Inside Man

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

He couldn’t dispute that.

  The interior of the restaurant featured wood paneling, raw beams, colorful porcelain beer steins with silver handles and lids, and pictures of women in dirndls with rosy cheeks and blonde plaits. The waiter showed them to a table in the middle of the big room, which Kelsey refused and asked for a booth at the edge, instead.

  While Cain sorted through the slim number of options on the menu, Kelsey set up the heavy duty laptop on the table between them and frowned at the screen. It was why she had wanted the booth. There was no chance of anyone reading the screen over her shoulder.

  He settled on a safe, banal chicken breast and salad and put the menu to one side. “You’ve made a choice already?” he asked her.

  “Oh, they’ll have a burger of some sort,” Kelsey said absently.

  “And fries, too, right?”

  “And gravy,” she added.

  Cain grimaced. “I guess it’s your gut you’re compromising.”

  She glanced at him, the crystal green eyes cool. “You’re a fine one to talk about nutrition abuse. Did you eat a single healthy meal in the years after the Olympics?”

  “That was an exception.”

  “Why?”

  “I wasn’t sober for most of that time.” He shrugged.

  The waiter arrived and took their orders. He seemed happy to provide Kelsey with what she wanted even though burgers weren’t on the menu. He laughed and flirted with her, while Kelsey completely missed the signals. Or perhaps she ignored them. Any man with a pulse would be drawn by her looks and try to get to know her, either subtly or overtly, as the waiter was. Or they’d try, at least. The danger of frostbite would drive them away.

  She kept her eyes on the screen even after the waiter left.

  “So?” Cain prompted, after long, silent minutes had passed.

  “Nothing new.” She wouldn’t let him look at the screen. He could only assume she was telling him everything the mysterious Dima shared with her.

  “Why are you still reading?”

  “It’s an email.”

  “You’re checking email?” Astonishment rippled through him. “Have you ever eaten a civilized meal in your life, Kelsey?”

  “You mean, three courses, snotty waiters, and sniffing wine corks?” She lowered the lid on the laptop and pushed it aside. “Of course I have. Burgers are honest.”

  He would have laughed at the underlying truth of that, except for her gaze, which was unfocused. A tiny furrow marred the smooth skin between her brows. “You’ve shut the computer, only your head is still there.”

  Kelsey glanced at the black rubber exterior of the laptop. “Sorry, yeah. It’s just an email I got…” She trailed off.

  “From?”

  Kelsey’s frown deepened. She scratched at an invisible spot on the knife she wouldn’t use. “Brian Cook.” Her gaze lifted to meet his. “He’s the colleague I knew, at NASA.”

  “The one who thinks he can get your old job back?”

  “Oh, he can’t do that. I kinda burned my bridges on that one.”

  “There’s a surprise.”

  “There’s a second engineering team gearing up to work on the next rover, and they’re short a man or two. Brian says he’ll talk to their director about me.”

  “Didn’t he say that in the last email?”

  Her frowned deepened. “Yes.”

  It was on the tip of his tongue. And you believed him? He just held himself back from speaking the words. “Guess you have to give it time, Kelsey.”

  Her gaze met his again. “Yeah.”

  The waiter set their meals in front of them. Thankfully, Cain ate. He was hungrier than he had realized.

  Kelsey wolfed down her burger in massive bites, while the furrow stayed on her forehead. She didn’t speak at all.

  Cain put down his fork, his salad nearly done. His irritation had built while he ate and now he couldn’t take another bite. “Will you for the love of Pete forget about the email? It’s insulting, Kelsey.”

  Her eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

  “We’re running for our lives, and you’re obsessing about the next job. You think I enjoy being reminded that I’m just the current assignment?”

  She lowered her burger. “It’s not meant that way, Warren.”

  “Cain. My name is Cain. Only, using it would break with your detachment protocol, wouldn’t it?”

  “You don’t understand. I’m…I don’t want to be with the CIA anymore. People get killed in this job.”

