Cease and Desist (The IMA Book 4) (18 page)

I remembered how he'd destroyed the phone in that remote mountain cabin, back when he'd been holding me hostage. He'd had a temper, even then.

“Do you have a spare?”

“I'll buy one.”

Two teenage girls, both Asian, glanced at Michael and giggled. Sweat glistened on his skin, catching on the ridges of his abs. He looked — I swallowed — memorable. One looked me up and down, and gave me an odd little smile. It could have been approval, or jealousy. I couldn't tell, but it made me uneasy.

How many other people had looked at us like that, branding us into their memory? Michael was not an easy man to forget and I — well, I did not exactly fade into the woodwork, either. Especially not when I was smeared with dirt and smelled like a dumpster.

“I think we ought to buy new clothes, first.”

Michael seemed to realize for the first time that he wasn't wearing a shirt, and barked a laugh that made several people look over. He glanced around, and his face sobered as he realized how much attention he was drawing. I almost wished he hadn't; his laugh had been wonderfully awkward — and was all the more endearing because of it.
Oh, Michael
.

Michael picked an innocuous skate shop and bought a new t-shirt for himself, and some loose sweatpants for me, and two baseball caps for the both of us. They let us wear the clothes out of the store, even removing the price tags for us.

Yes, there was something to be said about the anonymity of the city — and the benefits of paying in cash. I counted out my change quickly, before shoving it into my front pocket. Cash ran out so quickly, though, and we couldn't afford to leave a paper trail. Not now.

“So Adrian officially knows where we are.”

“He's toying with us,” Michael said. He was wearing an obnoxious t-shirt, the quote stretched tight over a chest that was no less impressive for being clothed. “This is how that bastard works. He fucking gets off on this cat-and-mouse shit. It's what he lives for.”

In the brief pause that followed, I fell into step with him. The sun was still bright and merciless, but I was walking in his shadow. “If that's the case, then why are we running?” I demanded, tilting my head to look up at him. “Why give him what he wants?”

“Because it's the only choice we have. I've known him a long time, sweetheart. A lot longer than you. You can't imagine what he's capable of. I've seen him do things — ” Michael broke off, glancing at
The Ivy's
facade. “He has no limits, because he has no conscience. There is no bargaining with him.”

That wasn't exactly true. He'd tried to bargain with me. If you could call it that.

“Then what are we supposed to do?”

A bellhop moved forward, offering assistance. Michael shrugged him off.

“Check out early. Go to another hotel.”

I shook my head and pulled open the door to our hotel room. “And then?”

I froze.

The door — it wasn't locked.

Michael swore, roughly, under his breath. “Wait here,” he said, before slipping into the room.

That was when I noticed the smell; it overpowered the carpet cleaner, seeping into the back of my nose, where it lingered like rot in the bottom of a dark, dank cellar.

“Oh God,” I choked. “What is that?” I sniffed discreetly at my clothing, wondering if it was the meat from the dumpster of the Chinese restaurant.

But no, this was so much stronger, and while it was similar, there was something about it…something that made my stomach turn.

Michael sniffed the air, and his face drained off all emotion. “I know this smell. It's decomposing flesh.”

“What?” I squawked, regretting it as my mouth filled with the noxious fumes. My voice had been too loud, the door to the hall still open.

Michael glanced at it. “Close the door.”

I didn't want to do that; it would cut off the ventilation, shutting us in with the smell. Somehow, I made myself do it anyway, and I breathed through my mouth, trying to forget what I had learned back in biology class — that when you smell something, you're actually ingesting a little of it, too.

Don't you dare puke.

His calmness was unsettling, suggesting that he had dealt with situations like this before. I didn't dare ask what occasion he had to acquaint himself with such a smell. Given his history, some questions were best left unanswered. There were some sides to him that I never wanted to know.

Michael pulled out his knife and slipped into the bathroom, and light flooded the dark room in a little yellow square. I followed on tiptoe, scared to make a sound. As if by being silent enough, I could unmake everything happening.
Be careful
.

There was a body in the bath tub. It was so mutilated it took me a moment to recognize it as something that had been human. The stink of rot was stronger now, strips of flesh sloughing off to reveal the blackened mess beneath. There was a pool of fluid beneath the corpse that wasn't blood, and this time I did gag. I barely made it to the toilet.

Michael sucked in a breath, then let out the air through his teeth in a serpentine hiss. “Fuck,” he said, “who — ”

He took a step closer. If he wasn't careful, he'd smell like death for the rest of the day. I wasn't sure I would ever get this stink, this rot, out of my brain. It seemed like the type of smell that would creep up on you when you least expected it, leaving you doubled over by the memory.

