Tell Me No Spies (40 page)

Rage spread its heat
through my blood. It would have been wonderfully defiant to remain
standing, but my quivering muscles had other ideas. I sank into a
chair before my knees could drop me.

Kane swung the door
closed and joined the others as they took their seats around the
table.

Stemp nodded in my
direction. “Ms. Kelly, we’ll begin with you. What, exactly, have
you been doing since last Tuesday evening?”

“Hitched a ride to
visit my aunt in Victoria. Spent the rest of my time trying not to
get dead.”

After a brief silence,
Stemp’s eyebrows rose fractionally. “Succinct.”

I shrugged.

He eyed me for a few
seconds, then exhaled audibly. “In detail. Day by day.” Another
pause. “Please.”

I blew out a breath of
my own and began to recount my activities. When I mentioned setting
up the meeting with Arnie at Hotel Village, something about Kane’s
immobile posture made me study his face. His eyes widened almost
imperceptibly, and I trailed to a halt in my narrative and faked a
cough.

“Sorry,” I croaked.
“Need a drink.”

Spider sprang up to
fill a glass, and in the momentary confusion, I met Kane’s eyes. He
gave me the tiniest of headshakes.

I sipped my water,
stalling and considering. Maybe he hadn’t reported our run-in at
the hotel. If he hadn’t, that meant Dave’s possession and use of an
illegal weapon against a government agent would never come to light
unless I brought it up.

It also meant Kane was
covering his ass. Lying and concealing his actions. Sick
disappointment dragged at my heart. He might have betrayed me on a
personal level, but I had believed implicitly in his
professionalism and dedication to duty.

I straightened and
swallowed the bitterness. Just more lies. That shouldn’t surprise
me anymore. At least I could get Dave off the hook.

I took a deep breath.
“I met Arnie at the hotel, and we decided it would be smart to lie
low. We were sure you’d be looking for me, and I wanted to do
everything in my power to help Nichele. We all got in Dave’s truck
and got out of the city.”

I opened my mouth to
continue, but Kane interrupted, his gaze steady. “I’d like to add
some detail, if I may.”

Stemp shot an
unreadable glance at him, and raised a questioning eyebrow at me. I
nodded slowly. What the hell was he up to?

“I didn’t realize
Aydan had been communicating with Webb,” he began.

“Sorry,” Spider
muttered miserably, his eyes fixed on the table.

“It’s all right, you
did the right thing,” Kane said. He spoke directly to Stemp. “Aydan
told Webb I’d killed her husband, and he decided to investigate
further before telling me about Aydan’s communication, in case I
was compromised. It was the right decision.”

Stemp nodded once.
“Noted.”

Spider’s strained
expression eased, and Kane continued. “I had been in contact with
Hellhound without telling him any details, and I led him to believe
I’d lost touch with Aydan and urgently needed to speak with her. As
soon as he got her message, he called me. I was hiding at their
meeting place when Aydan arrived.”

Kane’s steady grey
eyes met mine and held me. “Aydan and I had… had words… before she
left. I let my personal feelings get in the way, and I acted
unprofessionally. As a result, I botched the operation, and Aydan
escaped. I take full responsibility.”

Stemp nodded again.
“Noted. Ms. Kelly, please continue.”

A flood of
unidentifiable emotion held me speechless for a second. Relief and
gratitude and who-knows-what-else. He hadn’t covered his ass. He’d
told as much of the truth as he could without incriminating Dave. I
sipped some more water, recovering.

After another moment
to gather my thoughts, I carried on with my story, pausing at the
point where I’d reported the potential hit on Kane. “Is that when
you told him?” I asked Spider.

“Yes.” He met my eyes
imploringly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know what else to do.”

“It’s okay. I expected
you’d have to. Was James actually trying to have everybody
killed?”

“Yes,” Spider replied.
“It took us a while to dig it up, but he had contracts out to kill
everybody but Hellhound. They were just supposed to capture
him.”

A jolt of fear made me
jerk up in my chair. “Dante! Did you ever find him? Is he…”

“He’s fine,” Spider
comforted. “He wasn’t even in the country. He was at a photo shoot
in Milan.”

