Covert Game

by Christine Feehan

  Cheng regarded her bloody body as if she were a bag of trash Zhu was about to throw out. "Well?" he demanded.

  "She doesn't know a thing," Zhu said. "I've been doing this a long time, and she wouldn't have been able to hold out. She's not built for pain. She isn't stoic and she didn't have the opportunity to destroy the computers." He kept walking straight to Zara's room.

  Cheng swore loudly as he trailed after them down the hallway. "It had to be that intruder, the one we never found. A delayed virus of some sort introduced into the network? Or we have a traitor right here in the building, one that works for us."

  Zhu laid Zara on the bed. It hurt so bad when the sheets touched her back she wanted to roll over, but he prevented her with a hand to her stomach. Pouring water onto a cloth, he held it over her face, wiping blood and tears from her swollen cheeks and mangled lips.

  "Kill her or send her to Moffat. He'll sell her to the highest bidder. She's beautiful, so he'll owe us a favor," Cheng ordered. "She would be perfect for his club."

  "I will be keeping her for myself," Zhu said. "I have plans for this one."

  Cheng stopped his pacing and swung around. "You've never wanted to keep a woman."

  "I do now. She'll do what I want, and you'll have the benefit of her mind. She can develop programs for you instead of giving them away to anyone who wants them. I researched her carefully, Cheng, before I gave you the report. She's brilliant and would be an asset to you. Even had the computers not been harmed, she would never have left this place."

  "Can you control her?"

  At the question, Zara forced her swollen eyelids to part a minuscule amount, just enough to see the two men. Why it was important to see them, she didn't know, but they were deciding her fate. It sounded as if Moffat was a human trafficker, but staying with Zhu after what he'd done? Her entire body shuddered with pain and rejection of the idea.

  "Why would you ask me such a thing?"

  If she hadn't been watching from such a distance, Zara would have shivered in fear at the look on Bolan Zhu's face. He was extremely handsome, but in that moment, he looked a demon, invincible and very dangerous even to Cheng.

  Cheng sighed. "This was a blow, Bolan, a huge one for us."

  For us. Zara heard that clearly. Cheng and Zhu were more than boss and number-one interrogator. Cheng sounded as if Zhu was more of a partner than an employee. Cheng stayed safe while Zhu traveled the world doing his bidding. That didn't make sense, but her mind wasn't working properly so she didn't know if she was even hearing right.

  "Who is looking at the cameras?" Zhu asked.

  "I had a full team on because she was here. We don't let outsiders in and usually I have three per floor, but I had six in each control room. The tapes have been reviewed. No one tampered with them. They don't show anything amiss."

  "I'll talk to the heads of each of the departments," Zhu said. "If one of them is hiding something, I'll know it."

  Cheng turned on his heel and started out of the room, but paused in the doorway to look back. "Are you certain your need of this woman hasn't blinded you? Perhaps one more round again with chemicals."

  Zhu stood up slowly and stalked Cheng. To Zara's shock, Cheng gave way, backing up with a placating hand. Cheng was the man everyone feared, yet now she was certain everyone was looking in the wrong direction.

  "Do you believe I can be blinded by anyone, let alone this American woman? She's beautiful and has a brilliant mind. She is young enough for my every need. I have searched for a long while to find the perfect partner and the moment I read her file, I knew she was the one--and that was without seeing her. She was never going to leave this place. Had she been guilty, I would still have kept her, but she would have paid for that indiscretion for a very long while."

  "Bolan ..." Cheng broke off when Zhu shook his head.

  "Do not insult me again. We have built the perfect empire. Your role suits you as mine suits me. We had a setback. It's a bad one, but we can overcome it the way we have overcome everything else in our path."

  "How are we going to explain her disappearance?" Cheng asked.

  "I will keep her here, locked away where no one can find her if they start looking for her. We have to make certain it appears she returned to her hotel. I'll set it up so it will look as if she'd been robbed in her hotel room. There's enough blood to make it real enough for the cops. Later, when I take her as my wife, we will explain her defection."

  Cheng inclined his head and scurried away. Zara was left with the man who had beaten the shit out of her. She knew she was lucky to be alive. Every breath she took hurt, but her ribs weren't broken. He was that good. He'd gone for maximum pain, but he hadn't done any permanent damage.

  Zhu closed the door and came back to her, sinking his weight onto the mattress beside her. "Zara." He brushed back wet strands of hair from her swollen face. "Can you hear me?"

  She didn't want to admit she could. She was afraid to stay still without answering him. She swallowed hard and barely inclined her head. Just that small movement made her head explode. She made a hopeless sound she couldn't take back, and fresh tears flooded her eyes.

  "I want you to feel everything I did to you and know this was me being easy on you. It could have been so much worse. You might not feel gratitude now because you can't conceive of the ways I could make you suffer. Just know I was careful with you. I'm going to leave you now to take care of your disappearance. When I return, you'll know you belong solely to me. I can do whatever I want with you. You don't want to ever make me angry or disappointed in you. Not ever, Zara."

