Cloak and Dagger (The IMA Book 1) (20 page)

“
Are you…all right?”

“
No,” he hissed, switching the gun to his right hand. Another litany of curses escaped him. One of the doors nearby opened and a man in black uniform burst out. Michael fired, but the bullets didn't pass through the heavy-looking material. Not at such far range. But there was a gap between helmet and visor, so the guard could speak and breathe unimpeded even without removing his protective gear. Michael dropped to his knees, angled upward, and fired. A spray of blood hit both visor and floor. The man collapsed.

Michael glanced over at me. I saw a lot in that gaze; it scared me.

He bent over the man, examining the uniform. He examined the guard's gun, turning it over in his hands, testing the weight, looking at the ammunition. “It's a stun gun.” That didn't sound as bad as a real gun, but his tone made me wonder. In the guard's other hand was a small, black device. Michael's face darkened. “He called for backup.”

Several other doors opened with identical whooshes of air as all the access panels were activated at once. Men in black body armor poured into the small hallway. Gunfire erupted, pounding at my brain like a jackhammer. I wondered if I would go deaf. I wondered if I'd live long enough to find out.

Michael grabbed the fallen guard's riot shield. “Stay behind me!”

I ducked behind him — and the shield — and felt a tiny prick in my arm. I met the smooth, tinted visor of the man who had shot me and fell to my knees.

Michael tore open a pack of bullets with his teeth, loaded the magazine of his handgun, and fired off another round into the writhing sea of guards. He was holding the shield in his bad arm. Drops of his own blood spattered the tiles at his feet as his old wounds oozed and bled through their wrappings. The only sign of his pain was the sweat on his face and the tremors that wracked his body with every hit of the recoil. A dart whizzed by. He pulled his torso back and fired at the shooter. The man dropped, and another stepped forward to fill his place.

Then — Michael was hit. He cursed as the dart embedded itself in his shoulder and he dropped the shield. With a grim expression, he continued shooting until one of the darts spiraled into his exposed chest, sending him stumbling backwards through a slippery trail of blood. He collapsed, was handcuffed, and then taken away. One of the guards approached me, next —

And the scene faded to black.

Chapter Seventeen

Bound

Christina:

29 hours left.

The floor, the ceilings, my clothes — even the air — were all different.

I sat up, taking in my surroundings. Gone were the padded floors and walls of the containment cell. Gone was the stale underground air, riddled with the intolerable chill of the AC. I was in an open room with no furniture and smooth, curved walls that made me feel as if I were on the inside of a large metal egg. The air tasted salty, reminiscent of the sea. There were no windows to check, but I suspected we wear near the ocean. Or on it. A mechanical hum hinted at an engine.

Somebody — I hoped it was a woman — had changed me into black sweatpants and a white t-shirt. I couldn't understand why I kept getting white clothes. They hadn't maintained their color long. Maybe it had to do with transparency, and being able to hide foreign objects in the folds of your clothes. Or maybe the IMA just bought all of the supplies for their prisoners in bulk and the cheapest t-shirts happened to be white.

My right wrist was handcuffed to Michael, who was either asleep or unconscious. His breathing sounded labored, so I opted for the latter. The guards had really nailed him with those darts. Assuming they all contained the same amounts of tranquilizer, he'd easily received five times the dose that I had.

Michael was also wearing sweatpants. No shoes. White strips of bandages were wrapped around his bare left shoulder, where somebody had removed Adrian's knife. There was another set of bandages, also on the left side of his body, scant inches away from his heart and stained blood. I knew he'd been injured, but had no idea how
badly
. He didn't have many scars, though — not like the Michael from my dream. There were a couple, mostly on his arms, but the nastiest was just above the waistband of his pants.

It was easy to see why the IMA wanted him dead. I'd watched him take out something like twenty armored guards with a bullet wound and a bad arm. He had a body like Action Man with muscles so defined, they looked like they could cut glass.

I realized I was staring and turned away. My left arm was puffy from the sedative. Not an opiate, or I'd be ill — or dead. Somebody wanted me alive. Wanted
both
of us alive.

Why?

The door opened. A guard walked in. He threw a wary glance at Michael before setting down a food tray and two water bottles without caps. I tried to stop him. He threw off my arm. “Wait — where are you taking us?”

