“She’d walk barefoot across hot coals for you. Sure.”
“Likewise.” Everyone at ASI would go to the wall for Felicity. She was super smart, worked hard for everyone and had pulled their nuts out of the fire more than once. He diminished the screenshot of Honor sleeping and tapped a number. An instant later, Felicity’s pretty but pale face showed on the screen.
“Matt! How’s the Grange? My guy might be stopping by.”
“He’s here.”
Matt tilted the screen so she could see Metal, who waved and frowned. “Shouldn’t you be lying down?”
Felicity rolled her pretty blue eyes. “No, mom, I’m at work.”
“There’s a cot in the back room, you could —”
“Matt.” Felicity smiled, showing all her teeth. She sounded exasperated. Metal could be a little heavy-handed in his concern. “Did you need something?”
Matt nudged Metal out of the way and addressed Felicity. “This is confidential. I think a life might depend on it.”
Felicity’s face turned sober. “I’m a vault. You know that.”
He did. She was of pure Russian blood. Russians kept secrets for generations. Plus she’d grown up under the Witness Protection Program, had done contract work for the FBI and had worked at the NSA briefly. She’d lost her clearances when she joined ASI but she knew how to keep secrets.
“I’m sending some photos of a woman to you. Can you run her through some databases? Her first name is Honor. We think she’s a doctor.”
He heard faint tapping sounds from off screen. “Got the photos, am running them now. What’s the story?”
“I rescued her in the river. She’s battered and bruised. Said she’d been kidnapped and I believe her. She has signs on her wrists of having been shackled.”
A shocked breath and Felicity’s eyes rounded. “Shackled?”
Matt nodded grimly. “Yeah. And signs of IV infusions. We suspect she was administered drugs while being held prisoner. She’s frightened to death and doesn’t want to be taken to a hospital. Said they’d find her there.”
“If clever people were after her, they would.”
This touched a chord with Felicity. She herself had been on the run from a man who’d tried to kill her and had chased her to a hospital. She’d barely escaped and had fallen, bleeding and grievously wounded, through the door of a friend. Metal had been visiting and he’d caught her. And kept her.
Matt looked into Felicity’s bright blue eyes. “You know how frightened she must be.”
“God yes,” Felicity said, voice sober and sad. “To be wounded and on the run.” She narrowed her eyes and stared at the screen. It was as if she were staring right at him. “But you’ve got her now, right? She’s safe now?”
Matt nodded. “She’s safe now and she’ll stay that way. Don’t worry. I don’t care if the hounds of hell are after her, they won’t get to her. But we need intel, we need to know what the situation is to be able to protect her, and she doesn’t remember anything.”
“Amnesia?”
“Don’t know. Maybe not. Like I said, I think she was drugged, whether to make her talk or to keep her quiet, I don’t know. But I’m hoping when the drugs wear off her memory will return. In the meantime, if I know her name and other info, I won’t be blind.”
A soft ping and Felicity looked offscreen at a computer monitor. “Okay, here’s what I have and I’m sending it all to you right now. Name, Honor Jane Thomas. Physician, internist. Works in the ER of Eastern Memorial Hospital. Single, 31. No criminal record, not even a parking ticket. Excellent credit rating. Doesn’t have a Facebook page, smart girl. Has published two scientific papers, one on hypoxia due to smoke inhalation and the other on emergency treatment of strokes. Owns her own apartment. It’s small but in an upscale condo. Contributes to charity, cancer research. I’ll have to dig deeper to know more. Here’s a photo.”
The image of a driver’s license photo popped up. It was the woman, Honor. Looking relaxed, beautiful, unsmiling. The hair was deep red in the photo.
“That’s her. Dig deeper,” he ordered. “And find out if she has any connection to me.”
“Come again?” Her eyes rounded. “A connection to you?”
“Yeah. She had my name and the GPS coordinates of the Grange written with a Sharpie on her upper left arm.”
