Cloak and Dagger (The IMA Book 1) Read online

  “What's going on here?” an irritated but unfamiliar voice demanded.

  A man in a uniform and carrying a rifle was glaring down at us. Beside him were two other men, one in uniform and one in plainclothes. The man who wasn't in uniform was quite young, maybe only a couple years older than Michael, with dark skin, curly black hair, and five o' clock shadow that was just beginning to turn into a beard. He was standing stiffly with his arms behind his back. His attractive, fox-like face was grave.

  As I looked at him, our eyes met and he gave me a somber nod. I took in his tattered clothes, disheveled appearance, and bleeding lip, and realized that he must be another prisoner. He had to be. The stiff posture was undoubtedly due to injury, maybe from torture, and I just bet his hands were cuffed like mine.

  “She ran,” Michael said, diverting my attention. “I pursued.”

  “Where are her handcuffs?”

  “Somebody took them. But that doesn't matter. I have her under control now. I will see to it that she is returned to her cell and properly confined.”

  The guard, who appeared to be the leader of this small party, nodded and the three men continued in the opposite direction. Michael yanked me to my feet and let out his breath. “Jesus,” he muttered. “That was close.”

  We continued to my cell. I couldn't forget that young prisoner. The haunted look in his dark eyes hinted at unspeakable horrors. As soon as I figured we were far enough away, I whispered, “Who was that?”

  Michael's face closed off. “As long as you're here, you still have a fighting chance. Just remember this: once they move you to one of our internment bases, it's over.”

  Michael:

  The IMA had many enemies, and some were considered too dangerous for ordinary imprisonment. We had two special high-security prisons similar to Guantanamo Bay for such individuals. One was in Russia and called Ground Zero, or GZ for short. The other was off the coast of Mexico, called Target Island. If the IMA ever officially turned on me, they would send me there.

  I recognized the man in the hallway because I had been assigned as his bounty hunter. He'd been a double agent, working for a left-wing quasi-terrorist organization called the Bureau du Nuit, or Night Bureau,. They were a group of radicals who wanted political recognition. They regarded us as hypocrites and occasionally tried to thwart our missions. Until recently, they had never been successful.

  Pierre Dupont was a very proud, very determined man. 27-years-old. Intelligent, crafty. One of their leaders. The BN was unique in the sense that those in power actually performed their own dirty work. It was why they considered themselves superior to the rest of us: socialism at its best. It also made them easy targets. Pierre would be taken to one of our high-security internment bases. He would be tortured and then, ultimately, executed.

  The girl didn't realize how much danger she was in. That both of us were in.

  Christina:

  I was so full of adrenaline I thought I might burst. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. It had been easier to believe my situation was completely hopeless than to believe I had a microscopically small chance at escape. Hope really is the worst evil of all, I thought wretchedly.

  I curled up in a ball on the floor. When the door opened, I couldn't bring myself to sit up. Probably the guard again, threatening to inject my food into me intravenously if I don't eat it. Maybe if I act pathetic, they'll assume I'm too weak to be defiant and leave me alone. “I ate most of it,” I mumbled. “Please…let me sleep.”

  “Oh dear,” an unfamiliar voice said. “You are in bad shape.”

  A woman's voice? I cracked open an eye. There was a pretty red-haired woman standing over me. I blinked. She didn't go away. Well, that's a good sign.

  “Hello,” she said, nicely enough for someone who was probably a murderer.

  I hadn't seen many women since my arrival. This particular woman was wearing a pencil skirt and a blouse that looked exactly like the one I'd been drooling over in a magazine last month…when fitting in and test scores had been the worst of my problems….

  A sob rose in my chest. I morphed it into a whimper.

  Her face creased in concern. She approached with a guard on her heels. “Don't cry.”

  Was this a trick? A good cop/bad cop routine? “I'm not crying. Who are you?”

  “I'm here to help you,” she said, neatly sidestepping the question.

