He dropped the rest of the way to the floor, landing in an almost fetal position.
Hands on her thighs, she panted, gasping for air. Her knuckles were going to be bruised. She kicked her attacker in the head, and his eyes rolled backward and snapped shut as he passed out. “Do not call me the C word,” she said, kicking him in the ribs with all her strength.
“Eva?” Quinn called to her from the other side of the door.
About damned time. She stepped over the unconscious man and opened the door as far as she was able. Quinn peeked in and gave a nod of approval.
“You’re late,” she said.
“I had a bit of trouble with one of the players.”
“Anything to do with Nast?”
“I don’t think so. Just a sore loser. He’s taken care of.”
She grabbed her attacker’s legs, the dead weight heavier than she expected, and shoved them out of the way until Quinn could slip into the tiny room.
“This one knows something,” she said, giving him some space.
Quinn grabbed the man’s limp body and maneuvered him into a fireman’s hold over his shoulders. “Good. Let’s go find out what that might be.”
…
“It’s been a while since I’ve had to interrogate someone,” Eva said, nudging the unconscious man with her foot. Or rather, he was acting as if he were unconscious, but she and Quinn both knew faking a faint was difficult to do. In this case, he flinched when she came near, giving himself way. “I didn’t bring anything.”
“My knife always works,” Quinn said, sitting across from him, waiting. “I wish we had a car battery or something. Much less messy.”
She sighed with regret and took a seat on a desktop.
After slipping out the pub’s back door with Quinn carrying their target, they’d broken into the first empty building that didn’t have an obvious alarm system. Tall wooden shelves spanned the walls and were crammed with paperbacks. A few comfy chairs were in a corner.
Not exactly Eva’s first choice to torture someone. She liked books and the people that read them. But there was more on the line than the sensibilities of readers and bookstore owners.
There was Felix, the deadly knowledge in his head, and the man standing in her way.
Besides, Quinn could only carry the dead weight of the contact so far before they’d be seen and reported. The police already had her pegged as a kidnapper. She didn’t want to solidify their accusations by getting caught in the act.
Once they were in the building, and no alarm sounded or police came running, they’d holed up in a windowless office, turned on the light, and used her bra to tie up their target. At least the office wasn’t in the main area. She’d hate for a patron to see the blood.
Quinn stretched and came around the desk. “Let’s get done.” He jabbed the tip of his knife in the man’s bicep.
Her attacker screamed, and Eva jammed a wad of pages she’d torn from a magazine into his mouth. “Shhh,” she whispered.
Leaning over until they were nose to nose, she dragged a nail down his cheek, digging in so he would feel it. “We’ve just started. Pace yourself.” His eyes widened, and she grinned, glad her words had the desired effect.
Good torturer. Bad torturer. Cliché, but effective. Especially when a woman played the bad character. Men never knew what to do with the juxtaposition of hot woman and cheerful bully.
“Be nice,” Quinn admonished her. “He might tell us what we need to know without the theatrics.”
She shrugged. “Fine. But if he doesn’t, then I get to play.”
“Deal.”
Quinn pulled the wadded paper from the man’s mouth. “Let’s start with something easy. What’s your name?”
He paused. “Rick.”
Eva grabbed the knife and jabbed his arm again, drawing blood. Her stomach rolled with the revulsion that came at stooping to the man’s level.
Rick shrieked. “It’s Rick. Rick!”
She handed the knife back to Quinn, reminding herself that it had to be done. They had to know the truth. Not just what Rick wanted them to know. “Hesitate again, and I’ll assume you’re lying.”
Quinn wiped the knife on Rick’s slacks. “She’s impulsive. But she’s right. Don’t lie. Don’t hesitate. Answer our questions and you’ll get out of this alive.”
Rick nodded.
“Where is Kilburn?” asked Quinn.
He hesitated, and Eva grabbed the knife. “I don’t know,” he sobbed. “Please don’t hurt me.”
