Third Strike (31 page)
“You never were,” I said. “And you can’t go out looking for Sean and my father with all guns blazing, can you? We wondered why we weren’t picked up on the way down here. But you’re hiding from your own people just as—”
Vondie flipped the gun into her left hand and hit me in the stomach with her clenched right fist. I saw it coming just far enough out to brace, but she put some weight and venom behind it.
I staggered back, heard Terry shout, “For God’s sake, you can’t do this!” but I was concentrating more on staying on my feet at all costs. The pain was a tight crunch in my gut that radiated out in sharp, nauseating waves. I forced myself not to let it show on my face as I straightened.
“I thought so,” I said, as calmly as I could manage. “You punch like a girl.”
Vondie bared her teeth at me, might have gone for a second shot, but Terry stepped between us. She took my arms, steadied me, her eyes on my face. “Charlie, I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “You have to believe me. They approached me days ago, showed me pictures of Agent Blaylock and told me you’d killed her. That if you tried to contact me, I should play along and lead you here. It all sounded so damned plausible. I didn’t have a choice!”
“No choice?” I laughed, and it wasn’t a happy sound. “I would have thought when Storax are signing the checks, they’d have a say in how their hired help behaves, wouldn’t you, Terry?”
Her shoulders dropped. “You think they’re working for us?” she said, and I would have scoffed at the question, but I saw the sudden stillness, the awful realization as it hit her.
“Aren’t they?”
“No,” she said quietly. “We’re working for them.”
They separated us. It was the first thing they did.
Collingwood had me and my mother hustled out of the lobby and taken through into the security area. They had a holding cell back there, presumably used as a secure place to stash intruders until the local law enforcement arrived. Vondie opened the door and shoved my mother inside, twisting a painful lock onto her wrist when the older woman attempted to resist.
My anger flared afresh. I stepped forwards instinctively, but Vondie let go of my mother with a shove and yanked the barred door shut, separating us.
“Sorry,” Vondie said, smiling. “No family rooms in this hotel.”
The outer door behind us burst open and Terry elbowed her way through. She was struggling against the two security men who were trying, somewhat halfheartedly, to detain her.
“Collingwood, you can’t do this!” she snapped. “You’ve violated their legal rights. Even if you had any kind of a case against these people, it will never get to a courtroom if you deny them their right to legal counsel. I’ll stand—”
“You have a sister in San Francisco, don’t you, Terry?” Collingwood interrupted, his voice gentle.
Terry stopped, baffled. “Yes,” she said, frowning. “What—”
“How would you like her hounded by the IRS? How would you like your cousin’s work visa to the UK revoked and her deported in leg irons? How would you like your parents in Concord accused of harboring terrorists and thrown in jail?”
Collingwood jabbed a finger to emphasize each point, jolting her with every new threat, pushing her back. And when she was reeling, he paused, smiled at her almost kindly, let his voice turn coaxing. “You want to do your duty, don’t you, Terry?”
“Of course,” she said. “But—”
“Well, you’ve done it. Now let us do ours.”
For a long few seconds, Terry wavered, gaze skittering between us. She bit her lip, wouldn’t quite meet my eyes. Then, at last, she nodded slowly. “I’m sorry, Charlie,” she said, her voice low, and went out.
The two Storax guards had been standing, dumbfounded, listening to the threats Collingwood made against Terry’s family. They clearly had no wish for their own relations to come under that kind of official scrutiny. All it took to send the pair of them scrambling for the exit was for Collingwood’s gaze to swing in their direction. The door closed behind them with a grim finality.
“You choose your people well, Collingwood,” I said, bitter, aware of a faintly shiny taste in the back of my mouth. I faced him. “But if you’re not being paid by Storax to clear the way for the licensing of this new drug, what the hell
are
you up to?”
are
you up to?”
Collingwood didn’t answer right away, just jerked his head again and Buzz-cut closed in on me, the pickup driver keeping his injured leg at a safe distance. I must have just nicked him, otherwise he’d be on crutches.
I braced myself, glancing across at my mother, who was pale as death behind the bars.
“I’m not going anywhere without her,” I said.
Collingwood swung round, got right in my face.
“Come now, Charlie,” he murmured. “Do you really want her to see what we’re about to do to you?”