The door slammed shut behind him.

I couldn't move with Michael holding me down like a deadweight, so I remained where I was, picking at the fruit the guard had brought.
Why did they handcuff me to Michael? If they think we're accomplices, wouldn't they lock us in separate rooms?

Michael was still out cold.

I'd never been so afraid or uncertain.

I must have blacked out. I woke to the chain tugging my wrist. Michael was stretching. Pain tore over his face as he clenched his healing shoulder. His eyes opened, meeting mine. I saw them widen in shock. “What — ” He looked around. “What is this?”

“
A handcuff,” I said. “Good morning, sunshine.”

I saw his fingers whiten as he gripped the bandages and glared at me. Maybe I was being a bitch — he deserved it.
He
was the one chained up like an animal.
His
life had been thrown into uncertainty. The hunter had become the hunted. “Does it hurt?” I asked, nodding at the bandages.

“
More than you can fucking imagine that.”

“
I doubt that.” Even operating at half-capacity, he was far stronger than I.

“
Are you afraid, Christina?”

“
Are
you
?”

“
Fear is a useful emotion,” he pointed out. “It makes the body alert.”

“
You didn't answer my question.”

He sighed. “Yes. I'm afraid.”

If
he
was afraid, where did that leave me? “Why? What are they going to do to us?”

“
I'm fairly sure we're on a stealth boat. They have cloaking devices invisible to most forms of radar.” He leaned back on his elbows, the strain in his face obvious even to me. “They're either taking us to their base in the Ukraine, or the one in Mexico.”

“
What's the difference?”

“
Temperature.”

A whirring noise drew my attention skyward. Two of the panels in the wall parted to reveal a flat screen — rather like the one Adrian had used to make me watch the snuff film. The screen flickered, revealing an office replete with a desk and a potted banana plant. A man walked onscreen and sat behind the desk.

Richardson smiled pleasantly. “Good afternoon, Miss Parker. And Mr. Boutilier — back from the dead.”

“
No thanks to you.”

I looked at Michael. He shrugged.

“
Is the food to your liking?”

I'd barely tasted it.

“
Don't waste our time with your pleasantries. We know this isn't a fucking cruise.”

“
Still sore, Mr. Boutilier? Remind me, how many men did it take to bring you down?”

“
Ten.”

“
You took out some of my best men.”

“
They couldn't have been that good if I could take them out with a bad arm.”

The smile disappeared from Richardson's face. “You could have gone far, Mr. Boutilier. I have yet to see your equal in the training field. You will be difficult to replace.”

Michael shifted uncomfortably. I remembered how badly Adrian had hurt me. I had tried to hide my suffering and failed. There is a point at which you can no longer keep everything inside and all the agony bleeds outwards like an open wound. It had to be costing him a lot not to let a single ounce of that excruciating pain show in front of his boss.

“
Where are you taking us?” I asked.

“
Base ten.”

“
Where is that?”

Richardson smiled. “Mexico.”

The interment base Michael was telling me about?

“
We call it Target Island,” said Michael.

“
Do you plan on giving us the backup disk, Mr. Boutilier?”

“
No.”

“
What about telling us how you escaped from the lake?”

“
No.”

“
I know you had help, Mr. Boutilier. Even you aren't strong enough to break solid steel.”

Michael said nothing.

Richardson sighed. “One way or another, we
will
get the information we want.” He glanced at me. “It is a pity, Miss Parker, that you allowed yourself to become enmeshed in the situation.”

“
I didn't allow myself to get
enmeshed
in anything!”

“
Mr. Callaghan has provided me with information that points to the contrary. I did not know the nature of your business dealings was quite so…intimate.”

“
Go fuck off,” Michael snapped.

“
I am not speaking to you, Mr. Boutilier. You may be interested to know that we have finally made contact with your parents.”

“
You…have?”

“
They have agreed to meet us. But now, I am afraid the deal is off. You simply know too much. We cannot allow you to live. My dearest sympathies. You will arrive at your destination in approximately twelve hours. Enjoy the remainder of your journey — and your life.”

