Seduction Game

by Pamela Clare

  “We’ve got a unit covering the back. They never saw anyone come near the place. Once Holly and lover boy went back inside after dinner, that was it.”

  “Hey, guys, I think we found the answer.” Hunter came up behind them, holding a flashlight, the knees of his forensic overalls brown with dirt. “You’ve got to see this.”

  They followed Hunter into the laundry room, where he opened the access door to the crawl space.

  “I don’t think I’m going to like this,” Darcangelo muttered.

  “I guarantee you won’t.” Hunter crouched down and crawled into the darkness.

  One by one Zach, Darcangelo, and Corbray followed.

  “Be careful not to destroy the evidence. You can see where he dragged her.” Hunter pointed the flashlight at the ground.

  There in the earth were marks that might have been made by someone’s heels dragging in the dirt.

  They crawled a bit farther, then Hunter held up the flashlight to reveal a hole in the plywood wall that separated Holly’s crawlspace from her neighbor’s.

  Javier let loose with a string of swear words in Puerto Rican Spanish, only a few of which Zach recognized. “That mamabicho. It was her neighbor. I hated that dude from the first moment I saw him.”

  “You and me both,” said Hunter.

  They moved closer, found piles of sawdust in the dirt—proof that the hole wasn’t a part of the building’s original structure but had been cut recently.

  They passed through the opening, made their way to the door, and found themselves in her neighbor’s laundry room. They drew their weapons, quickly and silently clearing the condo.

  There was no sign of Holly or her neighbor.

  Zach holstered his weapon. “What was the fucker’s name?”

  “Nicholas Andrews,” Javier said. “We ran background on him. He came up clean. I’ll call Tower, get him to dig deeper.”

  “You don’t need to do that.” Chief Irving walked out of the laundry room, dusting the dirt off his slacks, apparently having followed them through the crawl space. “I just got a call from Langley. Andrews is actually Nikolai Andris. He’s one of theirs.”

  “He’s CIA?” Corbray looked over at Zach, disbelief on his face.

  Irving nodded. “They say he’s the one who killed Sachino Dudaev, without their authorization, of course. Apparently, he’s the rogue officer we’ve been hearing about. He’s armed and considered extremely dangerous.”

  Zach didn’t like that. “What interest does he have in Holly?”

  “I asked that question, and they said that perhaps he wants to make certain she didn’t see him that night. The officer who spoke with me said they’ve been trying to bring Andris in and have been in touch with him. I’m sorry to say this because I know she’s your friend, but they believe he intends to kill her.”

  It felt like a physical blow, the anguish Zach felt visible on the faces of the others.

  Corbray shook his head. “No fucking way. We’re going to find her first.”

  “Why would he spare her life the night he murdered Dudaev only to kill her now?” Darcangelo asked.

  It was a good question.

  Irving shrugged. “I don’t know, but it’s no longer our problem.”

  Hunter took a step forward. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “They’re taking over this case, just like they did Dudaev’s murder,” Irving said. “We’ve been ordered to stand down and turn over all evidence to them. That’s my way of telling you that you need to get the hell out of their crime scene.”

  “Fuck that.” Zach pulled out his cell phone, dialed the DC office. “As of this moment, I am claiming jurisdiction over the abduction of Holly Elise Bradshaw and the manhunt for Andris on behalf of the US Marshal Service. We outrank the Agency here in the homeland. If they want a dick fight, we’ll give them one.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Holly was losing all sense of the passage of time, her pain now very real as she forced herself to hang by her wrists from the bar, her weight making the steel cuffs bite into her already bruised and blistered skin, her shoulders and bruised ribs aching, her body screaming for water. A day and a night had passed, and now it was almost evening again, wasn’t it?

  If she could just hold out, if she could just stay strong . . .

  He was going easy on her, she knew. So far he hadn’t hit her or threatened to hurt or kill her. There were so many horrible things he could do to her if he wanted to. But he didn’t want to do this, and slowly he was losing his resolve. She could see it in his eyes. She could hear it in his voice—the strain, the anger at himself, the frustration.