  “Yeah, and I’ve got a big fat target painted on my back.”

  “Because of me!” Her voice was low, hard. “This is my fault. All of it. I’m not helping anyone!”

  His irritation built to fury. His chest tightened with it. “Helping people isn’t always direct, Kelsey. Sometimes just getting the job done without accolades is the best you can ask for.”

  “You think I’m doing this for the applause?” Her eyes glittered with a sudden harsh intensity. “I’m supposed to be an analyst, Cain. I’m supposed to be behind the scenes, assessing data and giving operatives my best-informed analysis of situations, so they can do their job. It is fucking helping people, and it’s direct and it saves lives. Only I haven’t saved a single goddam life. Not one.”

  “You saved mine,” he snarled and lurched to his feet. “I guess I don’t count in your view, huh?” He picked up the rental’s keys. “I’ll wait in the car.”

  He stalked from the restaurant, aware that he was spewing steam behind him like a train at full tilt and unable to halt it. He had to calm down. Extreme emotions, anger included, triggered all sorts of cravings. The hotter he ran, the harder they screamed at him.

  The air was a cold shot to the face as he stepped outside, which also irritated him, because once, he had lived almost permanently in air this cold and colder. He realized he was studying the mountain peaks visible on the horizon—sharp crags and downslopes—measuring the atmosphere around their heads and automatically cataloging it as good cross-country skiing weather.

  Being back in snow country wasn’t helping.

  With a growl of acute frustration, he stalked to where they had left the car in the smaller parking lot at the rear of the restaurant. He came face to face with a little Frenchman with round glasses, who was drifting across the lot looking at the rear ends of cars.

  The man’s eyes widened behind the lenses.

  The look in his eyes and his expression dropped Cain back into the dark days when everyone wanted to hurt him—cops, other gangs, belligerent members of the public, who crossed the street when he came toward them, or spat at him as he passed.

  This little man had recognized him. He knew it with every fiber of his gut.

  When the man reached under his coat, Cain leapt at him, his hands out, his fingers curled into claws, ready and happy to maim.

  The man tripped and sprawled in the black mush between the rows of cars, Cain on top of him. Cain grabbed the man’s wrist, to stop him from pulling the gun out from under his coat and bringing it to bear.

  The man was strong and had recovered from his surprise. His other hand gripped Cain’s throat. His fingers scrabbled, trying to find a stronger position, so he could squeeze and cut off Cain’s air and make him pass out.

  Cain took hold of that wrist, too. Now it was a battle of pure strength, and a fight Cain was happy to win. Only, the man was stronger than he looked. There was muscle hidden on the wiry frame.

  For the first time, Cain saw the pistol the man was trying to withdraw. It was an automatic. A Glock, which didn’t have a safety he could reach for and switch on, to stop the gun from going off if it was pointed at him. It had worked for Cain more than once in the past.

  He couldn’t reach the release for the clip from this angle, and the man was the type who’d have a bullet in the chamber. Even if the clip dropped out, he would still have one shot he could take.

  The man’s fingers flexed and shifted, then dug into Cain’s throat.

  It beca
me a race to the finish. Either Cain would pass out from lack of oxygen, or he’d disarm the man. Only, the man didn’t understand that Cain wasn’t able to give up. In all the numerous black moments in his life, when any other man would have chosen to check out, exit stage left with no applause, Cain had held on. Even when there had been no hope, he had held on. Years of reflection still hadn’t given him a reason why.

  Maybe he was just stubborn.

  That meant the little man had underestimated him.

  Cain hauled at the man’s fingers around his throat, easing their grip. “Give up,” he told him. “You can’t win this.” His voice was hoarse.

  The man laughed. “If you don’t kill me, he will.” The bleak fact gave him a spurt of strength and his fingers reattached themselves to Cain’s throat.

  The man would kill him, or face being killed by Zima.

  Cain wouldn’t give up, either.

  The man had forgotten a gun could be fired from any angle. What had Kelsey called it? Yeah, his pretentious sideways shit. That sideways shit was proof that a gun was lethal no matter how it was held.

