Compact with the Devil: A Novel (2 page)

“¿No está aquí?
” repeated Nikki, feeling a cold fear creep into the pit of her stomach. What did the woman mean, “not here”? Nina had to be there. Isolated from her family and married to the abusive head of a drug cartel, Nina Alvarez needed help. The mission was to extract Nina and install monitoring devices in the house to help them bring down her husband, who was funding revolutionaries throughout the region. That was the plan. But in order for the plan to work, Nina had to be there.

“
Los hombres están allí
,” said the maid, pointing through a large archway.

Nikki looked through the archway and felt a gust of wind that chilled the sweat on her skin. Hearing the loud
pop, pop
of gunfire coming from the same direction, she took a big gulp of air and ran toward the noise. She paused at a corner and risked a glance before sharply pulling her head back. Her team had three guys pinned down, but the men were behind a big cement planter. Nikki swore under her breath.

The team had deviated from her plan. Nikki remembered the briefing; she was pretty sure she’d been extremely specific about
the east entrance. The guards patrolled east to west. Entering on the west put them directly in front of the guards; entering from the east put them behind the guards and in perfect position for an ambush. Entering from the west meant that they were more likely to be spotted and get into a time-consuming and dangerous shoot-out … like they were doing now. This was exactly the sort of thing Nikki had been trying to avoid. She ground her teeth in irritation and calculated her next move.

Between the hard pops of gunfire she heard the
sluff, sluff
sound of the maid approaching. Nikki glanced over her shoulder and saw the maid shuffling quickly toward her, apparently talking on Nikki’s cell phone. Nikki gaped in disbelief.

“Get back,” she hissed urgently at the woman, making desperate “go away” hand gestures.

“
Sí, señor, Lucy Ricardo. Esa pelirroja loca. Aquí está.
” She handed Nikki the phone with a smile. “
Es el señor.
” Nikki took the phone, wondering what else could go bizarrely wrong today.

“Nikki, finally! Where are you? That sounds like gunfire.” Z’ev sounded irritated.

“I’m at Mrs. M’s,” lied Nikki. The number of times she was mysteriously hanging out at her boss’s house was growing improbable. She was going to have to come up with a new place to be. “Some kids are lighting off fireworks.”

“Wow, they’re loud.”

“I know,” said Nikki. “Can you hold on a sec?” She didn’t wait for his reply but held the phone to her chest, muffling the speaker, and leaned around the corner, firing a spray of bullets at the men behind the planter. There was a yelp from one of the men, and Nikki heard Camille yell at them to put their guns down. She picked up the phone again.

“I think the gardeners are yelling at them now,” she said,
hoping that would cover any yelling he might hear in the background.

“Oh, good. Look, Nikki, about our vacation plans…”

Nikki felt her neck muscles tense. “No, Z’ev! No. You’ve canceled twice already.”

“It’s not my fault, it’s work.”

Nikki bit back a reply that involved swearing and glanced around the corner in time to watch Jenny take a running dive over the planter and take out one of the guards. She pulled her head back and leaned against the cool adobe wall.

“Well, you can tell them to go take a flying leap off a cliff!” she said fiercely. It was the best she could do without a diatribe of cuss words that she couldn’t quite bring herself to say with the maid watching. “I haven’t seen you for more than two days in a row in two months.”

“I know, I know, but these things just happen.”

“They don’t just happen, Z’ev. You let them happen! I rearrange my work schedule for you.” She pushed herself away from the wall and walked out into the courtyard. Jenny had a grip on one of the guards; the other was wrestling with Ellen.

“Well, forgive me, but I think my work is just a little more important than yours.” Nikki thought of Nina Alvarez’s bruises and got mad. Ellen lost her grip, and the man slithered out of her grasp and ran toward Nikki, still looking at Ellen.

“My work is just as important!” she yelled into the phone. Forgetting about the TEC-9 dangling from her shoulder, she punched the guard in the face. He went down like a sack of potatoes.

“…you work for the Carrie Mae charity foundation,” Z’ev was saying with irritating calm as she put the phone back to her ear. “And outside of that one time in Thailand, world peace doesn’t exactly depend on you.”