She jabbed him in the thigh, letting the blade sink in an inch. This time, she left it there, her fingers still on the haft. “Did you think I was joking?”
Rick’s eyes remained centered on the knife. “No.”
“Watch out for the femoral artery, or he’ll be dead before we can learn anything,” Quinn quipped. Putting his hand over hers, he pulled the blade free, took it from her grasp, and wiped it off again.
Nice. That would worry him. She winked at Quinn, making sure that Rick didn’t see her. “Fine.” She sat on the desk, legs swinging. “Where’s Kilburn?”
“He said he was leaving for a special gig. That’s why he wanted Nast.”
“Was that hard?” Quinn said. “You answer, and we’re all happy. Did he say where this special gig was?”
“Alexandria.”
Sounded plausible, but there was only one way to make sure. Eva hopped off the desk and held out her hand. Quinn laid the knife in her palm, flat down.
Rick’s eyes widened.
She traced a path down his thigh with the blade. “Did he say where in Alexandria?”
Rick shook his head. “No. Just heard it in passing.”
“How about when he was leaving? How can we find him?”
“I...I don’t know.”
She didn’t believe him. He was scared, but he was being much too cooperative. A seasoned thug didn’t give up information this easily—even if he was terrified.
Eva grabbed the wad of paper and glanced at the edges. “Look. Cosmo,” she said as she jammed it into his mouth. Rick squirmed as he tried to scream through the mouthful of magazine pages. “There’s always an article or two on how to make your man scream in bed.” She flashed him a wicked grin. “We have the first part right.”
He struggled, and she put a sneakered foot on his crotch and pressed. He’s the bad guy, she reminded herself, grinding down enough to make him wince.
“You brought this on yourself,” Quinn said. “You shouldn’t have hit her. And you called her names. She hates that. And then there’s all that hesitating.”
Rick shook his head, and sweat flew outward, dotting the walls of the small office.
“You didn’t hesitate?” Quinn asked, shooting a knowing look at Eva. Time to bring this home.
“He did,” she insisted, pressing her foot harder. Rick screamed into the paper.
“He says otherwise.”
With a huff of exasperation, she withdrew her foot. Rick groaned in relief. “Go ahead. Believe the criminal.”
Once again, Quinn pulled the paper from Rick’s mouth. This time the pages were wet with spit. “One more chance. And do not lie. Do not hold back. Or I will let her have you.”
“He’s with his girlfriend.”
A girlfriend? That was useful. “Name?” Eva ran the blade of the knife along his cheek while he talked, stopping at the corner of his right eye.
“Lucy. Lucy Buchannan.”
She pushed the tip of the knife into his skin. “Are you sure?”
“Positive! Positive!”
“Address?”
Rick eyed the blade. “I don’t know. I swear.”
She pressed, drawing blood.
“I don’t know,” he sobbed. “It’s not like we’re friends or anything. We play cards.”
She handed the knife back to Quinn and sat on the desk. “I believe you.”
“Thank you,” Rick replied. A trickle of blood made its way down his cheek, cutting a zigz
ag through the razor stubble.
Time to ramp him up again. “Are you holding back, Rick?” She leaned in. “Is there anything you are not telling me?”
He swallowed hard enough for her to see his throat shift. “He said his boss was rich.”
Boss?
Quinn gave her the nod to continue. This was hers now.
“Does this boss have a name?” Eva asked.
“No. He said that he was making bank, and that’s why he thought something had happened to Nast. He wouldn’t miss this chance.”
A well-backed employer. That explained a few things but not everything.
“Did he say anything about his employer’s plans?”
“That it was big. That there was some scientist who was helping them—”
Felix.
“—and that when he was done, there would be a new world.”
That did not sound good. “Is that all?”
Rick nodded. “I promise. That’s everything.”
She traced his neck with the knife. “You sure?”
He looked her in the eye. “That’s all.”
Liar. He seemed to believe the myth that liars looked away when it was the opposite. They maintained eye contact in order to appear convincing.