Felicity’s pretty mouth opened, then closed.
“Yep.” He felt the same.
“She was looking for you?”
“Seems that way. But she got waylaid by monsters and held prisoner.” Well, the monsters weren’t getting her back, that was for sure. “I intend to keep her safe but I need to know what’s going on.”
“Sure.” Felicity looked troubled. She knew what it was to have some mysterious man after you and not know why. She’d nearly died at her own monster’s hands. A quick glance at Metal showed that he was remembering clearly the snowbound night she fell through the door into his arms, bleeding out. “I’ll find out what I can.”
“Appreciate it.”
“Of course. You know I —” Felicity broke off suddenly, turned sheet white and disappeared. Matt knew exactly where she was going — to the toilet to puke her guts out.
Everyone at ASI felt really bad but there was nothing anyone could do. And she refused to stay home.
“Okay.” Metal put a heavy hand on his shoulder. “That’s my cue to go. I can’t do anything else for Honor. What she needs right now is rest and hot food and drink. She’s refusing to go to the hospital, so you can do what needs to be done here. We’ve got a full stock of drugs up here — ibuprofen, paracetamol, antibiotics, you name it. She’s a doctor, she’ll know what she should be taking. I gotta go.”
Metal was quivering to get going. It was a tossup who was suffering more from Felicity’s pregnancy woes — Felicity herself or Metal. He was aging by the day.
In a second he was gone, heading like an arrow down the mountain to Felicity. They’d been planning a wedding but Felicity refused to organize a wedding where she might throw up. “Very uncool,” she’d said.
Matt had to agree.
He checked on the bedroom. Honor was sleeping deeply. Who knew how long she’d been kept prisoner? If they were interrogating her, sleep deprivation was a favorite, hugely popular with the kind of people who’d torment a woman. And she’d nearly drowned after being caught in rapids so she’d need to rest anyway.
Let her sleep, he thought. He pulled some food out of the huge stocks in the deep freezer, prepared another thermos of tea then couldn’t stand it any longer. He walked into her room, sat down and took her hand in his.
It immediately soothed him. She was safe here, of course. But she was particularly safe while he was by her side, holding her hand. He had his favorite Glock 19 in a hip holster and his usual Kershaw knife in his boot. He’d checked the perimeter sensors, put the entire system on high alert.
If a fly farted, the sensors would pick it up and he could shoot it out of the air.
Nothing was going to happen to this woman. Nothing.
He settled back in the small armchair he’d pulled next to the bed and sat vigil.
Perth, Australia
June 13
Lee Chamness attached his prosthetic nose, put flesh-colored spacers behind his ears making them stick out, applied special tape to the corners of his eyes to change the shape, put a device in his mouth that altered his jawline and put in dark contact lenses. Slid a rubber pregnant belly found in a theatrical props store under his sweater so he looked like he had a pot belly. Those were the basics, what he’d been doing off and on for six months in this Australian city in the back of beyond to establish his identity.
There were lots of things that could be done to defeat facial recognition. Tiny LED lights in the visor of a baseball cap. If he wanted to go full punk, he could have applied CV dazzle makeup that made you look like a member of KISS. Used Hyperface, a scarf made in a special digitalized pattern that mimicked human faces and threw off the algorithms.
Voilà! Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Martin Stewart, homely mild-mannered accountant who has never, ever been laid.
It amused him to become Martin, to slip through life unseen and unwanted. Ah, one further thing. He slipped out of his Ferragamo loafers and put on a bespoke pair of remarkably ugly running shoes. The sole of the right shoe was invisibly lifted half an inch and there were foam spikes in the instep of the left shoe, giving him an ungainly gait.
He’d tested the set up, running video footage of himself through a mirrored copy of the CIA’s facial and gait recognition system, which as far as he knew was the most powerful in the world. First, he’d paid very good money to a hacker in Bangkok to wipe his data from the CIA data banks.
Zip. The facial recog system gave the cyber equivalent of a shrug.