  Cain let his grip on the man’s gun hand slacken, enough for the man to think his strength was failing.

  With a grunt of victory, the man pulled the pistol clear of his coat. As soon as his hand was far enough to one side, Cain bore down on the wrist once more. The muzzle of the pistol shifted to point at the man’s armpit. The man’s wrist cocked at an acute angle which would snap with a bit more pressure.

  Cain let go of the man’s other arm and slapped his hand over the man’s on the gun. He slid the tip of his finger over the one on the trigger and squeezed repeatedly.

  With the first three shots, the man jumped.

  The fourth caused no reaction in him at all, except for a ghostly expiration of hot air from his parted lips. His eyes stared up sightlessly through the crooked glasses.

  Cain let go and scrambled backward, his coat dragging in the mud, his heels skidding.

  His heart rammed against his chest, making his temples throb. Black sickness built in his head and his gut.

  The man’s blood was turning the black slush into a thick red mud.

  Cain moaned, gripping his temples.

  Boots on the concrete behind him. He didn’t care who it was. He just did not care.

  “Fucking hell…!” Kelsey breathed.

  Cain heard her gun come out. There was no sound quite like that of a gun sliding out of a leather holster.

  She moved up beside the dead man, her gun pointing. “Try it bitch…please try it,” she murmured.

  Silence.

  “Cain, get up,” Kelsey said. There was a snap in her voice. She didn’t look around.

  She’d used his name. It was…wrong, somehow. He didn’t have the capacity to think it through and figure out why.

  “Cain!”

  “Moving,” he croaked. He pushed himself up from the cold mud, moving as fast as he could, which felt like glacier speed.

  “Keys,” Kelsey said. “You’ve got the keys. Unlock the car, while I hold her at bay. Move it, Cain.”

  He nodded. Keys. Where were the keys? He had dropped them when he leapt… He looked around and found the bright orange tag half buried in the snow and hooked it out. Then, still moving sluggishly, he walked over to the car. Every step made him ache. With slow, deliberate movements, he unlocked the car.

  “Get in and start it, then move out of the way,” Kelsey said.

  He was happy to let her drive this time. He dropped into the driver’s seat, and pressed the start button, which only worked when the key fob was within two meters. The car started.

  It seemed to take a month to get his legs to coordinate enough to slide over the handbrake and console between the seats and settle in the passenger seat. He knocked on the window screen. Kelsey was still standing over the body, her gun not wavering.

  He could see the woman, now—the one Kelsey had described from when she had spotted the two at the train station in Valence. Honey blonde, clear skin, a rosebud mouth and round face.

  Kelsey had failed to describe the coldness of the woman. She stood with her gun out, not quite raised, waiting for Kelsey to look away, or be distracted.

  Instead, Kelsey stepped sideways, a step at a time, the gun trained on the woman, until Kelsey’s knee came up against the nose of the Renault. She shifted forward and slid between the cars and around the open door, the gun never wavering.

  Cain braced himself. She’d have to lower the gun to get the car moving. The woman was the sort who would instantly fire.

  Kelsey shut the door, the gun still up and pointing through the windscreen. She put her left hand on the steering wheel. “Put it in gear,” she said, her voice flat, and put her foot on the clutch. “Reverse,” she added.

  Cain used his left hand to drop the car into reverse. “Done.”

  Kelsey tromped on the gas and the car reversed out into the next lane over, spraying mush and ice. Kelsey didn’t let the gun drop for a second, as she wheeled it out, and hit the clutch again.

  Cain didn’t need to be told. He threw it into first. “Now.”

  Kelsey took off with an even larger spray of filthy, watery mud, the gun staying on the woman until the cars hid her from view. Then she dropped the gun between her thighs and drove like the devil was behind them.

  Because he was.

  [14]

  La Richonnière, Drôme, France.

  One principal question circling her brain as Agata drove without direction, taking corners and turning down intersections randomly, putting distance between them and the restaurant.

