Riley believed her. He flailed at her as she seized his chin and the back of his head in her hands. She stood with a foot on his hand nearest her, pinning it to the ground and staying too far back for him to reach her with his other hand.
Metallic tings sounded overhead. Then Riley spotted a lithe shadow moving amid the twilight darkness gathered on the alley floor. The woman responded to the sound and the sight, as well, dropping his head and turning to face the latest threat.
Sam St. John reached the second-floor landing on the metal fire escape she’d evidently used to climb down from the rooftop, then she launched herself over the railing.
Sam was already in the air before the woman holding onto Riley McLane glanced up. When the woman did look, moonlight played over her pale face. The fact that she did look so much like her in person surprised Sam. Then she hit the woman in a cross-body block that took them to the alley floor.
Ribs aching, bruised if not broken, Sam rolled and came up on her feet. She lifted her hands before her automatically and came set in a defensive position, feet set in the L.
Amazingly, even after taking out two opponents, her look-alike did the same. Their martial arts styles were different, Sam noticed. The woman’s looked more like a Korean style, tighter and more aggressive. Sam’s was Chinese, loose and flowing. Only a true expert would have known the difference.
“Who are you?” the woman demanded. Surprise widened her eyes.
Sam circled to the left, shuffling her feet and never crossing one foot over the other so she could be caught off balance. The woman mirrored her, moving her feet with the same caution.
Sam said, “Surrender.” Only after she’d spoken did Sam realize they were both speaking Russian.
“No.” The woman’s eyes narrowed. Then she attacked.
Sam gave ground immediately. Kung fu was a discipline that taught a fighter to use an opponent’s strength against him or her. The look-alike tried to drive her blows through Sam’s defenses, relying on muscle and speed. Matching her kicks and punches with her opponent’s, Sam turned aside the flurry of blows and had her own blocked. Her arms and legs ached with the forceful impacts immediately.
The woman threw a right-handed punch at Sam’s head. Sam automatically stepped outside the blow, slapped at the back of the woman’s wrist with her left hand to throw her off balance, and stepped around to the side in an attempt to hit her with a spinning back fist. Instead, she caught a whirling back kick full in the face.
Staggered, Sam stepped back, giving ground immediately. Her opponent gave no quarter, dropping into another attack form and coming at her instantly. Sam batted aside a side kick with a sweeping forearm, ducked beneath a roundhouse kick that would have taken her head off, and met a front snap kick with one of her own.
Without warning the woman broke off from the fight, turned and ran.
Sam hesitated just a second, thinking it was some kind of trick. Then she realized that Commander Novak and his SEAL team were quickly surrounding them. She ran after the woman.
One of the SEALs tried to intercept the woman as she streaked for the same fire escape Sam had leaped from. When she’d first taken up pursuit, Sam had claimed the high ground, thinking that the vantage point would allow her to keep up with the action better. After years of la parkour, she was at home on the rooftops, and the alleys were narrow enough to leap from building to building.
The SEAL set himself to block the woman, then punched at her. She swept his punch away, then came forward with the same arm she’d blocked with and slammed an elbow into the SEAL’s face, stunning him. She twisted around to the side, grabbed a handful of the man’s hair and evaded Riley’s sudden lunge at her. Then she ran up the SEAL’s back even as he was falling. She caught hold of the fire escape and pulled herself over the railing.
Another SEAL leaped after her, but he was too late. His hands slammed together just as she pulled her feet out of reach. She threw a chain around the ladder that would normally slide down at a pull, effectively blocking the way up. There wasn’t another fire escape till the next block.
“Riley.” Sam ran at Riley. “Help me up.”
Realizing what Sam intended to do, Riley gathered his hands into a stirrup, bent over, caught her foot in his hands and helped propel her up. Sam caught the edge of the landing railing as her look-alike sprinted up the stairway, turning and yanking herself up. After she pulled herself over, Sam hurled herself in pursuit.
