Wallbanger (5 page)

Most times the puppet was thankful for his
plainness; it made his subtle shifts in mood easier to read. With
one glance she could tell when the Master was displeased, even if
he did not voice that displeasure. It was at those moments she
wished his features were more distinguished, more grotesque.
Nothing scared her more than knowing a face so absolutely normal
masked the mind of a monster.

Approaching another cell, she chose the first
tunnel on the right and proceeded to her destination. Ordinarily,
she’d have chosen the third, preferring the most direct path to the
large chamber, but tonight the circuitous route was in order. The
Master believed only he and his guards knew the full course, but
the puppet quickly learned her way around the stone labyrinth—its
entrances and exits—pushing aside the claustrophobia that paralyzed
her on her first visit to the Dungeon. That session had taught her
a great many things about the Master, and herself, and her
resilience then earned her the Master’s trust.

She came upon the little nook in the tunnel
and dropped to one knee, searching the tiny crevice for where she’d
squirreled the package. Her fingers brushed the nylon case and with
the tips she pulled the bundle from its hidey-hole. The horrors of
the Dungeon paled to the dangers of this weekly trip, but she
always looked forward to it. She’d yet to be caught with the cell
phone—all outside contact was strictly forbidden due to the
sensitive nature of the Master’s affairs—but the puppet was certain
no one suspected the gadget had slipped past the chateau’s tight
security.

Helsinki being located on a peninsula, water
bordered it on three sides. Therefore, expansion had always been a
problem. But the innovative Finns quickly learned to build not up,
but down. The city was full of subterranean complexes—shopping
malls, hockey rinks, metro and bus stations—and all of them
equipped with cell phone access. Sitting on the floor, the puppet
powered the phone on, pressing her back against the rock wall.
There were only a few places in these tunnels where the signal was
strong enough for her to make a call, some close to the Dungeon,
but the risk was always worth it.

“Kotenok.” Her nickname came through the line
in a soft Russian purr.

The puppet smiled and spoke in the same
language, her voice hushed to keep it from echoing through the
passageways. “They meet in two days, but there will be a party
tomorrow night. He is set to attend. ”

“And your Master?”

The question was a ritual, one she’d answered
every call since becoming a puppet many months before. “He…” she
trailed off, decided against voicing what her heart truly felt.
“Nothing new, from what I can tell.”

“You are hiding something, pet.”

Relief flooded her at the opening, and the
puppet allowed the words she’d been dying to say spill like the
Hannoki Falls. “He is getting worse. The screaming. The…rage.
He…has hurt me, and the others,” she amended quickly, lest she be
thought unworthy. “I—”

“Courage. It will end soon, kotenok. I
promise.” The call disconnected.

Still clutching the phone to her ear, the
puppet’s heart soared. A promise. A binding. Already she could feel
the long-missed burn of rope on her skin. The Master had bound her,
but it was not the same—sloppy and hurried. In the dark recess she
fingered the delicate skin of her wrist, lightly tracing the
pattern of an intricate knot.
Soon…

Pushing from the ground, the puppet turned
off the phone and slipped it back into the nylon bag. Then she
continued on her path, mapping out her next move in her mind’s eye.
She never put the bundle in the same place twice, and would have to
move fast to hide it in a tunnel on the other side. The Master was
expecting her to bring his tools and to bind one of the lesser
puppets. He trusted her with the tasks, and her alone.

That her rope-work would end up a bloody mess
saddened her. But the Master insisted on her talent, commenting
once that the ritual she made of binding was a beauty he’d only
before imagined in his dreams. It was the nicest he’d ever been.
But she knew that for some of the puppets, it would be the last
thing of beauty they’d see in their living nightmare.

Coming to the desired shaft, she located her
hiding spot and shoved the phone inside. Then she turned and ran
down the tunnel leading straight toward the Dungeon, never aware of
the shadow that followed.

* * * *

Halfmoon Bay, British Columbia

“Son of a bitch.”

