Cease and Desist (The IMA Book 4) (12 page)

“I invited them over for fucking tea and scones,” he said, “what do you think?”

“Are you sure you want an answer to that?”

Michael raked a hand through his wind-touseled hair, causing his shadow to convulse sinisterly on the wall behind him. “Don't sass me,” he said wearily.

“Why can't you just tell me? We're in this together, in case you've forgotten, and you keeping things from me has never worked out in your favor.”

“You're too nosy for your own fucking good.”

“You know what they say. Knowledge is power.”

“Knowledge is a rope, and you're weaving a noose out of it. Leave some slack for the enemy.”

“You wouldn't be getting so defensive if you hadn't killed some of them.”

Silence. His expression revealed nothing, but I knew I was right.

I shook my head, frustrated. “Why were you contracted to kill someone in the
yakuza
? Couldn't they hire someone Japanese?”

“Fine, you win,” he said. “You want to know the cold, hard facts? The ugly details? One of their superiors found out that these two dick-dribblers were skimming profits. They were part of a corrupt branch, the rotten part of the tree. The end was near for them anyway, but this was the termite that broke the motherfucking branch.”

“And so their boss —
he
hired you to kill them?”

“No. They hired me to kill
him
so that they could carry on, as per usual.”

“And did you succeed?”

Michael closed his eyes briefly. “Of course. That was why they hired me. I never fail — at least, I didn't used to. You were the first mission I'd ever botched. My luck's been spotty ever since.”

I flinched, as much as from what he'd said as how he'd said it. He was glad to be free of his assassin's mantle — or so he claimed — but sometimes I wondered if he missed that power. If he missed being feared. Michael hadn't exactly left his previous profession by choice. Did he resent being taken away from all that? Did he resent me?

He started pacing again, more furiously this time. All the pent-up energy inside his body fueled his erratic movements. He reminded me of a caged lion, stalking with lithe, agitated grace. Beautiful to watch — until he came after you.

“I killed their boss before he could do the same thing to them. His men were cowards. They should have been killed. Men who betray their master cannot be trusted; their boss would have been smart to eliminate them as soon as their weakness presented itself. But he hadn't, because they had cut their pinkie fingers and sworn allegiance, and that was supposed to signify bravery.

“I had a feeling they were going to pin his death on me. As I said, they were cowards and their branch was not populated by foolish men. They would know immediately that their boss had been murdered and the suspicion would fall on the shoulders of those with the most to gain from getting him out of the way — these men. And they were not efficacious enough to stage a coup, not without setting someone up for a fall.”

“Someone like you.”

“Yes.”

“Just like Adrian and the IMA.”

Michael paused. “Yes. I'd anticipated that, however, and this time I made sure to plant plenty of evidence. DNA evidence, circumstantial evidence. There was plenty, and I hid it in such a way that the traces of their guilt would only come to light if there was an investigation.”

“Which I'm guessing there was.”

“Of course,” Michael said again. “Criminals are perfectly fine with breaking the law, until they happen to be on the receiving end of it. Nobody likes getting fucked over. Criminals least of all, because they know how easy it is to get off scot-free.”

No wonder they hated him. I'd hated him too, for the way he made me feel as if there were no way out. He was not a man you wanted as an enemy. He could render you powerless in an instant, and hating him was the only option, because if you feared him, you were done for, because you were as good as acknowledging the hopelessness of your situation.

“Why the hell would you get involved with the mafia?”

“Because they paid me upfront.”

“That's a stupid reason,” I blurted.

“People have gotten involved with them for less.”

He moved towards me.

“It doesn't take much to get involved with the mob.”

When he kissed me I could taste the city on him, electric and vibrant. Kissing him always made me think of neon lights and pitch-black alleyways, because the live-wire burst of passion I felt when I was around him was tempered by the grim knowledge that we couldn't, couldn't keep on like this. He would be killed. I would be killed. This couldn't last. One way, or another. This couldn't last.

“I'm not good at this,” I said. “Any of this.”

Michael lifted his head, pressing his forehead against mine. “You're still alive,” he pointed out. “That's more than most men and women in this profession can say for themselves.”

