Dark Seduction

by Cheyenne McCray

  Logan shrugged. “You’ll have to take our word for it.”

  “How about you climbing into this chair?” she said.

  “Not going to happen.” He shook his head. “We will not apply the CVP to me or the CIA agents. Too many secrets must be kept confidential that the agents and I are each entrusted with. So you either trust us and work with us or you don’t and it’s jail for you.”

  Tori closed her eyes. She could hope the PIA would pull some strings and get her out from behind bars…

  If they were the bad guys, likely she wouldn’t be going anywhere.

  They killed Jeremy, went through her mind over and over. How could the government have sanctioned the death of an innocent like him?

  She focused on her heart and her gut instinct. If she followed both of those, she’d be at Logan’s side in a second.

  And she did believe him.

  In her heart she believed that the PIA was either a rogue agency or a faction out to gain power. What the CIA agents had said backed up what she felt to be true. Something hadn’t felt right about the agency for some time.

  Add to that the fact that Jeremy’s death was because of them… It had not been necessary to kill him. Not necessary at all.

  She was certain that a lot of good people worked for the agency, people who were no doubt unaware of its true nature, just like she’d been. Was her partner Brian one of the good guys? Or the bad? He’d been the one to kill Jeremy, of that she was certain. Had he just blindly followed orders like she had?

  No matter what she thought, she needed something more logical than her heart and gut instinct to separate the truth from lies. She opened her eyes and turned to the agents. “I need proof.”

  “Tell you what,” Taylor said as she put her hands on her hips. “You get one of the PIA agency’s dirty agents in here and we’ll strap him into that chair and you can hear it for yourself.”

  “How am I supposed to know who’s dirty and who’s not?” Tori asked. “What if I bring in someone who’s in the same boat I am? What if they believe everything the agency has taught them?”

  “We know of agents who are as dirty as the agency,” Mallory said. “What’s the name of your partner who killed Jeremy Farrell?”

  “Brian Eckhart,” the computer said before Tori could. She glared at Logan for still pointing the damned CVP instrument at her.

  Taylor shook her head. “Oh, Eckhart’s dirty all right.”

  Tori felt stunned. “Brian?”

  “Eckhart has been with the agency a long time and he’s in there tight.” Taylor nodded. “The agency always pairs up an insider with agents who don’t know the true nature of the organization. Which apparently is the case with you.

  “So what you need to do is get him in here,” Taylor added. “We’ll set it up and then notify you so that you can carry out the plan.”

  Tori bit the inside of her lip as she twisted everything in her mind. If she could get Brian in here, it would give her proof one way or another.

  Finally she answered, “What do I need to do?”

  “Just a couple more questions.” Logan brought her attention back to him and the CVP instrument. “Do you plan to work against the PIA as a double agent and do what you’re instructed to do?”

  “Yes but only if you can prove to me they are dirty,” the computer answered and Tori’s breath blew out in a slow exhale. “I will do what I need to do.”

  “Do you know what will happen to you if you try to double-cross us?” Logan asked.

  “Prison,” the computer said for Tori. “I’ll be convicted and sent away.”

  Tori looked at Logan, wanting to see in his eyes that he cared for her, but his face was stone-cold.

  “As long as we understand each other. You work for us but we need to prove our ourselves and we will.” Taylor said.

  So many feelings rolled through her as she looked from Logan to Taylor to Mallory. It was like her world had just been turned upside down. Everything she’d believed was falling apart. She’d worked for this organization and to believe that she’d been working all along for the enemy… It was pretty hard to come to terms with it.

  “Yes.” Tori nodded. “I understand.”

  Taylor studied her. “You’ll need to make damned sure they don’t even suspect us having talked with you, or you may be dead next, Agent Adams. You won’t even have a chance to work as a double agent.”

  Ice went through Tori’s veins. She knew Taylor was right—the PIA would kill her in a heartbeat. She nodded again.

  Agent Taylor gave a tight smile as she studied Tori. “It looks like we have some work to do.”

  Chapter 14

  “You’d better shift back into Carla,” Agent Taylor said to Tori once her cuffs were removed. “If the building’s being watched, we need to make sure things look as they should. If anyone asks why you were here, you can tell them that Mr. Savage left something behind that he needed.”

  “But why would that have taken so long?” Tori asked.

  “I’m sure you can think of something,” Mallory said with a smirk.

  For some reason Tori’s cheeks felt warm. They were talking about her and Logan supposedly having had sex.

  She turned her gaze on Logan but he wasn’t looking at her. No doubt he hated her now. How could she blame him?

  “What do I need to do next?” Tori looked from Taylor to Mallory and avoided Logan’s eyes. “Other than changing back into Carla.”

  “You’re going to go out as planned,” Taylor said, “And then we will call Logan with instructions in the morning. We need to get some wheels turning and get everything into place.”

  When her gaze met Logan’s, his expression was one of disgust and a sick feeling went through her belly.

  While they watched, she shifted into Carla, growing six inches taller, pain shooting through her as her limbs grew longer, her scalp tingling as hair spilled down into a golden fall past her shoulders. When she had fully shifted, she was wearing Carla’s silver dress and heels, her things back in the silver handbag instead of in her jeans pockets.