They gained the rooftop within a heartbeat of each other. The look-alike glanced back over her shoulder as if calculating her chances of confronting Sam, then obviously thought outrunning her would be the better choice.
“South,” Sam said over the radio frequency as she ran after her quarry.
“Affirmative,” Commander Novak responded.
From the corner of her eye, Sam caught the movement of the SEALs below in the alley. Two of them helped the man the woman had flung through the café to his feet.
At the roof’s edge, the look-alike didn’t hesitate, flinging herself over the alley and landing on the next rooftop. She dropped and rolled, coming at once to her feet.
Sam followed, throwing herself over, as well. She noticed at once that she was better at the rooftop travel than her double, and she leaned into the race. Evidently her doppelganger was an expert in hand-to-hand, but she lacked skills in urban racing.
They ran across three more rooftops, going up a floor on a taller building. Sam leaped forward and caught the building’s edge, trying desperately not to think of the three-story drop below her. She pulled herself up and continued the chase.
“East,” Sam called when her quarry broke and ran in that direction. She continued calling the changes to guide the SEALs rushing through the alleys below. Chayton stayed in touch, his voice calm and neutral. From below, they could never have tracked the woman.
Her breath burned the back of her throat. Her legs began to feel like lead. She pushed through the fatigue, noting with grim satisfaction that the chase was wearing on her double as well. Still, for all the skills Sam had at la parkour, she knew her double was in better shape than she was. The two months of being incarcerated had taken some of her endurance edge away. It had been hard to use large muscle groups in an aerobic activity while in the room.
Sam concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, letting her instincts and her skill give her the edge. Gradually she started overtaking her double.
“North,” Sam shouted hoarsely, throwing herself over the side of the next building. Her feet thumped solidly against the rooftop, then she regained her balance and kept running.
“Affirmative,” Novak replied, sounding exactly as he had long minutes ago when the chase had first begun. “We’re close to your position now, Sam. Just keep her moving.”
Sam leaped another alley, losing sight of her double for just an instant. She hit the other building’s rooftop and sprinted forward, not seeing the woman’s leg come shooting out of the darkness around the side of a HVAC unit on top of the building until it was too late.
Raising her hands to at least partially block the kick, Sam grabbed the leg, tripped herself and went back and down. She hung on to her opponent’s leg and twisted violently, bringing the other woman down with her. Rolling away, Sam shoved up to her feet. She was winded and hurting. A small cut over her left eye wept blood down into her eye, and part of the world turned black.
The woman attacked, using everything she knew. It was all Sam could do to keep her face from being broken up and to stay upright. She swept her arm out, blocking a punch, then came back with a reverse punch that slammed into her opponent’s face at the same time a back kick hammered her stomach. Her breath left her lungs in a rush. Black rimmed her vision.
“Are you finished then?” the woman asked.
Using everything she had, Sam straightened. “No.”
“You are.” Her double grinned confidently and wiped blood from the corner of her mouth. “If you make me kill you, I will. Don’t doubt
that.”
“I don’t.” Sam stared into that face that was so much like her own. The whole experience was too strange. If the pain hadn’t already numbed her to anything else, the surreal quality of the situation would have.
“They have blocked the way ahead of me, yes?”
“Yes.” From the corner of her eye, Sam saw two shadows leaping across the rooftops in their direction. Evidently two of the SEALs had found egress to the rooftops.
“I can still get away,” the woman said. “I will go through you if I have to.”
“You haven’t been able to so far.”
“How did you get my face?”
“I was going to ask you the same question,” Sam said.
“It’s a pity,” the woman said. “You’re almost as pretty as me. This will almost be like destroying myself.”
Too late, Sam realized that the woman’s words weren’t egotistical. They were said to distract her, to work on any hesitation that she herself carried, and to enhance any insecurity.