Nikki clenched her fist around the phone. She couldn’t decide which infuriated her more: his attitude about her job or the fact that she couldn’t tell him what her job really was. The Carrie Mae Foundation, charity subsidiary of the at-home-cosmetic-sales giant, was a widely acknowledged force for women’s rights; that they also happened to use force was less well-known. Very few people outside the foundation knew about the all-woman spy network. What worried her was the creeping suspicion that even if Z’ev knew she was an operative for a secret agency focused on women’s rights, he’d have the exact same attitude.

“Well, I may not work for the CI—”

“Nikki!” Z’ev interrupted sharply. Talking about his job on the phone was forbidden.

Briefly, Nikki took stock of the year that they had been dating. Weekends mostly, and occasional weeklong visits in between missions, his and hers respectively. She’d always tried to get time off or schedule things around his visits. He’d never even invited her to his apartment in Chicago. He had never made her a priority.

“I may not work for your ‘company,’” Nikki said, “but if you read the news these days, it’s a pretty good guess that in the world peace department, you guys suck!”

There was an angry silence on the other end of the phone, and Nikki made a quick status check; the team looked fine. No one was bleeding. Jenny was hog-tying the guards.

Nikki walked toward Nina’s room; she had a mission to complete, but her legs felt rubbery. She couldn’t believe he was doing this to her. Ellen was a few steps behind her.

“Nikki, I’m sorry, but this is the way it has to be,” he said at last. There was an angry finality about his tone that she hadn’t heard before.

Nikki opened the door and looked around the room. He had a
drawer in her apartment and a job in the CIA and Nikki suddenly realized that was how it was always going to be. The room contained a lot of things, but none of them was Nina Alvarez. She blinked back tears. This was a disaster.

“Well, in that case, Z’ev Coralles,” said Nikki, reverting to her mother’s habit of using full names when truly pissed, “next time you want to call up and cancel plans with me, don’t bother, because we don’t have any.” And she hung up the phone.

“Did you just break up with Z’ev?” asked Ellen, taking off her ski mask and mopping her face with it. Nikki felt sick. Ellen’s comfortably middle-aged face held an expression of concern, and she patted Nikki’s back in soothing little circles.

“He’ll call back,” Nikki said, breathing hard.

They both looked at the phone in her hand, which was noticeably not ringing.

Camille stalked into the room, snatched the phone out of Nikki’s hand, and threw it against the wall. Nikki watched as her phone splintered into a thousand tiny pieces and fell to the floor with a clattering plastic noise.

“Hey,” protested Ellen. Nikki’s voice was stuck in her throat along with her heart.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Camille, grinding the phone into dust with her heel. “I didn’t mean to interfere with Nikki’s personal
life. Perhaps when you’ve dealt with your boyfriend issues, you’d like to join the rest of us in doing our job!” Camille’s sarcasm stung, and Nikki flinched. The petite brunette didn’t wait for a reply but swept out of the room. Nikki gathered up the pieces of her phone, hoping that the memory card was intact.

“She isn’t here,” yelled Camille, her crisp British accent echoing off the walls of the courtyard, her personality sweeping everyone along in a tidal wave of anger. “Everyone back in the van. You too, Lanier.”

“That is not the plan,” said Nikki, but Camille cut her off.

“Well, the plan was that she would be here, and she isn’t. Ellen can drive back to the rendezvous. Give her the keys.”

Nikki thought about arguing; she was the leader of this mission. But Camille was her superior. She looked at Ellen, who shrugged and grimaced apologetically. Nikki looked around the room, feeling a little lost, and spotted the maid peering through the bedroom doorway, still carrying Nikki’s purse. Nikki sighed in resignation and took her purse back, handing the keys over to Ellen.

“It’s out front,” said Nikki. “Look out for the two guys in the underbrush.” Ellen nodded and jogged away with the keys. Nikki smiled wanly at Ellen’s easy burst of activity. When they had first met in training over a year ago, Ellen had been struggling to run a mile.

The drive back to the rendezvous was accomplished in silence—a humid and slightly embarrassed silence from the team; icy fury from Camille. Meanwhile, Nikki’s mind alternated between the failure of the mission and her failure as a girlfriend. Nikki rubbed her temples, dislodging sweaty red curls from her ponytail.

Besides the ludicrous amount of chemistry between them and the ridiculous fascination that Z’ev held for her, they actually
worked well together. During her first mission in Thailand they had operated as a team, albeit a strange team, where she knew he was CIA and he knew nothing about Carrie Mae. But in the year since then it seemed that he’d managed to convince himself that her behavior had been a fluke—as if Nikki’s occasional brushes with death and willingness to tote heavy artillery were simply character flaws. He had reverted to treating her like just a girl.

