Armed and Dangerous (The IMA) (9 page)

Wouldn't be the first time if I was.

On the other hand, would Callaghan have wasted all that time and money 'retraining' me if he only planned to kill me afterward?
Only if the payoff was even bigger
. The BN was a pain in the ass, but they sure weren't the mother lode of figurative hemorrhoids.

“
The fuck are those assholes planning?” I muttered, scratching the stubble on my chin. It was starting to itch.

A woman down the row kept turning around to stare. I glared back at her until she returned to her book. When I saw what she was reading, I snorted. Fucking mommy porn. She heard the snort and turned red, squirming in her seat, trying to hide the book in her too-small purse.

I rolled my eyes and turned away. I knew I was being cruel. But I had just graduated from the Ivy Leagues. I was on my way to a high-paying job. Why shouldn't I laugh at some frazzled housewife reading the literary equivalent of garbage? Doing so was in character, and if it gave me some small amount of pleasure, who the hell cared?

That's right. You're a college graduate. Life's a party. So smile and eat shit and pretend it's fucking caviar
.

When the steward came by again, I tugged his sleeve and said, “Another scotch, if you please. There isn't enough alcohol in here to get a mayfly buzzed.”

Chapter Eight

Frustration

Christina:

I felt hunted, trapped.

Not quite so brave now that you are no longer Michael's whore?

I shivered, forgetting the smothering heat for a few chilling seconds. How did they do that? How did they always manage to strike right where it hurt most? How did they
know
?

Stupid question. They knew because they had been trained to—and it wasn't exactly like I had the world's best poker face. Far from it.

I ended up going straight back to my apartment without getting my photo ID taken. My encounter with the Sniper had left me too rattled. I didn't believe for a second that he hadn't meant me any harm. While he wasn't a complete sadist, unlike his boss, he hated Michael and he didn't like me. He had now proven that he was not above vengeance. Spraying him in the face with pepper-spray probably hadn't helped my situation.

Why was he here? Had he been going to kidnap me?

Worse?

I can think of several men at the IMA who would only be too happy to take you up on your, mm,
self-respect
, as you call it
.

Worse.

I tried to swallow the lump that had formed in my chest starting circa thirty minutes ago and my eyes blurred with unshed tears. I yanked the stop cord on the bus and hurried off before anyone on it could see me cry. As my skin heated up from the mid-afternoon sun, my tears began to feel like ice as they evaporated. This was bad. This was really,
really
bad.

Keep it together
.

Where was my key? Had I left it there, back in the restroom? Did the
Sniper
have the key to my apartment?
If he does, you are officially too stupid to live
. My breathing hitched as I dug around in my pocket. Please, no. Please, for the love of God, no, no, no,
no
. My fingers closed around warm metal. I let out a breath. Oh, thank God.

The key stuck in the door's lock. I had to jimmy it around a little and as I did so, I heard a strange click. Was it jammed? Did I just break my door? Maintenance was so going to hate me.

But then the hinges yielded to the push of my arm and with a shriek of rusted metal I was in. The cold air hit me like a tidal wave and I leaned back against the door, slamming it closed. I did up all three locks and collapsed where I stood. The cold hadn't penetrated as far as my bedroom yet, which faced directly into the sun and got ridiculously hot. So hot that I could never sleep past ten or the heat of my own blankets would wake me.

I'd survived this long. I wasn't about to let myself get knocked off by mere heatstroke. Or stupidity.

But in the meantime, what was I going to do?

Don't think about that
. I swiped my hand over my forehead. Droplets of sweat spattered the carpet. The movement made me feel a little dizzy, as if my brain was a buoy bobbing in the vast sea of my head. When did I last have a drink? Had I even eaten? I couldn't remember. I couldn't even tell if I was suffering from dehydration or paralyzing terror.
Maybe it's both
.

That was more in keeping with my luck.

When I no longer saw the heat shimmering in front of my eyes I got up and went to the fridge. I grabbed the orange juice and drank it straight from the carton. It had been propped up against the back, close to the freezer, and was partially frozen. I closed my eyes and drank the slush until my throat ached from the sweet, chilly tartness of it. I crossed myself, belatedly blessing the food, set the carton aside, and wiped my mouth with the back of a shaking hand. My stomach hurt a little but I no longer felt faint.

I had let my sympathetic nervous system take over again, going on autopilot. Abandoning myself to terror. That was bad. Not just because it made me do stupid things like forgetting to eat and drink and sleep, but also because it meant that I had elevated cortisol levels. Enough to kick-start me into unnecessary spurts of fight-or-flight.

Not so unnecessary in this case.

The IMA were back in my life, and I wanted to know why. I hadn't done anything circumspect. Perhaps Michael had, and because Michael was inaccessible they were taking their wrath out on me. The Sniper had implied as much and Michael himself had warned me this might happen. Kent, too, before he took me back home.

I have been watching you since you arrived in Oregon
.

Did that mean he knew where I lived? My lock — had it been jammed because of its cheap component parts, or a trick of the heat warping the metal, or because the IMA had broken into my apartment? A few days before I might have brushed that off as simple paranoia and popped one of the anti-anxiety pills my psychiatrist had prescribed for just
these types of situations. “Panic attacks,” they were called. Except when they were warranted. Then they were called “common sense.”

I closed the fridge. The IMA used the Sniper for visual surveillance, in addition to marksmanship. His renown as a “good shot” carried multiple meanings; he could snap a photo as easily, and with as much finesse, as he could snap a neck. That made him a valuable commodity.

