Devil’s in the Details (75 page)

"I work for a company called Voltaire." Victoria's voice startled me and caused me to toss the file back on the desk. She smiled softly at me, handing me a glass of bourbon she had poured in the kitchen. "You know them as the fancy lingerie company you received a million catalogs from." She moved to lean against the edge of the desk facing me, setting the big bottle of liquor down as she cradle her own full glass of the amber liquid.

Victoria kept her head down, her brow furrowed in a pained manner, "That's one of their many fronts to keep the public and the government happy." She clutched the glass tighter. "Before I go any further, I need you to know that no matter what you hear, I love you, Alex." Victoria looked up, meeting my eyes with glassy, cloudy ones, "From the first second our eyes met to this moment, I have never loved anyone like I love you. You're the one true love of my life and the one person that saved me from myself and the world I was forced into it. A world that I never expected to find light in."

I swallowed hard, feeling the tears rise, why were we doing this? "I love you too, Victoria. So much."

She nodded, her face scrunching up in attempts to not cry. "I am a Professor at the Naval Academy, have been for many years. It was where Voltaire placed me after I recovered from my injuries while in captivity." She took a sip of the bourbon. It was clear she was struggling on how to start the conversation.

I moved to the edge of the chair, "Victoria, just tell me what you think you want to. I don't need to know everything."

She shook her head, lifting her head back up, "I don't want to lie to you anymore, Alex." She sucked in a slow breath, holding my gaze for a moment filled with awkward silence. "My operative name is Chimera. It was a name given to me by one of my direct bosses, the old man. I work for a black operations company that is a creative collaboration between the CIA and MI6, my bosses, codenamed the old lady and the old man are heads of each agency, respectfully. Voltaire is an attempt to unify the two missions of both agencies to control and eliminate mutual enemies."

I stared at the blonde. If I didn't know any better, I would think I was in the middle of a weird dream, but I wasn't. I looked at my glass, "What do you mean eliminate?" I had an idea of what the answer would be, but for some odd reason I needed, wanted clarification.

Victoria closed her eyes, "The after action report you read about my injuries and my rescue, the part where the psychologists noticed I had had a mental break, and that my PTSD was the cause. They were right. something snapped in me after all those days of torture and I came out a completely different person." She paused, setting the glass down. "Dani and I were pulled aside the day I met the president. Approached by the old lady, old man and a Colonel in the Army. They spoke of continuing the good mission of fighting evil and basically took advantage of my zombie like state. I agreed without thinking anything about it because I was still trapped in my broken mind. Dani agreed to come with me since she was the only person I trusted."

Victoria paused again, folding her arms and looking down at the floor. I moved closer to her, an overwhelming need to touch her as she spoke of things that could fill a spy novel. "So you work for the government as an intelligence analyst, Dani told me that much."

Victoria opened her eyes, catching that I was moving to touch her. She took a step away, "I don't analyze for them, I’m a field operative."

I frowned, hating her the walls were moving in. "Okay." I stood back up, "Victoria, I have told you a thousand times, I won't ever care what the secrets you hold are, I will always love you."

"I kill people, Alex." Victoria blurted it out, "I kill them in whatever manner my bosses suggest to me." She glanced at me, her eyes filling with pain. "I kill terrible people that sell, kill, mutilate and treat other humans as disposable currency." Her eyes were brimming with tears, "I'm a killer, an assassin, a contract hit woman. I kill people in the name of whatever convoluted idea of patriotism I'm supposedly serving."

I felt the wind get sucked out of the room and my body. I froze in my steps, staring at the woman I loved telling me what she just did. "Victoria."

She shook her head angrily, "No, Alex, let me finish." She grabbed the laptop and opened it, tapping on keys the screen lit up. "I was in Colombia the other day. Sent there to eliminate the head of a cocaine ring who was selling drugs and then using the money to overthrow the local government. An idea the CIA didn't like, so I was sent in. Last month it was killing a Ukrainian arms dealer and making it look like a suicide."

She pounded on the keyboard, her voice thick with anger and sadness, "I've killed congress members, oil magnates, drug dealers, arm dealers, human traffickers, sex traffickers, and I've done it all without a second thought other than how to make it look exactly how my bosses want it to look. I've killed a lot of people, Alex. More than I dare say, or it will bring an even harsher reality to what I am." Victoria shoved the laptop to the edge of the desk with a flippant flick of her wrist, pointing at it like I was one of her students. "It's all there Alex, in that laptop and in those file folders. I'm a killer for hire and I am one of the best, because I lack the humanity to falter when the time comes."

I stared at Victoria, taken aback by the hard tone that forced my eyes to the laptop flickering images of faces I half recognized from the news. I swallowed the rising upset in my stomach down, she wasn't bullshitting me, this was real. There were faces all over the laptop screen who I knew to be dead, the media having glossed over their tragic or celebrated demises.

"All I have ever known for the last ten years is how to live one life. One where I just change the mask from boring Professor to feared assassin who feels very little to nothing when I have blood on my hands." Victoria's voice was rising as it shook at the edges with tears, "Dani is my handler. She is my eyes and ears in the sky as she watches me dismember, choke, and murder the dredges of humanity. That's why we are so close, she saved my life and has every damn time I go out on a new job. Not because we were ever together in a romantic way, she's just always been the one person I could trust. Until you came into my life."

She sighed with a small smile on her face, her eyes clearing up for a second before she continued, her voice breaking more, "Before you even say it, I'm not a hero, a patriot serving the country I love. I'm a broken piece of what was a person, shattered by a war and by a fat arrogant bastard who sucked me into his world. I'm paid to kill people."

