The bottom of the pack came loose, releasing the first-aid kit. She turned it upside down again, shook it free.
The kit fell with a clunk onto the table.
His wallet thudded after it, bounced open, spilling contents.
A slip of paper wafted after it, settled like a feather on top.
A credit card slip.
For a meal at Mumbai airport. Only a week ago.
Skye stared at the strange name on the bottom. Scott Armstrong.
She felt her jaw drop and turned her head slowly to look at her companion.
He lay on the bed, eyes closed, pain etched into his features. He clutched the wound on his arm, pale as death. Blood seeped through the cracks between his fingers.
She turned, rummaged quickly through his wallet, found two credit cards. One for Scott McIntyre. One for Scott Armstrong.
Her hand began to tremble. Her eyes flicked to the bed.
Backup.
He was going to call for backup.
With a sat phone.
He had a gun.
No ordinary civilian in Canada carried a handgun.
The tremor spread to her limbs. She forced herself to her feet.
Tiny beads of perspiration broke out above her lip. She wiped them away with trembling fingers, stared at the man on the bed. He was no innocent writer.
Then who the hell is he?
Chapter 15
The bitter bile of betrayal leached acid into Skye’s stomach. Her brain spun in a dizzying kaleidoscope. Maybe the name on the slip meant nothing. Maybe McIntyre was his writer’s alias. He said he’d been traveling.
Who was she kidding? He had to be working for someone. His moving in next door must have been orchestrated.
Oh, God. Her hand flew to her forehead. He’d befriended her. Seduced her. Made love to her. Deceived her. He had stolen into her heart… For her secrets? Had everything been a lie?
No. She couldn’t believe it. Panic danced through her blood, skittered through her gut.
Who is he?
All those things, those little hints that should have alerted her, they crashed now like a tsunami through her brain. The knife at his ankle. His wary moves. The professional way he’d escaped their tail. The way he’d disguised her with that wig. The way he’d picked up on her Greek connections. She should’ve seen it coming.
No. She had seen it coming. Only she’d refused to acknowledge it. Refused to act on it. Because he had made her feel.
But it was all a lie.
Terror clawed through her stomach. She’d told him everything. Oh, God. And he’d just sat there. Listening. Had he known all along? Her eyes shot to the door.
She could run. Her eyes flicked back to the pile of contents on the table. The car keys lay among them. She glanced at the man on the bed. He needed help. He was bleeding badly. Honey whimpered at his side.
The sight of those pleading doggy eyes tugged at her soul. She couldn’t just leave Scott to die like that. A maelstrom of confusion crashed through her. Whoever he was, this man had gotten hurt trying to save her life. She had to fix him up, stop the bleeding.
Then she’d run.
“It’s okay, girl,” she whispered. “I’ll take care of him.”
She lugged the heavy wood table over to the bedside. Steadying her hands, she took the scissors from the first-aid kit and cut into his sleeve. She tore it open and set about cleaning away blood so she could get a good look at the wound. He groaned softly at her touch, winced as disinfectant stung. His lids fluttered open and he looked up at her with those hauntingly beautiful bottle-green eyes. Those eyes that had lied to her. She halted, caught by what she saw there.
She forced her attention back to his injury, willed herself to focus on his injury.
He’d been right—it was a surface wound. The bullet had ripped through his flesh. It was a mess but it wasn’t life-threatening. Not if she stopped the blood. She worked quickly, efficiently, as she’d been trained to do. She taped the edges of the wound tightly with the adhesive butterfly sutures she found in the kit. They would serve until he could get it sewn up properly. She found analgesics and antibiotics in the first-aid bag. It was a comprehensive backcountry kit he carried. But she wasn’t surprised at his survival skills.
Not now.
He was someone sent to spy on her. Someone trained to betray her. She could no longer control the tremor in her limbs. With unsteady hands she unscrewed the cap of a water bottle, gave him the pain relievers. “Here, drink.”
He did. “Thanks, nurse.” He motioned with his chin to the neatly bandaged wound on his arm. “You learn to do that in the camp?”
“Yes. Let me look at your chest.”
She peeled off the remainder of his shirt, found the smashed wreckage of his phone in his pocket, set it on the table. The impact of the bullet glancing off the phone had caused the myriad of blood vessels under his skin to rupture. The blood was spreading, pooling into what was going to be a devil of a bruise. She pressed tentatively with her fingers. He gasped in pain.
“I don’t think your ribs are cracked.” She was concerned, however, about other internal bleeding. “How does it feel? You got a sense there’s any serious damage in there?”
He shook his head. “Nah. I think I got lucky.”
She helped prop him up. He groaned in pain.
“Knee?”
“Blown it. Probably for good now.”
She said nothing, started to remove his pants. He helped by lifting his butt as she edged the jeans carefully down his legs. His knee was a balloon of wobbly mass. She swallowed her shock, averted her eyes. “It needs ice, but I haven’t got any. Maybe these anti-inflammatories will help. I’ll splint it, bandage it.” She set the pills on the table and got to work splinting his knee with two pieces of wood from the woodpile. Job complete, she stood back, stared down at him.
He frowned. “I look that bad?”