  “What did the message say?”

  She struggled to stand upright, needing to give her wrists, shoulders, and ribs a break, but that only made her numb fingers start to tingle. Her throat was parched, her mouth dry. “I told you already! It said your name . . . was Nick Andris. And that you were . . . a danger to me. Well, that was true . . . wasn’t it? Here I am.”

  She had decided it was safe to tell him things they both knew were true, ladling it out bit by bit, making him pay for every word in emotional distress over her suffering.

  “What else did it say?”

  “It said . . . I should leave town . . . They sent money, tickets. That’s all it said . . . That’s all. Look at it . . . It’s not that long. Please, can I have water? You said . . . you said if I answered . . .”

  “Have you been tasked with terminating me?”

  “No! I’m not . . . the killer. You are.”

  “That’s right. You just seduce men for money. I guess that makes you a whore. Why do you do it? To hurt your father?”

  That brought her head up.

  “I know you joined Air Force ROTC instead of Army ROTC. Was that a way of trying to piss off the old man? When that wasn’t enough to catch his attention, you dropped out of ROTC altogether.”

  Holly felt an old, familiar pain well up inside her. “My father never . . .”

  She stopped herself, tried to lock that part of herself away.

  “Your father never cared about you, did he? That photo in your bedroom—that’s one of the few good memories you have of him. Daddy never gave you the attention you needed.” Nick paused, watching her like a predator watches its prey. “Or maybe he gave you too much attention. That’s it, isn’t it? After you sprouted tits, your relationship changed. Maybe he even wanted you, his own daughter. Maybe he got physical with you. Or maybe he fought that unnatural impulse by ignoring you.”

  Holly felt her pulse pound as The Bastard’s guesses struck terribly close to home. “My father . . . never touched me.”

  But he’d said things, things that had made her feel dirty.

  You are a hot piece of ass, baby girl. I bet there isn’t a man on base who doesn’t want to fuck you.

  Holly found herself in tears, whether from physical pain or stress or sheer exhaustion, she didn’t know.

  “But you got back at Daddy, didn’t you? You took that beautiful body of yours, you took that beautiful face, you took the tits he wished he could touch, and you put it all to work for the very elements your father spent his career fighting.”

  “That’s not true!” She lunged for Nick. Pain screamed through her wrists, shoulders, ribs, the room spinning. When her knees gave out this time, she wasn’t pretending. “I am . . . a patriotic American. I never . . . betrayed my country. You did.”

  “What do you mean by that?” He took her chin between his fingertips, forced her to meet his gaze. “Goddamn it, Holly, answer me!”

  “The message . . . says you’re a rogue officer . . . a CI threat.”

  What had she just said? Had she slipped? Had she compromised herself?

  He stepped back as if she’d struck him. “That’s what it said?”

  “Now . . . you’re going to kill me.” The sweet oblivion of unconsciousness called to her, and for a moment the world faded away.

  She heard something click, felt hers
elf falling.

  He caught her, carried her to the bed, and held her as he trickled water between her parched lips. “Drink, Holly. That’s it. Not too fast. Don’t choke.”

  The water felt so good, sliding down her dry throat.

  She opened her eyes, looked up at him, played her last card. “When you kill me . . . shoot me in the heart . . . not the forehead. I want my face . . . for my funeral.”

  But she saw in his eyes that he wasn’t going to kill her. He wasn’t going to hurt her anymore, either. He couldn’t. He was finished.

  She’d done it. She’d held out.

  It was over.

  * * *

  “One more swallow. There you go.”

  Nick coaxed more water down Holly’s throat, then laid her head gently back onto the bed, watching as her lids closed and her body slowly relaxed. He retrieved the medic kit from his go-bag and did what he could to make her more comfortable, putting ointment on her bruised and blistered wrists, wiping dried blood away from the corner of her mouth, pressing an instant cold pack against the deep purple bruise on her ribs.