Connolly rolled from bed at the continuous
sound of his cell phone ringing. He’d been awake a while now, and
had heard when it first started its harping thirty minutes earlier.
While he’d gotten more sleep than expected, his aging body
protested the quick move with a series of cracks and a pop that
would have been disturbing had he not heard it countless times
before.

One hand steadied on the rail, he made his
way down to the offending device, tempted to snatch it up and throw
it in the bay. There was only one person crazy enough to call him
constantly, and right now that person had a boot on Connolly’s
neck.

The ringing started again as soon as his foot
touched the bottom level, and he stalked to the table, scooped up
the mobile. “Yeah?”

“This is not the way to do business, Bill.”
The voice filtered across the receiver in a silky, feminine
dulcet.

He made his way to the kitchen and out the
back door, deciding to walk down his dock to loosen his limbs. It
didn’t bother him that he was a rumpled mess in the same shirt and
slacks from the day before, or that his hair was unkempt, or that
he’d left the house without any shoes. The cold ground felt good
beneath Bill’s feet, but had zero effect on his boiling blood.

“You listen to me,” he said, keeping his
voice low and menacing. He’d be damned if some young hotshot
bumbled their way into this catastrophe and then started throwing
weight around. “Calling like crazy won’t get you your money any
quicker. The more contact we have, the more of a trail you could
possibly leave, you fuckin’ idiot.”

“Perhaps a trail is what I want, Bill. I need
some assurances, you understand.”

A boat was out on the water. Not unusual for
the area, but it still sent a shiver of apprehension down Bill’s
spine.

“I told you—”

“I know what you told me. Doesn’t mean I
believe you. I’ll expect it within the week, or I expose you to
your higher-ups,” the voice said sweetly.

That couldn’t happen. That
wouldn’t
happen.

Bill let out a defeated sigh. “By the end of
the week.”

The line went dead.

When the first contact was made a couple
months back, it was as if the caller was still contemplating this
blackmail. The voice was shaky, bumbling, uncertain. Since then it
had grown more cocksure, more demanding. Bill had dragged on,
trying to get more Intel; what the person actually knew, who else
they may have blabbed to and whether or not they were acting alone.
It wasn’t forthcoming.

Now, Bill had no choice but to act. An
outsider having knowledge of The Crew and their operations posed a
problem for all of his agents, and the nation. And while the method
was a last resort that might not plug all the leaks, Bill took
solace in knowing it would definitely send a message.

Looking back across the bay, Connolly noticed
the boat appeared to be heading toward a neighboring island. He
turned on his heel and strode back to the house. The brisk morning
air and the decision he’d finally made peace with giving him just
the jolt his brain needed.

Inside, he dropped his phone on the table,
picked up the other to make the call. A tap of the screen and the
display lit up indicating a text had come in early that morning. He
opened it, seeing the garbled mess, and activated the built-in
decryption software. Twenty seconds later, he read the results, and
his face paled at the short decoded message—
D.N.C.

That code only came across when an agent was
actively engaged in a mission. Since he’d demoted her to inoperable
after Mauritius, there was no way he should have read what he had.
Something was definitely going on with Kizzie Baldwin; off her
game, and now, off the grid. What had happened exactly, he didn’t
know, but he knew someone who could help.

Dropping into the lazy boy, Bill put aside
his initial move and composed a message he wished he could
avoid.

4

Chantilly, Virginia

“You look nothin’ like a Jack,” Gale Freeman
said in southern-salted English, plopping onto the bed in the room
at the Doubletree Hotel. She handed the passport to the man beside
her and sunk into the comforters. “And
Jack Holloway
of all
things? Who’n the hell comes up with the names ‘round here?”

Jack took his credentials and handed Gale
hers. “Second Life name generator. Put in ‘assassin’ and….” He
shrugged.

“Assassin?” Gale asked sardonically.
“Ha!”

Smiling, Jack rolled on top of her, pecked
her lips. “You never did tell me how you got to be in Virginia.” He
dropped another kiss on her neck, one more on her collarbone.