He knew his gait had been in the system, as was the gait of about seven million people, and that too came up blank, wiped. Only Martin came up in another database, Homeland Security. Martin Stewart, the poor schlub accountant, who travelled often to the US.
Martin had a deep legend. He’d been born in Hobart, Tasmania and now lived in Perth, where he ran a small one-man accountancy business. The business was registered, paid its taxes, the office was a room in a flat he owned and the phone was answered by someone in India. The credit cards made out in the name of Martin Stewart were genuine and had records of low-level spending.
His passport was genuine, too.
It had to be.
Little-known fact. Australian passports were the most secure, hardest-to-forge passports in the world, with floating images of kangaroos and the intaglio on the inside cover made of five colors instead of the usual two. Consequently, border officials stamped Australian passports without a second glance.
Chamness had gotten his real passport using his fake identity many, many years ago, in his early days with the CIA, deepening his identity with each iteration of the passport, building up his legend. He even did a very credible Australian accent. He had done it as insurance and now he was cashing in on the policy.
He had to work hard not to get overconfident and sloppy because when he travelled as Martin, he felt invisible. Like one of those superhero movies where the superpower was being able to pass through crowds unnoticed.
When he arrived in LA he would ditch Martin Stewart, like Clark Kent ditching the glasses and the suit. Until he had to fly out again, which he would, as Martin. No record at all of Lee Chamness flying into or out of the US.
He would fly out fifty million dollars richer, though. He would fly to Mexico City and then to Sydney, then on a German passport via a private jet to Bali, just another sex tourist. And then on his yacht to his own private island, where he would live under the radar in luxury forever.
The hardest thing about this was flying coach. Insignificant, frumpy, overweight Martin would stand out like a sore thumb in business.
When this was over, he would not only never fly coach again, he’d never fly commercial again.
He was a week from becoming insanely rich but for now he was still modest, unassuming Martin Stewart. He even took a bus to Perth International Airport. This one last time.
When they called his flight, he boarded, turning right for coach for the last time in his life, looking with dismay at the crowded seats of ugly, fat people up ahead. The back of the plane already smelled of suet and sweat and cheap perfume.
He shuddered. Never again, never ever again.
The Grange
June 14
She was used to waking up quickly, fully alert. She knew this about herself, without quite knowing why. But this was different. It was like being underwater, swimming toward the surface far above but weighed down by chains.
She’d swim up, seeing light ripple on the surface, up where there was light and air, only to sink again under the weight of steel. Desperately trying to rise, being brutally yanked down.
Up toward the light, that’s where she wanted to be, needed to be, but it wasn’t working.
A hand reached down, broad and strong, and took hers, towing her gently up. She broke the surface on a gasp, disoriented.
“Good morning, Honor,” a deep, low voice said. “Are you feeling better?”
She wanted to panic. In unfamiliar surroundings with an unknown man sitting next to her, holding her hand. Her heart pounded. The last thing she remembered was escaping from ‘them’, trying to run but stumbling because she’d been pumped full of …
What?
But that had been some time ago. A few … days ago. Hadn’t it?
This room, unfamiliar, yet — she’d been here before. She’d slept and woken up. Hadn’t she? And this man, this stranger, he wasn’t a stranger. She remembered —
“You saved my life.” It wasn’t a memory so much as knowledge. She’d been running, then drowning and then she was safe.
He was a big man, tall even sitting down, broad shoulders extending beyond the chair back. Shaggy dark hair almost touching his collar. Dressed in black — black long-sleeved tee, black jeans, black boots. Hard face.
She’d been held prisoner by men who had that look. She didn’t remember them individually but she remembered being their prisoner. She’d observed them carefully — the memory of that was coming back. They’d been cruel and vicious, almost inhuman.
Their body language had revealed who they were. They’d ogled her, eyes lingering on her breasts and crotch, sexualizing her captivity. Restless, fingers twitching, jaws clenching and unclenching, eyes constantly roving.