  His fingers had been stroking her inner wrist, but settled over her pulse as he gave her orders. She couldn't respond, she was too terrified and her entire body hurt so bad she was afraid to move a muscle. His fingers continued again, as if the wild beating of her heart satisfied him.

  "When I return, I'll give you pain pills and clean you up. In the meantime, I want you to think about every part of your body because it belongs to me. I can make you feel good or I can make you feel very, very bad." He leaned down and brushed a kiss over her swollen eye. "I like that you don't like pain. It pleases me. I enjoy inflicting pain. You need to remember that at all times. When I ask you to do something, you will obey me immediately. Do you understand?"

  She didn't answer because she couldn't find her voice. She was too terror-stricken. He caught at her bloody, stripe-covered breast and squeezed until she gasped in anguish.

  "Do you understand?" he repeated, his voice as mild as ever.

  She swallowed again and attempted to nod. The movement sent hammers crashing down on her. A moan escaped, and she hated herself for giving him the satisfaction she saw in his eyes. He did like that he hurt her. He was allowing her to see the cruelty in him--the craving to see her just like this, mewling in pain, barely human, dependent on his good will and her obedience in order to keep from getting worse. She thought Whitney the epitome of a monster, but she was wrong. So very wrong.

  "Don't roll over while I'm gone. I know caning hurts, but your back has no cuts. I was careful to leave you with one side to lie on. If your roll over, the sheet will stick to the lacerations and it will be very painful when I have to pull it off you, especially if my errand takes too long and the blood dries."

  When she made no sound, he leaned over her. "Did you understand what I said to you?"

  She nodded hastily. She wasn't making the same mistake twice.

  "Good girl. You forgot to thank me for taking it easy on you. Cheng expected a much worse beating for you."

  She took a breath. Let it out. "I'm grateful." God. She wanted him dead. She wanted this monster of a man out of her life. Away from her. She didn't know a human being could hurt so bad and still live. She fought down the need to kill him. If she did, Cheng would take her apart and all of this would have been for nothing.

  He rubbed his hand down her body from her breasts to her mound, skimming deliberately over the open lacerations the whip had caused. "Each o
f these cuts is shallow. You won't have a single scar from this."

  She knew immediately what he expected. She wanted to spit in his face, but she knew better. "Thank you."

  He smiled at her and held the bottle of water to her again. "I am angry at Cheng for hitting you with his gun. You shouldn't have any permanent damage, but if you do, he will pay."

  Did he expect her to thank him for that as well? She couldn't say another word. He would have to torture her and hear her screams, but she wasn't talking because she didn't have anything left.

  Zhu seemed to know her breaking point. He slipped his arm behind her back, making her cry out as he put her in a half-sitting position. "You have to hydrate, Zara. You shouldn't fear what will happen to you, your new life. Once you understand that you will do as I say, you will be given the equipment needed and you can research all you want. You will be able to discuss your findings with others who will be excited about your projects and aid you in finding the answers that are important. There will be plenty of money so you will have the best of whatever you need."

  She drank from the bottle and allowed the little slits in her eyes to close all the way. Her eyes hurt like hell anyway. He kept her drinking until she couldn't swallow and the water ran down her chin. He didn't wipe it away any more than he cleaned up her bloody body.

  "Remember what I said to you about turning over. I will be very angry if I have to soak the sheets to get them off you."

  She made a sound in her throat to indicate she heard him. Pain swamped her. Enclosed her in a horrific cocoon. Her body refused to stop shivering, the tremors going through her, rocking her. She knew she was close to shock if she hadn't already tipped over the scales. All the water she drank, even after the several times of humiliatingly losing her bladder in the interrogation room, meant she would have to find a way to crawl to the bathroom, and he knew it. Did spies get treated this way? If so, why would anyone voluntarily sign up?

  She'd been in an orphanage and Whitney had all but bought her. She knew a great deal of money had exchanged hands because he told her all the time what a disappointment she was for the price he'd had to pay--how much he'd lost in his pitiful gesture of kindness. She had discussed with Shylah and Bellisia, her two best friends, what a horrible megalomaniac Whitney was, and she'd cried because she'd been considered so useless to him. It hadn't mattered that she'd gone to the university so young and excelled. She couldn't take pain. She was a baby when it came to the slightest wound on her. The lightest of blows.

  Zhu pushed back her hair again and stood. She felt the movement rather than saw it, and it took everything she had not to cringe. She was blind and writhing in pain, unable to stay still, but every movement made her hurt worse. She couldn't imagine the damage Zhu could inflict on a prisoner he truly wanted to harm.

  She couldn't imagine anyone defeating him. Anyone. She didn't know anyone as strong as Zhu. What kind of man could stand up to someone so evil? She certainly couldn't.

  "No one will enter this room while I'm gone, not even Cheng. He knows you're under my protection."