An hour and a half later the van jerked to a halt and the team slowly exited, hauling their gear behind them.

“Operations room, twenty minutes,” barked Camille, pushing through the double doors of the office building that was Carrie Mae’s Colombian headquarters.

“Nikki, y’all are so getting screwed over this,” said Jenny, watching Camille walk away. Jenny and Ellen were two-thirds of the team that Nikki had brought down to Colombia to help with this mission. Presumably Jane, the third, was inside being briefed on Nikki’s shortcomings.

“Thanks, Jen, that’s really helpful,” said Nikki sarcastically. Jenny had a talent for stating what everyone else would prefer to leave unsaid.

“It wasn’t your fault,” said one of the Colombian girls with a shrug.

“Camille’s just like that,” said another.

“She’s a good boss if you can just keep her from interfering in the day-to-day stuff,” said the first girl.

“I think she misses the action,” said the second thoughtfully. “But she’s too busy to go to the briefings and then she won’t listen to anyone who has. Not your fault.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” agreed Jenny, “but that woman is going to try to kick your ass six ways from Sunday.” Jenny, a true born Southerner, was constantly forcing her gracious, Georgia-peach
accent to wrap itself around the hard-nosed aspects of her personality. Hearing her speak was like being mugged by someone really nice. “You know how else you’re going to get screwed? Your mom is going to be absolutely gonzo if she can’t reach you on the phone.”

“I told her last night I was going to be missing Christmas and she yelled at me and then hung up. And usually after the yelling she gives me the silent treatment for a week. That’s why I didn’t call her till last night,” said Nikki, feeling the familiar twinge of guilt.

“You mean you mentally manipulated your own mother!” exclaimed Jenny. “I don’t know whether to be horrified or impressed.”

“What? I wanted some vacation time with Z’ev to myself without her calling. I just figured that timing was everything, as Mrs. Merrivel says.”

Jenny shook her head, looking both amused and disgusted.

“Let’s just get this over with,” said Nikki with a sigh, and started toward the building.

“Did you really break up with Z’ev?” asked Jenny as they walked.

“He canceled vacation plans, again,” said Nikki.

“That’s not good,” said Jenny. “You don’t think it had anything to do with …” Nikki shot her a warning look as they entered the building and Jenny changed the topic. “Well, can’t you just keep him around for sex?”

Startled, Nikki tripped over the carpet in the entryway and careened into a passing office worker. The woman gave her a nasty look, and Nikki smiled apologetically.

“Jen!” protested Nikki when the woman was out of earshot.

“What?” demanded Jenny. “I’ve seen that boy; he’s hot. I mean, steam actually rises off of him.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I’m not being silly; there was steam.”

“It was just that one time,” said Nikki with irritation. “We were running and it was cold out. Our sweat was warmer than the air, therefore you get steam. Natural phenomenon.”

“It ain’t natural to be that fine, but I guess you can delude yourself if you want,” Jenny said, seeming cheerfully unconcerned.

“Thanks, I think I will,” said Nikki as they arrived at the Operations Room. “Because he may be fine, but that doesn’t stop him from being an ass.”

“Fatal flaw of all men,” said Jenny with a grin as she opened the door.

The room was walled with whiteboards that were pasted over with blueprints, diagrams, and intel sheets. In the center of the room was a long conference table that had been laid with manila folders set perpendicular to the table edges, so that each seat was the picture of businesslike precision. At the head of the table sat Nikki’s boss, Miranda Merrivel, a dark-haired woman of nearly seventy with a serene, professional appearance. Nikki sharply sucked in a breath of freon-cooled air, and Jenny flinched a little. They had been expecting a ranting Camille, but finding Mrs. Merrivel waiting for them meant that they were in for a whole new level of getting chewed out.

Jane entered the Operations Room from the opposite door. Nikki looked for some sign from Jane as to Mrs. M’s mood, but Jane avoided eye contact and handed a folder to Mrs. Merrivel. Jane preferred the chic-punk-rock look and today was working a safety-pinned black T-shirt that bore the words
WHITE WRITING ON A BLACK SHIRT
. She had paired it with Donna Karan slacks and black jelly bracelets. Mrs. M, as usual, appeared oblivious to Jane’s costume and simply accepted the folder with a nod.