  She whimpered in her sleep as the cold pack touched her skin, pain etched into her sweet face, her cheeks stained and still damp with her tears.

  He took an auto-injector of morphine out of the kit and set it aside with an alcohol wipe in case she needed pain relief when she came to again.

  He had done this to her.

  Bauer had ordered him to do this to her, and Nick had followed those orders, even when his gut had warned him that something was wrong.

  Goddamn it!

  “Forgive me, Holly. I didn’t know.”

  Jesus!

  Why hadn’t he figured it out sooner?

  Not that Holly had outright admitted that she worked for the CIA, but Nick knew it just the same. Her use of the term “CI threat” had given her away. The moment he’d heard those words it had all come together for him. Her mastery of R2I techniques. The quality of the fake ID he’d found in that purse. The tradecraft involved in sending ciphertext via catalogue shipments.

  A pang of regret sheared through him.

  He’d just spent the past thirty-six hours interrogating an innocent woman, a fellow Agency officer no less. He couldn’t undo it. He couldn’t take it back. All he could do was take care of her now—and hope she didn’t kill him or knock his balls off when she regained consciousness.

  As for his own situation, the writing had been on the wall. The internal investigation. The way Bauer and Nguyen had questioned him about Kramer’s disappearance. Rumors that Dudaev had been killed by someone operating without Agency authorization. The fact that he was one of only two men left who’d had boots on the ground in Batumi that night.

  Taken together, it was a giant “Kick Me” sign taped to his back.

  Now Holly had confirmed it for him.

  He’d been set up.

  Bauer.

  It had to be Bauer.

  He’d been the one to recall Nick to the US. He’d assigned him to take out Dudaev and run surveillance on Holly, insisting she was Dudaev’s contact. He must have known all along that Holly was with the Agency, must have known she’d been sent to retrieve the stolen files and had wanted to stop her.

  What role she had to play beyond that Nick couldn’t say, nor did he understand why Bauer wanted her dead. And he did want her dead. He’d called to authorize her termination less than an hour ago, tasking Nick with an illegal act that he would never have been able to carry out. The entire operation had reeked of bullshit from the beginning, but Nick had been too fucking blinded by his desire to even the score with Dudaev—and his loyalty to Bauer—to admit it to himself.

  And what about Nguyen?

  Nick felt something twist in his chest. Nguyen had been there when Bauer had given him his assignment. He knew what Nick had been ordered to do. He must be in on it, too. But why?

  From where Nick now stood, only one thing was certain.

  He and Holly needed to get the hell out of here. They needed to find a safe place, hole up, crack the password, decrypt the files, and figure out what was really going on. The moment Bauer realized Nick was no longer playing his game—

  Something sharp bit into Nick’s thigh, and he looked down to find the morphine auto-injector buried in his quadriceps, Holly’s fist wrapped around it.

  “What the . . . ?” A sickening wave of euphoria surged through him as ten milligrams of morphine hit his system all at once.

  Shit!

  “You bastard!” Holly scrambled past him out of the bed and stood just beyond his reach, glaring at him with undisguised hatred. “How do you like being drugged?”

  “You aren’t . . . as hurt . . . as you let me believe.”

  “Never underestimate the strength of a truly pissed-off woman.”

  Nguyen had been wrong. She wasn’t good. She was amazing.

  And it struck Nick suddenly as funny.

  He now knew she worked for the CIA just like he did, but she still believed he was a CI threat, a fugitive, one of the bad guys. Given that he’d just spent the past thirty-six hours interrogating her, what else could she think?

  “Holly, honey, we’re on the same side.” He tried to stand, but sank to the floor in a boneless heap.

  She watched him drop. “Don’t call me that.”

  He lay there chuckling to himself about the absurdity of it all while she disarmed him, using no more force than if he’d been a child.

  “Shit. Holly, listen. I work for the CIA, too, see? I’m not really a fugitive. I’ve been set up.”

  Except that maybe he was a fugitive.

  Was he?

