How Spy I Am (6 page)

This time I believed
him. Pulse racing, I hitched the chair backward across the carpet.
Smoothly and carefully.

Stemp one-handed the
gun and picked up the phone receiver. “Get me Kane.”

We sat in silence, and
I held back grudging respect. Even in his one-handed grip, his gun
was rock-steady. When he spoke again, I had to suppress a start, my
nerves stretched almost to breaking.

“Kane. How long have
you known about Ms. Kelly’s other undercover activities?”

My stomach twisted
into slow knots while he listened without comment, and I imagined
Kane providing his usual concise, thorough report.

Stemp spoke at last.
“I see. Very well.” He hung up without a goodbye, and I
determinedly ignored the need to gulp at the large, hairy lump
apparently lodged in my throat.

Still watching me
steadily, he lifted the receiver again. “Send Dr. Travers over with
the polygraph.”

Again we waited. I
racked my brain for some convincing argument but came up empty. I
bit my tongue to keep from babbling and sat still.

My nose began to
itch.

I refused to move or
break eye contact.

Around the time I was
ready to rocket out of my chair shrieking and pawing at my nose,
the door clicked open behind me. Stemp’s eyes darted toward it for
a bare instant, and I nearly gasped relief as I rubbed the itch
away.

In the next moment, my
estimation of Stemp rose another notch when he returned his
impassive gaze to me instead of staring at the unreasonably
gorgeous woman who’d just entered. I was sure any other man would
have gaped helplessly, or passed out entirely when the blood flow
got diverted from his brain.

“This is Dr. Honey
Travers,” Stemp said. “Dr. Travers, Aydan Kelly.”

Honey. Of course her
name would be Honey. A leggy, thirty-something natural blonde with
vividly blue eyes, pouty lips, and cheekbones to make a supermodel
weep with envy. Her white lab coat did nothing to conceal the kind
of figure that makes men stumble into furniture.

“It’s so nice to meet
you, Ms. Kelly,” she said.

Yeah, sure, she had
the sultry voice that could launch a thousand 1-900 numbers,
too.

“May I call you
Aydan?” she inquired.

I swallowed an
unaccustomed sensation of inferiority and found my voice. “Of
course. It’s nice to meet you, too, Hon… uh, Dr. Travers.”

“Please call me Jack,”
she said. Her small grimace made her look, if anything, even more
beautiful. “Honey is my given name, but I prefer my middle name,
Jacqueline.”

Yeah, I could
understand that. I wondered if Stemp had mentioned her first name
to be correct, or if he just liked calling her Honey.

She shot a quizzical
glance at Stemp’s gun, still trained on me. “Is that
necessary?”

“I intend to find
out,” Stemp replied. “Please prepare Ms. Kelly for her polygraph
test.”

A perfectly arched
eyebrow lifted. “Director, you do realize this is still
experimental technology, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course,”
Stemp snapped. “Get on with it.”

A faint line appeared
on her flawless forehead, but she placed her small attaché case on
the other chair and opened it without comment.

Relief battled fear
while I watched her tinker with various switches and dials inside
the case. At last, I’d be able to lay everyone’s suspicions to
rest. I hoped.

God, what if it
malfunctioned? What if it said I was lying?

I took a long, slow
breath, trying to stay calm.

Shit, what if fear
screwed up its readings? What if…

Dr. Travers advanced
on me holding a band festooned with electrical wires, and I tried
to hide my nervousness.

“Don’t worry,” she
said. “This is just a device to measure your brainwaves.”

“Uh.” I shot a look at
Stemp. “What is Dr. Travers’s security clearance?”

“Dr. Travers is aware
of your project.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t sure
whether to relax or not.

She smiled as she
secured the band around my head. “This is very similar to Dr.
Kraus’s instrumentation. You won’t feel a thing.”

“How accurate is it?”
I asked.

She turned back to her
readouts. “Ready whenever you are, Director. You may begin
questioning now.”

Stemp leaned forward
in his chair. “You will answer yes or no,” he said. “Is your name
Aydan Kelly?”

“Yes.” My heart
thudded ridiculously. Shit, I was telling the truth. Why was I
reacting like I’d just told the lie of the century?