  She wanted to scream and throw things at him. She could only mewl a little in abject terror and total agony. His voice never changed. He had to be a complete sociopath. Her mind was in such chaos, for the first time in her life, she couldn't think of a way out. She didn't acknowledge she heard him. If he hurt her more, so be it. She couldn't speak, only keening wails escaped her throat. An animal in pain. He'd reduced her to that and he'd said he was going to keep her.

  Whitney had forced her to do his bidding, and now she was in Zhu's hands. Something had to be terribly, terribly wrong with her. How could Zhu have the face of an angel? Not a fallen angel, an actual angel. He was beautiful. No one would ever take him for a monster.

  She heard the door close, and she let herself cry. Sob. Tears poured down her face and mixed with the blood from where Cheng had struck her with his gun. The tears stung but she barely noticed. She thought to move, but her body protested, refusing to her obey her. She tried to think about soldiers, captured during war. They were tortured far worse than what she'd had done to her. If they could endure it, surely she could. But she knew she couldn't. She couldn't ever do this again. The only good thing was, the virus would kick in soon, a week, maybe two at the most. The bad thing was, when she died, they might find the SSD. Hopefully they wouldn't figure out how to get the information out of it. Could she endure two entire weeks with Zhu? She wasn't certain, but she made up her mind to kill him before she died, and then somehow, she had to figure a way to keep them from taking apart her body.

  Zara wanted to curl up in a little ball and never move. She wanted a safe haven she never had to leave. Someplace where no one hurt her. Someplace where she could have a semblance of a home. She wanted to be someone else, anyone but Zara Hightower.

  5

  G

  ino looked at his watch. 01:55. He put out his hand. Rock solid. It was a silly leftover habit from his childhood when Ciro checked to see if he was able to continue no matter the difficulty of what he was seeing or doing. In the beginning his hand had shaken a lot, but slowly, over time, he'd become completely able to control his nerves and even his heart rate.

  The charter plane was small, and they were cramped inside with the power paragliders, but he took it as a good omen that they'd managed to get this far without discovery. Their gear had gone through customs with the heavy operating equipment the construction company had brought over. No one had noticed anything amiss. No one had suspected they were anything but workers for the company, not even the other personnel.

  "Ready," Ezekiel called. "Rubin, you're up."

  Rubin had nerves of steel, or maybe he didn't have any. His brother and he were from a poverty-stricken section of the Appalachian Mountains. They'd survived by hunting, killing with one bullet because they couldn't afford to waste ammunition. After the last of their family was gone, they'd made their way to the streets of Detroit where they ran into Ezekiel and his two brothers. Ezekiel had taken them in.

  They'd been teenagers and had no clue how to survive in a city, but they'd learned fast. Both were soft-spoken and had lazy drawls that somehow gave people false impressions about who they were and what they were capable of.

  "Okay. Good luck," Ezekiel said. "See you on the roof. Stand by ... Go."

  Rubin went out without looking back, falling into the dark sky. Farther below, the city was lit up with so many lights, Shanghai blazed like a sun.

  Diego followed his brother without hesitation.

  Draden shook his head. "I hate this shit," but he launched himself out of the plane.

  Gino went next, making his jump smooth. There was the wind, a vicious hit on his body, but unlike Draden who didn't like the drop, Gino had always relished the freefall. Moving through the sky, hearing the whoosh and then silence. A perfect silence. For a few seconds, he was part of the universe along with the stars and moon. The night. Part of the reason he loved being a GhostWalker was their creed was so true. The night belonged to them, and falling through the night sky was just a small part of that.

  He hit his mark on the roof, but just barely. A gust of wind caught at him at the last minute, trying to blast him off target. It caught Ezekiel full on. He was coming in right after Gino hit, and Gino moved fast to clear a path. Gino and Draden caught at Ezekiel to steady him so the wind pulling at his chute and the weight of the power paraglider didn't take him over the edge of the roof.

  Man, that was ugly, Ezekiel said. Everyone good to go?

  Each responded telepathically.

  Two up, Diego said.

  Three up, Draden added.

  Four up, Gino reported.

  Five up, Rubin reported.

  Okay, drop the gliders here. Gino, keep your medical pack, you may need it.

  Like he was going to forget that. The others had traveled light out of necessity.

  There's a camera on that door, Rubin, Ezekiel reminded Be careful approaching it.

>   Camera's already disrupted, Rubin reported. Starting electricity glitches.

  Draden moved to the keypad and lock. He had the door unlocked, and Gino moved to the front of the line. He "felt" for the energy behind the door and looked briefly beyond it, his eyes burning as he did so. Guard on the lower stairs to the top-floor corridor.

  They moved in silence, careful of the slightest sound on the narrow, metal stairway. One sound would blow everything before they were even close. If they took out a guard and he had to report in, that would alert security that something was wrong. If they didn't take him out then he would be between them and their escape route.

  Take him out. Ezekiel made the decision.

  Diego slid past Gino, his feet whispering on the stairs. Rubin covered the sound. He moved around the corner and in one motion, shot the guard with a tranquilizer dart. Rubin caught him and dragged him into the stairwell out of sight of anyone walking by.