Cease and Desist (The IMA Book 4) (24 page)

But there was one thought I kept circling back to — Christina. In the mall, afraid and alone, put in a situation that I had sworn to keep her out of.

I shouldn't have been so hard on her.

I shouldn't have left her alone.

That last one, it killed me. That man never would have approached her if she wasn't alone.

I sighed impatiently, and the woman turned to give me a sharp look.

Even if we had been together, even if we'd been glued at the hip, it would have only postponed the inevitable. The men at the IMA were paid to be tenacious, to lock their jaws into a case and, like a pit bull, not let go.

I would know. I'd been one of them.

Sudden movement had me turning my head. The man beside me was reaching into his pocket.
More drugs? A weapon?
I tensed, but he wasn't pulling a knife; he was removing a long swatch of black fabric from his suit jacket.

A blindfold.

Of course. He didn't want us to see where they were taking us. Which was interesting, because I was an ex-agent; I knew where most of their old bases were because of my rank. The need for this secrecy could only mean one thing: they had been building more facilities since I'd left the IMA.

The man rose from his seat and looped the fabric around Christina's eyes. She jerked, but didn't struggle. I soon saw why. There was a bruise on her face that hadn't definitely hadn't been there before.  They had decided to wait until I was unconscious before laying into her.

How pathetic.

As he tied off the fabric, he looked at me and made a lewd gesture she couldn't see. I tightened my mouth and stayed silent. The woman rolled her eyes and said, “Oh,
grow up
, Earl.”

“Did you hit her, Earl?” I asked him.

“It was Luis,” Earl said, nodding at the first man, who gave him a sharp glare.

“I'll remember that.”

“What you
remember
won't matter soon.” Luis turned his dark eyes on me. “Do him, too. If he says another word, give him another dose.”

Fuck you, too, Luis
.

Fabric looped around my own head, knotted tightly enough to cause discomfort. The blindfolds were a nice touch. They weren't just disorienting, they were a display of power. Blindfolds rendered the wearer blind, helpless, and utterly dependent. Combined with the handcuffs, they ensured that my training would be of as little use to me as possible.

There was nothing to do but sit back and wait.

Christina

The blindfold heightened my other senses. I could feel when we began our descent. Whatever was going to happen would happen soon.

One advantage of the helicopter's violent motions was that it helped mask my fear from my captors. My hands were shaking.

I might very well die today.

Death — I had been looking it the face every day since my kidnapping. Since the day I'd realized that it was fully possible to die young. Since the day I'd realized that not only could I die young, I could die young in a number of unpleasant ways.

A quick death was a luxury far too many people took for granted.

I had expected that they would remove the blindfold once we landed, but my captors didn't bother. I stumbled and felt an unyielding hand clamp around my forearm to keep me from falling.

“Walk,” said a male voice. I think it was Luis. I'd managed to make that out from Michael's conversation with Earl on the helicopter; he had a slight accent I hadn't picked up on before in my panic. I thought he might have been from Argentina.

I was trying to walk, but the ground felt shaky beneath my feet, as though someone were gripping it in their hand, seconds from pulling it out from under me. I wasn't sure if that was a lingering aftereffect of being on the helicopter or a byproduct of my own sheer terror.

“I said to
walk
.”

Luis was not a patient man.

I was filled with the urge to cry. “I'm
trying
.”

“Try harder. Pretend your life depends on it.”

There was a flight of stairs. Blindfolded, stairs are terrifying because only a single step divides you from a tumble into darkness. Hinges shrieked and a blast of cold air hit me like a slap, tinged with the scent of mulch and leaves. We were outside, and I suspected that the lack of warmth on my skin meant that it was nighttime. Hours had passed.

I tried to count the footsteps, to see if Michael and the two other agents were still with us, but I couldn't quite sort them all out. My head was still sore, and I was foggy from the anesthetic.

There's at least three
. I wanted to call out to Michael, to see if he'd answer, but I was afraid that doing so would get him in trouble. I'd heard Earl's threat to inject him again if he spoke.