The woman feinted, then launched into an all-out attack that drove Sam backward. Sam fought defensively, staying as small and as pliable as she could, trying not to stand forcefully in the woman’s way. Getting a broken arm or a leg or a skull fracture wouldn’t just end the fight, it would also effectively end her chances of doing any real good going undercover in the Russian operation.
It would end her chances of finding the Cipher. The assassin would get away with Rainy’s death.
For a time Sam held her ground. Knowing that all she had to do was hold her ground because the clock worked against her opponent. Every second, the SEALs got closer, the net grew tighter. Then, a foot seemed to come from nowhere and landed against her jaw. Sam’s head whipped around and a nova erupted inside her skull.
“I’ve got her in my sights,” a man’s voice said over the ear transceiver. “I’ve got the shot.”
“Take her down,” Novak ordered.
“No,” Sam yelled weakly. An image of the woman’s face exploding from a bullet filled her dazed mind. She didn’t want to see the woman who wore her face die. The thought sickened her in ways she was not prepared for.
Sam’s double hit her again, knocking her to the ground. Then the look-alike was off like a shot, sprinting for the nearest side of the building. Two steps from the building’s edge, she stumbled but kept going. Sam pushed up and threw herself after the woman.
“I hit her,” the SEAL radioed.
“Damn it,” someone else said. “She’s headed for the edge.”
The look-alike stumbled again as she tried to leap from the building. Her legs turned rubbery and she fell over the side, her legs dragging.
Sam threw herself down and reached for the woman. The four-story drop promised nothing but sudden death or a trip to intensive care.
Blindly, guided by instinct and desperation, Sam caught the woman’s foot as she fell. When the weight hit the end of her arm, Sam felt certain her shoulder was going to be torn from its socket and the sudden impact with the roof’s edge was going to crush her chest. If nothing broke, she was still in for heavy bruising. She cried out in pain. She knew she wasn’t going to be able to hold on long. The woman was dead weight at the end of her arm. She could feel the woman already sliding from her grip. Managing to get her other hand around the slim ankle she held, Sam only forestalled the inevitable.
Then Riley was there, dwarfing her with his size. He reached down and took hold of the woman. Immediately the look-alike’s weight lessened. Sam kept hold with both hands.
“It’s okay, Sam,” he said. “You can let go. I’ve got her.”
“Don’t drop her,” Sam pleaded. What would it be like to see the woman dead? Would she still look like her, or would she look like someone else?
And how the hell did she get my face?
“I’m not going to drop her,” Riley promised. “I’ve got her. Let go.”
“No.”
“Damn, but you’re stubborn.”
“I can’t,” Sam whispered. “I can’t let her go. I can’t let her fall.” She didn’t know where that impulse came from, but she knew it was true.
“All right, then, let’s pull her in. On three.” Riley counted quickly. On three, they pulled the woman to the rooftop just in time for a SEAL with a short tranquilizer rifle to kneel down and put disposable plastic handcuffs on the woman.
Sam finally let the woman go then. She sat with her back against the rooftop and ached all over.
“Don’t get too comfortable, St. John,” Riley said. “We’ve got to get you up and running. Someone’s going to miss her soon. Either you’re in place or we scratch this phase of the mission.”
Minutes later in the back of the truck the SEALs used as a command vehicle, Sam unbuttoned the woman’s shirt and started stripping her. The unconscious state the woman was in made handling her and getting the clothes off almost impossible. She had to cut the disposable cuffs from her.
“What are you doing?” Riley asked.
“I need her clothes,” Sam said. “If I return to the hotel in a different outfit, someone may notice.”
Riley swore. “I didn’t think about that.”
“I thought you were the one with the plan,” Sam stated sarcastically. “Did you think maybe we were going to coordinate outfits for the kidnapping?” She tugged on the shirt again. “Help me.”
They worked by flashlight. Once they had the woman’s shirt off, Riley handcuffed her again, putting her hands in front of her this time and securing the cuffs to an eyebolt set into the metal frame of the truck’s cargo area.