Smell is the only sense that isn't mediated by the thalamus. It goes right through the memory pathways in the brain, which is why a simple scent, like baking bread or the smell of the earth after a day of rain, can bring such evocative memories — and why the smell of baby powder makes me want to run screaming from the room.

“Fucking Callaghan,” Michael said. He was standing over the body now, his eyes narrowed. I flinched, because it was as if he'd been reading my mind, but when I realized what he was really talking about I moved closer to stand reluctantly beside him.

Oh, it was terrible. The woman — it had been a woman, I saw that now, which made it worse, more personal — had been mutilated. Sunken holes where her eyes should have been, two raw, red circles where she used to have breasts. One of them was stuffed messily into her mouth. Her jaw had been dislocated.

Before, or after?

Bile rushed up my throat again. I leaned away from the smell that was suddenly overpowering and emptied what remained of my guts on the tiled floor. Michael cursed, but I didn't care. Because he was right. Only one person could be so sick, and knowing him, he'd probably done it while she was still alive. Tears ran down my face to mix with the snot that was pouring from my nose.

Michael wordlessly handed me a tissue. It was a nice one, fabric. I demolished it. He shook his head when I handed it back and I was about to let it fall into the puddle of mess on the floor, until I remembered things like DNA. Reluctantly, I shoved it into a pocket instead.

“W-who…” My throat hurt, scalded by the stomach acid and bile. “Who would he—”

“It's Suraya.” Michael's face was tight, but I could see the tension in his shoulders, the jump of muscle in his tightly clenched jaw. “There's no question.”

Suraya? “No,” I whispered. “How can you be sure?”

“That birthmark here.” He pointed to her breastbone, and I wondered what occasion he might have had to see it. “And this necklace.” It was silver filigree with a symbol that I didn't recognize, but was probably religious or spiritual in nature. “Her sister has the same one.”

I sucked in a breath, and regretted it instantly. “Jatinder,” I murmured, “what are we going to tell Jatinder?”

“The truth,” said Michael. “She deserves that much.”

I shook my head. “Nobody deserves this.”

“I agree,” said Michael. “It is an outmoded interrogation tactic. When you torture someone, they tell you what they think you want to hear, regardless of whether it's true or not.”

That hadn't been what I meant. “He didn't do this because he wanted information. He did it because he could.” I couldn't look at her body, or I'd vomit again. There was no way her death had been quick or painless. All I could think was,
it could have been me.

“That's probably true, too,” Michael said grimly. “He knows we're on to him. Somehow, he found out Suraya was our plant. She compromised the mission and they must have reported that lapse. This is his way of saying the game is up. I should have told her to get out while she still could.”

I could feel the color drain from my face.
Maybe it should have been me
. I didn't really believe that, not deep down, but the thought was there nonetheless, gilded with guilt that shone as bright and hot as molten gold.
It's my fault.
“What do we do now?”

“We've gotten close enough now that we're becoming a problem.” Michael looked at me, and then at the body. “So I say we take a gamble and put all our money on red.”

Chapter Fourteen

Desperation

Michael

I was left with no choice but to inform the others. Nobody had ever accused me of being an honorable man, but I didn't make it a habit to fuck over the people who assisted me when needed.

Then I scoffed. That was bullshit. There was a time I would have fucked my most loyal subordinates if I'd thought it would advance my career.

But I'd been betrayed and I'd found myself alone, the only one in my corner was my scared, teenage hostage whose only motivation in assisting me was feeling slightly less fear towards me than Adrian.

And then I realized, loyalty has its fucking perks.

I purchased a phone from the convenience store across the street. Disposable. Prepaid. One by one, I called up the members of AMI.

What remained of them.

“Fuck,” said Cliff. There was background noise. I wondered where he was, if it mattered.
Running, if he's smart. Running for his life.
“Are you serious?”

That had been my initial reaction. But Adrian didn't have to worry about cops. Our prints were all over that hotel room, and Christina had vomited on the floor — not that I blamed her.

I didn't spare Cliff any of the details. Part of me was punishing him for being a coward. Another part was punishing him for being of so little consequence that he had managed to escape that bastard's radar.

Maybe I hadn't changed so much after all.

“I'm afraid so,” I said mildly.

Shock quickly ceded to anger; nobody enjoys feeling like a coward. He was intelligent enough to know when he was being played.