The soft words hit harder than Vondie’s punch to the gut. Before I knew it, I’d allowed myself to be dragged out, down a short corridor, into another room. It was empty with painted block walls, a concrete floor, and concealed lighting panels in the ceiling. It might have been a storeroom or an empty office, but it felt like a cell, or worse.
It was a reasonably sized space, but with Collingwood and Vondie, and the two men, it felt oppressively overcrowded in there.
Vondie set about searching through my pockets and quickly found the switched-off mobile phone. I’d emptied out everything else before we’d left Terry’s house. I thought of Sean’s phone and hoped that he was using it to call Parker right now.
I don’t know how much cavalry I can rustle up if you get yourselves into trouble,
Parker had told me,
but I’ll do what I can.
Parker had told me,
but I’ll do what I can.
The only thing I could do was give them both a little time.
Vondie showed the phone to Collingwood, who nodded back towards me.
“Let her turn it on, just in case.”
“Do you really think we’ve rigged it?” I asked. “Wow, you’re more scared of us than we thought.”
The pickup driver stepped up behind me and cut the PlastiCuffs. I flexed my hands a few times, then obligingly thumbed the phone into life. Vondie snatched it out of my hands and pressed a few keys, scowling.
“Nothing.”
“It’s called being a professional,” I said sweetly. “You should try it some time.”
“Where will Meyer have taken your father?” Collingwood asked, folding his arms and leaning against one wall.
I shrugged. “Who knows,” I said. “He could go anywhere. I hear Phoenix is nice this time of year.”
“How much have you told your boss?”
“Everything,” I said without hesitation. “We’ve kept him fully briefed and he’s making moves as we speak to have the pair of you hauled in for treason—if that’s a recognized crime over here. Back home, you’d probably be sent to the Tower of London and beheaded with an ax for what you’ve done.”
Collingwood’s face showed emotion for the first time. “I’m doing my job,” he said, darkening with the fervor of a true fanatic. “My superiors may not like my, ah, methods, but I love my country, and if we don’t get the jump on this nation’s enemies, you can be sure as hell they’ll try and get the jump on us.”
“Your superiors don’t know what you’re up to,” I said. “Come to that, if you’re not taking a backhander from Storax, why the hell are you trying to bury a drug that doesn’t work?”
“But it does work,” Collingwood said, levering himself off the wall abruptly and pacing, and there was a zealous gleam in his eyes now. “It targets a particular genetic code. Do you have any idea what could be done with that?”
I stared at him blankly. “You’re talking about a bioweapon,” I said. I laughed. “Jeremy Lee’s family were originally from Korea. Is that what this is all about? You’ve gone to all this trouble for the possibility of developing a side effect into a weapon. What are you intending to do, Collingwood, stand on the battlefield and wait for your enemies’ bones to crumble?”
Collingwood stared at me for a moment, then shook his head. “You don’t understand the possibilities, just like the bureaucrats above me when I first got wind of this. The Storax people were trying to play down the whole thing, so they could get their license, but I saw what could be done with it, even if they didn’t.”
I didn’t want to let him reel me in, but I couldn’t help asking, “How ?”
He gave the slightest of smiles, as though he’d known I wouldn’t be able to resist his rhetoric.
“Any company that handles government contracts has to be checked out regularly,” he said. “I have unlimited access to Storax’s files and I like to be thorough.”
“So you’re a glorified filing clerk,” I said.
His face tightened. “You’re not an American, Charlie, and you don’t understand the threats facing this country,” he said. “But, right now, you’re one of them.” He glanced across at Vondie. “We need to contain this as fast as possible. Find out what she knows and who she’s talked to—and where Meyer and Foxcroft are likely to be,” he said. “Do it, but with no …
outward
damage. If we have to trade her, she needs to
look
to be in one piece, if nothing else.”
outward
damage. If we have to trade her, she needs to
look
to be in one piece, if nothing else.”
“There won’t be a mark on her,” Vondie promised, almost a purr. “Don’t you worry about that.”
Collingwood nodded and walked out without a backward glance. The door closed behind him.
“Well,
hardly
a mark,” Vondie amended. She eyed me, triumphant, savoring the moment. “Okay, boys,” she said. “Strip her.”
hardly
a mark,” Vondie amended. She eyed me, triumphant, savoring the moment. “Okay, boys,” she said. “Strip her.”
I fought them then, hard and dirty. Knowing what they were trying to do set off all kinds of echoes back down the line, reaching viciously into the past and slashing through reason and training to carve a strake of outright bloody fear.
