Cease and Desist (The IMA Book 4) (23 page)

He jabbed a needle into my throat hard enough to break my composure.

I stared at the car ceiling with watering eyes.

“You're about to get what's coming to you.”

“
Va te faire enculer
, fuck boy.
”

The man just shook his head and closed the box of needles with an indulgent smile.

“ — lights out, Michael Boutilier.”

Chapter Eighteen

Isolation

Christina

Unconsciousness yawned open like the jaws of a beast to devour me whole.

I tried to resist, but resisting was like fighting against the ocean while caught in a rip-tide. My eyes slipped closed before I was even fully aware of them doing so, and I was plunged into a restless, unnatural sleep plagued by troubling dreams.

Mamá
, pale and blue with death, wearing the ratty remains of the dress we had buried her in. “Whore,” she said, maggots and worms falling from her sunken red lips with each utterance. “I raised a whore for a daughter. You should be
ashamed
.”

“I'm sorry,
Mamá
,” I said. “I'm so sorry.”

“Sorry you killed me, you mean,” she scoffed. “
I
certainly didn't raise you to run around with assassins. I didn't tell you to seduce strange men.”

“It was
necessary
.”

“It was never necessary, Christina. You had every opportunity to back out and you didn't take it.” She glowered at me through her viscous, watery eyes. “You might as well have signed my death warrant yourself.”

My tears cut like blades as they fell. Blades that sheared directly into my heart. “That's not true, and you know it!” I said. “
You
wrote that memoir!
You
got on their radar!
You
opened your door to the wolf he hired to kill you! It was all you! Not me —
you
.”

“Foolish child. You aren't listening to me. I was killed to teach you a lesson.”

I sucked in a breath.
No
.

But it was true, wasn't it? When I'd refused to work for Adrian, when I'd shot him in the knee and fled, my mother had died not a week later.

“Oh God,
Mamá
.”

When I looked again, she was having sex with a faceless man, except he was ruining her, causing her skin to flake off and slough away. She had no breasts now and her eyes were ragged red holes. That's when I realized I wasn't looking at
Mamá
any longer; I was looking at Suraya.

Suraya, as I remembered her from
The Ivy
.

The smell of death.

The complete and utter terror.

“It should have been you instead of me.”

I choked back a sob.

“You think you're above this, don't you?”

“No.” I shook my head. “No, I don't.”

“Then why didn't you go?”

“Because I was
scared
.”

“A coward,” Suraya corrected me.

She turned into A, the IMA agent besides Michael who had tried to help me when I'd been captured. A had been the mistress of the old boss, but towards the end she had started to question his ways. She, like
Mamá
, had been a casualty in Adrian's quest for power. And now she was here, flesh barely hanging on to bones, with an inexplicably long and full head of hair.

“It's all your fault,” she said in her sweet voice.

The man who was fucking her had a gun where his penis should have been. I wanted to look away, but I was frozen in place, forced to watch.

When he climaxed, he came in her face, shooting A in the forehead, and something too black and viscous to be blood ran down her face amid the shower of bone and dust, coursing down her chest, eating up her flesh like quicklime.

As her body fell away, the faceless man turned towards me and out of the shadows, and I realized that he had a face after all —

Adrian Callaghan.

He smiled. Naked, except for the blood and gore that covered him like a mantle, he stepped towards me. The gun in his groin was still smoking.

“No,” I choked. “No, please — ”

“Rise and shine, Christina Parker.”

I opened my mouth and I screamed.

Something hit my back hard. My eyes flew open and I saw not Adrian's cold gray eyes, but a pair of dark brown ones I did not recognize.

I was hyperventilating, my blood streaming with adrenaline and panic. Fingers dug into my jaw and I shook my head, frantically, saying, “No, no,
no —
” the words coming out before I could reclaim them in my blind need to negate my imaginings.

Was I awake? Was I still asleep?

Did it matter?

(Rise and shine —
)

“
No
.” In my terror, I dragged the word out into several syllables. “
Dios ayúdame
.”

There was a loud crack, and then pain. My vision stretched and then snapped back into place like a rubber band as I reeled back from the impact.
I tried to reach up and assess the damage, but my hands wouldn't move. What —

Slowly, reality seeped back into my brain with the same agonizing pins-and-needles feeling as a limb filling back up with blood. I was handcuffed, trapped in a car. This man had captured us.

This man was the enemy.

He lowered the hand he'd hit me with.

“No more screaming.”

Had I been screaming?

I stared at him blankly. He returned it levelly, then looked away with a sound of disgust.

My throat ached.
Oh God, I was screaming.

I craned my neck to look over my shoulder at the motionless heap that was Michael. He hardly seemed to be breathing. I wanted to ask if he was all right, but even I knew I wouldn't get an answer.

The man reached into the door's side pocket and gave me another one of those drug-laden cocktails, forcing it to my lips like before. It tasted syrupy, with vague notes of fruit.

I swallowed, gagging, and glared at him.

He pretended not to notice.

If the nightmares returned, I didn't remember them. A small blessing. Where I was going, there would be plenty of opportunities to make new ones.

This time when the car stopped, the man got us all out of the car. We were in the middle of an office park that looked to be deserted. There was only one other car here besides ours, and the windows were tinted.
Backups
, I thought.
Reinforcements.