Soil eventually ceded to hard tile. The soles of my shoes squeaked on the polished surface. It was still cold in here, but the air was stale as if it had been pumped through an air conditioner with old, musty filters. I could smell disinfectant coupled with an odd chemical smell that was pungent and unpleasant. A cleaner of some sort? Fuel?

To hell with it. “Michael?”

The sound of a keypad pricked my ears. We were entering a room that was kept locked by code. I was not anticipating the step, or the push that accompanied it, sending me sprawling into an ungainly heap into a padded floor.
Padding
.

Oh, God, one of
those
rooms.

All the old terror before was swirling around me, like clouds swirling around the epicenter of a building storm.

The blindfold was ripped off, and light speared into my eyes. I rolled over, kicking with my feet to propel myself against a wall with which to right myself as my eyes brimmed with tears from the abrupt brightness of the fluorescent lights. The guards seemed to take it as an attack, or maybe they were just feeling vindictive: I received a kick to the gut for my trouble, hard enough to wind, and send me curling in upon myself like a woodlouse.

By the time my eyes had adjusted, my captor, or captors, had left the room. It was a holding cell, almost identical to the one that I had been in before. And just like before, I was alone.

Chapter Nineteen

Numb

Christina

Food was not forthcoming, and neither was water. As far as messages went, that had all the subtlety of a ten-foot sign painted in blood.
You are unnecessary. Keeping you alive is not cost-effective
.

When I had been here before, the IMA had still needed me. I was their bargaining chip, and their connection to Michael, who had gone MIA.

Michael had told me at the time that I'd been lucky, that if I hadn't been a crucial component of their plans they wouldn't have bothered treating me with kid gloves. I hadn't believed him at the time; my treatment had seemed brutal to me. In my shortsightedness, I had trouble seeing how my situation could have been worse than it was.

But now — I was starting to understand. The IMA had no need to treat me nicely, not when they were going to kill me anyway. Before they had fed me, provided me with water, and, until Adrian had been given control over my case, I'd remained mostly unharmed. I hadn't been tortured.

Things were different now.

Now they had every reason to want me dead. I was caught in the maelstrom. I would be battered and bandied about, lucky if I came out at all recognizable in the end. Lucky if I came out at all.

I thought again of Suraya and shuddered.

Dios no lo quiera
.

Time passed incredibly slowly in the cell. I fell into a listless sleep that I imagined lasted for at least half a day.

Whenever I sleep for more than nine hours, my head becomes stuffy and my eyes swell, and I feel as though I've taken a double-dose of antihistamines. I call it “sleep hangover.” I felt that way now, along with an acute sense of hunger that asserted its presence with a bloated sensation in my belly that throbbed in time to the aching in my temples and behind my eyes. Part of that was dehydration, I think. I hadn't eaten or drunk anything since the mall.

I lay crumpled in a heap, trying to conserve my energy. My lips were cracked. Bits of skin peeled away as I opened my mouth to yawn. When I had gotten up to use the bathroom earlier my urine had been a dark, brownish yellow.

Humans can only survive a couple days without water; and they're quick to feel the effects when deprived.
Such an easy, cost-effective way to torture someone
. I didn't want to die that way.

I didn't want to die, period.

Coward
, whispered the ghosts from my dreams.

Was it cowardly, to not want to die?

If so, then yes, I was a coward.

I wanted very badly to survive.

I curled up into an exhausted, unhappy ball, bracing myself in one of the padded corners against the unrelenting air conditioning. I dozed, and my nightmares wove entire tapestries of horror inside my head: each one of them was a grim reflection of the reality I now found myself in.

Please. Someone help me.

I stumbled to my feet when I heard the door open. It was a guard, nobody I recognized. He had a glass of water with him.

I lurched towards him, in spite of my weakness, trying not to look too eager. As soon as I got close, he upended the glass slowly, letting the precious liquid spill out as he maintained eye contact.

“What are you doing?” I rasped, near tears.

“Better drink fast, before it soaks into the padding.”

My mouth fell open. “But why…?”