“I'm not like you.” I felt him stiffen. “I wasn't trained for this. I don't
want
to be in this profession.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Michael gave a rusty sounding laugh and shook his head. “You haven't got a goddamned choice.”

“There's always a choice. And I'm afraid that if I choose to stay in this profession, I'm going to die.”

“You won't,” he said. “Not as long as I'm alive to keep you safe.”

I touched his scarred cheek. Scar tissue is different from regular skin — it's rougher, stronger … and yet, in so many ways, also more vulnerable. “But Michael,” I whispered, “what if they get you, too?”

“They won't.”

“You're the strongest man I've ever met,” I said, “but even you're not Superman.”

“I'm not a hero,” he said sharply, “and I'm not afraid to die. I'd rather die tomorrow than spend an entire lifetime without you.” He pulled back to look at me. “When Callaghan took you from me, I realized that for the first time in my waste of a life I had something worth living for, and the only thing more terrifying than that was the thought of losing you.”

“Do you ever regret it?” I asked him. “Falling in love with me?”

“No.” His voice was full of certainty, so much that it made my heart feel as though it were about to burst. But — he'd hesitated for a moment, and I wondered if he didn't regret it after all. “…do you?”

I asked myself this nearly every day. Once, the answer would have been yes. My life certainly would have been simpler without him in it. Sometimes when I was with him I felt more alone than when I was by myself. But I'd tried to outrun my feelings before and it was like trying to outrun my shadow; you cannot outrun the darkest part of you.

On the other hand, he had made my days explosive, lighting up hidden fuses I hadn't even known I'd possessed; it was as though I had been living my life in black and white, and in being with him I was able to see color for the first time in all its vivid glory.

Nothing is as deadly as the love of a powerful man.

“No,” I said, and I hesitated, too, so maybe that made us even. Just two more hurts in a long line of hurts, maps of scar tissue on hearts that could stand to take far more beatings than they should.

“I love you,” I said. “God help me.”

“He can't help you. But I can.”

This time, when he kissed me, we ended up on the floor in a tangle of emotions that blinked and misfired like broken Christmas lights.

All my life, I had been taught to regard sex as evil, unless it was within the context of marriage — in which it became a necessary evil. Now I was in a relationship that hinged on it.

Could he help me? Could
anyone
help me? Or were we doomed to fail before we even began?

“Te necesito
,” he said, in near-perfect Spanish, so intensely that his words nearly scalded.
“Se mío.”

“Me estoy cayendo
,” I said, reaching to touch him, to assure myself that he was really there.

That he was real.

“I'll catch you.” He spoke in English, intent now on my body, the look in his eyes making me flush.

My brain flicked back to the nightmare I had, and I recoiled, managing to curb it only at the last minute. But I still had those memories. A frightened girl, alone in a basement. A dark boat in a sea of danger.

I thought, but did not say,
what if you miss?

Michael

I still remembered the day I had gotten involved with the
yakuza
. I was working for Callaghan while Christina was at the BN's special training center. I'd been finding things that hadn't added up, before I'd realized about his big takeover. I'd known that whatever I found wouldn't be good, and the urge to squirrel away some emergency cash kicked in.

Most Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, and in a time of financial crisis they really feel the rub. I grew up dirt poor and it's not an experience I really care to repeat. I always keep some extra padding in my accounts — at least a couple thou more than I think I need. You never know when you might have to go off the grid and disappear.

When they came to me with their proposition, my first thought was skepticism. I was hardly the best man for the job. Mob hits are high profile — they often make the news. I was also high profile, wanted in multiple states with a listing on Interpol of my very own. An unknown would be preferable, if they wanted to keep this on the down-low. I told them as much, offered to put them in contact with someone who better matched their agenda.

No, they had insisted. They wanted me.

That sent up some red flags. I had considered that they were associated with Callaghan in some way, but my nosing around had turned up nothing. They were exactly what they claimed to be: ex-yakuza, greedier than their means, and too incompetent to utilize the resources they had at hand to get rid of the man who posed them the greatest threat.