This man was the opposite. He sat calmly, unmoving, dark eyes fixed on hers. Absolutely nothing like her jailers.
He moved his torso forward, slowly, resting one elbow on one knee, one hand still holding hers.
“Are you starting to remember what happened? How you came to be in the river?”
Honor closed her eyes, a blinding headache building behind them. Spikes of jagged pain dug deep inside her head. Since when did thinking hurt? All she saw were flashes. The cruel men, being chained up, escaping … how did she escape?
Her head hurt so much. There was a mewling sound. She looked around wildly. There was only Matt in the room, face grave, dark eyes sad. That horrible sound … it came from her mouth. She sounded like a wounded animal.
“Never mind.” Matt gently squeezed her hand then withdrew it. “I have some hot food, excellent food actually. We have a lot of it here. All prepared by Isabel Harris.”
That name … she blinked. “Isabel Delvaux-Harris … the food blogger?”
He nodded. “The very same. She experiments up here, holds courses up here. So basically anything you might want, we probably have. I can nuke whatever you want. The only thing I personally can make for you is some more hot tea. Do you want to get up or do you want me to bring it in on a tray?”
“Get up.” Oh God, yes. Stand straight, walk to food prepared by Isabel Harris’s hands! Most people would walk over hot coals barefoot to eat something cooked by her. She swung her legs over, tried to stand. Her knees shook, legs shook.
Standing, the easiest thing in the world until you couldn’t do it.
He caught her by her arms before she could fall.
“Easy there, Honor. Let me bring you a tray. Maybe tonight you can eat dinner at the table.”
Tonight. “What time is it?”
“Noon. You’ll be hungry because you slept past breakfast time. I didn’t have the heart to wake you up. Dinner will be any time you want it.”
Time, the concept of time, rushed back in. She’d been here days. She met his eyes. “I escaped.”
“Yeah. Got that. You must have been very smart and very brave. You were shackled. I’ve seen the signs of that before. Getting away must have been hard.”
She looked at her wris
ts and registered the bruises, the chafing. She held her hands up, the memory of weights on them rising up in her head. She’d been shackled … to a wall. The memories rushed in a crowded jumble. “You’re right,” she said slowly, shaking her head to get rid of the cobwebs, though it didn’t help. “So hard to think.”
It was horrible, not being able to think straight. It made her feel unmoored from the world.
He put a hand over hers again and she was astonished at the comfort it gave. His dark hand was strong yet gentle and it felt like just a little of his strength passed from his hand to hers.
“Don’t push it. You were drugged. You have signs of an IV. Metal took a blood sample and should be getting results soon. Today, probably.”
“I remember.” She stretched out her arm, looked at the crook of it. The information was there, right in her head. “Judging from the size of the hole, it was a cannula. Which means an infusion of whatever I was given, over hours or possibly days. No wonder I can’t think straight.”
Matt rose and for a second she panicked. His presence was immensely reassuring, like having a guard wolf looking out for you. A few more clouds cleared away, and there was the memory of him swimming strongly against a river in full spate to carry her to safety. “Are you going?” she tried to keep the panic out of her voice.
“Just to get you something hot to eat and to drink. It will do you good.”
It would. She knew that. Knew it with her heart and her head. Knew precisely that a person who’d skirted hypothermia needed warmth, hot nourishment, bed rest, all things this man was offering.
But … she also didn’t want him to go. The room she was in was beautiful but large and with shadowy corners. Nothing at all was familiar. Something was wrong with her head, she kept catching at thoughts and memories and they slid away, like trying to catch fog with your hands. The one thing she could catch, hold onto, was this big man who’d saved her life.
Holding on to his hand felt like holding on to a lifeline.
Something in her told her she wasn’t a needy woman but right now she’d do anything to keep him right here, anchoring her shadowy world.
Midnight Renegade (Men of Midnight Book 7) Page 4