I let the air leak out
through my lips as I sank back. “Thank God. So he doesn’t know a
thing about this.”

“And he never will,”
Kane said.

“Thank God.” I sipped
some more water, trying to ease my aching throat. “Is that when you
started tracing my IP addresses?” I asked Spider.

He flushed. “Yes.
Well, no, actually, I was tracing you right from the start, I just
didn’t…” He trailed off.

“It’s all right,” Kane
encouraged. “It was still the right decision.”

I gave Richardson a
hard look. “So you were looking for me at the internet cafe. That
wasn’t coincidence.”

His eyes darted to
Stemp, and a muscle jumped in his jaw as a faint flush climbed his
neck. “It was coincidence that I was the one closest to the cafe.
As soon as Webb sent the word out, I got over there. Where were
you?”

“Hiding in the corner
with my hood up and my head down. When Weasel started making a
commotion, I slipped out behind you.”

His flush deepened. “I
noticed a skinny teenage boy in a baggy sweatshirt slipping out. I
was looking for long red hair. That was pure incompetence on my
part.”

I wasn’t harbouring
any charitable feelings toward him, so I let the silence lengthen
for a moment before moving on.

“And at the mall? Did
you have the phones bugged? Is that why the police showed up?”

Richardson’s eyes
darted to Stemp’s impassive face. “Not exactly bugged…” He trailed
off.

“But you knew I was
there.”

“Yes,” Stemp said.

In the silence that
followed, I realized he wouldn’t elaborate, and clenched my fists
in momentary frustration before letting it go to move on. “So at
the library, you just happened to be in the vicinity again?”

“Not close enough,”
Richardson replied. “By that time, we’d discovered the hit on you
had been cancelled, and James was trying to capture you alive at
all costs. We knew that meant he’d discovered you were more
valuable alive than dead, so we immediately made the connection to
Fuzzy Bunny. We were desperate to bring you in before they could
get to you, so we sent the police on ahead and I came as fast as I
could.”

He shot me a
frustrated glance. “And missed you again.”

I shrugged. “How did
you find us in the industrial park? More to the point, how did
James find us in the industrial park? We were just supposed to be
meeting Hellhound’s contact.”

Kane grimaced. “James
had ears on the street trying to track your whereabouts, and he
found out you’d set up the meeting. He ‘convinced’ Hellhound’s
contact to tell him where and when. The contact is in the hospital
now, but he’s expected to survive.”

He shot a look of
approval at Spider. “Webb was digging for anything he could find on
James the whole time, and once we realized the connection to Fuzzy
Bunny, he had more to go on. At that point, we gave up on finding
you and focused on finding James instead. You were too hard to
catch, and we expected you’d end up in the same place eventually,
since we knew you were searching for him, too.”

He nodded to Spider,
and he took up the tale. “James is smart, but I eventually
unearthed a connection through one of his aliases in a shell
company, and found the cell phone number he was using. We tracked
him using his cell phone.”

“So we were able to
put people in place at the industrial park waiting for you,” Kane
finished.

Fury bubbled up. “And
you let Arnie go in anyway. Did you see what James did to him?” I
jerked forward, my voice grinding my flayed throat. “Do you have
any idea how much pain he went through? For nothing?”

Kane’s eyes reflected
the full knowledge of that pain. “We had originally planned to
intercept you and extract you.”

Stemp’s cool voice cut
in. “But then Webb discovered James had arranged a trap for you,
and a transfer to Fuzzy Bunny’s buyer. The opportunity was too good
to pass up.”

His dispassionate gaze
raked over me. “I required some assurance of your continued
loyalty. So we captured the buyer and sent Richardson in his place.
It’s unfortunate that your friend had to suffer, but the ends
justified the means.”

The air choked out of
my body. “The ends… justified…? You… What if James had killed
him?”

“It was an acceptable
risk,” Stemp replied. “We knew James wanted to capture him, not
kill him. I would have avoided collateral damage if I could, but my
priority is the security of this country, and the millions of
innocent lives that would be at risk if you were compromised. A few
bruises and broken bones are a small price to pay for that.”

“Yeah,” I grated. “As
long as they’re not your bones.”