Sam knew that Riley was uncomfortable and embarrassed by the way he handled the sleeping woman’s body. At first Sam enjoyed that, watching Riley totally out of his depth as they took her double’s pants off, leaving her clad only in a silky emerald bra and bikini panties that emphasized her slender figure and milky pale skin.
“Damn, St. John,” Riley whispered hoarsely. “She really could be you.”
Sam silently agreed. The woman was a match for her, so it might as well have been her lying there nearly naked, unprotected and vulnerable. She suddenly felt everything she was certain the woman would have felt if she’d woken and seen them looking at her. Riley stared at the woman, and Sam didn’t know if it was her double’s nakedness or likeness that kept him glued to the sight of her.
“And you know we look that much alike because you’re seeing her nearly naked?” Sam started to ask when he could have possibly seen her naked, then she remembered the constant surveillance she’d been under in her cell. The thought of Riley watching her through the cameras with the night-vision capability made her angry, but the possibility also unexpectedly excited her.
And if he’d been interested in watching her in the shower, the fact that he’d been able to spurn her attempted seduction said a lot.
Riley looked up at her with a guilty expression that quickly disappeared. “I’m just saying that the resemblance is even more noticeable now.”
“I’m going to do us both a favor and not ask what makes you think that.” Sam took an army blanket from the supplies the SEALs had in the truck and covered the sleeping woman. She used a sanitized cloth to clean the blood from the woman’s face.
“I’ve seen the inside of your lip,” Riley said. He had helped her clean up after the fight. “I think you need a couple of stitches.”
Sam had felt the cut on the inside of her lower lip with her tongue. Her lip was puffy from swelling and the edges of the wound felt raw and jagged. She agreed with Riley’s assessment, but she knew medical help was impossible.
“We can’t,” she said as she continued her ministrations. Although they’d been opponents only moments ago, the act of helping the tranquilized woman brought Sam an unexplained peace. The beating she’d taken was going to be noticeable. Medical attention would be immediately suspect.
“She’ll be all right,” Riley said. “She’s sleeping because of the drug. Not because of somethi
ng you did.”
“I know.”
Riley stood and walked a few steps away. Trying hard not to be noticed, he checked the time. Full night had sprung upon the city outside the truck. They still didn’t know if her double had been going somewhere important when they’d intercepted her, or merely out for dinner and drinks.
Aching and battered from the fight, Sam stood as well. “Do me a favor, McLane. Let me change clothes and I’ll get to the mission.”
Riley turned to look at her. “What you’re about to do, Sam…” He hesitated and looked at the drugged woman lying on the cot against the wall. “It’s dangerous.”
“That’s hardly a news flash.”
“I know. But if you want to pull out of this thing, now would be the optimum time.”
“Is that what you want me to do?” Sam stared at him.
“I don’t want you hurt.”
“Is that the real answer?” Sam asked. “Or are you just more afraid that I’ll screw up your operation?”
“This is risky, Sam. It’s more than you’ve ever been asked to do. More than you’ve been trained to do.”
“Stepping into potentially hostile situations where I can’t count on anybody but myself?” Sam arched a brow. The effort hurt and caused her headache to pound. “That’s what I’ve been doing all my life, McLane. You’ve seen my background. You know that. I only thought things had changed when I signed on with the Agency.” She paused, knowing she’d scored with her barbed comment. “I’ll be fine. I’m back where I belong, not trusting anyone and suspicious of everyone I come in contact with.”
“Hell of a way to live your life,” Riley growled.
“I didn’t pick it. And, just so you know, getting locked up by you and Mitchell just reemphasized something I should never have let myself forget.”
Sipping a long, slow breath, Riley nodded and said, “I had that coming.”
“Yes.”
Riley looked at her. “You changed your life for a while. You had—have—your friends from school.”
“Yes.”
“You might want to rethink risking all of that.”
Double-Cross Page 18