“You’ll live.” But he sure as hell wasn’t going to be able to follow her.
She shut her eyes, tried to marshal her thoughts. She should go. Now. But she couldn’t just leave him like this. She spun on her heels, marched out the door and stepped once again into the dark. She scanned the ground with the flashlight, located his wooden cane.
She propped it against the wall beside the bed where he could reach it, then filled his water bottle, set it next to the pills. She filled Honey’s water bowl, poured dog biscuits into another. And she placed his gun carefully on the table within his reach. The Glock she tucked into the back of her jeans. Grabbing the car keys, she started throwing her things into her pack.
He watched in silence.
“You going somewhere?”
Her eyes snapped to his. “I am.”
“Where?” He struggled to pull himself up into a sitting position.
“I’m taking your vehicle.”
“What’re you talking about?”
She held up the sales slip, credit card. “These. They say your name is Scott Armstrong.”
He blanched.
“Who are you?”
“Skye—”
“Nothing about us was true, was it? You slept with me, made me care for you.” She fought the quavering edge in her voice, grasping for a tone of confidence, authority. “Dammit, you made me care. You didn’t have to go that far.”
“Skye, sit down. I can explain.”
“Lie to me some more?” Her whole body shook uncontrollably now. “I don’t think so.” A deep ache swelled in her chest as she looked into his eyes, his face, saw his hurt. It threatened to suck her up, drown her. Obliterate her.
“Sit. I’ll tell you everything. I was going to before we were attacked.”
“Right.” She remained standing.
He pushed himself into a full sitting position, grimacing as he moved, eyes flashing in spite of his pain. Or because of it.
“Sit.”
She backed closer to the door. “You said nothing, down at the lake, while I spilled
my guts. You knew all along, didn’t you? And you didn’t say a goddamn thing. You watched me bleed. You’re no better than a filthy, scheming jackal.”
“Skye, hear me out.” His voice was laced with pain but he spoke with urgent force. “I needed you to tell me. You have to understand that. It had to come from you.”
Uncertain, unsteady, she lowered herself onto the chair nearest the door, well across the room from him, still clutching the keys. “Why?”
“Because in my heart I believe in you.”
Her heart gave a sickening lurch. She swayed momentarily from dizziness.
“I wanted to know you were a victim in this. I had to be certain. I couldn’t turn you in without giving you a chance to tell me…everything.” He coughed. Agony twisted his features as the spasm racked his injured chest. He caught his breath. “I had to be sure. I need you to be innocent, Skye. Goddammit, I need you.”
He slumped back, face bloodless.
Lord, she wanted to believe him. More than life, she wanted to believe him. Her chest ached. She half rose to go to him. Held back. “Who are you? Who do you work for?”
“My name is Scott Armstrong. I’m an agent with the Bellona Channel.”
She felt her mouth drop open. “You…you were sent to spy on me,” she whispered. “Why?”
“I’m going to give it to you straight. I may live to eat my words, but I believe in you, Skye. Remember that.”
“Tell me,” she said quietly. The yellow light of the lanterns flickered and shadows shivered as she spoke.
“Bellona thought you might be connected to the Rift Valley Fever outbreak in the States.”
Her mind reeled. “Why?”
“You were there at the right time. You’d come via Africa. You have the expertise.”
“And that’s what you were going on?”
“You are also on record as having expressed the opinion that an ecological attack would be an ideal anti-imperialist ploy to undermine the American economy.”
“It’s true.”
“It’s that kind of sentiment that alerted authorities. Our intelligence indicated you’d expressed revolutionary views. It was my mission to sound you out.”
“And that included making love to me?”
“Skye—”
She gave a soft, wry laugh. “Don’t even try to explain. I know of these things. That’s what Malik trained me to do.”
“This was different, Skye.”
She ignored the hurt in his eyes. “Since when do you put people under surveillance for a theory, Agent Armstrong? Is that what the world has come to?”
“It’s what men like Malik Leandros have reduced the world to. And checking you out was Bellona mandate. We keep an eye on things government sometimes overlooks. If it proves serious, we involve various law-enforcement agencies where necessary.”
Skye rubbed one hand over her face. She felt tired. Very, very tired. But she had to know. “How long have I been watched?”
Scott’s head flopped back on the pillow. Drained, he stared up at the ceiling, took a deep, shaky breath, blew it out slowly. “You weren’t exactly a high priority until the invalid rolled into town.”
Skye leaned forward. “What do you mean?”
“Bellona was looking to keep me busy and out of their hair while I recuperated.” He gave a dry little laugh, coughed, winced. “I think my boss thought once I laid eyes on you, you’d help keep my mind off other things.”
“Like your wife and child, like your injury,” she said softly.
“Yeah.” He closed his eyes, gathered his thoughts, opened them. “I figure Rex thought you’d help dig me out of my morose pit. He even threw in the dog for good measure.”
Confusion spiraled through her brain, clashed with anger, empathy, pain. The whirling force of mixed emotions held her immobile in its vortex. She could only stare at the powerful, injured male that lay on the pine bed.