  A bubble expanded inside my chest. “Can you get me out of here?” I asked eagerly.

  She laughed at that, but not unkindly. “I'm afraid not. They haven't been treating you very nicely,” she said, examining me closely. “Your clothes…and your hair” — her eyes fell on my wrists — “Oh, dear.”

  I yanked my hands away from her. This pretty, well-kept woman was making me feel even more drab and scroungy than I had felt before. Worse, she was a painful reminder of just how good a set-up I'd had back home.

  “Are you here to torture me?”

  “No. I was told to let you take a shower.”

  “That's all?”

  “Well…” She looked confused. “And give you new clothes, of course.”

  I didn't care about new clothes. I wanted to believe one person in this place didn't want to see me bleed.

  “Think about how nice it will feel,” she said encouragingly.

  Even if it's a trap, at least I'll die clean.

  “You can call me A,” she told me in the hallway.

  I looked over my shoulder. The guard was following at a discreet distance. Discreet meaning close enough to overhear everything I said in the conversation but not so close he was breathing down my neck. “A? And what do you do here, A?” Lead the office in a cheery rendition of the alphabet song?

  “I have a desk job,” she said, either not hearing or choosing to ignore my suspicion. “Research. Graduated from Smith magna cum laude.”

  “No offense,” I said. “But you don't exactly look like an agent.”

  “I suppose that's a compliment considering the way most people here dress. But I can only wear these around the office, because otherwise, people might stare.”

  I stared at her.

  “My friends think that I work for a bank,” she explained. “Part of my cover story. A new Versace dress might raise unseemly questions regarding the annual income of an alleged banker.”

  Is she for real? “Have you ever killed anyone?”

  “Goodness, no!”

  The locker room was exactly like the one at Holy Trinity, except that each locker had an access panel instead of a flimsy combination lock, and probably contained more than unwashed gym clothes and body lotion. “The showers are this way,” she said, gently but firmly steering me away from the lockers. The guard didn't come in but I suspected he was right outside the door.

  A was right. The water did feel good, though the soap and hot water stung my wrists. The water pressure at the safe houses had sucked — here, I was able to get almost as clean as I had been before getting kidnapped. It was heavenly.

  Why was A being so nice to me? Was this supposed to be a happy send-off before I died? And had she really never killed anyone, or was that a lie?

  I rinsed my hair a final time and changed into the clothes A had hung over the door. They looked expensive. The quality was superior to what Michael brought me. I pulled on the pristine white sweater and blue jeans, searched fruitlessly for shoes, and walked out of the stall feeling cheated.

  A was sitting on the long wooden bench with a first aid kit. “Let's have a look at your arms.” She pulled out strips of gauze and a bottle of peroxide.

  “No shoes,” I said.

  “Afraid not.” A wrapped up the minor cuts on my left wrist. The ones on the right were worse. “These are nasty things, aren't they?” She tried to sound upbeat, but she was frowning at the long gash — the one Adrian had torn. “Who did this to you?”

  It was still red and angry-looking, like a screaming mouth, and puffy with infection. It doesn't look as bad in my cell. “Most of
them are from the handcuffs. But Adrian — ”

  “Adrian?” Her hazel eyes burned with anger. “Adrian Callaghan? They sent you to him?”

  “Um…” I shouldn't have said that. For all I know, she could be a plant. “Is it bad?”

  “Not good, but not terrible, either.” She drizzled peroxide over the cut. I dug my fingers into my thigh to keep from crying out. “Just deep.”

  Inwardly, I heaved a sigh of relief. Subject changed.

  “That's the best I can do for now.” She capped the peroxide. “I'll check on it in a few days.”

  “Can I ask you one more question?”

  She started packing up. “That depends on what you ask.”

  “Why are you helping me?”

  She paused. “All Mr. Boutilier said was that you were in bad shape. He was right, although he neglected to inform me just how bad.”

  I was speechless.