Stemp flicked a look
over to where a small green light glowed in the case. Please let
green mean ‘true’.

“Have you ever used
any other name?”

“No.” Green light
again. Maybe that was a good sign.

He asked a number of
other relatively benign questions, and I began to relax while the
green light flashed steadily. Maybe it was working. Maybe I could
finally convince Stemp I was one of the good guys.

“Are you working for
anyone besides Sirius Dynamics?”

“Um. Well, yeah, I
have my bookkeeping business…”

“Yes or no,
please.”

“It’s not a yes or no
question, you know that,” I protested. “You’re just trying to make
me say something that sounds like a lie.”

Dr. Travers spoke for
the first time. “Do you own your own bookkeeping business?”

I turned to her with
relief. “Yes.”

“Do you also work with
Sirius Dynamics decrypting files and messages?”

“Yes.”

“Do you work for
anyone besides Sirius Dynamics and your bookkeeping clients?”

“No.” I eased out a
long, slow breath at the sight of the reassuring green light.

“Are you conveying
information to anyone outside of Sirius Dynamics?” Stemp
demanded.

“No.”

After what seemed like
hours of the same questions phrased in every possible way, Dr.
Travers turned to Stemp. “Everything indicates she’s telling the
truth.”

Stemp shot her a
glance before focusing his snakelike eyes on me. “Are you sure your
instrumentation is working correctly?”

A faint flush climbed
her cheekbones. “As sure as I can be under the circumstances. As I
told you earlier, this is experimental technology.”

Stemp’s gaze bored
into me. “Lie,” he commanded.

“No.”

“If you want me to be
convinced, do it,” he barked. “Tell a lie!”

My ravelled nerves
finally snapped. I jerked forward in the chair. “Fuck off! You’re
just trying to trap me! I’ve jumped through your fucking flaming
hoops so many times my ass is permanently scorched, and it doesn’t
matter what I say or do, you won’t believe me. The instant I lie,
you’re going to use that as an excuse to frame me. Stick it up your
ass!”

I clenched shaking
fists on the arms of my chair and glared at him.

Dr. Travers had
recoiled at my outburst, and she stepped forward again to lay a
placating hand on my arm. “Aydan, are you all right?”

“Fine,” I growled.

The light in the case
glowed red.

After a long moment,
Stemp laid his gun down and leaned back in his chair with a sigh.
“Thank you, Dr. Travers, you may go. You never saw Ms. Kelly.”

We sat without
speaking while she packed up and let herself out of the office.

I glowered at Stemp.
“Now, I want Kane reinstated. I want my car back. And I want you to
get the word out that I’m not really dead so my friends don’t have
to suffer.”

Stemp’s expression
didn’t change, but I got the distinct impression of fraying
patience held in check only by a supreme effort of will.

“Perhaps I didn’t make
myself clear,” he said evenly. “Your car has been totalled. Crashed
and burned. We will replace it with a different one. You will
remain officially dead for the duration, because it’s the only way
to divert Fuzzy Bunny’s attention away from you and away from this
project. Nothing you do or say will change that.”

I stood, holding onto
my temper with all my might. “Then I guess we’re done here.”

“Sit down.”

I stood my ground,
fists on hips. “No.”

“So you’re refusing to
do any more decryptions.” His voice was still emotionless.

“Yes.”

“In full knowledge of
the suffering it will cause.”

“Perhaps I didn’t make
myself clear,” I said, and turned to leave.

“Where are you going?”
he demanded.

I wheeled to face him
again. “Home.”

“You can’t. You’re
dead.”

“No. I’m.
Not
,”
I snarled.

“Yes. You
are
.”

God, he was fast. I’d
been watching his gun hand so intently I hadn’t even noticed his
other hand, concealed by the desk until he jerked it up.

I registered the sound
of the gunshot at the same time the almost-painless impact pitched
me backward. The ceiling flashed by.

My final instant
burned with white-hot rage.

I woke. That was a
hell of a surprise.

I had expected harps,
pitchforks, or nothing at all, but I hadn’t expected to find myself
still alive, lying on a bed in a white room. I braced for the pain
of a gunshot wound, but none came.