“So that's how it's going to be, huh?”

I didn't respond, which made him angrier.

“Where are you? You find this out and then, what, leave us out to dry? Who the fuck does that?”

“If I were leaving you out to dry, as you put it, it would be so much easier for me to cut you out of the picture entirely and save myself the trouble of wondering if you'd talk,” I pointed out. “I am taking an enormous risk contacting you right now, so why don't you show some fucking gratitude.”

“You're right.” There was a pause. “I'm sorry.”

“He's declared it's open season. I suggest you leave town while you still can.”

“And the files? The research?”

“It's useless now. Destroy it.” All those hours of work, wasted. “Destroy everything that can be destroyed and then leave. And you had damn well better be thorough.”

“What are you going to do?” Cliff asked.

“Find the bastard.”
And kill him
, I added silently.

“How are you planning on doing that?”

“You leave that to me.”

Displeased silence.

“Unless you're volunteering?”

Cowardly silence.

“That's what I thought.”

I hung up and dialed the next person on my list.

Angelica picked up on the second ring. “Hello?”

“It's Michael.” I didn't waste time on pleasantries. These were lean times. Waste was a luxury only the privileged could enjoy. “Is the girl with you?”

“Ah, yes — why?”

I heard the sound of call waiting. Cliff, probably, with more questions. I probably should have star-sixty-nined the call, but then neither of them would have picked up. In the meantime, he could fucking wait. Besides, with the kind of men Callaghan had hunting us down, that wouldn't have helped.

“I'm afraid you're going to have to be the bearer of some really bad news.”

I relayed as much of what I had learned to her as I could. Some things are best not spoken over the phone, but Angelica was intuitive enough to fill in the blank spaces. She took a moment to process my words, then sighed. In the silence that followed, I heard the persistent chiming of call waiting.

Impatient bastard.

“You are more trouble than you are worth, Michael.”

“I get that a lot.”

Christ, that beeping was annoying. I shifted the phone to my other ear.

“Are you still in the city?”

“I am someplace I will not be found,” she said, which I took to mean “no.”

Well, that made one of us.

“Perhaps you should follow your own advice.”

“And do what?”

“Leave town while you still can.”

“You've been talking to Cliff.”

“He just emailed me.”

“That fucking moron.”

“He had the sense to encrypt it first — and with a complicated key, no less. Christina taught him well.”

“She's become as good as her father.”

“Even so.” Angelica cleared her throat. “Mr. Callaghan is not a man to be trifled with. It may not be my place to say so, but I think this is a battle you cannot win.”

“I think I can find him,” I said. “In fact, I'm fucking sure of it.”

“Of course,” she said, “because that is exactly what he wants you to do.”

Was that it? Was this a trap?

Or was this a bluff by a man with a losing hand?

“Don't let her become her father,” she said. “Don't give her a shovel, and then tell her to dig graves for her loved ones. Knowledge is a dangerous thing, Mr. Boutilier, and sometimes it has a tendency to lash back against us when we least expect it to.”

“Spare me the aphorisms,” I said. “Just go easy on the girl — and tell her I'm sorry.”

“Good luck,” said Angelica. “I will do my best to help you, but I think it is best if we avoid contact for now. You understand, of course.”

Angelica was out, too.
Of fucking
course, I thought.
I understood goddamn perfectly.

I switched to call waiting. “What is it now?”

“Hello, Michael.”

I knew that voice. It had said the same thing three years ago, in the same mocking way. I'd been running then, too. I wondered if he remembered.
Probably
.

“I know you're there,” the bastard said. Under my fingers, I felt the plastic yielding to my grip, reaching breaking point. “I can hear you breathing.”

I wanted to curse at him. I wanted to ask him what the fuck he thought he was playing at, sending corpses via courier. I wanted to ask him a lot of things, but all of them would mean letting him win.

“How did you get this number?”

“Easily — only slightly less so than finding you.”

An evasive answer. If he wasn't gloating, that meant he was through playing around.

He must have wire-tapped our base in San Francisco.

And now he knew we were in Los Angeles.

“Did you get my message?” he asked pleasantly.

“Message.
Message?
”
I wanted to drive my fist through the wall. “You want to send a message, send a text — not a crime scene, you fucking lunatic.”

“You sold her. What did you expect would happen? Whores die every day, Michael. You of all people should know what it's like to be a statistic.”

“Fuck you.”

“Am I getting to you already?”

I tensed. “Stay out of my head.”