Well, apart from my own damn sense of pride.

I killed their boss, and they paid me. And then, later, as the DNA evidence I'd planted surfaced, I realized that they had tried to frame me for it. If my discharge from the IMA had taught me anything, it was that crime scenes should never be left too clean: it makes it far too easy for others to leave behind incriminating evidence to implicate you.

That they had turned up now was an unwelcome coincidence, and I had never put much faith in coincidences, anyway. I suspected that their presence in San Francisco meant one of two things: (a) someone else — probably Callaghan — was looking for me, and they had followed the same clues, or (b) they'd had some outside help in finding me.

There were a lot of men out there who would pay big money to see me stop breathing. Half would probably double the payment if it meant they got front-row seats. Some, like Adrian, would probably null some of the fee if they were allowed to participate.

Christina's expression as I had listed off some of her more obvious weaknesses had impressed itself in my conscious. I saw it again and again each time she looked at me with a new shyness that hadn't been there in a while, and the nervous way she skirted around me when I stood too close. It was true what I had told her, that I observed because I had been paid to, and because she had been my intended target once upon a time.

Things were different now. And the same people who would pay to have me killed would see nothing wrong with using Christina as a means to an end — my end. If she got hurt in the interim, if she was raped, or tortured, or killed…they wouldn't care.

Because she was my weakness, and I would do anything to keep her safe.

Even if it meant pushing her away.

Chapter Nine

Survival

Suraya

The drug in that filthy needle had been potent. When I opened my eyes, it was to find that my surroundings had changed completely. I doubted I'd been out for long, though. When I reached up to touch it, my hair was not greasy enough (interesting that they hadn't bothered to cuff me) and — I took a quick sniff — I didn't smell. The room did, though. Filth, sweat, and sex. It was rank.

Looked like I'd gotten picked up by the right men after all. What a shame it would be if it was a completely different set of thugs. Something crawled across my leg, as light and unpleasant as a single stray hair, and I tried not to think about the last time the bed I was on had been washed, if ever.

Christina Parker could not do this. She had been through some difficult things, but she was sheltered. You only had to see her face to know that. She had an unguarded openness in her manner and speech that only comes from having lived a privileged life. A few weeks in a basement doesn't change that.

I brushed the insect away, and winced at the stiffness in my arm. The unknown sedative had made my body feel as heavy as lead, and I ached as though I'd fallen asleep contorted in an unnatural position.

I sat up with effort, cursing the criminals, hoping there wasn't anything more dangerous in that needle than the usual mix of staph and old blood. I was lying on a cot in a dark, windowless room. No other furniture that I could make out, and the bed looked to be bolted down. Creaks in the walls and floor, and the distant rumble of chatter, told me that I wasn't alone.

But
where
aren't I alone?

I frowned. Had I been out longer than I thought? They could have bathed me, I realized. I could scarcely make out whether or not I was wearing the same clothes. They could have bathed me and changed my clothing while I was unconscious.

I looked down. A quick assessment proved that no, I was not dressed as before: a revelation that would be a bleak wake-up call for any woman entrapped in their snare.
We've seen it all
, that said,
and who knows, we may just see more
. Sick — and clever.

A key rattled in the lock, startling me. I hadn't even heard the footsteps approach. Was it that the walls were that thick, or was I losing my touch?

I sucked in my breath.

A man filled the doorway. The light behind him was blinding, throwing his entire face into geometric relief. Under his brown threadbare jacket, he wore a dark t-shirt. His unkempt beard further distorted the lower half of his face, and gave him a filthy, half-feral appearance. Beards could be a clever touch, if they weren't memorable. Shaving it off could be a separate disguise. Nothing about this man was memorable. He was generic trash.

This could be a good sign. If they suspected I was anything apart from what I was pretending to be — a naive foreign girl who had allowed herself to be sold into the sex industry — they wouldn't have bothered with all this pretense; they would have shot me on sight, point-blank, like the poor fool who'd been used to  get my foot in through the door.