The man spoke into a phone, and a man and a woman both dressed like businessmen appeared out of nowhere. They were both wearing earpieces, and they both looked tense.

“Where is he?” the man asked.

They're afraid of Michael
. That was reassuring. If they feared us, that meant we still had some sway. Fear was currency in this world: more powerful and more universal than money.

My captor jerked his head back towards the sedan. “He's still in the car.”

Both of them relaxed.
Cowards
.

They grabbed Michael under the arms and got him to a standing position. He was still unconscious and slumped in their arms as they half-carried, half-dragged him towards one of the buildings.

The man opened my car door, leaning in to unbuckle my seat belt. He seemed to enjoy invading my personal space. Intimidating me. This time I didn't lean away. I met his eyes coldly. “What?”

“Are you willing to walk?”

“Yes.”

“Don't run.”

My handcuffs jangled as I swung out my arms to steady myself instinctively while getting out of the car. Handcuffs. It had been years since I'd worn any, and the cold, restrictive metal bracelets were bringing back memories of the time I had spent alone and afraid in the IMA's base waiting for my fate to be decided by men who made it painfully clear that they considered my life worthless.

All that had changed.

I dug my nails into my palms and stared resolutely ahead as the building got closer.

I won't run.

The man beside me reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out a ring of keys. He sorted through them until he found the one he wanted — a brass, utilitarian looking key — and unlocked the door with a noise that echoed down the hall.

We were quickly ushered inside. I bit the inside of my cheek. While I'd been held captive by the IMA, Adrian had shown me a video of Michael torturing one of his enemies to a slow death in the middle of an abandoned warehouse just like this.

Was that to be our fate now? I didn't ask. If I showed any fear, that would only give these people more to work with. It might give them ideas. They were trying their best to break me; they didn't require my help to do it. But I was terrified.

We got to an elevator, Michael and his two captors in front. He was starting to stir now, but his face was slack and disconcertingly gray. His hands were still locked behind him in that uncomfortable position. I imagined his shoulders must be killing him and he was doing everything he could to avoid showing that strain.

Once, he had told me that he didn't need his hands to kill someone. Remembering that threat of his now, it made sense that these people would take precautions. I just wished that they hadn't come so prepared. I wanted them to make a mistake. I wanted them to
fuck up.

There was no sound in the elevator, save for our commingled breathing and the hum of the mechanisms pulling us skyward. We were going so high, all the way to the top floor. Maybe their plan was to push us off the building, make it look like a double-suicide — but they'd need to remove the handcuffs, first. Plus, that man had told me that Adrian wanted us both brought in, though he hadn't said alive.
Maybe they're going to shoot us
.

The elevator opened up at the roof, increasing my fears. The floor was concrete, covered with dead leaves and bird droppings. There was nothing around for miles; we were completely isolated and alone.

They could do
anything
.

The man said something but I didn't hear what it was. All sounds were being subsumed by a deafening staccato roar. A black helicopter was roosting on its landing pad like some fearsome bird of prey, the pilot waiting in the front seat with a helmet that obscured his eyes. We were now outnumbered four to two.

I'd never been a gambler, but even I knew those odds weren't good.

One of my captors nudged me in the spine with the barrel of his gun. “Get in.”

I dug my heels into the concrete, hesitating. If I got inside that thing, I'd be heading en route for my own death. If I didn't, they'd shoot me like a dog.

I wanted to run. More than anything else, I wanted to run, far and fast, without looking back. But I was not a coward, and I would not leave Michael. If either of us had a chance, it would be together, not alone.

One mistake
, I thought.
That's all we need. Just one
.

“Christina.” Michael, conscious now, raised his voice to be heard over the roar. “Don't be an idiot.”

The man behind me adjusted his grip on his gun, and though it was too loud to hear, I knew he had just removed the safety. There would be no second warnings.

“Okay,” I said shakily. I swung myself in unsteadily and the man got in beside me. Michael was placed across from me, with the woman and the other man sitting on either side of him like bookends. As if it had received some signal, the helicopter took off with a lurch that made me dig my nails into my palms.

The IMA used to have two internment bases. Target Island was one, an island off the coast of Mexico. Michael had told me that there was a second in Russia.

Was that were they were taking us, Russia? Could we get there by helicopter alone?

If they were taking us to an internment base, there was no question what would happen to us. We would be executed like war criminals. If anyone questioned our disappearance, they would also vanish. All traces would be wiped clean. Nobody would find our bodies. Nobody would find anything.

Michael was sitting straight up as though he were attending a briefing and not pending his own execution. His face was without an ounce of softness: even when his eyes met mine, there was no yielding, no reassurance, nothing.

A chill rippled through me.

I'd seen that look before. Fear — it was fear.

Michael was afraid.

If he was afraid, I didn't have a hope.

Michael

We'd been blindsided, both of us.

Conscious of the agents on either side of me, I said nothing. Better if they thought I was still under the influence of that morphine. Which I was, to an extent. I was lucid, but my head felt as though it had been packed with the itchy cotton from a dentist's office, and all my thoughts had slowed.

In the silence, I turned inward, and reflected on what I could have done differently. Retraced every single goddamn step we had taken to bring us to this point. An inadvisable exercise by any standard: it was a waste of brain power, there were better uses for my cognitive abilities.