The Phoenix Law

by Cate Dermody

  Chapter 5

  Rain spattered in Alisha’s face, wind lifting it under her umbrella’s brim. Twenty-three hours of travel: a sailboat out past the maritime-law line and a seaplane, exchanging a man and woman of Brandon and Alisha’s general build and coloring for the pair on the boat. Then a flight down to Mexico City, her own false papers obtained from one of her safety deposit boxes. Two sets of papers, so by the time they changed planes in Rio de Janeiro, they’d left their true identities two personas behind, burned to death in a Sacramento neighborhood fire. Alisha had risked one brief phone call to Teresa, swearing she was all right but pleading with her sister that she act as though Alisha had died. Hanging up without being able to offer a full explanation had made her tremble with anger and loss. The only way through had been to soldier forward, putting everything but getting Brandon far away from her family out of mind.

  The stop in Brazil was necessary, though it ate more time than Alisha wanted. Two new sets of papers for Brandon in under six hours had taken nearly all the cash she’d brought with her. What she’d had stashed in her house was plenty for one person to get a long way away discreetly, but two cost more than twice the price. So it was to Rio to withdraw more cash from one of her boxes, deposited under an alias she hadn’t used in years. Not a Strongbox alias; those were Company-sanctioned names. Those names and files were her way of leaving a record of who she’d really been, just barely traceable for someone who had access to her original mission files. The Brazilian account was under a name she’d created for herself, one of many in case she ever needed to disappear.

  And that was one of a hundred reasons she’d left the Agency, Alisha reminded herself. Because a life she might have to disappear from in order to survive was no life at all.

  Yet now she hurried through blustery London, sunshine peeking out in bursts through low thick clouds that spat rain down on her. Almost a year’s worth of normalcy come crashing to an end. Alisha couldn’t tell if her heart beat so quickly from anger or excitement.

  Twenty-three hours, fifty-three minutes. She’d slept on the airplane once they were safely out of Rio, the New World left behind. The flight was direct to London; they couldn’t afford to waste time with one more identity change or airport wait. As it was, she was cutting it very close indeed to arrive at the café she’d specified by the appointed hour. Brandon was hard-pressed to keep up as she ducked through city streets and down alleyways, for all that he had half a foot’s height on her.

  The coffee shop was still there. Something unknotted in Alisha’s breast as she came around a final corner and saw the glass-paned front, elegant letters etched in black curves. It had been—how many years? She put the question to herself as if the answer didn’t leap vividly to mind. Four years, two months, ten days; a scattering of minutes and hours, and that had been three years after he’d shot her in the Piazza San Pietro in Rome in order, he said much later, to save her life.

  She had not meant to find him, a truth that her superiors hadn’t believed. It’d been a chance glimpse, the man she’d once loved across Trafalgar Square, hand in hand with a laughing brunette, a child balanced on his shoulders. Alisha followed him out of habit; it was what spies did. She learned the places he haunted with the woman, and learned her name was Emma Dickens. The child was Mazie, six years old, and not, thank God, Frank Reichart’s daughter.

  Alisha had told herself the relationship was a cover, its ordinariness so extreme she couldn’t bring herself to believe Reichart had settled down to it. She’d wanted to approach him, to demand to know why he’d shot her, why he’d left her there alone to die. She’d wanted to bring him in and cage him until she got the answers she sought.

  And in the moment when she might have done all that, she’d heard both love and affection in his voice for the woman called Emma, and for some reason had turned and walked away from the coffee shop that now lay a few yards ahead. Reichart had never known she was there.

  “Alisha?”

  She came out of her reverie with a scowl. Brandon’d said very little in the past day, which was as she wanted it. “Are we going in?” he asked. A note of teasing hung in the words, reducing its diffidence. Alisha nodded curtly and stalked forward, leaving Brandon a step or two behind again. Bells rang as she pushed the door open, taking in the café with a glance.