Unless they have something worse than death in mind
, I reminded myself. I couldn't afford to be too positive.
They might use torture to find out what I know
.

Not that I was any stranger to pain. Even before I got involved in the IMA, and the personal hazards that accompanied such a vocation, I'd been well acquainted with agony. Twice the equipment in one of the local factories of my childhood home had exploded because of poor safety protocols. I had detailed one of those incidents to Michael; I hadn't told him that I'd been in another.

I'd been bringing lunch to my father when some of the lubricating oil caught fire from a spark generated by the grinding metal parts. The force of the explosion had been enough to blow me back. I'd almost lost an eye. I'd almost been killed. The explosion had left burn scars up and down the left side of my face. I was told that I would never look normal again. My parents despaired at ever finding someone willing to marry their deformed, half-breed daughter. The untouchable was just that:
untouchable
. Unlovable. A face not even a mother could love, much less a husband.

Adrian had recognized the freshness of the scars and the even fresher emotional wounds that accompanied them, and mocked me for it, even as he'd raped me. “Perhaps some depraved part of you is flattered,” he'd said, in that awful accent of his, “that anyone would want you with that face — even like this. And you hate yourself for that, don't you?”

“You are awake.” The guard's voice cut through the silence like a blade. But now that I was aware of his presence, I didn't startle. I'd been expecting him to say something, to assert his presence.

I paid him no mind. For all he knew, I couldn't even speak English. The drugs were strong. They wouldn't expect me to be possessed of myself. And I didn't trust myself to speak or act while my thoughts still swirled bright with hatred.

People say hate is like a poison — but they're wrong. It's like a drug. You never forget your first hit, how it seduces you with its strength and power, and takes you completely by storm. It colors your world in light and meaning, until you wonder how you ever managed to get by without it. And then, eventually, you get to a point where you can't. It takes over your life, until hating becomes your reason for living.

When Adrian brought me to the U.S. I went to a paramedical tattoo artist who specialized in matching ink pigments to human skin. Scar tissue is more sensitive than regular tissue, and the pain was intense, but the scars were a memory I want to forget, and made me more memorable where I would have preferred to be forgotten. And with my face fixed, I found that many doors that had been closed to me were now open. The very men who had mocked my appearance now fell over themselves trying to please me. It was disillusioning. It was pathetic.

But it gave me a reason to keep on living.

I looked at the man in the room, the man who would bring me down if he could, and wondered which distorted version of me he saw. He looked back at me with black, fathomless eyes and chewed on something — it looked like a wooden toothpick.

When he spoke again, all he said was, “Get up.”

I did.

Mistake. I cursed myself. I was pretending that I didn't speak much English. Should I have understood this command? On the other hand, his order had been accompanied by a gesture that was pretty damn clear.

Maybe not such a mistake after all
.

Maybe I should have shown more fear, though.

No
, I decided.
Not yet. But a little more meekness couldn't hurt.

“This way,” the man said.

I hesitated —
good girl
. “Why?”

The man grabbed me roughly by the arm. His fingers were painful. I looked down, to give the appearance of submission while I searched for distinguishing marks. He had a scar on the back of his hand, and his nails were stained brown with nicotine.

Filthy habit.

I hoped I wouldn't have to fuck this man. I could do it, but it would be unpleasant, to borrow Michael Boutilier's woefully inadequate turn of phrase.

Luckily, fucking seemed to be the last thing on his mind. Everything about his conduct bespoke a grim, business-like sense of urgency.

He was worried.

Which meant I should be worried, too.

Flies buzzed, describing slow, somnolent circles in the stale air. The hall was silent but I had the sensation of being watched by unseen eyes.

The man opened a door and let go of me to give me an ungentle shove that sent me stumbling through. “In,” he said, belatedly.

I regained my balance, straightening as I did so, taking care not to stand too tall or look too poised. Appearance was everything; reconnaissance was akin to being a character in a play — only if I did not reprise the role to satisfaction, it really would be curtains.

There was another man waiting in this room.