  Michael:

  A gentle, lacustrine breeze ruffled my hair through the open window of the van. Lake Angelus was full of large residences and small specialty stores geared towards the elite. With the average annual income hovering around a cozy $112,000, they could certainly afford it. This was a scenic little town, too. Big valley filled in with a large blue lake, with the surrounding tree-dappled hills reflected in the placid surface. Whitewashed cottage houses. Very WASP-y.

  My partner, Miles Trevelyan, was too busy staring at the houses to notice the surroundings. “Wow,” he whistled. “Look at the size of that place.” he shook his head, slowly, so I would catch the significance of whatever he was going to say next. “It pisses me off how some people can choose to live like this.”

  I'd never cared much for Miles. I found his jocular personality overbearing, and his interactions with Richardson bordered on insidious. Usually an office grunt, he had undoubtedly bounced around like a puppy when he found out he had been marked down for one of the coveted field assignments. I wondered how thrilled he'd be if he realized the reason he'd been chosen in the first place was precisely because of how expendable he was.

  The IMA would not suffer a serious loss if, say, Miles somehow got caught in the crossfire. Assuming they use guns. “Are you saying that you, as a mercenary, feel you are less driven by money?” I asked absently.

  Miles rolled his eyes. “Nah. But one-percent of the people in this world hold ninety-nine percent of the world's wealth. It's just something to think about.”

  I was thinking I had seen that printed on an ad somewhere.

  I parked the van in front of one of the larger houses. It matched the address I'd committed to memory in the debriefing room. Richardson rented our van under an assumed name and had it painted with the logo of a prominent local cable company. I'd made a point of checking the van out. It was clean. No detonator. Just a couple bugs. All the parts were operating normally; nothing was rigged to blow. Clearly, I was intended to survive the journey. That meant they intended to off me in the house. It was two and half stories, with a watered lawn. There was even a new champagne-colored Porche parked in front of the house. The IMA had gone through a lot of effort to make this plausible. In spite of myself, my heart began to pound. They must really want me dead.

  “Nervous?” Miles asked, looking down at my hands.

  I unclenched them from the wheel. “You wish, rookie.”

  Miles rolled his eyes again and pulled out a pair of binoculars. “Place looks secure. No guards, though.”

  “That's because they're idiots,” I said with grave finality, “Who have been lulled into a false sense of security by a series of lucky escapes and close calls. Their mistake.” I was pleased. That sounded like something I might say under ordinary circumstances.

  Miles stared at me. “Here's something I don't get. What's the point of being out here if Richardson is going to give them the ultimatum?”

  “Seeing as how they didn't come when we had their daughter, I hardly believe that they are going to come to us of their own volition.” I slung my arm out the window. “Don't ask me any more questions until we get inside.”

  “Can I ask you something first?”

  “Is it pertinent to the mission?”

  “There's a rumor going around the office that you slept with your hostage.”

  “Disregard it.”

  “Is it true?”

  “Give me those.” I tugged on the binoculars. Unfortunately, they were still looped Miles's neck. He made a strangled sound: an improvement over what normally came out of his mouth.

  “Something's moving in there,” he rasped.

  I eyed the house. “Where? Which room?”

  “The one on the left. Kitchen, maybe.”

  “Remember what I told you.” I released the binoculars. They smacked harmlessly against Miles's chest. “Corners are your friends — and your enemies. Check both sides before ascending a staircase or entering a doorway and, most importantly, stay off my tail.”

  I suspected the shot would come from behind. It was doubtful the shooter would care about a little collateral damage, provided he got his quarry. I opened the door, gun drawn, and checked both hallways before pushing it wide open.

  The hallway was empty.

  “All right, it's clear. Miles — Miles?”

  He had vanished.

  One less thing to worry about.

  I moved down the hall, about to turn right. Something socked me in the back. It took me a few moments to feel the pain, hot and burning, like a ball of fire in my chest. I clutched at the front of my uniform and my gloves came back coated in blood. My blood.