Stemp met my gaze with
his flat eyes. “I’ve sacrificed my share of bones. I have nothing
to prove.”

I shut up, seething.
In my heart of hearts, I believed him. I knew he’d been a field
agent for years, and I knew the risks that came with that role.

When I could trust my
voice, I spoke again. “So you set me up to believe I’d been taken
by Fuzzy Bunny.”

Stemp shrugged. “It
was the only way we could be sure you were still loyal.”

“So how long were you
going to torture me before you could be
sure
?” I spat. My
eyes strayed to the bandage on my arm before I glared at
Richardson.

“Aydan, I’m so sorry,”
he implored, his voice raw with emotion. “I…”

“We never intended to
torture you at all,” Stemp cut in. “I expected the captivity alone
would be enough to break you eventually. The threat of torture was
just icing on the cake. I was hoping to speed up the process.” His
clinical tone made my skin crawl.

He continued, “When
you agreed to enter the network, I wanted to see if you would
accurately decrypt the files, or whether you would lie about their
contents. We made sure the files contained information that would
be disastrous in Fuzzy Bunny’s hands, and we knew you’d realize
that as soon as you decrypted them.”

He shot a glance at
Kane. “We thought you might have an anxiety-driven loss of control
inside the sim, and Richardson had been briefed that he might have
seconds to extract you if that happened.”

For once, Stemp
allowed expression to creep onto his face. A flash of wry humour
transformed him briefly into a human being before the mask closed
down again.

“None of us expected
you to blow your brains out,” he said.

Richardson leaned
forward, hands flat on the table, his expression beseeching.
“Aydan, I’m so sorry. I’d been told that you usually visualized
suffocating or getting trapped, so I thought I’d have a few seconds
to get you out. When I saw the gun, I panicked. I knew a pain
stimulus would yank you out of the network instantly. I didn’t have
time to drop the torch and pull the crystal off you.”

“It’s only a small
second-degree burn,” Stemp said.

Richardson spared him
a single hostile glance before meeting my eyes again. “I didn’t
realize how horrific it is for you to be pulled out of the network
like that,” he said. “That was just…”

He shook his head and
continued, “And then you went in again so fast. I yanked the
crystal off you, and you started to go through hell again, and I…”
He met my eyes wretchedly. “I shot you with the trank gun. It was
the only thing I could think of to make you stop suffering. I’m so
sorry. I never wanted to hurt you.”

I took a moment to
process that, letting my whirling mind adjust from loathing the man
who’d tortured me to having sympathy for a good agent forced into
an untenable position. God, talk about a mindfuck.

I restrained myself
from slumping forward to rest my aching forehead on the table for
about a year, and settled for a long sigh instead.

“It’s okay,” I told
him. “I know you were doing what you had to do. I wish you hadn’t
been so convincing, but it’s okay.”

“Thanks,” he
muttered.

“So then when I woke
up and overheard your conversation with the doctor…” I shot Stemp a
glare. “…I assumed I was still with Fuzzy Bunny. So I tried to
escape.”

“It was an excellent
attempt,” Stemp said. “Both attempts were quite impressive,
actually, under the circumstances.”

I met his eyes across
the table. “So, are you satisfied? How many times do I have to
prove myself to you?”

He sighed.
“Unfortunately, the answer is ‘over and over’. You’ve seen for
yourself how agents can be turned.”

I slouched in the
chair while I absorbed the truth of his statement. Heavy exhaustion
oppressed me. This was my life now.

The rest of the
debriefing dragged interminably.

At last we emerged
from the meeting room, and I massaged my aching temples. I glanced
up at Kane as he paced beside me. “Can I get out of here now?”

He gave me a
sympathetic glance. “Yes. Linda is waiting back at your room.
She’ll take that IV out of your hand and do the discharge paperwork
with you. I’ll meet you down in the lobby.”

I nodded thanks and
trailed back to the small room. Linda met me with a compassionate
hug, my backpack, and a bottle of orange juice. “Don’t worry,” she
whispered. “It’s over now, and everything’s going to be okay.”

“Thanks, Linda.” I let
her naive reassurance comfort me a little.

When I stepped into
the lobby, I was greeted by a familiar smiling face.