He struggled to sit again. “Rex was right. You did distract me, in more ways than one. But he was wrong about one thing, Skye. This was no lame mission. This is a major coup. This could net us La Sombra, the world’s most wanted man.”
Reality smacked her sharply up the back of the head.
The injured Bellona agent thought netting Malik would redeem him, show his organization he was still strong. She could see it all now, how he was using her. She tasted bitterness. “So I played right into your hands when I asked for your help.”
Scott nodded.
“You fed off my need. You fed off my fear of Malik’s men.”
“Skye, those guys in the brown car, they weren’t La Sombra’s. They were feds.”
“What…what feds?”
“Come here, closer, sit on the bed. What I’m going to tell you isn’t going to be easy.”
She clamped her teeth together. “I’ll stay here, Agent.” She was afraid to go near him. Terrified he’d capture her in another elegant web of lies, hold her heart prisoner with false words, render her immobile with a warm, caring touch. “Just spit it out. All of it.”
He hesitated.
“All of it,” she demanded.
“The feds were after a guy who is now known to be Balto Nakiskas. An Anubis operative.”
“What has that got to do with me?”
“Skye…Jozsef Danko is Balto Nakiskas.”
The world tilted under her chair. Her head swam. She felt sick. Couldn’t breathe. She pulled at her shirt, tried to loosen its grip on her neck, tried to harness her thoughts. But the blood was draining from her brain, leaving her numb, stupid. “Jozsef?” The word came out a soft croak.
“Please, come sit here.”
“No,” she snapped. She didn’t know where to turn. She had to keep her distance from him. “I don’t believe you.” But she did. She was just having trouble computing it. “He…he was going to marry me.”
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “W-why?”
“We’re not sure.”
“If Jozsef works for Malik, that means Malik has known where I am for more than a year. Why…why didn’t he just kill me?”
“He must have a purpose for you.”
“But how did he find me?”
“Jalil.”
“Jalil? You know about Jalil?”
“He’s dead, Skye. Has been for over a year.”
Blood drained instantly from her head. “Oh my God,” she said softly.
“A system from northern Greece has been tapping into Jalil’s computer.”
“Northern Greece? Malik?”
“That’s our guess. Except we thought it was just another cell. Authorities are closing in on it as we speak.”
“But Jalil was e-mailing me.”
“They set it up so you thought you were still corresponding with him. They got into your computer through Jalil’s system. My guess is they got to know you that way. They learned what buttons “Jozsef” needed to press in order to insinuate himself into your life, in order to woo you.”
She tried to swallow. Her mouth was like sawdust. Tears welled hot, spilled silently down her face. She jerked up from her chair, spun to face the window, clutched arms tight to her stomach. “How…how could I let this happen?”
“Don’t blame yourself, Skye. I’ve seen this kind of thing done before. A hacker who gets into a personal computer can learn a lot about that person. He can make you think you are his soul mate. Like you told me, you thought he was almost too perfect.”
“No…how could I let this happen to Jalil.”
“It was beyond your control—”
“No!” She jerked around to face him. “He died because of me!”
“That’s the assumption.”
“Did they torture him?” She glared at him, defying him to tell the truth.
Scott hesitated. “Yes.”
She stared at the stranger on the bed. “Jalil was my friend.”
Skye took a step, then another. She paced the room quickly, back and forth, her boots clonki
ng on the wood floor. She had to think. Why had Malik sent Jozsef into her life? What purpose could he have had for her? She froze.
Oh, God. The blights. She whirled, faced Scott. “That trip to Texas, and to Africa, they were for Jozsef’s business. It was at his insistence that I joined him.”
“He insisted?”
“Yes. He was doing work for an import-export company out of Europe.”
“Don’t tell me—KTS Global?”
“How do you know?”
“It’s the company that paid for the rental of the truck that was tailing us. KTS Global is held by a parent company in Belgium, which in turn seems to be a shell for another numbered company in Athens.”
“Malik?”
“It’s a good bet.”
She sucked in a shaky breath. “Jozsef took sample tins of Belgian foie gras on those trips. He had opportunity to introduce pathogens. He could have contained it in those tins.” Then it hit her. Skye’s stomach heaved, dry. “Jozsef also insisted I go with him to Ontario, just before the whitefly outbreak.” She turned slowly to face Scott. “Oh, my God. It was him. And they wanted to blame me. They’ve been setting me up all this time. They probably leaked the information about my travels.”
Scott struggled to sit up again. “It’s possible.” His mouth pulled sideways in a grimace. “In fact, I’d bet my life on it.” He held his hand out to her. “I just knew you hadn’t done it, Skye. I knew it,” he said softly. “Come here.”
She felt the primal tug of his gentle words at her very soul. But she held her ground. Stood steady on the floor in the middle of the cabin. It was her only way to maintain any kind of mental order. Because everything else was spinning out of control. It was too much to absorb at once. She forced her thoughts into coherency. Jozsef, alias Nakiskas. The man had demonstrated an unhealthy interest in her beetle project. Her brain reeled. Had Jozsef meddled with her beetles, too?
Was it possible that he’d introduced something that could make them a vector for yet another disastrous outbreak, one she’d be held liable for? One the Canadian government would itself spread across the country?
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