Wild Card (57 page)

I knelt at the edge of the carpet. I was hyperventilating, dizzy.

I forced myself to look at her face, and another voice came back to me: “… or I’ll rip those eyes out myself…”. The voice calm, as if it would be no big thing to carry out his threat.

Silas!

A bitter despair and a gut-twisting anger swept through me.

It fell into place. We were getting too close. Maybe Ursula had called him and told him I was asking questions about Clayton. He’d needed a distraction, and Larsen just fit the bill.

The Larsen I’d seen wasn’t the rogue. His bewildered terror at what was happening had been too…human.

And I’d let it happen. They’d hauled him away to some kind of trial, with Larsen of course claiming innocence. But I’d laid the groundwork to ignore that. A sociopath could say anything convincingly. Silas must have produced some manufactured evidence. The pack had probably taken Larsen to Bitter Hooks and extracted their revenge this morning. That’d be where they were.

And Silas had managed to divert here first, to lure Melissa out and kill her.

My friend. My House.

Tears streamed down my face.

On my Blood, I would not rest until I tore him apart, strip by bloody strip. I wanted him screaming his life out under at my hands.

If I could.

The strongbox had been loosened. The wolf wanted out again.

I was shaking violently with the effort of holding it together. I couldn’t even stand up.

As if it were happening to someone else, I heard voices behind me.

Griffith.

“I warned you, Farrell,” he said. “You have the right to remain silent…”

I clenched my teeth together. The shaking would not stop. I wanted to kill him and anyone else who got in my way. Kill and kill and kill, until I got to Silas, and then kill him too.

I was shaking so badly, they had trouble putting the cuffs on.

They were shouting at each other. José, Edmunds, Griffith. It washed over me.

I could hear, but I couldn’t listen. If I let go for one instant, for one tiny second, I would change right in front of them and kill them all.

Chapter 61

They’d injected me with something. The shaking had stopped. The tears had stopped. Only the anger was left. It was a sullen, formless blanket over everything, pressing down on me, crushing my heart.

Melissa.

I was so tired.

I was at the CBI in one of the interview rooms. I slumped in a chair and waited for Griffith to come back.

He wasn’t far away.

There was an argument right outside the door.

I frowned. They’d been arguing around me like wasps since I’d been arrested, but there were some new voices now.

“I don’t care if you’re her lawyer. Farrell is being held under the Patriot Act. I don’t need to allow her access to representation yet.” That was Griffith.

“How the hell are you trying to swing that, Griffith? This is gross abuse of process. You can’t hide behind federal indemnity.” Morales.

“I don’t actually have to tell you, but I have a military assault rifle with her fingerprints on it.”

“Now, we’re getting somewhere. Thank you, Agent Griffith. So, this assault rifle. What is it, a Kalishnikov?” Who was that? He had to be a lawyer, because he knew the answer to the question he was asking. Someone from Jen’s lawyers? No, the voice was familiar. Who the hell did I know who was a lawyer? Apart from Kath, who would probably have been cheering Griffith on.

“You arresting everyone who owns a rifle?” Morales said.

“No.” Griffith said. “No to both.”

“So? What is it? What type of rile are we talking here?”

“An FN Special Operations Combat Assault Rifle.”

“Ah. One of our own,” the lawyer said. “I see. Someone has been providing weapons to the enemy. Well that certainly is a major felony, putting our own weapons in the hands of terrorists. Now, this rifle, would you happen to have the details on it? Serial number? Provenance? How did it get into the hands of a terrorist? And back again?”

“What are you insinuating?”

“That maybe it never got into the hands of terrorists. That it was actually a weapon signed out of FBI stores by one Agent Griffith.”

There was a crashing silence.

“So, what is it, Agent Griffith? I believe the FBI keep good records. What are we going to see if we subpoena them and drag you in front of a judge? You signed it out and it was never out of your possession, but mysteriously has the fingerprints of a terrorist on it, or you signed it out, it was then in the possession of a terrorist and now it’s back in your possession? What would go down better with the judge?”

Ingram. Agent Ingram must have tipped off my knight in shining armor .