  Logan just stared at her and she wondered what he was thinking, feeling.

  The worst would be if he felt nothing. Nothing at all.

  After Logan put away the device and locked it in the special case, he took her by the arm and led her from the lab, the agents following.

  He practically dragged her to the elevator and he stepped inside, bringing her with him. The agents stayed in the hallway, apparently discussing something. As the elevator went down, Logan’s fingers pressed so hard that it hurt where he held onto her. She tried to jerk away from him but his hold was so tight that she couldn’t shake him off.

  “Let go of me,” she said then gritted her teeth when he ignored her.

  She partially shifted her arm, like she used to do in elementary school, so that it grew large and difficult to hold onto. She slipped from his grasp and put distance between them before shifting her arm back the way it was supposed to be and they rode the rest of the way down in the elevator, and then walked to his car in silence.

  “I don’t feel like going to the theater,” she said when they were in his car.

  “Funny,” he said as he gave her a hard look. “I don’t either. But we have to for appearance’s sake.”

  She turned and looked out the window as the car pulled away from the curb.

  Thoughts went round and round in Logan’s head as he drove Tori to the theater. He still had a hard time reconciling the fact that Carla was really Tori. At least the Carla he’d known for the past two weeks.

  He glanced at her to see her looking out the window and he thought about what the CVP had showed on the LCD of her stream of consciousness. The CVP only answered questions out loud to get specific facts. Every other thought was shown on the device and stored in its memory.

  He had read Tori’s genuine confusion and the way she had worked everything through her mind. She had truly believed that she was working for the
government and was put on assignment to get the CVP out of the hands of Savage Industries.

  But she’d also put two and two together when it came to the agency she worked for. She hadn’t been feeling good about recent changes that had been made. But, she had never considered that she might actually be working for the wrong side. The thought had made her ill.

  And she really did believe that she loved him. He mentally shook his head. But she had betrayed him.

  She thought she was working for the good guys.

  Hell, this was about to drive him out of his freaking mind.

  Tori still had reservations and he knew he should put those reservations to rest by letting her use the CVP on him.

  He hadn’t allowed it earlier because he didn’t want the CIA to be able to get into his head, to hold that kind of power over him. He probably shouldn’t let Tori do it, either, but he could easily take the device from her if her questions got dangerously close to classified information. He certainly wouldn’t be strapped down.

  They had just reached the theater’s parking lot when Logan’s phone vibrated. He pulled it out of his pocket, glanced at the Caller ID screen, and frowned before answering it.

  “Logan here.”

  “Did Aimy reach you?” James McKnight said, urgency in his voice.

  “No.” Logan frowned. “My phone was on vibrate and I must have missed it.”

  “Get to the CVP lab, now,” McKnight said. “The CVP has been stolen.”

  “What?” Logan’s gut clenched as he tried to digest what McKnight was saying.

  “It’s gone, Logan,” McKnight said. “It’s gone.”

  Logan’s thoughts crashed, one into another. “I’ll be right there.”

  The Jaguar’s tires squealed as he spun the car around and headed back in the direction they’d come from.

  “What’s wrong?” Tori looked alarmed.

  He kept his gaze on the road, fury sending heat through his body. Tori gasped as he growled, “The CVP at the lab has been stolen.”

  Logan barely kept from jamming the gas pedal to the floor as he raced his Jag back to the office. He parked at the curb and was out of the car and running up the steps as Tori climbed out and followed him. She had a hard time keeping up because she was still wearing high heels. He had to wait a moment after getting into the elevator and then he punched the number for the floor where the CVP was.

  Fury burned through him as he met her gaze. “Tell me how you managed to help steal the CVP.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t. I was responsible for finding a way to steal the schematics, not the device itself.”

  Logan narrowed his eyes. Trying to get used to Carla as Tori—or Tori as Carla—wasn’t easy.

  He remembered what the CVP had said, that she loved him and something twisted in his gut.

  Hell. Why was he thinking about that when the CVP had been stolen?

  “I might as well get out of these shoes and into something easier to maneuver in,” she said and began shifting into comfortable clothing and shoes, but stayed in Carla’s form. He almost felt like he was hallucinating as he watched her.

  The moment the elevator doors opened, he bolted down the hall to the entrance to the CVP lab. They made it through the outer doors and then through the glass walls he could see the scene in the lab.

  James McKnight was crouched next to a body. Blood was spattered across the white floor and on cabinets. Logan opened the door to the lab itself. The stench of blood and death hit him as he rushed to McKnight and the body.

  Agent Taylor lay in a pool of blood, her blonde hair soaked red.

  Logan tore his gaze from her body to the clear case where the CVP was kept—the case was empty.

  He shot a look at McKnight. “What the hell happened?”

  The head of security shook his head. “I was headed to Michael Demitri’s home like you wanted me to. I was almost there when Aimy notified me that there was a disturbance at the lab. I thought the call went out to you, too.”

  “Had my phone on vibrate and missed Aimy’s call,” Logan said, furious that he hadn’t noticed it. “Didn’t know anything about it until you got through to me.”