If they had sent him to me, specifically, there was a reason, and that reason was that the IMA was interested in keeping an eye on me. That they suspected something.

But what?

Back in Washington, the Sniper had bugged Michael's apartment. He had spied on us while we were on the run. It looked like he was doing the same thing now, which meant that somewhere in my apartment were various bugs.

I chewed on my lower lip, trying to remember if I had done anything incriminating recently. They would put the camera somewhere they could see me come and go, I guessed. They would want to establish patterns in my schedule, see who I was in contact with. In the Seattle apartment, Michael found the dime-sized camera squirreled
away in one of the knotholes over the front door.

He hadn't showed it to me, though. He had destroyed it first. I had no idea what real bugs actually looked like, what I was looking for. I doubted they looked like they did on TV — big, futuristic looking devices that blinked out “I am a bug!” in Morse code.

At least try
.

I backtracked through the hallway, dragging one of the cheap IKEA chairs with me. I ran my hand over the wooden frame to check for signs of tampering. Uneven spots, lumps, peeling paint. Nothing. A big, fat
nada
.

I stomped into my bedroom, which was a mess, relatively speaking. I began cleaning, working my way from the door to my bed, keeping one eye peeled. Nothing
looked
moved, and I would notice, Mamá being the snoop she was. If the IMA had been here, they had been careful. My computer looked fine, at a glance, and I could run some software scans that would tell me if they had installed a keylogger. My phone had been on me at the time so I wasn't concerned with that, either — for now. I checked the framing on all my windows and doors. That was a bust. So was the bathroom.

I went into the kitchen. The appliances worried me because they had come with the apartment, so I wasn't entirely sure what they were supposed to look like normally. I didn't want to tinker around with them, either, and risk losing a hefty chunk of my security deposit to sustain damage costs. Better to leave it all alone and just avoid hanging out in the kitchen if I could.

I did find something strange fitted into the thermostat in the living room, which faced the front door. A strange ring with a tiny blinking light and what looked like an optics device. I crushed it under my shoe and felt a little better. Not much, though. There were probably more.

This cloak-and-dagger warfare was a message, a warning. It said:
We know where you are. We are watching you. And if we want to, we can hurt you
.

College was supposed to include the best years of my life. Instead — this, all this. I was beginning to suspect that God might not want me to get on my life. That, or my faith was being tested somehow, like Job, But if this was a test, what was I supposed to do? I wasn't capable of fighting against the IMA. Not on my own. I'd tried.

Michael could
, I thought, surprising myself. He had been fighting against the IMA in his own way since he was first recruited. Michael knew what bugs looked like and where to look for them. Michael would know what to do, where to go, and when to run.

In the face of my survival I had taken his abilities for granted, but really, when it came down to it, he was the main reason I was still alive. Yes, he had gotten me into this mess in the first place, if not personally then by proxy, but he had also been the one to defy the odds to get me back out. That had to count for something.

I could talk big, stall, even run and hide — but Michael knew how to fight. And it was starting to look like the IMA was demanding one.

Michael:

When the plane landed my armrests bore divots in the leather from my fingers. I'd half-expected the plane to blow up. Rookie fear, I know, but that would be just like the bastard — to take a bunch of innocents down along with his target and then blame the act on terrorists.

Callaghan liked that, lulling people into a sense of false security and then catching them with their pants down. I knew I had a limited shelf life — I'd come to terms with that a long time ago — but for now, I was alive. I hadn't yet outlived my usefulness. I just needed to keep it that way for a little while longer.

My luggage had disappeared again, not unlike the Scotland trip, so I wasn't surprised, either, when I got pulled aside for another “random” security check. By the time I got out of the London airport I was an hour and a half behind schedule.

Those assholes had no respect for me or my time.

I had been set up in an over-priced, under-furnished hotel. Crystal chandeliers, red carpet, rococo wallpaper. Suitable for a hot-shot who judged things by cost and not quality. This kind of place was a trap for bourgeois tourists. It was even called
La Chançard
— 'the lucky fellow.'

Someone appreciated their own sense of irony.

I strolled up to the concierge's desk. I could see him around the corner, talking into the phone, but I was getting into the swing of my role and found I was developing a taste for being a dick. I slammed the bell, gratified to see him jump. The annoyance left when he saw my suit.

“
Yes? What can I do for you?”

Fake posh accent and everything. Now that was class.

“Mr. Agnew,” I said. “I believe I called earlier on about a room.”

The concierge studied my ID for a long time. I watched him glance from me to my driver's license as though memorizing my features. I suspected he was trying to get the measure of me, so I stared right on back. I was better at this game and he knew it. We both did. When he handed back my license, he didn't meet my eyes. “It's two-hundred pounds a night. That includes a continental breakfast.”

“Great.”

“
How long will you be staying with us?”

I eyed him. “I'm roughing it.”

He seemed to accept that. Of course he did. “Form of payment?”

“
Credit.”

“
Very good.” He slid the card through the scanner and then handed it back with a key. The key was dull brass and hung from a tooled leather fob. “Three thirty-seven is your room, sir. Please enjoy your stay at our hotel.”

I waved my hand in thanks.

The room turned out to be on the third floor. Not my preference. I preferred lower floors. Easier to escape that way in a pinch. Something I'm sure Callaghan took into consideration when making the arrangements. He probably put me as far from the fire escape as he was able, as well. At least it had a view. I could see the London skyline, occluded by a shroud of misty vapor and air pollution. Sulfur-colored skyscrapers. I closed the blinds, tossed the keys and luggage on my bed, shrugged off the suit-coat.