She stabbed him in the leg again, this time, the tip of the knife struck bone. He screamed, and she clamped a hand over his mouth, hoping he didn’t try to bite her.
“Shut up,” she said. “Or I’ll do it again.”
Tears streamed down his face, but he nodded.
She pulled the knife out, and he whimpered through gritted teeth but nothing more. “You lied to me, Rick. I’m disappointed.” She tapped her thigh with the blade. “What are you not telling me?”
“Please don’t kill me.”
She cocked her head at him. “Then stop lying to me. What are you hiding?”
“He was bragging about the money and all that…”
“And?” she encouraged.
“And that he was looking for someone. A woman. That his boss wanted her brought in alive. When you started asking about Nast, I figured it was you.”
“Did he give a name?”
“Eva Torres.”
Chapter Eleven
“Are you sure you heard Felix right? He might have meant something else,” Tempe said. The video feed was jerky and flickered, but it was clear enough to see the doubt in Tempe’s green eyes. Quinn had his smart phone propped against a book in the back of the store, while they talked to her via video conference. Still tied and gagged, Rick remained in the back office of the bookstore.
“Bioweapons and suppressants. I’m sure of what I heard, and I am damned sure what it meant,” Eva said. The director had been none too pleased to receive a phone call asking her to pick up Rick. After all, she’d told them they’d get no more help. But they all knew that under the circumstances, requests were meant to be ignored.
“You seem confident,” Tempe said, but she sounded unsure and more than a little sorry for Eva. “But we ran every search we know of and came up with both diddly and squat. As soon as you told me he created weapons of mass destruction, I looked into it, but there is simply nothing there.”
But Eva knew better. She’d seen the desperation and shame in Felix’s eyes when he’d told her about his past. And the guilt. It was all too real and familiar. She knew delusions and lies when faced with them, and Felix offered neither. “That’s not possible,” Eva said. “Try again.”
“This is HRS. Not some government organization that depends on funding from whomever they can squeeze it out of. If there was something out there, we’d know it.”
Eva turned to Quinn, but he only offered a shrug of his shoulders.
Her heart dropped. She and Quinn might not always agree. They might have a past. But she always thought he believed in her. The realization that he didn’t hit her like a punch in the gut.
“He didn’t lie,” she insisted, her voice almost a whisper. “Not to me.”
Tempe continued, “Felix was in the jungle for months. Starved. Beaten. People do what’s needed to survive, and that includes creating their own world. Fantasies where they have the power that’s being denied them. Perhaps he created this story as a way of escape. To assure himself that he was smarter and stronger than his captors.”
“Maybe,” Eva said, then grasped at the flaw in the theory. “But that doesn’t explain why anyone kidnaps a seventy-year-old man midair.”
“Pauline was supposed to be on that plane. You know that.”
“And why would they want her? She’s a bank teller.”
Temperance’s gaze shifted away for a split second, then flickered back, boring into Eva. Eva knew that expression. Guilt. “What the hell, Tempe? What did you hold back?”
“Money,” Tempe said. “Lots of it.”
Eva looked at Quinn. “Did you know this?”
He held up his hands in defense. “I came to get you. That was it.”
“How much are we talking?” she asked.
Tempe leaned in as if guarding a secret. “Her stepfather owned Omnipresent. They make computer chips.”
Omnipresent? They were huge in the computer industry. A week ago, there was an article on the front of Newsweek about their new breakthrough in chip technology.
“I know who they are,” Eva said. “Everybody does.”
Tempe continued, “When her stepfather and her mother died, she inherited everything. She’s worth billions.”
Eva fell back. Pauline had hid her wealth. The apartment was average. The furniture chic but a tad worn. And she worked as a teller. She probably made above the minimum wage, but it wasn’t by much.
There had been nothing to indicate she was a billionaire heiress.
“And you never disclosed this?” she snapped.
