Fatal Honor: Shadow Force International (20 page)

Only for Charlotte, she felt like she was being sucked backward, at least in time. “My mother was a good seamstress, as I mentioned. So good, in fact, she opened a small shop in a strip of businesses not far from Embassy Row that catered to the international community. She worked with everyone from Vietnamese to South Africans. Word got around, and soon she had some pretty impressive clients. Duchesses and other royal ladies. Everyday after lessons, I would go to the shop and help out.

“There were Gypsies, too, some from Romania, others from neighboring countries. They all knew each other, even though many didn’t get along. The Roma women brought my mother business. One of the men—he was said to be a tinker from Ireland with some Roma blood in him—regularly stopped by to help her with maintenance on the building when my father was away. Dad was away a lot.”

She told him a few of the little things, details that came back to her about her mom and the shop. Like how every Wednesday, the women would gather in the backroom to drink tea with rum and spices and
rokker
—talk. How she never liked the tinker even though he fixed the plumbing when it backed up and installed better lighting in the backroom where her mother sewed.

“One day, I was late getting to the shop. A violent storm had broken out right before the school bell released us and I stayed under some shelter until it was over. By the time I got to Mum’s shop, it was dark. The front door was locked and the sign said closed. I thought she was angry with me and had closed up early. Or maybe the storm had scared her and she was hiding in the back.”

In her mind, she saw the cobbled street, wet from the rain. The gas lamps springing to life. “I went around to the alley. A gunshot echoed from my mum’s shop. I started running, but I slipped on the slick pavement and went down. When I looked up, there was a man hurrying out of the back entrance. He took off down the alley as I got to my feet and I saw black smoke coming out one of the windows. I ran to them and peeped in, saw my mother lying on the floor. Blood blooming on the front of her chest.” Her words sounded dispassionate, but inside, she felt the enormous weight that had always been there, choking her. She had to swallow past it, past the peach pit lodged in her throat. “They said the explosion that followed was caused by a gas leak. It threw me back a couple of meters and slammed me into the opposite wall. It took out the shop next to hers. My mother’s body was nothing but ash and bones when they finally dug through the debris and found her. I suffered a concussion and some scrapes and bruises.”

“Who was the man you saw running from the shop? Did they catch him?”

“They told me I made it up, that my concussion caused me to remember the situation wrongly. I didn’t see his face and couldn’t make a solid ID, but I know it was him. The Gypsy man. I’ve been looking for him ever since that night.”

“You think he shot her and then tried to cover it up with the explosion.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I think my father does, but he’s always refused to discuss it. I wouldn’t shut up about it and I caused quite a stir. My father had to be out of the country a lot and finding anyone to watch after me and my brother was challenging. Losing our mother, our father being out of the country so much, and me running around claiming our mother was murdered was too much for my brother. He retreated into his head, which caused my father to blame me. The doctors put me on drugs, but they messed with me to the point I was a zombie, so I quit taking them. I ran away from home, tried to find the man. Finally, my father had me committed. For six months, I lived in an institution. Drugs in my veins kept me zombie-fied. They strapped me down any time I raised my voice or asked a question because they said I was upsetting the other patients.”

At least this time, when Miles slammed on the brakes, he’d already yanked the truck over to the side of the road. Before she could protest, he pulled her across the shifter and into his arms.

“Jesus Christ, what an awful life you’ve lived,” he said into her hair.

One hand was on her back, the other on the back of her head. She took a deep breath, enjoying his scent and sunk into the embrace. It was good to be held.

“I’m okay,” she said, chin on his shoulder. The quiet, forest road had been mostly empty, but now a car buzzed around them. “I’m not one of those people who dwells on the bad stuff, and like I told you before, my parents and my brother made me the agent I am today. That whole incident changed my perception of the world and how to live in it. I realized on the anniversary of my mother’s death that I either had to become the daughter my father needed and the sister my brother needed, or I’d end up in a facility until I turned eighteen. By then, I’d be so brain dead from the drugs, I’d never be able to live on my own. I straightened out, and even though I secretly never gave up my quest to find out what happened that night, I quit talking about it. I righted the ship, as they say. I went back to school, learned how to manage my brother and his condition, and behaved myself when Dad went out of town on assignments and we had a live-in nanny.

Miles broke the embrace and brushed a strand of hair from her face. “Did you ever find the man?”

“No. I had several leads over the years from discreetly talking to my mother’s backroom friends, but they were all dead ends. His name was Orlo Ayres, but that could have been one of many aliases the man had. He was what the Gypsy women called a traveller. No one knew precisely where he came from, who is clan was. He moved around a lot and kept to himself. An outcast. But he was the best plumber and electrician in the community. Like my mother, he was known for his skills and never lacked work. One of the women once told me he worked for the Romanian ambassador, that they were friends, but because of the man’s past, he wasn’t allowed inside the embassy. However, she’d seen him coming and going from there and the Iranian embassy at odd hours of the night. She suspected he was a spy.”

“Did you ever contact the Romanian ambassador?”

“I didn’t learn this until I was seventeen. By then, the man was dead. The Iranians wouldn’t talk to me.”

Miles chuffed the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “Well.” He stared out at the bright white landscape. “Looks like you and I will have another mission after this one.”

“What?”

He shifted and gave her a grave look. “After we’re done with Bourean, we’re hunting down your mother’s killer.”

He believed her. Just like that.

Holy cow.

Something popped inside her chest like a helium balloon. A warm sensation flooded her heart. “We are?”

He pulled back onto the road and gunned the engine. “We are.”

“W
HAT’S
T
HE
S
ILVERWARE
for?” Miles asked. They’d been on the road for hours. Traffic had grown heavier as they joined the easterly flow of travelers even though they tried to stay on the back roads as much as possible.