Victoria stepped a few more steps away, "I'm a killer, Alex. And I've lied to you to keep you away from that part of me. A part of me that I want to walk away from and never look back, but I can't. Not yet." Her tone became more and more distant with every step she took away from, as if she was trying to cut whatever cords that kept us together. Scaring the hell out of me that I was about to lose her even though what I was hearing was devastating and sickening.

I still had my eyes glued on the laptop, showing me images and snippets of case files that were confirming everything Victoria said, I felt the slow roll of sickness build. "Victoria, I." I almost said it was okay, but it would have been an automatic response to the pain Victoria clearly was in. I could find a way to forgive her, look past this. She was doing her part for the country, working for the government. She was no different than a soldier on the front line. This all could be justified and worked through, she was doing what she was asked to do by a higher power for a greater cause.

"You need to hear it all, Alex." Victoria's voice was trembling, "I never expected to fall in love with you. I thought I had lost that part of my humanity, the ability to feel, around the fifth day of my torture."

Victoria's persistence was there, in her voice, in the pointed movements she made to bring up file after file of her work. The way her body shook with every breath, it appeared she was on the verge of a complete breakdown. I turned to focus on the horrid images instead of the blonde in front of me struggling with every breath. What I saw on the laptop, broke my heart. The crime scene photos all showed a person who was very meticulous in the task at hand, but frenzied as one who was starting to lose themselves and struggling to find the way out. I had seen it a million times while assisting the Medical Examiner at Bellevue. Victoria was clearly broken and as I turned to finally look at her, I could see her two worlds were coming apart at the seams. All because of me and my demands for the truth. The truth to hear her version of a reality that was better left buried in that laptop.

Victoria looked at me, tears rippling in her eyes, "I have to tell you the truth about the first time we met."

I shook my head, "You found me in the metro station and took me to the hospital." I smiled softly at her, "You saved my life." I went to move forward, hoping this would be the end of the conversation and I could hold her and tell her that I could and would forgive her. She was just doing her job.

Victoria held up her hand, frowning, "Please." She dropped her hand as a tear slid down her cheek, "I was sitting on the bench when you walked down into that station. I was wearing a hat, sunglasses and reading a magazine." She folded her arms tightly across her stomach, shrinking into a tight ball as she kept her head down, the dark clouds covering her eyes and forcing more tears to fall from the woman. It felt like she was in a confessional and I was the priest about to hear a multitude of sins I wouldn't be able to stomach.

I felt my heart drop when that night flooded back, the memories all piling up quickly in small pieces. I could see everything, smell everything and hear everything. In particular I could clearly see the person wearing the USN hat bent over a Popular Science. I closed my eyes, focusing on bringing that memory in clearer. I could now see the curves of Victoria's jaw, her long neck, the same neck I loved to kiss late at night while she was sleeping. "No." My gut twisted hard, sending sharp pains up to my heart.

"I wanted to so desperately not to get involved, to let fate cast its wind wherever it may." Victoria looked up at the ceiling, "You looked at me and smiled. I turned back to my magazine and urged the train to get there quicker so I could go home. I had just finished a terrible job and wanted to forget. Then those junkies thought it was a good idea to bother you." Victoria dropped her head back down, tears running down her face, "I wasn't going to get involved, until they hit you. Then I got involved."

I spoke up, my voice cracking, "You didn't. You killed those men?" I felt my heart tighten to the point I couldn't breathe, this was not what I expected and it knocked all of the wind out of me.

Victoria nodded slowly, "I did. All of them. I killed them without a hesitation or a second thought of what I was doing. I rarely ever do when I’m in that mode." Her face contorted, "I never thought I would ever see you again, Alex. I dropped you off at the hospital and disappeared, but I couldn't stop thinking about you. The way you trusted me when you opened your eyes in the car as I buckled you in."

She moved closer to me, reaching for my arm, "Alex, please look at me."

I stepped back, shaking my head as my anger came out of nowhere, "No, Victoria, don't." I didn't know what to think. I was better when she was telling me she worked for the government agency, but telling me she outwardly killed four junkies, innocent or not, I didn't know how to digest it. "You killed those men." I tried to look at her but couldn't, I would just see those crime scene photographs and immediately picture her as a monster.

She nodded, "I did, I killed them because they were going to kill you if I didn't do something."

"You could have just roughed them up, left them or left me." I closed my eyes, "The detectives, they showed me the pictures." I could see the immense amount of violence of those pictures. They betrayed the gentle, soft ways of the woman I loved, the brutality of those images weren't Victoria. They couldn't be her. She wasn't like that. She was the woman I loved implicitly.

"Alex, please." Victoria's voice was painfully soft, shaking like it had earlier. Victoria was struggling to hold it together, and it shattered more of my heart that I was angry at her and causing all of this.

I glared at her when my anger spiked suddenly, "And were you going to kill me? Is that why you sought me out?" I was spewing out the words faster than I could think twice about what I was saying. I just didn't know what to say or think. The woman I loved completely was telling me she was a killer and had murdered for me was sparking a strange rage inside of me.

"No, that never was a thought in my head. Ever." Victoria moved closer, "I love you, Alex, I could never hurt you. I fell in love with you that night and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't stay away from you." She let out a shaky breath, "I tried to stay away, keeping you only as a friend, but I couldn't. You were putting my humanity and my heart back together and I. Oh god Alex, I never meant to hurt you. I never want to hurt you."

I let out a half sob, "So you chase after me, lie about who you are and hide the fact you did what you did, never once thinking that it might bother me, hurt me to know this side of you?" I pointed at the laptop, shouting back at her, "You could have given this up at any time, you could have told me the truth when we were friends or let me go at any point! Instead you let me fall hopelessly in love with you and then force me to beg for the truth. Why didn't you let me go that night you came to the hospital? That night when you sent the tulips and had me come here? You could have walked away and saved us both from the piles of lies you've told over the last year."