by Cate Dermody
Brandon stretched his forearms, then reached for the bar again. “I’m hardly at liberty to tell you that.”
Alisha crooked a smile. “It was worth a shot.”
Brandon chuckled, quick sound beneath his labored breathing as he began his set. “I guess. Anyway, even if he’s naive, I don’t have a lot of illusions about how my work will be used.”
“Then why do it at all?”
“Because someone would.” Brandon spoke through his teeth again, huffing out the count for his repetitions at the end of the comment.
“And it might as well be you?”
He shot her another look. “Why do you do it?”
Alisha curved a faint smile. “Money.” It was Elisa Moon’s motivation, at least. Moon had grown up poor, her only commodity her pretty face. It hadn’t been enough to get her through college, but drug couriering had. Elisa’s allegiance was to whomever could pay her, plain and simple.
Just like Reichart, Alisha thought.
“Someday,” Brandon grunted, “I’m going to ask you that question again.”
Alisha’s forehead wrinkled as she looked down at him. He gave her a thin smile, then turned all his concentration to the weight bar. “Eleven,” Alisha murmured, picking up the count for him. “Why? Twelve. Three more.” She curled her fingers around the bar more solidly, watching Brandon’s biceps tremble with strain.
“Because.” Cords stood out in his neck as he spoke through his teeth, focusing on lifting the bar. “I don’t—” he thrust the bar up, Alisha’s fingers clenching around it, then relaxing “—believe money. Is a legitimate answer. There’s always—” He broke off again with another grunt.
“Fourteen. One more. C’mon, Parker.”
“—another reason!” He shoved the weight bar up with one last burst of energy. Alisha caught it, guiding it back to the braces, and stepped back from the bench.
“Nice job,” she said quietly. “I’m going to grab a shower. I’ll see you in the mess hall.” She took another step backward, then turned away, keeping the length of her strides steady as she headed for the door. It felt too much like a retreat, as if Brandon had gained an upper hand she hadn’t known they’d been playing for. She paused at the door, looking back.
“Maybe if you ask another time I’ll have another answer.”
But not until she knew more about Brandon Parker and his associates.
“Dr. Parker will be with us in a few minutes.” Rafe opened his hand, gesturing Alisha down the hall. “There’ll be another potential buyer joining us for the live demonstration.”
Alisha arched an eyebrow, giving the lab assistant a sideways look. His nostrils were pinched with consternation, though he gave her a brief smile, an attempt to belie the distress his body language admitted to. “An unexpected addition,” he said apologetically. “Brandon insisted.”
“Really.” Alisha kept her voice neutral, just a hint of curiosity in it. “Who’s he representing?”
Rafe gave her another pained smile. “I’m sure you understand I can’t answer that, any more than I’d discuss whom you’re affiliated with.”
“Of course not.” Alisha gave the nervous Englishman a quick smile. “But it was worth trying.”
“It must be exhausting.” Rafe opened a door, nodding Alisha in. “Living a life where you’re always wondering which side everyone’s on. How do you do it?”
By scribbling down all the things that drive me crazy about it, Alisha answered silently. By keeping a record purely for myself, that allows me to be as honest as I can be before facing the blacks and whites of my reality.
“Practice,” she said easily. “I imagine it can’t be so different for you, Mr. Denison. Rafe,” she corrected herself, before he had a chance. “You probably don’t tell much of your family that you’re working on secret weapons research, after all, do you?”
“No,” Rafe said. Alisha could all but hear him adding the stipulation: but I don’t buy and sell weapons on a black market, either. She stepped past him into a control room not at all unlike the one she’d infiltrated the night before: enormous windows overlooked an open hub area, thick concrete walls rising up into a tangle of pipes and lights at the ceiling. Alisha glanced up, studying it briefly, before looking down into the belly of the room.
The Attengee drone squatted there, half-hidden amongst a maze of wood and concrete walls. Four men in stiff-looking fatigues stood together, another three scattered in the maze. “Those aren’t standard issue,” Alisha said, nodding at the closest group of men. Rafe shook his head, expression approving.