  Reichart wasn’t there yet, but it was four minutes until the hour. She wouldn’t expect him until the exact time she’d specified. Under other circumstances, she wouldn’t be early, either. Enough chill ran through her from the wind and rain that she stepped up to the counter, grateful to order a cup of strong coffee. Brandon lifted a hand in request and she doubled the order, then added one more mug to it as Brandon made his way to the window and found a seat. Alisha waited at the counter, gaze unfocused on an analog clock behind the barista. The second hand swept to the minute as the young woman behind the counter slid a triangle of coffee cups across to her, and the bells on the door behind Alisha jangled.

  Despite the circumstances that had brought her there, a smile curved Alisha’s mouth. His timing was, as always, impeccable. Coffee mugs in hand, she turned, saying, “I trust you still like your coffee…”

  Her heart lurched, surprise tightening her fingers around the cups. They were ceramic, not cardboard, she noticed distantly, or they’d have collapsed under her grip, sending hot coffee to the floor and all over herself.

  “Black,” Emma Dickens said, with a smile of her own. “Thanks very much.”

  The woman’s hair was darker than Alisha’d remembered it, black instead of brown, though it had none of the flatness of hair dyed to that shade. And she was tall, even without the heeled, calf-hugging boots she wore. Alisha handed over the third cup of coffee with an easy smile in place, though she knew it did nothing to hide the shock in her eyes or the racing pulse in her throat.

  “It’s good to see you again.” Alisha’s tone was perfect: smooth, pleased, full of warmth. The lie came so readily, she might have believed it herself. “Come on.” Good humor threaded through her words as she smiled and tilted her head toward the table Brandon had staked out. “I’ve got someone for you to meet.” Her pulse had steadied by the time she finished speaking, pupils no longer dilated with surprise. Nothing in her physique betrayed the emotion spilling tumultuously through her mind. Fear, anger, a confusing sort of betrayal, though that had no viable place in her thoughts. If Emma was here, something had gone wrong; Reichart was unable to meet her.

  But he might have chosen another courier to carry the message. That thought was laced with tight dismay. Emma, with a touch of equally tight sympathy, inclined her head in response to Alisha’s invitation. “I’d be delighted.”

  Which was worse, Alisha wondered, being caught out by an unexpected encounter with an old lover’s one-time—or was it more permanent than that?—romance, or having that other woman recognize the irony and difficulty of the situation, and share its dark humor? Alisha restrained herself from shaking her head and led Emma through the tables, sliding Brandon’s coffee cup to him. “Brandon, this is—” A very brief glance at Emma got her an equally brief nod, and she concluded with the woman’s real name, so far as she knew it: “Emma Dickens. Emma, this is Brandon Parker.”

  Brandon’s gaze darted beyond Emma, searching the coffee shop, then came back to Alisha, lighting there for one questioning instant before he offered a weary smile and a hand for Emma to shake. “It’s a pleasure.”

  “The pleasure’s mine.” Emma sat down as Alisha did, both watching the other with guarded curiosity. Brandon drew back, as if sensing a rivalry in which he didn’t want to be caught.

  Which was absurd, Alisha thought. If there had been a time for rivalry, it was long past on her part, and yet she couldn’t help sizing the other woman up. Emma’s gaze was direct and open, though Alisha didn’t believe the openness: her own expression could be equally without guile, and utterly meaningless. For the moment, she knew quite well that she frowned, the expression both judgi
ng and questioning, without a hint at subterfuge. Emma looked unbothered by the direct study, waiting calmly for Alisha’s assessment to be finished.

  The British woman was not pretty, Alisha decided, ridiculously aware that it made no difference at all. She was striking, with her dark hair and pale skin, and there was a certain something to her bone structure, the shape of her nose and jaw, that made Alisha certain she would recognize the woman as English-born no matter where in the world they first met, and before any words were spoken. Moreover, what she lacked in ordinary prettiness was made up for by an underlying intensity that became more obvious the longer she and Alisha met eyes.