Charlotte had the map laid out in her lap studying it. Her hair had worked itself loose of the braid and a few strands caressed her cheek. Throughout the afternoon, the sun had played tag with clouds in the grey winter sky. When it had shone through, the highlights in her hair had turned a pretty copper. “Bartering.”

“And the ammo you threw in the bag that doesn’t work with our guns?”

“Ditto.”

After she’d told him about her family, she’d asked about his. He’d figured she already knew about his southern upbringing and his parents’ forty-plus year marriage, but told her about them anyway. His mother was a Tennessee Farnwall, heir to the Farnwall whiskey empire. His father, a Texas cattleman who had built a highly successful dude ranch/vacation conglomerate throughout the South. The two had met at one of his father’s first dude ranches when his mother vacationed there. They’d fallen in love during a whirlwind romance and had been going strong ever since. With two older sisters and a younger brother, there was plenty of family drama, but they all got along pretty well.

Didn’t he want to join one of the family businesses, Charlotte had asked. He’d admitted he’d never felt the pull. He’d always wanted to travel, to do some good in the world. He liked a good whiskey but didn’t much care how it was made and had no interest in ranching or catering to vacationers.

The sun was sinking fast in the rearview and traffic had slowed to a crawl. A medieval forest lined both sides of the road. There seemed to be a bottleneck up ahead, but he couldn’t see around the line of cars to tell what it was. “What exactly are we bartering for?” he asked. “We know where the USB is, so we don’t need intel on that. We have transportation, food, clothing…”

“You’ll see,” Charlotte said without looking up.

She’d switched the radio on and was humming along with some guy singing about ‘The World Is Mine’. Even after the progress they’d made opening up to one another, she was still holding out on him. “I don’t like surprises, Charlotte. Just tell me why we need the ammo and silverware.”

She sighed and looked up. “The area we’re traveling through is a bit of a no-man’s land. On any given day, a crime lord may send some of his men to collect a toll, or there may be renegades and outlaws that stop you and go through your things looking for something they want in exchange for your safe passage. Some of them claim to be Gypsies, but the Gypsies here never bother anyone. Not even the tribes who live along the sides of the roads. They get angry about the outlaws and criminals pretending to be them and giving them a bad name, but there’s little they can do about it. People are predisposed to think ill of them.”

Miles’ internal warning system kicked into high gear. “None of these criminals happen to be associated with Bourean, do they?”

“They might,” she said, staring straight ahead. “But it wouldn’t be any of his normal men from the compound who’ve see me before. It’s doubtful they’d recognize me.”

“Why the hell would they want silverware instead of money?”

“Oh, they love money.” She pulled the rubber band from her hair and started finger-combing the long locks, pulling bangs over her forehead. She also donned a pair of sunglasses. “But most travelers through these parts don’t have much and ammo is worth a lot throughout Europe. The renegades and outlaws have plenty of guns, thanks to the fall of the Soviet Union, but never enough ammunition. Silverware, the real stuff like we have, can be bartered for something like ammo, or melted down and sold by the ounce.”

They’d come to a full stop. Charlotte went back to her map and her humming. Miles beat his thumb against the steering wheel, running evade-and-escape scenarios through his mind as they inched forward.

Sure enough, as they rounded a corner, he saw exactly what Charlotte had described. A group of men that put the bikers at the bar the previous night to shame were stopping cars and collecting “tolls”.

“Let me do the talking,” Charlotte said as she calmly folded her map and tucked it away. “I picked you up at the bar last night and we’re having a weekend fling. You Americans are always fascinated with Transylvania and the stories of Dracula, so that’s where I’m taking you. A little sight-seeing and a lot of sex.”

Honestly, it sounded like a sweet combination to him. If only they weren’t, in reality, dodging homicidal crime lords and equally nasty, if more proper, government agents.

She withdrew ammo from the bag behind the seat and hid the rest under it. “They’ll be rude and act inappropriately. Don’t let it get to you.”

Miles ground his teeth for a moment. The car in front of them had ponied up whatever it took to make the men on each side of the road happy and was jetting off. He pulled the car forward, eyeing the M4s and the ratty boots the men wore as they evaluated him and Charlotte through the windshield. “They touch you and they’re all dead.”

Her hand snaked out, fingers intertwining with his on top of the gear shift. She was smiling. “Remember, sex and sight-seeing. Happy, go-lucky. We don’t have a care in the world.”

The song on the radio ended and the news came on. The newscaster spoke in Romanian, his voice too loud for their close quarters. Miles forced himself to smile back at Charlotte as he shook off her hand, cut the radio, and rolled down his window. She did the same with hers, engaging the man on her side in what sounded like a similar dialect to the newscaster. She spoke loud enough for both men to hear, that smile of hers never wavering as she bounced her gaze back and forth and answered for Miles when the asshole on his side started asking questions. She handed each of the outlaws an ammo clip with a few euros strapped to it.

The man on her side leaned down, a lengthy beard combed and braided into two tails complete with colorful beads, dangling from his chin. His eyes were hard, unforgiving. He said something, ran a finger down Charlotte’s cheek. She slapped his hand away, but laughed as if he were joking about something, then let go of a rapid string of words. For a few seconds, the man stared at her, and Miles tensed, foot hovering over the gas pedal.

Shit, shit, shit… He was reaching for his weapon when the man’s laugh cut through the weird silence. Charlotte sighed and handed him the cross ring from her finger. Beaded Tails eyed it and put it on, then wagged a finger at Charlotte, straightened, and slapped the top of the Land Rover’s hood. The universal signal to drive on.

Miles didn’t breathe again until they were a mile down the road. Charlotte rolled up her window and turned the radio back on. “You did good, Duncan. I thought for sure you were going to open fire when he touched my cheek.”