Bless your big Texan heart.

But who was my knight? Not something I’d ever thought to say about a lawyer.

“How the fuck—” Griffith choked.

 “I think that’s entirely secondary to the central issue of the credibility of your assertion about Ms. Farrell.” The lawyer was warming up nicely. I’d thank him as well as Ingram.

I stood up and walked to the door. Every step seemed to take a huge effort, but just moving helped. The door was locked of course, but I banged hard on it.

“Keep it down, I’m trying to sleep in here,” my throat demon said before I could catch it.

Surprisingly, the door was opened. Agent Ingram stood there.

In the corridor, Griffith was pale as milk and I guessed he was trying hard to back-pedal his way out of a difficult spot without appearing to.

Morales reached my side and peered into my eyes.

“Jesus! What have they dosed you with?”

I swayed and shrugged. Whatever, it was wearing off. It had given me the opportunity to get the strongbox closed again, so I wasn’t complaining, as long as I got out of here now.

The shock was the lawyer.

Taylor. Taylor Tyson, Kath’s fiancé.

What the hell was he doing here, arguing my case?

“Taylor?” I said.

“We’ll just be a moment, Amber. I’m sure Agent Griffith has become aware that there’s been a mistake made about the grounds for holding you without representation. I believe we’ll deal with the charge of interfering with an FBI investigation quite easily.”

Ingram muttered something in Griffith’s ear, and whatever it was, it worked. Ingram began shepherding us down the corridor to the lobby.

“I do believe we need further discussion with you this afternoon, Captain Morales, but I think Ms. Farrell has had a difficult time and she should be escorted home. Mr. Tyson, would you oblige?”

“Yes.”

Huh? I looked at Taylor. His answer came out wrong for some reason. I guessed it didn’t matter. If I could just get out of here, I’d be able to find my own way home. Maybe I could call up a bit of Athanate and burn the sedative off. Then again, I didn’t want to try anything, Athanate or Were, at the moment. Shelve that idea.

“We do need to talk again, Ms. Farrell,” Ingram said. “Please don’t wander away from Denver.”

“It’ll be a pleasure,” I said, feeling warm and fuzzy toward him. “I’ll call.”

I got my jacket back, and given the snow flying outside the windows, I’d need it.

Taylor took my HK and a bag of my possessions.

Fine, for now. Just get me out of here.

More shocks in the lobby.

“Kath?” I blinked hard, but she was still there. Not a drug-induced hallucination. I couldn’t understand what was going on, but she was there for me. That meant something. “Thank you.”

“You’re my sister,” she said as she pulled me through the doors into the biting cold. “I’ll stand by you, whatever.”

Damn that wind. Damn the drugs. Couldn’t see straight. Everything moist and blurry.

The storm had settled in over Denver with a vengeance. Snow was falling heavily.

“Light dusting over high ground,” I quoted, stumbling. “They got that wrong.”

Taylor took my arm and helped me walk quicker.

Kath’s car was parked next to a paramedic van. A couple of orderlies came out, shivering and hugging themselves, hiding their hands from the cold.

“It’s okay,” I said, my lips still feeling numb, so I had to talk slowly. “It’s just a sedative. It’ll work its way through. Don’t need anything.”

Can’t have medics looking at me. Colonel Laine’s rules. Don’t work for the army any more. Still, probably a good rule.

“It’s for your own good, Amber.”

“Huh?”

“I won’t let any cult take my sister away from me.”

I understood the words, but nothing was making sense. I was still trying to process that and I barely registered the sharp jab in my arm.

What the fuck!

I tried reaching for anger, but there was nothing. Inside me, it was as woolly as the snow all around us.

The world was tilting slowly upwards.

“Straight to the center,” Kath was saying.

“We understood there’d been a change—”

“Listen, you’re working for me. I’m giving you instructions which you will follow to the letter if you don’t want your ass sued off. If he needs to move her later, that’s fine, he can talk to me. Not now. Not in this weather. Straight to the center.”

“You got it, lady.”

And everything went soft and white and blank.