  How the hell had Zima found them?

  In the passenger seat, Warren sounded as though he was hyperventilating. She didn’t have time to deal with him now.

  What to do? What now?

  Then Warren took the decision from her hands. “Stop! Stop! Now!” He gripped his hands into fists tight enough to make the wrist tendons flex and his knuckles to whiten. “I mean it,” he muttered.

  His tone, a mix of desperation and urgency, made her arrow the car into a secondary road, then onto the verge, where mud and snow mixed into a watery soup.

  Cain threw the door open and staggered down the steep embankment. He bent over the gutter at the bottom.

  Agata closed her eyes and tried not to listen as he lost what little lunch he had eaten.

  While she waited for him to finish and haul himself back up to the car, she exhaled and tried to calm herself so she could think. Cain wasn’t thinking, right now. He was reacting. Badly.

  She had to think for both of them.

  It didn’t matter how Zima had found them. The tile had clearly dropped out of the bumper back in Valence. It had lulled them into relaxing, while Zima came straight to the first natural stopping point on the way to Grenoble. Which meant he knew they were heading for Grenoble.

  She had already said it once to Cain and she should follow her own advice; she had to assume the Kobra knew everything they had planned and was feeding it to Zima. How the Kobra knew was a question for later.

  Had Zima lucked upon the restaurant and the car? La Richonnière was small enough to let them circle, checking all cars they came across.

  Which meant Zima knew they were in a car and which car they were in. It implied he had access to the rental company’s database. Only, she had used her spare passport. Lucky guess? There couldn’t have been many blonde women renting cars that morning, with a dark-haired man in tow. A few euros would have confirmed that the Alison Fisher who rented the Renault was she.

  The car was hot. They must ditch it.

  Also, they must go off grid. Nothing which could be hacked or traced. No credit cards. The least memorable interactions with people who might recall them later.

  Her fear rose, threatening to swamp her. She had miscalculated. Now Cain was a wreck she would have to put together enough to go on.

  He appeared at the top of the embankment and moved over to the open door.
Eased himself onto the seat, with a heavy exhalation. His skin was naturally swarthy, although there was a coppery yellow cast to it now.

  “Okay enough to sit for a few more minutes?” Agata asked him.

  He swallowed. “Yes.” With a painstaking movement, he reached for the door and shut it. He let his head fall back against the head rest and closed his eyes.

  Agata got the car in gear and drove on, looking for the first hotel or pension or holiday chalet which appeared.

  It was a seedy motel, catering to the highway traffic. She could hear the A49 not far off. The swish of cars and the heavy blast of trucks. She pulled up in front of a unit without a car in front.

  “Rest a bit. I’ll be right back,” she told Cain.

  He nodded. Sort of.

  Agata used a clean passport to rent the room she’d parked in front of, and paid cash with the wad of euros in the duffel bag. She went back to the room, unlocked it, and dumped the duffel bag on one of the narrow beds.

  Cain walked gingerly into the room. He was covered in mud and held his hands out from his sides. He shrugged off the coat, so it dropped around his boots, and looked at his hands.

  They were trembling.

  Agata grabbed two of the stacks of euros and stuffed them inside her jacket pocket. “Get clean, and try to sleep,” she told him. “I’ll be a while.”

  “Where are you going?” His tone was sharp.

  “I have to ditch the car.” She paused. “I’ll get you some clothes. What size are you?”

  “Medium.”

  “European sizing,” she amended.

  He told her.

  “It could take a while,” she said. “There are a few things I have to get besides clothes for you. You going to be okay?”

  He considered. Swallowed. “I’ll still be here when you get back.”

  It wasn’t an answer, although Agata didn’t have time to spare to sort it out. Time ticked in her head like a bad B movie bomb. While the car was close to them, they were exposed.

  “I’ll go as fast as I can,” she told him, gathering her hair up and stuffing it inside the jacket.

  “Kelsey.”

  She paused, her hand on the door handle, and looked back.