After a moment, I
blinked away the last of the dizziness and sat up to take stock.
When my blurred vision cleared, I realized the bed was bolted to
the wall. Seatless, tankless toilet. Camera on the ceiling in the
corner. Nothing else in the featureless room.

Slow certainty dawned,
and I peered down at the large red stain on the front of my
sweatshirt, the gelatinous remains of the ballistic tranquilizer
gun’s paint pellet still embedded in the fabric.

I held panic in check
with the fierce heat of anger. Fucking rat-bastard. Trank me and
lock me down, will you? We’ll see about that.

It was only an
eight-foot ceiling. I managed to catch hold of the camera on my
first jump. I swung for a moment before it tore out of its
mountings, and the broken wires spat brief sparks.

Camera in hand, I
stood eyeing the wires. Too bad the live ends were up too high for
me to do anything with them. Not that I had any brilliant ideas
anyway.

The sound of the
sliding door made me swing around. I was pretty sure I was being
held by the good guys, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.

And if I got the
opportunity, I planned to give Stemp a camera suppository. Pointy
end first.

My arms were already
stretching into a backswing when the report of his tranquilizer gun
made everything dissolve again.

The next time I woke,
I smelled food. I dragged myself into a semblance of sitting
position and leaned my back against the wall. There was a covered
tray in the corner, obviously the source of the aroma.

The dizzy grogginess
didn’t abate this time, and I blinked heavy eyes at my watch. After
a moment of slow bewilderment, I realized I wasn’t wearing it
anymore.

My apathetic gaze
wandered to my feet. I was tethered to the bed by a chain around my
ankle. It looked long enough to allow me to reach the toilet, but
just. Shoes gone, too. I pulled listlessly at the chain. Any minute
now, I’d completely freak out at being trapped and restrained.

I waited patiently,
but no particular emotion surfaced.

My brain struggled
through the sludge to gradual comprehension, and I squinted at my
arms. Sure enough, a reddened dot marked the entry point of a
needle on my left forearm.

Drugged.

My stomach growled,
and I wondered how long I’d been held. And how long Stemp intended
to hold me. I slithered numbly down the wall to lie on the bed
again and turned my face to the wall.

Time oozed by, blurred
by drugs and punctuated by the small, flat report of a trank gun.
Several food trays came and went while I was unconscious, but I
ignored them. Sooner or later, Stemp would decide this wasn’t
working. With any luck, he’d be lulled into believing I was drugged
into passivity. And I’d be ready.

My eyes opened on a
different room. Sensing a presence beside me, I blinked the
blurriness away to discover Mark Richardson seated in a chair
beside the bed. My heart slammed into my ribs and I flinched away
from him before I could stop myself.

“Aydan, it’s all
right, you’re safe,” he said hurriedly.

I shot a wild glance
around the room. “Wha… Is this a sim?”

“No. This is the safe
house.” He ran a hand through his wavy brown hair, eyeing me with
concern. “It’s okay, don’t worry.”

Could this be another
of Stemp’s mindfucks? I peered at Richardson’s empty hands and the
space under his chair, unable to control my shudder. No visible
instruments of torture…

His face twisted as if
in pain. “Aydan,” he murmured. “I promise you can trust me. I
promise I won’t hurt you. You’re safe here. Please believe me.”

I gulped down the bad
memories and reached for calm. “Sorry, Mark, I believe you. It was
just the surprise that got me.”

Get over it. He was
one of the good guys. He had been more upset over burning me than I
was. He wouldn’t hurt me. I knew that, dammit. Just let it go.

The dull, drugged
sensation had diminished, and I drew a deep breath and took a less
hurried evaluation of the room, willing the tension out of my
body.

I sat in a queen-sized
bed with soft pillows and a fluffy duvet. Definitely not
prison-issue. The walls were a warm taupe colour, and there was a
dresser in the corner. No camera. No seatless toilet. The bedside
table held a glass of water.

Following my gaze,
Richardson picked up the glass and offered it to me. “You should
drink something. They gave you IV fluids while you were
unconscious, but you’re probably still dehydrated. And you must be
starving.” He eyed my tremors as I fought to remain sitting up.
“Lie back for a bit. I’ll get you some orange juice.”