re
an agent. And a good one, too. It’s the only way to explain your
reactions.” Stemp’s poker face was firmly in place again, his gun
steady. “What do you mean, ‘not me, too’?” He eyed me narrowly.

Shit. Shouldn’t have
said that.

“You know damn well
I’m on your side,” I snapped. “You’ve tested me often enough.”

“True…” His gaze never
left my face, his eyes as expressionless as the bore of the gun
still trained on me. He contemplated me for a few long moments.
“Kane knew,” he said at last. “That’s what you meant. Kane knew
about your other undercover op, and he didn’t report it to me.”

Fear trickled coldly
under my skin. If Stemp thought Kane had concealed a potential
security breach along with his personal feelings for me, I might
not be the only one calling in dead.

“I’m not an agent!
Kane asked me if I was undercover, and I told him the same thing.
He believes me.”

I resisted the urge to
cross my fingers when I spoke the last sentence. I was actually
pretty damn sure he
didn’t
believe me, but I thought he
trusted me. I hoped.

“Please move your
chair back to the middle of the room,” Stemp directed. “Stay
seated. If you make any other move, I will shoot you, no questions
asked.”