  She was, Alisha thought, a good match for Frank Reichart, and wondered if Emma saw the same in her. Very possibly not: Alisha knew her own strengths lay in an apparent delicacy, her heart-shaped face bearing the ordinary prettiness that Emma’s did not. It was useful, being neither beautiful nor homely, because with the right makeup and attitude, an illusion of either could be reached. She was a melting-pot child, her coloring both dramatic and unremarkable enough to allow her to fit into a wide variety of societies without notice. Emma wouldn’t blend that well, but there was sometimes as much use in hiding in plain sight as in the shadows.

  Stop it, Alisha told herself, and out loud, with an old friend’s smile, asked, “How’s Mazie? You look wonderful. It’s been too long.”

  Emma’s eyes darkened just briefly, as clear as saying, A hit, aloud. “Mazie’s wonderful. Thirteen now, you know. Almost fourteen. She’s doing well in school, and still riding. She wants to do dressage in the Olympics.”

  Alisha smiled, surprising herself with the genuine emotion behind it. “Good luck to her.”

  “I’ll pass it on. And your nephews?” Emma’s eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch, challenging. “Is Timothy still playing football? Soccer,” she corrected herself. “I always forget you Americans call it soccer.”

  Alisha felt Brandon looking back and forth between them, then felt laughter pulling at her mouth. She’d played a low hand, mentioning Mazie, and had been well and truly put in her place. “Yes,” she said to the table, then lifted her gaze, letting a smile play into her eyes. “He’s getting good. We could do this all day, you know.”

  “Do you want to?” Humor hadn’t quite reached Emma’s expression yet, legendary English reserve keeping her tone just slightly frosty.

  “Not really,” Alisha admitted. She put her coffee cup down and turned her palms upward on the table. “I started it and you trumped me. I apologize.”

  A light of curiosity came over Emma’s face. “Would you be apologizing if I hadn’t trumped you?”

  “If you hadn’t been able to,” Alisha said, “it would have established I had the upper hand, and I wouldn’t have to apologize. I swear,” she added more quietly, picking up her coffee mug again, “I tell myself I hate those kinds of games, but I play them every time. I wonder if it’s human nature or just—” The training, she didn’t want to say it out loud. The coffee shop, almost random out of hundreds in London, was unlikely to be bugged or watched. But that was the training coming through: a reluctance to mention it even obliquely in public places.

  “Some of both, I think,” Emma said with clear understanding. “The first thing pack animals do is establish their place in the hierarchy. We are very much pack animals, we humans.”

  The corner of Alisha’s mouth turned up. “And when two alpha females meet?”

  “They fight for dominance in whatever manner best suits them. If there is no clear winner, they back away and watch one another warily, waiting for a chance to strike, however they might do that. Whether,” Emma said, “it’s in battle or by claiming the strongest and most suitable mate.”

  Brandon cleared his throat, making both women look at him. “Am I supposed to be understanding this?” he asked plaintively. Alisha felt Emma’s gaze come back to her and ignored Brandon’s question with an uncharitable vicious pleasure. She still hadn’t forgiven him for bringing the Sicarii to her door and endangering her family. She might never forgive him.

  “Since it’s come to that,” she said back to Emma, quietly, “where is he?” Enough humor still ghosted through her to wonder just what Reichart would think of two women staking him out like unclaimed territory, and referring to him in such ungainly terms as mate.

  He’d probably love it, she thought ruefully, and waited for Emma’s reply. But rather than answer, Emma sent a suspicious, questioning look at Brandon, then turned her attention back to Alisha, waiting in turn for an answer. Dread made a cool spot in Alisha’s belly and she pushed her coffee away, suddenly no longer wanting its acidic bite. “He knows everything important. That’s part of the problem. Do we need to go somewhere else?”

  “This is as circumspect a location as any, as long as the company we’re keeping is equally…” Emma tilted her head, almost making a mockery of her own words, “reserved.”

  Alisha’s smile went pointed. “It’s one of those extraordinary cases,” she said, “where you can say trust me and mean it. Right now his life depends on his discretion.”

  Emma’s dark eyes turned back to Brandon, calculating, before she pursed her lips and murmured, “Really. I wonder from whom he is in the most danger.”