  What the fuck —

  I turned around. The last thing I saw was a scared-looking Miles holding a gun in his trembling hands. I started for him and he fired again.

  Everything went dark.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sickness

  54 hours left.

  I was instantly wary when the doors opened and a guard entered the room. “What's going on?” It was just the one, but his expression was dark.

  “They want to question you,” was his only comment.

  Again?

  I was getting used to the labyrinthine hallways. They were still intimidating, but less impressive. The guard led me up a flight of stairs, which lent support to my initial theory that part of the building was underground. The upper floor was less prison-like and more office-like. I had never liked change, and under these circumstances it seemed especially bad. Why was I being questioned again? Had somebody overheard my conversation in the hall with Michael?

  The guard opened a plain wooden door that didn't have an access panel; we just went right in. With its tacky wallpaper, the heavy-duty sink, and the cot backed up against the corner, the room looked just like a doctor's office. There were other furnishings as well, these more out of place: a student desk — the kind with a table attached — and odd equipment hooked to a monitor.

  The interrogator looked up as we came in. He wore a bland smile on a face like a withered apple. I would have placed him in his mid-sixties but it was hard to pinpoint his exact age; he could have been ten years younger or older. He was wearing a suit, a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, and had a goatee that looked like a tuft of white cotton candy. For some reason, he also looked vaguely familiar. The thought that I might know somebody here was so distressing it took me a moment to realize he reminded me of a picture of Freud I had seen in my psychology textbook. Ah, that's why. I was relieved. God, he gave me the creeps.

  “Sit.” The guard forced me into the stiff-backed chair of the desk. He unlocked one of my handcuffs and refastened it to the bar that connected the seat of the desk to the table.

  “You must be Christina,” Freud said, smiling pleasantly.

  I didn't deny it. I didn't agree, either. I said nothing.

  His smile faded. He placed the monitor on the counter beside me. “Do you know what a polygraph is?”

  A lie detector? I shrugged. Clearly he'd never heard of CSI.

  “It's more commo
nly known as a lie detector. It measures various physiological responses, such as your pulse, blood pressure, respiration, skin conductance, and so on, after establishing a baseline.” As he spoke, he placed two black loops around my ring and index fingers. That wasn't so bad. Then came a blood pressure cuff, which was uncomfortable, and two metal bars around my chest, which was weird.

  “Your name is Christina?” he said, looking at the monitor. “Yes, or no?”

  “…Yes.”

  He nodded. “Let's start off simply. Why don't you tell me about yourself, your school life, your hobbies…”

  Why was that important? “I don't know.”

  “Withholding information will only make your situation worse.” His frown deepened, causing an eruption of wrinkles around his mouth and forehead. “You can cooperate with me, young lady, or I can let Mr. Callaghan pry the answers out of you. It's your choice.”

  Freud seemed to accept that. He kept the next question simple. “Where do you attend school?”

  “Holy Trinity.”

  “Is that a Catholic school?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you Catholic?”

  “My mother is.”

  “Are you Catholic?”

  I sighed. “No.”

  “Do you believe in God?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any idea where you want to go to college?”

  “No.” Not anymore.

  “What are your grades like?”

  I wondered if I should lie. Maybe if he thought I was stupid, he'd ask me stupid questions. These were getting a little too personal. But they could look that up. “They fluctuate from year to year.”

  “What is your collective GPA for this year?”

  “Not as high as I'd like it to be.”

  Freud steepled his fingers in front of his mouth. “What about your parents?”

  “I don't know. They haven't been in school for a while.”

  A searing pain tore through my scalp. The guard had hit me with his gun. The tears that stung my eyes came unexpectedly. “Don't be a smart-ass,” the guard snarled.

  “Don't be so rough with her!” Freud chastised the guard. He turned back towards me, pulling out a hanky to dab at his sweating bald head. “How would you describe your relationship with your parents?”