Even through the white-hot smear of rage, I recognized the fact they had their hands tied. They’d been told not to do anything to me that was going to show, and I was giving it everything I had and a little more besides. So, even outnumbered, I was more than holding my own and I reckoned we were pretty much at stalemate.
And then, as Buzz-cut staggered back, doubled over and starting to retch as he clutched at his balls, Vondie finally stepped in with an exasperated bark of, “Oh, for fuck’s sake …” and stunned me.
I didn’t see her pull it. She reached under my thrashing arms and dug the double electrodes of the TASER directly into my rib cage just below my left breast, which was probably as close to my heart as she could get it.
There was an almost infinitesimal delay, then the stunner’s electro-muscular disruption technology stampeded over my neural pathways with all the tact and delicacy of a boot camp drill sergeant. It didn’t bother trying to modify the control signals from my brain to my muscles, it blasted them into the ether, screeching commands in their place that I was unable to ignore or defy.
I’d been trained against the older type of stun guns, to focus and to fight through the charge they delivered, but this was like nothing I’d experienced before. I gave it a damn good go, flailing, but my coordination was blown to shit. Fifty thousand volts through your chest will do that to you.
The pain had a jagged quality all its own, ripping out chunks of my nervous system and spinning them away like debris from an explosion, so that some parts of my mind seemed magnified a hundred times and others were just big blank holes of frenzied nothingness.
Next thing I knew I was on the floor, my body rigid. I was peripherally aware that my head was banging on the concrete and that was probably not a good thing, but I couldn’t stop the twitching dance of my limbs. My hands had distorted into the twisted claws of an arthritis-ravaged geriatric. I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. It was the worst cramp I’d ever had in my life, the most violent fever, the meanest hangover, all rolled into one.
After that, I don’t remember much. They handled me roughly, yanked at my clothes, stuck something sharp in my arm. I think I heard someone groaning out the word, “Bitch!” over and over.
Then the corners of the room folded in neatly over my head, and I went under.
The first things that struck me, when I came round, was the nagging ache in my shoulders and wrists, and the nasty tingling in my fingers. I’d been sleeping, but something was very wrong with the angle. My head was lolling forwards into space, overextending my neck muscles.
They had strung me up, I realized belatedly, with all my weight hanging from restraints round my wrists. Padded restraints, by the feel of it, so they didn’t mark me.
How kind.
How kind.
I lifted my head, miscalculated how heavy it had suddenly become and had to right myself with a jerk that did nothing for the pain everywhere else. I wondered how long I’d been left like that. Not long, I reckoned, or I would have suffocated like a crucifixion victim.
“Back with us, huh?” said a woman’s voice I couldn’t immediately place. There was something familiar about the words, though. I waded sluggishly through my memory, sifting. My father. That was it. He’d said the same thing when I came round in hospital after I was shot. Shot. My father. My mother. New York. Boston. Parker. Texas. Storax. Terry.
Vondie.
Vondie.
Reality arrived like a subway train, bringing with it a wheezing rush of information. On reflection, I think I preferred things when they were more fuzzy.
I opened my eyes. Somebody had brought in an easy chair and Vondie was reclining elegantly on it in front of me. The chair had been carefully placed out of my reach, even if I’d had the energy to try. She was leafing through a file contained in a thick manila folder and swinging her crossed foot negligently.
She’d taken the time to primp while I’d been gone, I saw. Her platinum blond hair was immaculately pleated behind her head and her makeup was flawless. It helped to disguise the thick nose I’d given her, even if it failed to conceal the damage completely.
It didn’t take long to work out why she’d gone to the trouble, and the realization sent a greasy slither of fear coiling through my belly. They’d stripped me naked before they’d dangled me from the ceiling. Never a state of affairs that’s going to make you compare well to another woman and feel good about yourself. Not when she’s tall and slim and wearing a fistful of designer labels, at any rate. Quite a change from the chainstore brands she’d sported on the UK job.
I forced my stiffened legs to uncurl, biting back a groan as I straightened my feet out with slow, deliberate effort onto the cold floor beneath them, so I could take some weight off my arms.
They’d hung me just high enough so that, when I stood upright, the best I could do with my arms was bend my elbows a little, but they were still largely numb from the restricted blood flow. Eventually being cut down, I recognized ruefully, was going to hurt like a bastard.
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