The guard shook out the last few remaining droplets. “Tick tock …”

I decided I didn't care. I fell to my knees and lapped up the pathetic pools of water as if I were an animal. The guard made cruel comments I scarcely heard: my head was throbbing, dizzy from standing up and then kneeling down so quickly.

Sometimes pride and survival are mutually exclusive things. I was glad when the guard left, although the sting from his comments still lingered like poison beneath the skin. I didn't cry at least, but that wasn't saying much.

My eyes were far too dry for tears.

Michael

Sleeping meant leaving myself open to attacks I couldn't defend myself against, but if I was going to pull through this, I would require rest. Rest that didn't come from the business end of a needle.

Thinking of the needle and Luis filled me with a dull anger. I shoved that aside for now. Anger wasn't useful at the moment. I needed my head to stay clear in order to focus on the festering cluster-fuck of a situation I'd gotten myself into.

That I'd gotten
her
into.

Don't think about that. Relax.

I'd always been a light sleeper. Part of this was innate, but I had taken the trouble to cultivate it for my own purposes. I had pissed a great many people off by the nature of my trade. It paid to be alert. I breathed out slowly, relaxing my muscles one by one as I stared at the faded light emanating through the fuzzy blackness of the blindfold.

I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, the blindfold was gone. Fucking vanished. I sat up sharply, studying the room. There were no traces left to signify that anyone had ever been in here but me, but I knew better. Someone had been in here as I'd slept. They had managed to remove my blindfold without waking me.

That was not good.

Although perhaps I should be honored that they were going through the old song and dance of these petty intimidation tactics for my benefit.

The door opened with a rush of air. A guard. He wasn't in uniform, but his posture and bearing screamed “hired professional.” His face was unlined but grim. A few more years of that, and he'd look twice his actual age. I'd seen it happen before. It was starting to happen to me.

He walked into the room and the tension spiked. I sat up slowly, not making any sudden movements. “You don't look anything like the ad.”

A muscle in his neck tightened. He didn't say a word. Didn't need to. The way he was coming at me, it was clear what his intentions were. The moment I recognized that air of repressed violence, I'd known that he was here to fuck me up.

I sprang to my feet, fighting the dizziness that threatened to overtake me as my blood pressure dropped abruptly. I was not in prime condition. Far from it. I was dehydrated and hungry, and there were enough drugs swimming around in my system that I'd be guaranteed to fail just about any mandatory piss-in-the-cup test. But I had pushed my body to the very limits of endurance; like a battery, a human body cannot realize its full potential unless it has been fully drained and then allowed to recharge. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger and all that bullshit.

“You wanna dance? Let's fucking dance.”

I kicked him in the hollow space between stomach and ribs. Heard the air leave his lungs —
yes
— and kicked again, intending to knock him on his back. That, paired with the kick, would leave him winded and at my mercy. But this man had my training and my speed. He caught me by the leg and yanked my feet out from under me.
Fuck
.

I hit the floor, rolling, and felt the air around me displace briefly as he aimed a parrying blow at the area of floor where I'd been lying prostrate scant moments before.

I had to get back to my feet, but my hands were still cuffed behind my back. These fucking restraints would be the death of me. I bent to a half-sitting position like I was doing a crunch, and kicked at the floor. When my back hit wall, I levered myself against it so I was standing again.

“Bravo, Mr. Boutilier.” He slow-clapped.

The guard had his fists and his legs at his disposal, and unlike me, he was wearing boots. Was Callaghan aware of this man's methods? He didn't give two shits if an interrogation tactic was unorthodox, but it really wasn't like the bastard to let others share in on the fun.

“Your boss know you're playing in his sand box while he's away?”

“I have my orders.”

“Funny thing about orders. They can change.”

Something flitted across his face. A shadow of doubt, acknowledgment, something. Whatever it was, it disappeared before I could get a proper reading on it.

“Your girlfriend is just as stubborn.”

He was trying to distract me. I knew it. I knew it, and I still fell for it like a rookie.

He drove his fist into my face. Something crunched, and I smelled blood. Several more attacks followed, with swift precision, all of them hitting their mark. Oh, Christ.

“I thought you were going to interrogate me.”