She swallowed her sigh. Why he insisted on
always breaking this rule, she didn’t know. The deal was, whenever
they happened to be in the same vicinity they’d hook up for sex. No
talking about their jobs or anything personal. Just a nice
“Boom-Boom-POW!” for however long they had and they’d go their
separate ways. In fact, she only called him by his aliases when
they were together. It helped her keep things from getting too
intimate. But no matter how crafty her pseudonym—and they were
craftier than
Jack Holloway
—Jack made a point to never use
hers.

“Didn’t have a chance to tell ya’ anything
seein’ as how ya’ mauled me soon as I got through the door, Jack.
Mumbled ya handle and stripped me b’fore I could say ‘boo’.” She
fingered his brown locks and shook her head. “Hardly recognized
ya’. What happened to the blonde?”

“Needed a change. Got tired of it. So answer
the question.”

“What question?”

“Virginia…?”

“My…” she chewed her lip, “My mama lives in
DC, aw’right?”

Jack propped himself on his elbows.
“Really?”

“Yeah, really,” she lied, pushing him off of
her. “Now ya’ know somethin’ personal ‘bout me.” Why couldn’t he
stick to the rules?

Gale had been a member of The Crew for years,
and if there was one thing she knew it was that relationships
didn’t last. Not the good, wholesome, straight from the
Disney-vault kind, anyway. The toxic ones, the type based on sex
and a mutual respect for your partner’s lies and shortcomings,
lasted as long as was stipulated on the hotel reservation, and that
was usually long enough. She and Kizzie—one of the few people she
really trusted in The Crew—had covered this topic many times. Their
motto: Bang ‘em and on to the next one, just like a certain
Englishman of the last name Bond.

But Gale messed up, had returned to this
one
more times than she could count, and now the ninnyhammer
had gone and caught feelings for her. Growing up on her family’s
farm she learned a very important lesson applicable to this exact
situation: Everybody drinking from the same well was a sure way to
get a cow to catch a cold. And that didn’t bode well for Gale. She
was allergic to feelings.

Naked, she stood from the bed and went to
find where her purse landed on the floor three hours before.
Digging in the depths, she located the machine and freed it from
the bag.

“Make that
two
things ya’ know about
me,” she grumbled, setting up the personal monitor. She pricked her
finger with the lancet and touched the test strip to the drop of
blood. A second later the meter beeped and she reviewed the
results. A cherry LifeSaver came out of the roll and she popped it
onto her tongue.

“We can do a trade.” Jack smiled
sympathetically, and it didn’t help matters one bit. “I’ll tell you
any two things you want to know about me.”

Gale leaned against the dresser. “All I need
to know about you is what’s b’tween your legs.” His face clouded,
and she wanted to roll her eyes. If he weren’t so damn good in the
sack, she’d have dropped the sap years ago. Work would have been
awkward, well, more awkward than usual, but she’d have gotten over
it. “Com’ere,” she said, crooking her finger at him, hoping to get
him off the topic before he got too emotional.

He didn’t let up. “Why do you always do that,
Gale?”

“What’s that,
Jack
?”

He hopped off the bed and thundered toward
where she stood, stopping just close enough to brush against her.
She was average-height to begin with, and Jack’s long, fluid body
was one of the things that attracted her to him. Didn’t hurt that
he was cute and could fuck her socks off too. But in spite of his
stature he was a docile man. The brainy type. More passive than
he’d ever been aggressive. For the first time in their affair she
actually saw some fire. His anger would have been funny if it
wasn’t such a turn-on.

Gale looked up at him; usually warm green
eyes were freezing. He gripped her shoulders and spun her toward
the mirror, erect cock pressed against the small of her back. “Who
do you see, Gale?”

“We agreed—”

“Who do you see?” he demanded.

His hands slid around her chest, cupping her
breasts, kneading the flesh in his palms. He thumbed over puffy
pink nipples and Gale dropped her head back against his breastbone,
pussy flooding with heat. Commanding Jack was new and uncharted
territory, and you could just call her Magellan.

“I see Jack,” she said, wondering just how
that would affect him and, ultimately, her. His long fingers
spreading the lips of her sex made her gasp and she decided Jack
would be the only name she called him for the rest of their time
together.