“You were escorting Felix. If Pauline had decided to go with you on the plane, I would have told you. It wasn’t needed. Her stepfather was low-key and cautious in order to prevent kidnappings. Pauline is the same way. She doesn’t advertise her wealth, and as our client, I have to honor her wishes to keep her financial circumstances private unless it changes mission dynamics.”
“As soon as Felix was kidnapped, you should have said something,” Quinn said, his voice modulated, but Eva didn’t miss the undercurrent of anger. “To both of us.”
“I was trying to find the balance between her wishes and protecting both her and you,” Tempe said. “I tried to convince Pauline to enter protective custody, but she refused. I sent over Agent Oliver, and even that took a bit of coercion. I wasn’t just on my way to bring Eva back; I was on my way to convince Pauline to accept our protection. Or that of the police. Someone.”
Eva watched the screen as the director paced the floor of her temporary HRS office, flashing back and forth into their vision. “Now do you understand why I doubt Felix’s story?” Temperance said.
“Yes,” Quinn replied.
Betrayer. “I don’t,” Eva countered. “If the people who took Felix are this well-connected” —and it seemed they were— “then they would know she wasn’t on the plane. Why take Felix if she’s the one with the cash? How can she pay ransom if she’s been kidnapped?”
She focused her attention on Quinn, begging him to back her up. “Am I wrong?”
He swallowed hard, as if deciding which side to take. “No.”
Back on her side. She tried not to smile.
“I know we don’t know everything, but her money coupled with the fact there is nothing on him tells me that I am on the right track. These are facts. Not instincts. Felix has no association with bioweaponry. If he did, someone would know something. Somewhere. But there is nothing.”
Eva fought the urge to roll her eyes. There was no convincing the director she was wrong, Tempe’s stubbornness was almost legendary, but it would also not help to antagonize her. “What do you suggest we do?”
“Come in. You haven’t said anything, but it’s obvious you’ve been targeted by this gro
up. I want to get you out of here before either they, or the police, succeed in finding you.”
“We’d like to stay in the field,” Quinn said. “Keep looking for Felix.”
“And your opinion is compromised,” Tempe shot back. “Both of you need to come in. Now.”
Compromised? Had he told Tempe about their past relationship? Did she know about the other night? There was no way, but still, Eva’s cheeks burned hot.
“I am not compromised,” Quinn said. “What I want to do is my job, which means finding Felix, whether he’s a bio teacher or a bioweapons expert.”
“Can you tell me that you would go this far for another agent? That you’d risk everything for someone who wasn’t Eva?”
Eva bit her lip. She knew. And she seemed to think that Quinn still cared. Eva knew better.
“Yes,” he replied. No hesitation. And despite her promise to listen to her head, her heart skipped at his answer.
“Liar,” Tempe shot back.
“I won’t come in,” Eva interjected into the escalating fight.
“You can and you will, or you will both be terminated.” Tempe’s tone held no sympathy.
Eva didn’t want to leave HRS, but she couldn’t abandon this mission. “It’s been nice working with you.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Tempe said. “Once the kidnappers call in with whatever it is they want, we’ll get Felix and his daughter back. But if you keep interfering, you’ll get them killed as well as yourself.”
“But who can they call?” Eva asked. “Who’s left? That’s exactly the point I’m trying to make.”
“If they want to be paid, they’ll figure it out,” Tempe said.
Round and round. The conversation was going nowhere, and they were losing time. Besides, wasn’t she fired? “We have criminals to catch,” Eva said. “If you don’t mind, I need one last favor.”
Silence.
“There’s a man tied up in the back of a shop called Bountiful Books. He knew Nast. If you don’t mind, please try to retrieve him before the shop opens in the morning. I’ll leave the back door open,” and she turned the phone off.
“Are you sure that was wise?” Quinn asked.
“I don’t have a job anymore. There wasn’t much left to say.”
“You know that’s not what I mean. Tempe might be right, you know. She usually is.”
Risking It All for Her Boss: A Heroes for Hire novel (Entangled Ignite) Page 15