“No,” the guard said. “That privilege goes to him.”

He didn't specify, and I didn't ask; we both knew who he was referring to.

This is bad.

Christina

A woman entered the room. Older, in her late thirties, with frosted blonde hair. My heart lifted slightly — until I caught a glimpse of her face. The moment I saw the steel in her expression and the ice in her eyes I knew that there would be no sympathy from that quarter.

I'd been here for about two days without food, and with almost no water. My hair was starting to get greasy; in one more day, it would be. Beneath the faint traces of deodorant was the faint but unmistakable odor of unwashed skin already in the process of graduating to a full-on reek. The woman looked at me with undisguised disgust, and perhaps this was calculated, too. As women we put so much stock into the way we look; it says so much — too much — about our culture that a go-to insult for cutting a female down to size is “ugly.”

She paced around the room, her high heels sinking in to the padded floors. I got the impression that she was waiting for me to speak. Well, she could wait until hell froze over. My throat was aching, dry, and raw, and sore. All I could think about was water in tall frosted glasses…. A whimper started, and I choked it off mid-sound. Crying wouldn't help me now
.
I doubted whether anything would.

The woman waited for a good five minutes, watching me watch her, her impatience betrayed by each toss of her hair, each start and stop as she moved around my cell with a lithe grace that I'd never possessed. She stopped in front of me, and said, “So you're Christina Parker.”

“You didn't check before you brought me in?” Speaking hurt, as if each word was a shard of broken glass scraping along the inside of my throat. I almost preferred the stare-down.

Her mouth tightened and her eyes narrowed.

Don't antagonize the interrogator, Christina.

I couldn't help it, though. Sarcasm had always been my way of whistling in the dark, even when it turned out to be the shovel that dug me deeper into the hole I was in. Was I digging my own grave?

“You know,” she said, “human beings can only live a few days without water. You're on your second, isn't that right?” She pursed her lips. “I suggest you cooperate. For your sake.”

I drew in a deep breath, and almost choked on it. “Okay.”

The woman lifted her eyebrows. I could tell she was thinking this was too easy. Rather than according a sense of disbelief, her expression signified something else, perhaps disappointment.

I compressed my lips as another painful swallow had me wincing. Did she hope I'd remain stubborn so she could torture me? If so, she and Adrian deserved one another.

“Your name is Christina Parker?”

God, my throat hurt. “Yes.”

“And you are the head of AMI?”

“One of them, yes.” That was no secret. They weren't stupid. I wouldn't be here if they were.

“You admit to defecting from the Bureau du Nuit, then.”

“I didn't defect from the BN,” I said. “I defected from Adrian Callaghan. I might have stayed loyal to their cause if they hadn't prostituted their organization to a psychopath. As far as potential downsides go, that's a huge fucking drawback.”

A muscle in her face jumped at the word 'prostituted.' I wondered why. Because of the slur against her boss? Or because prostitution was a filthy industry she knew her boss had a hand in and maybe didn't approve of? I didn't have the wherewithal to figure it out. Dehydration was taking its toll; I could barely concentrate. I would have to be very, very careful not to reveal anything dangerous.

“Mr. Callaghan would disagree with you,” she said tightly.

“No, he wouldn't. He'd laugh, and say that possessing a conscience is an impediment to success. He kidnapped their leader's daughter and then threatened her in order to force the merger — or did you not know that?” Her face had, for a moment, betrayed her. She hadn't.

“Do you have kids?” I asked. “Is that how he got you?”

“You should take a moment to consider your situation.”

I bit back another sarcastic retort. “I could say the same thing.”

The mask had slipped back in place. Any leeway I thought I'd had vanished like so much smoke. “Did you try to hack into our databases?”

“I didn't try.” I succeeded.

“Don't lie, Miss Parker.”

“I'm not lying.”

I had succeeded where my father had failed, because he had taken the overhanded approach. In all his brashness, and eagerness to prove himself, he had announced himself like a braggart. I, however, had stolen in through the backdoor, through their accounting files, chasing ill-guarded streams of code until, like Houdini, I had made my surprise entrance.