This new one was dressed similarly to the one who'd held me in his vise grip. He was a smoker, too. I could smell the lingering chemical odor of his cheap, undoubtedly imported cigarettes, seasoned by his rotgut alcohol of choice. What a revolting human being he was. That they both were. This profession was tailored to suit human detritus like them.

He looked me over without playing at subtlety. I saw neither approval nor disapproval in his face, though his expression was far from kind. When his eyes met mine again, it was free from any lingering signs of his humanity.

I waited.

He waited.

I waited longer.

Finally, he spoke.

“The life you knew is over.”

Trace of an accent, too. Not Russian or Serbian, like the dubious club owner from before. Something else. Possibly Albanian. Interpol's wanted list was filled with Albanian men wanted for everything from human trafficking to terrorism. A hazard, when your chief export is crime.

The men exchanged a look, and I realized my face must have looked too wooden. I stared at the new man impassively, allowing a tinge of unease and, yes, fear, to creep into my face. Fear was what they wanted to see, but if I showed too much, they would be all too quick to tear me apart. Too little, and I would be made into an example.

Deliberately, the man said, “You belong to us.”

He spoke slowly, making lewd hand gestures that would ensure that the implications of that statement sank in in spite of the language barrier.

I shook my head furiously. The new man nodded, and the first one, my captor, slapped me casually. That was a nice touch. Debasing, without involving enough force to leave a mark. The sting was already fading. In an ordinary girl, the dehumanization wouldn't. I let my shoulders sink, which the men took for submission, resignation — whatever it was they were aiming for, that was what they chose to see.

“This is where you live now.”

The second man raised his arm, and I braced myself for another slap, only half-feigning it this time, but he was only gesturing towards the room, in a half-circle gesture that reminded me of the flies in the hall outside.

“You will stay in your room. You will not leave, unless one of the men here comes with you. You will fuck whoever we tell you to fuck. All of the money you make belongs to us.”

Of course. It all comes down to money in the end.

There's a saying that you can't put a price on a human life, but that saying is a lie because we have. We have, and it's so much lower than you would think. Yes, human life has its price like anything else, and will continue to do so for as long as it doubles as a commodity.

I must not have looked appropriately humbled, because the man's eyes narrowed. “If you steal from us, or try to run away, we will know, and you will be dealt with severely.”

Because the premises were being filmed by CCTV cameras? Or because he encouraged the girls to inform on one another? I had to assume it was a mix of both. I continued to meet his eyes blankly.

“You might lose a hand, or your legs. Maybe both.” He shrugged, as if it made no difference to him. “You will make more money if you are whole, and we will be happier with you if you make more money. You want us to be happy with you. If you make enough, we may even decide to let you go. Who knows? Stranger things have happened.”

What a liar he was. If anything, this speech was motivation to avoid becoming a top-grossing commodity. They would never release such a viable and easily manipulated source of income. Not willingly — although a naive girl who didn't speak the language might not think that through. Not when escape was the only thing on her mind.

His threat of amputation, however, could very well be true.

I repressed a shudder.

I had seen such things done before. Adrian Callaghan, for example, mutilated his victims for fun. I had seen him cut out the tongue of the man who Michael Boutilier called Villanueva. He toyed with the man the way a cat does with an injured bird, ending  his misery only when he had tired of the game. Oh, and yes — he had raped him, too.

I had seen such things done in India, too. In many ways, Adrian was a glaring reminder of what I had left my country to escape. The difference was that the villains in my home country had become villains out of necessity, of desperation, of greed. Adrian had become a villain because he found it diverting, and because it came as naturally to him as sleeping or breathing. As horrible as these men were, they could not hold a candle to Adrian Callaghan's many cruelties: he could reduce them to a weeping, bloody powder if he wished.

“Do you understand?” the man asked bluntly.

“Y-yes,” I said, infusing the word with a heavy accent.

Not that it would matter if I did or not. This man did not care if I understood; he only wanted to make a point. He nodded, putting an end to the conversation.

Adrian might be more dangerous, but the threat that these men posed to me was far more immediate. I would do well to heed their warnings — for now.

“Take her out of here.”

A hand closed around my arm, and I traded one circle of hell for another.