“We had to develop an armor that could stand up to the lasers if we wanted to be able to test the drone against live targets. It absorbs most of the heat, although the knockback is still a problem.”
“But better than a burning hole through your stomach,” Alisha said. “Now all you need to do is find a way to convert the absorbed heat into an energy pack for charging soldier-carried laser weapons and you’ll have a fantastically efficient system. Maybe not no-loss, but you could develop something to fight entropy.”
Rafe shot her a startled look, protesting even as the thought clearly appealed to him. “A no-loss system is impossible. Entropy can’t be defeated. But a conversion process…” He shook his head, but when he turned back to the target room his brows were furrowed with interest. Subdued laughter trickled through Alisha, curving her mouth in a half smile. Good going, Leesh. Suggest a way to vastly improve the bad guys’ system. But if they could do it—which they couldn’t, once she’d delivered the schematics to the CIA and the virus she’d set had destroyed the rest—it’d be a tremendously efficient war system.
She stilled a nod, recognizing that a plan had crystallized in the back of her mind. The scope of Brandon’s project was simply too large for an individual to take it out, at least without sufficient preparation. Extraction would require a team, and she could put that together once outside and back in contact with Greg. It would have to be swift and efficient with very little time to prepare; even the slightest delay could compromise the materials inside the base, and with a second buyer coming in, Alisha had no wish to risk it.
The door behind them swung open, ushering Brandon’s words: “—will take place here. This is my assistant, Rafe Denison, and Elisa Moon.”
“Another assistant?” The deep voice made a jolt of physical pain lance through Alisha’s chest, just above her heart. She opened her fingers wide to prevent herself from rubbing it, swallowing against a thrill of sick panic as she turned.
“An interested party,” she corrected, giving the dark-eyed man with Brandon a tight smile. His hair was longer than it’d looked when she’d caught sight of him at the Scottish observatory, tending toward a little curl. It suited him, giving him just a touch of impishness to temper the thin smirk he so often wore, like a promise that the bad boy could be tamed. Alisha’s hands were cold as she offered one to him, an infuriating tell that he couldn’t fail to notice.
Frank Reichart clicked his heels together and performed a short, sarcastic bow over her hand. “My apologies, Ms. Moon. It’s a pleasure. Michael Clarke, at your service.”
“Mr. Clarke,” Alisha said neutrally, and turned away again, forcing her breathing to remain steady so that the hammering of her heart wouldn’t be betrayed by the rapidfire pulse in her throat. Brandon launched into a lecture, apparently oblivious to Alisha’s discomfort, as he should be. It was the only thing in the mission that was going right. She listened and watched the room below as the demonstration began, recording detail without yet absorbing it.
Reichart was working for the Russians. Parker might be working for the Americans. The former, at least, could blow her cover with a single word, as easily as she could break his. The situation bordered on out of control.
No battle plan, Alisha thought very clearly, survives the first encounter with the enemy.
Chapter 9
“Elisa—” Her alias was hissed down the hall at her back, full of quiet
urgency. She turned to face Reichart, her jaw set as if the physical gestures would deny him anything he asked.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t know I was here,” she said in as low a voice as he’d used. “What the hell are you doing here? The Russians, Frank?” She used his real name deliberately, taking out frustration and anger in the only way she could. “Did you follow me?”
“Off that cliff? Are you nuts? Elisa—”
Alisha rolled her eyes, an expression so violent she turned her whole head with it, cutting off the name with a jerk of her hand. Reichart bared his teeth, then set them and said, even more quietly, “Alisha.” She could all but hear his unspoken, Are you happy now? in the pause before he continued. “I’m not here because of you—”
“Of course not,” she snapped. “You’re here for the money.”
Reichart’s nostrils flared, the only sign that he’d nearly taken the bait. “You’re in over your head.”
“I wasn’t until you showed up and screwed the whole equation.” It was a blatant lie, and worse, Reichart’s expression gentled slightly, suggesting he knew it. “Who’s Sicarii?” Alisha demanded, grateful for the confused surprise that wiped sympathy from his eyes.