Michael:

A month ago, if somebody had told me I was going to end up branded as a traitor handcuffed to my hostage on a boat headed towards Target Island, I would have shot them in the face for such insolent slander. That was before I woke up, shackled like a common prisoner. All my weapons were gone. All my old clothes were gone, too. Operatives were skilled at weapons concealment. I wasn't surprised that they had taken my shirt or my shoes. I was lucky they hadn't left me fucking naked.

The room were were in was too large and too oddly-shaped to be anything but the lower level of a boat. I could feel the engine's vibrations. Probably a stealth boat. The curved, smooth chamber was about the size of an ordinary room. There was no furniture, which was only to be expected. Furniture could be made into weapons. A couple pillows were strewn about. Somebody had come in while I was asleep and set down a plastic tray of food and water. Fresh fruit, raw vegetables, sandwiches, even pastries. I didn't understand why they took the bottle caps and left the food — if swallowed whole, a carrot could be just as much of a hazard.

I looked around again, frowning. Considering the conditions most prisoners traveled in, this bordered on ludicrous. Left to wallow in their own filth, the trip itself was a prelude for the unimaginable horrors to come. Richardson's pitiful attempt at bribery was laughable. He thought he could buy my compliance with a bit of food and some
pillows
? He really was a fool.

I leaned back again, not in the mood for eating. Richardson's long-winded speech had left me with a sour taste in the back of my throat. I was exhausted. It was like I hadn't slept in years. My chest was aching again and my pain-killers had been confiscated with my pants. The last reserve of my energy had gone into that final stand-off against the guards in B-1.

How much information did that bastard have in his possession? Too much, clearly, if he had known somebody helped me in Michigan, though that could just be fancy guesswork. A keen sense of insight had always kept him from being a total pushover. I wished there was a way for me to contact Kent, to warn him.

Christina sat as far from me as humanly possible, putting tension on the chain and my shoulder by proxy. The chain hadn't slackened once during my thoughts. I thought she might be asleep, but when I turned to check she was staring at me. Even now, en route to Target Island, she was still afraid of
me
.

I found it ironic that I hadn't been able to instill the proper terror when it had actually mattered, and now that it didn't, and she actually needed my help — and I, hers — she was skittish, mistrustful, and afraid. I took a long drink of water. Irony was a bitch.

She was in sweatpants nearly identical to mine and a white t-shirt. I wondered absently why they hadn't just dispensed with it altogether, and given this dying man a sight for sore eyes. I felt my lips curl into a bitter smile. “What is running through your head Christina?”

Christina:

26 hours left.

I didn't understand — why would Michael destroy the disk? If Richardson was telling the truth, and the only reason the IMA was keeping us alive was to learn its location, then any bargaining power we had was as hopelessly crushed as those tiny pieces of silicon. What did he think the IMA was going to say when they found out? That's okay, accidents happen?
That
was what was running through my head.

Luckily, a guard came in with more water before I had to respond. A different guard than before, younger. I thought that because of his age, he might be more amenable to asking questions. I asked how much time was left before we docked. He snorted and muttered something sarcastic under his breath as he unceremoniously set the bottles on the floor.

“
They won't answer any of your questions.”

I grabbed one of the carrots and took a huge bite. Not because I was hungry but because I needed something for my jaw to work on, else I was going to grind my teeth into a fine, powdery dust. If my mother was here, she would be pleased. She had always tried to find a way to transition me to snacking on carrots. The answer had been under her nose all along: all she had needed to do was threaten me with untimely death.

When I looked up, Michael was watching me again. “You never answered my question.”

“
Dieting,” I answered. “I think the prisoner look is going to be the new heroin chic. What about you? What's on yours?”

He just looked at me.

Michael had been a different man since his attempted assassination. It wasn't that he had stopped being dangerous, because he
was
, but that he had become dangerous in a different way. Fire instead of ice. Explosive instead of contained. Mercurial instead of predictable. I found myself looking at him sometimes and wondering what he was going to do next.

“
Your father is good with computers,” he said suddenly.

I nodded, taking another bite of carrot.
Where is he going with this?

He paused only a beat. “Did you know he was a famous computer hacker?”

The carrot I was chewing lodged in my throat. Carrot flecks speckled the floor as I coughed,
“What?”