“Then stop letting me in. I'm rather surprised you didn't sell
her
,” he said. “She's quite a bit prettier, and they like them untouched in the business. Or gently-used in Christina's case — though I doubt gentle is in your working vocabulary, hmm? Not with the way she looked at you with those big, scared eyes.”

Prayers in Spanish. Tears. Big, scared eyes.

Oh, yes. I remembered this.

“Couldn't bring yourself to do it, though, could you? You always were so terribly sentimental, but these recent Hallmark sentiments of yours have made you rather…predictable.”

“Then why haven't you caught us yet?”

“Maybe I'm biding my time.”

“Yeah, or running scared. It's all fun and games until you lose, isn't it? You're familiar with losing, aren't you, Callaghan? Yeah. You'll never forget that I was Richardson's choice, not you. And you'll never forget that the girl you branded as weak ended up marking you in a way that nobody else ever could. Which reminds me,” I said, “how's the leg?”

“I'd be careful, Michael Boutilier — this isn't a zero-sum game. I have nothing to lose. You, on the other hand, have so much. Your money, your life, your girl. She's the only one in your corner now, ever since your little resistance group disbanded.”

Was he bluffing? Did he know?

“I think I might rape her,” he said thoughtfully.

“What did you fucking say?”

“Ever since I saw the way she looked at you — when you first brought her in, and she thought that you were the devil himself, I realized it would be such an easy way to get through her defenses. Rape often is. Psychological, you know, as well as physical. It couples trauma with stress, and if you get inside their head you'll never leave their body.”

There was a hotness in my eyes, a weight in my chest. I felt like I was suffocating.

Ever since I saw the way she looked at you —

No
.

No.

“Would you like to watch?” he asked, as soft as poison. I felt my rage spark against my skin, catching like flame to gasoline. “I think you would.”

“That will never happen,” I growled. “Never — ”

But the image was in my head. The face I saw in my nightmares. The look of betrayal. Of fear.

Fear of me.

Was that why?

Did she still fear me?

Oh, Christ. I couldn't.

“Of course, there are so many other terrible things I could do to you.”

More terrible than that?

“I could see, for example, how much of your insides can become outsides before you die. I could gouge out those eyes your girlfriend seems to find so pretty and make you eat them right before I cut out your tongue. I could even — ” he gave a little laugh “ — rape you, too.”

What the fuck —

“Perhaps that will give Christina the closure she needs. Does she still have nightmares, Michael? Does she still dream of you?”

I was having trouble breathing. “You're going to die, you motherfucker.”

“So many others have said the same, even as the blood drained from their veins. And yet here I am. I wonder how long will you be able to say the same.”

I could hear the smile in his voice.

“Goodbye, Michael.”

The only sound was my blood in my ears — and something else. Something soft. Hesitant.

Footsteps.

When I turned around, Christina was there.

“It was him, wasn't it?”

“Fuck,” I said. “I didn't see you there.”

“It was him,” she repeated. “Adrian.”

Was there any point anymore? She was learning my defenses. She was starting to see through all my lies. “Yes. It was him.”

“This is it,” she said. “It's a sign. I have to go.”

“No.”

She flinched, and I hated myself for that.

“But he
called
us — ”

“Yes. He called us. Are you fucking insane? He knows where we are. He's following us so closely he can call us on
this
— ” I snapped the phone in half; she didn't even flinch ”—piece of shit. If you go now, you'll be killed.”
Or worse. So much worse.

Everything he had threatened me with, he could do to her, too. And he would make me watch.

“I was there with you when you found Suraya,” she reminded me. “I was there. It was sickening. But you said we didn't have a choice.”

“I say a lot of things.”

There are always other choices. Just, most of the time they're too horrible to bother considering. This was one of those times.
Ah, God
.

“You know for a fact now that Callaghan has dealings with the Albanian mob. I've been looking into our findings and coincidentally, there just so happens to be a hot spot of illicit activity here in Los Angeles.” She looked at me, with those wide blue eyes that were already seeing too much. “But I don't think that's a coincidence, do you?”

“What do you want me to say?” I asked. “'You got me?' All right, darlin. You fucking got me.”

“What did he say to you? You've gone pale.”

“Never you mind that.”

“You were confident earlier. You had a plan.”

Had
a plan. I couldn't lose her again.

“Give me the chance to do what Suraya couldn't.”

What if you can't do it, either, you brave, insufferable girl? What if I lose you, too?

“I don't want to see you get hurt,” I rasped.

“Trust me.” Her face was so earnest.

How could I trust her?

I didn't even trust myself.