“Alisha, this isn’t the place—”
“No shit, Sherlock.” Alisha flexed her fingers, trying to pull her emotions back under control. Reichart brought out the worst in her in the best of circumstances—and, she admitted sullenly, the best in the worst—but in the midst of a mission was not the place to let old anger get the best of her. She dropped her chin to her chest, lifting a hand, palm forward, to stop anything Reichart had to say. When she raised her eyes again, her breathing was steady, heartbeat calm. “Step back,” she murmured. “You’re in my personal space. Nobody who comes around a corner is going to think this is a casual conversation.”
Reichart did as she asked, to her surprise and his credit. His shoulders straightened as he uncurled from the intense, hovering posture he’d held, though his frown stayed in place. Almost, Alisha thought, as if he was genuinely concerned. “How’d you know it was the Russians?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Meet me in Paris on Friday.” Reichart’s voice was low, deep enough to be hardly more than a rumble. “There’s a lot to talk about, Alisha.” He turned his head a fraction of an inch, hearing the same footsteps falling in the hall behind them. “Adequate?” he asked, amusement suddenly tracing his tone. “You’re a hard woman to please, Ms. Moon. I thought the demonstration was more than adequate.”
“You weren’t here yesterday,” Alisha replied coolly. “A malfunction in the programming decided I was the target. It was corrected, but I’m sure my employers are going to be cautious about artificially intelligent drones that make that kind of mistake. Don’t forget that in the report to your own.”
“Conspiring?” Brandon asked pleasantly as he came up to them. Alisha turned a brief, meaningless smile on him. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Reichart stiffen, and her smile deepened. The man couldn’t possibly be jealous. No, she corrected herself, he couldn’t reasonably be jealous. But reason had little to do with envy.
“Comparing notes,” she said. “Mr. Clarke thinks highly of your prototypes.”
“Thus damning me with faint praise.”
“Not at all,” Alisha said. Never mind that she’d done just that a few moments earlier, and never mind the amused look Reichart gave her for the lie. “Despite yesterday’s hitch, you know perfectly well it’s an amazing machine.”
“I hope you’ll be telling your employers as much.”
Alisha’s gaze slid to Reichart. “You can count on it. For now, though…” She turned her wrist up, making a small show of looking at her watch. “I should get my things. The plane is at two.” And with the plane went her chances to find a way to steal the half a dozen drones that were hidden beneath the base. Frustration surged through her, hot enough to make her feel as though she blushed.
“There’s time for you to stay for the second demo, if you like. I have something of a surprise planned.”
Alisha exchanged a look with Reichart, whose dark eyebrows rose as he turned the look onto Brandon. “I assume it’s not one involving me being shot at?”
“Scout’s honor,” Brandon said. “Elisa?”
Reichart’s eyes darkened at Parker’s informality. Alisha, catching the faint change of expression, smiled and nodded. “How could I resist?”
“You couldn’t,” Brandon said with a grin. “I’m irresistible. This way, please.” He offered Alisha his arm and she took it with a laugh.
“So noted.” She could all but feel Reichart’s gaze boring between her shoulder blades as Brandon escorted her down the hall.
The Attengee drones swarmed the broken wall, ratcheting legs and trifold feet locking together to pull each other up. Two, perched atop the wall, lay down fire, covering the others as they crossed into the battlefield. Alisha watched, lips parted with astonishment, and turned to Brandon.
“They arrived last night,” he said, the note of pride in his voice so smothered it was all the more obvious.
“You have a production facility?” Alisha asked, strain audible to her own ears. Brandon all but bounced on his toes as he gave one delighted nod. “That’s considerably more development than we’d been led to believe.” Alisha struggled to keep the distress out of her voice, though Reichart’s sideways glance told her she didn’t entirely succeed. Good, she thought: it kept her cover. Brandon should have no hint that she’d been in the bunkers the night before and had seen his new stash of drones.