  “Not sure how this all went down,” McKnight said. “How this woman ended up in the lab, much less dead.”

  “Susan Taylor, a CIA agent was here with Agent Brent Mallory.” Logan shook his head. They followed me out, so I’m not sure how they got back into the lab.”

  “What do you think happened?” McKnight said.

  “Mallory is gone. My guess is he murdered Taylor before he took the CVP.” Logan clenched his jaw shut. “But I don’t see how the hell that’s possible. I locked the case and put the safeguards back in place.”

  Logan headed over to one of the lab computers. “I hope to hell they didn’t get the rest of the software for the computer that translates the information from the scanner.”

  Tori watched as he bent over the keyboard, still standing, and typed in commands. His face looked more and more grim as he typed.

  Logan turned back and looked at McKnight and Tori. “The rest of the information was downloaded about the same time the CVP device was stolen. It had to be Demitri.”

  “Sonofabitch.” McKnight growled out the word.

  Tori was still in Carla’s form. “What about the security video?” she said as she looked up at the camera mounted in the ceiling. “It might show what happened.”

  “My thought, too,” McKnight said. “And I want to know what happened to my men who were supposed to be monitoring the feed for this lab.”

  Logan turned toward the lab’s main door. “Aimy,” he said to the computer. “Contact Agent Rich Valenzuela with the CIA on his private number, then transfer the call to my phone.”

  Logan reached the door. “Let’s see the security video.” He pulled out his phone as they headed out of the lab as it rang. “Logan here,” he said.

  “What the hell is going on?” Agent Valenzuela said.

  Logan explained everything he could as they walked to the security room.

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Valenzuela said.

  “The police?” McKnight said when Logan disconnected the call.

  Logan shook his head. “Valenzuela can deal with the body and the scene how he sees fit. I’m just worried about getting the CVP back.”

  McKnight led the way to the security room. When they walked in, two men were slumped over two of three desks in front of a bank of monitors. Blood splattered the instruments and some of the monitors and a hole was in the back of each man’s head.

  “Someone must have come up from behind them and shot them before they knew what was happening,” Logan said.

  “Shit,” McKnight said as he went to the empty desk and began to type on the keyboard to look over the video.

  “The camera is blacked out.” McKnight looked at Logan. “I don’t even see that you were here tonight. All I see is the lab. Someone must have covered it before you went in with the agents.”

  “Fortunately we have a backup system in place with the additional cameras that can’t be seen.” Logan looked at McKnight who nodded.

  “Not even my security people know that,” McKnight said as he started typing again and brought up the video from the backup cameras.

  Logan told McKnight approximately what time to start the backup video. He remembered the time that had been on the CVP when he’d used it on Carla—Tori—and about when they’d finished.

  McKnight punched one more key. “And here we go.”

  They watched the video on a monitor at the point when Tori morphed back into Carla. McKnight’s jaw dropped and he turned and stared at Tori, who was currently still in Carla’s form.

  “I’ll explain later.” Logan didn’t take his eyes off the monitor. “But right now I want you looking at the video.”

  The three of them watched as Logan and “Carla” left. Taylor and Mallory both followed them out and the lab was empty.

  Moment
s later, Taylor and Mallory walked back into the lab. Taylor was frowning.

  “How the hell did they get back into the lab?” Logan muttered.

  Taylor looked like she was going to say something but Mallory raised a gun and shot her. She crumpled to the floor.

  Anger burned in Logan’s gut. He watched as Mallory walked to the case, but still didn’t understand how it was possible that the CVP could have been stolen.

  And then Mallory began to change.

  His body shifted, stretching so that he was wider, heavier. He went from nearly bald to having longish-dark hair.

  “Demitri.” McKnight said the name like a curse. “Sonofabitch.”

  “He’s a Changeling.” Tori sounded as shocked as he was. “I’ve never run across any other Changelings in Seattle.”

  They watched as Demitri went to the box and went through the sequence to open it. He took out the device and slipped it into a pocket before walking by Taylor’s body and leaving through the door to the lab.

  “Shit.” Logan hissed the word under his breath.

  “This is bad.” McKnight shook his head. “Real bad.”

  “That’s the fucking understatement of the century.” Logan typed on the keyboard and then the cameras for the outside came up.

  He backed up the video and they watched Michael Demitri walk out the front door, down the steps, and to a maroon sedan. Logan paused the video and enhanced the image of the car and the woman driver so that they were close up.

  Tori sucked in her breath audibly and Logan shot his gaze to her. “You recognize that woman?”

  She nodded. “My boss—my former boss—Janice Harper.”

  “Your boss?” McKnight said, sounding dumbfounded as he looked at “Carla”.

  Logan cursed again as he looked from the video to Tori. “And you had nothing to do with this?”

  She shook her head and met Logan’s eyes. “No. I didn’t know any of this would be going down. I didn’t know that Demitri was an agent for the PIA.”

  “The whole thing must have been organized to take advantage of an opportunity if one came up,” he said as he tried to work it out. “The agents would have had no idea about tonight until an hour before I brought you up here.”