  If Bauer and Nguyen had burned him and turned the Agency against him, if officers had been sent to bring him in or terminate him, then he was a fugitive.

  Well, fuck.

  Not exactly a promotion, now, is it?

  But Holly was glaring at him. “I never said I was CIA.”

  “I put it . . . together.” He fought to clear his mind, to keep his eyes open, but felt himself going under as the drug took full effect. “I’ve . . . been set up. We . . . need to leave here . . . They know.”

  “They know what? And who are ‘they’?” She tore into an MRE and began to eat.

  “My boss from Langley . . . set me up. Sent me after you. Authorized your termination . . . Didn’t tell me . . . you were CIA, too.” He tried to focus, fought to get the stupid smile off his face. “He knows we’re here. If he finds out I didn’t kill you . . . he’ll send people here after us. He may have . . .”

  The world was going black.

  He may have people on the way already.

  * * *

  Holly ate the rest of the MRE trail mix and washed it down with more water, her gaze fixed on Nick, who lay semi-conscious on the floor. It wouldn’t take long for his body to metabolize enough of the morphine for him to get back on his feet. She likely didn’t have time to dry clean the vehicle to make sure it was free of listening devices and GPS tracking. That meant she would have to hike out—and fast. There were only a couple hours of daylight left. She didn’t want to find herself benighted in the mountains.

  She’d heard what he’d said—that his boss at Langley had set him up, authorized her termination, and hadn’t told Nick she was with the Agency, too.

  Could he be telling the truth?

  Not likely. He’d done nothing but lie to her and deceive her from the moment she’d met him.

  Would it change her plan of action if he was?

  No, it wouldn’t. She needed to get away from him, contact Javier to let him know where she was, and call Beth to ask for some time off from work.

  Then she needed to disappear until this sorted itself out.

  But first things first.

  She fished the encoded message and the image of his face out of his pocket, tossed them into the fireplace, and poured a little lantern oil on them. Using matches she found next to his gear bag, she set the paper on fire and watched it
burn until it was reduced to unreadable ash. When that was done, she rummaged through his gear and was relieved to find her running shoes and a pair of socks that he’d brought for her, along with the five thousand dollars her CO had sent. The false ID and plane tickets were there, too, though the tickets were no longer of any use. She put on the socks and shoes, then tucked the money and ID, the matches, several bottles of water, a flashlight, and two MREs into a little folding daypack she found.

  Nick tried to raise his head, muttered something. “Decrypt the files.”

  She knelt beside him, took the watch off his wrist, strapped it to hers. “Decrypt what files?”

  “Outside. In the back.”

  “The back of the vehicle?” Another reason to leave the SUV.

  She didn’t want to be caught with files she wasn’t authorized to see.

  He opened his eyes, a troubled look on his face. “Got to go . . . now.”

  “That’s my plan.” She took the medic kit, dug through it, and almost jumped for joy when she found a packet of ibuprofen.

  She popped two, washed them down with water, then began searching for anything else she might be able to use. She took a light jacket, a baseball cap, and ammo for the SIG, but left twenty grand in cash—who knows where he’d gotten that—and a custom-made Ruger MK III, probably the weapon he’d used to kill Dudaev. She zipped the little daypack and strapped it on to her back, wincing at the pain that shot through her ribs. Then she put on the baseball cap to keep the sun off her skin.

  But what should she do about The Bastard?

  She should cuff him to the bed and report his location to law enforcement. What happened to him after that was not her problem. He was a fugitive, wanted by the Agency. He’d deceived her, humiliated her, hurt her.

  He’d hated it. He’d hated every minute of it. But he’d still done it.

  And what if he’d been telling her the truth about the rest of it—his boss authorizing her termination, setting Nick up, sending men after them?

  In the end, Holly couldn’t bring herself to cuff him. Nor could she leave him without a weapon and defenseless. If he was lucky, he’d be gone before anyone arrived.

  “All’s fair in love and war.” She turned her back, leaving him on the floor.