“I didn’t want to show our hand until I was sure the first-run drones would work well.” Brandon nodded again, pointing toward the squad of machines as they laced their way across the field and began scaling the mountainside. “You asked about their handling of rough terrain. I think this demonstrates their capabilities nicely.”
“Extremely.” Alisha dared a glance toward Reichart, whose expression was carefully schooled. Well enough, she thought, that he too was hiding surprise. She hoped his surprise was more genuine than hers. It was petty, but she was still unhappy with his unexpected arrival at the base. If his surprise leveled the ground, she was pleased. “Your patron has put a great deal of money into this, Brandon. I’m impressed. He must be very sure of turning an eventual profit.”
“I think so.” He flashed her a smile. “Not that I expect the CIA will be providing it.”
Sound thunderclapped around Alisha’s ears, a deep boom that made her feel as if she’d been hollowed out. She crinkled her forehead, privately astonished that her heart rate wasn’t soaring, for all that every bit of her training taught her to stay cool in just such a situation. “The CIA?”
“Central Intelligence Agency,” Brandon said, voice light and mocking. “I think you’re familiar with it.”
Alisha’s eyebrows crinkled further, a deliberate expression of confusion that she hoped masked the impulse to reach out and throttle Frank Reichart. “Who isn’t?”
“Don’t embarrass us both, Alisha,” Brandon murmured. Cold plunged through Alisha’s hands, her feet itching with the need to move. “Did you really think I wouldn’t know my father’s protégé? I’m not that out of touch.”
“Your father?” Alisha turned the adrenaline churning in her belly into bewilderment, filling her voice with it. “I know your father’s CIA, Brandon. You used to be yourself. What does that have to do with me?” She could see Reichart taking a slow step backward, his hands partially lifted, as if to say he was not involved in the situation. It was possible, barely possible, Alisha acknowledged deep inside herself, that Brandon was telling the truth, and that Reichart hadn’t betrayed her.
It was barely possible that pigs with wings might be pigeons, too.
It could wait. Who’d set her up was irrelevant, right now. Getting out was all that mattered, and there was no good way out: she didn’t have to look around to verify that. The best chance might be across the minef
ield, up the mountains with the drones—and then there’d be the drones themselves to deal with. “Brandon—”
“Rafe.” Brandon turned his head a fraction of an inch as he issued the one-word order that brought the Englishman forward.
“Ms. Moon,” Rafe said apologetically. “If you’ll come with me.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Alisha turned toward Rafe, rocking her weight back, hands spread compliantly as she saw that he held a gun with easy competence. “You checked my credentials yourself.”
“Brandon had some compelling evi—”
Alisha lashed out with a kick, smashing her toe into the joint nerve in Rafe’s wrist. His fingers spasmed open as she ducked forward, wrapping her hand around the barrel of the gun as it fell. She reversed it, sliding her hand over the grip and checking the safety—it’d been on; it wasn’t as she curved her arm around Rafe’s neck and held the gun to his temple. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said through clenched teeth. “Do we have an impasse?”
Brandon had taken one step forward in the time it took her to take Rafe hostage. Reichart stayed back, hands still held wide, though he watched her as intently as Parker did. He’s FSB! Alisha wanted to shout, but doing so was useless. Brandon’s mysterious contact had warned him that a Russian agent would be coming; he knew what Reichart was. And there was the very slightest chance Reichart would opt to help her, if she didn’t out him.
She was better off counting on flying pigs.
“Alisha, you can’t get out of this alive unless we agree to help one another,” Brandon said.
“Elisa,” Alisha said. Beyond Brandon, Reichart ducked his head and cast a faint smile at the platform floor. She saw his mouth move, and for all that she didn’t hear anything, she knew what he said: Leesh. Rafe’s fingers were curled against her arm, digging in; she could see his eyes were crushed shut, and his breath came short and quick over her arm. He didn’t have the combat training that she—that any of the others—did, or he’d have thrown her already. “Drawing a gun on me is not a good way to earn my cooperation, Dr. Parker. How exactly do you think we can help each other?”