  Alisha felt her smile turn even sharper and spread her hands a second time, less an apology than an acknowledgment this time.

  Emma said, “I see,” still in a murmur, and nodded. “In that case, I’ll take you at your word. Frank would.”

  The name made Alisha’s stomach muscles jump. She referred to Reichart that way—by his last name; hearing another woman call him Frank casually was embarrassingly disconcerting. “Where is he? It’s not like him to send someone else to meet—to a meeting.” She cursed herself silently, angry at the slip. “To meet me” was what she’d begun to say, and changing that was more obvious than leaving it the way it had been.

  Emma gave no indication of noticing her change of phrase, but then, Alisha wouldn’t have either, in her position. That it had been noted was unquestionable, regardless. “Frank would say we have no fate but that which we make ourselves,” Emma said quietly, “but those who believe as he does are facing a hard battle, and they are losing.”

  The words were innocuous enough, but they twisted cold concern into Alisha’s lungs, making the next breath hard to take. No fate was the rough translation for the organization Reichart worked for, an ancient congregation called Fas Infitialis, whose driving purpose was to better the lives of man. They stood diametrically opposite the Sicarii, believing that man’s destiny was to be forged by individuals fulfilling their potential. They worked silently to improve education and health around the world in order to help people rise to what they might best be.

  Their shadow war against the Sicarii belief in divine right and the ordinance of a few to rule the many had gone on for centuries, stretching back as far as ancient Rome. Both sides of the fight had found it necessary to conduct their business subtly, in the world’s sidelines, too fettered by society to achieve the results they wanted with open action. Alisha had danced at the edges of their unseen fight for nearly a decade, never knowing about the conflict going on around her. Once drawn into it, though, it had seemed there was no going back.

  And all of that has led you to right here and now, Leesh. Alisha put her hands on the table again, this time palms down, feeling the varnished coolness pressing into warm crevices. “You’re frightening me.” The emotion was too strong: fear connoted a hard-beating heart, cold hands, breath caught in her lungs and unwilling to escape or move. This was more a creeping sensation of dread, her thoughts becoming too clear, time slowing as if she was about to go into battle. She didn’t know precisely what form Emma’s news would take, but her body, trained from years of combat, already reacted to what she would hear as if it would be dire, and would lead inexorably to danger.

  “Frank’s been missing for ten days, Ali,” Emma said, putting some effort into gentling the words.
It didn’t last, though, as her gaze hardened and returned to the third at their table. “And the last person confirmed to have seen him is your friend, Brandon Parker.”

  Chapter 6

  Alisha kept her hands open very wide and steady on the table, uncertain of her ability to restrain herself if she should let them move. Throttling Brandon was a passing whimsy, she told herself. It would resolve nothing. It would get no answers.

  But dear God, it was tempting. Brandon squawked a protest, pushing his chair back and raising his hands as if he needed to defend himself. Alisha kept her gaze focused hard on her own hands, waiting for her heartbeat to sound less like thunder in her ears. Waiting for the fight impulse that made her want to launch herself at him to die down. Waiting for stomach-churning panic at the idea of losing Frank Reichart yet again to settle.

  It was just as well the stricter gun laws in Britain had prompted her not to carry any of her weapons to the meeting at the café. Had she had a gun handy, Alisha was not at all sure it wouldn’t be pressed against Brandon Parker’s forehead for the second time in a day. And that would lose any hint of discretion or subtle behavior. An arrest featured on the evening news would be an embarrassment to her training.

  “Alisha, I swear I didn’t do anything to him. It’s true. I saw him last week.” Brandon spoke low and fast, as if every word might be his last chance at salvation. It wasn’t, Alisha thought, far from true. She still hadn’t moved, heat burning her cheeks as she stared at the tabletop between her fingers. “He wanted to know where the Attengee production facilities were. He wanted to know if I had codes to get in them. I told him where they were, Alisha. I figured I owed him that much, for what he’s doing, if nothing else. I wanted those things to help keep peace, Ali, not make war. I know it’s idealistic, but I wanted to create something that saved lives, not took them.”