Chapter 62

Lights. Noises. Warm and cold at the same time. Cold air on my naked skin. There’s a foul taste in my mouth and my head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton.

I couldn’t see anything. I tried to sit up, but nothing worked, like one of those nightmares where you don’t have control over your body.

That was okay. If it was a nightmare, I’d wake up soon, wouldn’t I?

Instructor Ben-Haim is sitting beside me.

Is this part of a dream?

“Farrell. You’re in med. You’re experiencing what it’s like to be injected with some of the substances commonly used in interrogation. There is no training we can give you, just familiarity. Can you hear me?”

My mouth won’t move. I can’t reply. I want to tell him I already know this feeling.

He goes on as if I have answered him. “You’re feeling confusion. Disinhibition. Delirium. Hallucinations. You can’t trust your senses. Turn inward. Remember who you are.”

I remembered this. I remembered crying. I remembered being sure Dad had sat next to my gurney. Like I had sat next to his bed.

I remembered wanting to tell Dad everything and knowing I couldn’t. Because he wasn’t real. He was the enemy.

This wasn’t happening. This was a memory. A memory of a hallucination. Ben-Haim wasn’t here. Dad had never been there.

“Subject recovering consciousness at 10:43,” someone said.

The voice was flat and emotionless; it triggered an avalanche of memories. This
was
a nightmare. A nightmare about Obs.

My stomach heaved, but there was nothing to come up. I felt a tube in my throat. The name came to me from military med courses; endotracheal tube. What had happened to me?

“Clear the room.” Another voice, speaking with authority.

Not from Obs! I knew the voice, but there was something in my ears, distorting the sounds.

I felt another injection in my arm. Or was that just the memory of one before?

I couldn’t see. I tried getting up again. Nothing. Then I tried lifting just one hand, but I still couldn’t move. I was strapped down. Chest, wrist, hip, thigh, ankle.

NO! NO! NO!

I heard a sound like an old-fashioned kettle boiling on the stove; the thin sound of muffled screaming. I realized it was me. I forced myself to stop, tried to make words instead.

I couldn’t even speak. My face was held in some sort of webbing. It ran across my mouth. Metal clamped my jaws.

That sobbing. That sobbing couldn’t be me.

I was sick with fear.

Another memory avalanche churned up images that had been locked away. Screaming at the touch of cold metal plates against my head. The foul taste of plastic in my mouth, choking my screams. A sense of utter hopelessness as the first warning prickles began to stab at my temples.

This couldn’t be happening to me again.

My body was shuddering violently.

Ben-Haim debriefing us. Asking us about the vulnerabilities we felt under chemical interrogation.

“I felt compliant. Eager to please,” someone says.

“Compliant. Eager. And this without effort on my part,” Ben-Haim replies. “In the hands of an experienced interrogator, under the effects of these chemicals, compliance will become the prisoner’s sole reason for existence. He or she will burn with desire to help. The interrogator will become God.”

He looks around the silent room. “Not a good position to be in,” he says with his customary understatement.

My mind went blank again.

What had I been thinking about?

Petersen! The name was like an electric shock. Somehow Petersen must have persuaded Kath to help kidnap me. How?
Why?

The room was very quiet.

It’s always been quiet. A long time. I’m still in Obs. I’ve been here forever. It was all a dream. I never got away. I never will.

“Amber.”

I jerked in surprise, stiffening against the restraints. The whisper was very quiet, very close to my ear. A hand pressed on my shoulder. Warm. Comforting.

“It’s Alex. I’ve come to help you escape.”

Blinding tears of relief flooded out of my eyes. I wanted to say his name at least, but I couldn’t speak and my body shook in frustration.

“Shhh! Not a sound. They’ll hear us.” His hand massaged my shoulder. “Shhh.”

I tried to calm down. Alex was here. I was safe. He wouldn’t let anything happen to me.

“Better,” he whispered. “Listen to me. This is very important.”

I listened. It felt as if my whole body was listening. I wanted to hear him more than anything else in the world. I wanted to hear his voice clearly, without all the distortion in my ears. This was important. My kin.