by Leslie North
“Ten minutes. Gather your things. Purse and the clothes you had on at the bar. Nothing else.”
Angela’s lungs gulped two fast, light gasps of air on the intake, like a trigger of asthma that went nowhere. She bounded toward him, unaccustomed to action without a litany of steps, and found herself on her tiptoes, thanking him and kissing his cheek. Never had she been so spontaneous, not even when her roommate in grad school liquored her up on cosmos and paid for a lap dance from a male dancer. Samson’s bare chest wasn’t all that much different—bare, warm, hard-won muscles challenging every contour.
The dancer, however, never reached back.
Samson seized her elbows. His eyelids cut low across his stare; his voice edged out like a newly-sharpened blade. “You do as I say. Every second, or we don’t go. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
She feigned the same authenticity as when they had established the rules of marksmanship. A clean shot at getting her brother back, nothing left to lose. Opponent chooses the target. In this case, her.
At the right moment, she would slip away, be at that flagpole, and allow Julian to take her to her brother. Even if she had to swallow the entire bottle of courage in her purse to make it happen.
Chapter Seven
On a normal day, the Third Street Promenade was three square blocks of southern California heaven rolled up into jewelry and fashion boutiques, a canopy of shady palm trees, and an eclectic mix of vendors and street performers. Sunshine and the salty ocean air gave the tourist mecca a vacation feel.
On this day, Samson’s nuts were in his chest.
It wasn’t just an uneasy feeling. The razor knocking around inside him was potent and raw and fucking debilitating. He never should have agreed to leave the safe house. It was a rookie mistake, something Bon Jon would have pulled. At the safe house, he could mitigate outlying risk: one road in and out; a small arsenal; familiarity to navigate every inch of the property blindfolded; him calling the shots. In a busy, outdoor pedestrian shopping complex, at the mercy of a team of federal agents, Samson felt powerless in his protection detail, despite being damned-near glued to Angela’s hips since entering the department store security office where the FBI team outfitted Agent Donna Sikes as a poor-woman’s Angela.
Only no one else in the world could pull off Angela.
The woman navigated social situations and crowds like a goody-two-shoes heroine in an old black and white horror movie awaiting raptors of prey to swoop down and peck her to death. Her ass failed to sway at all when she walked and her shoulders were rounded as if she had been born hunched over a microscope and didn’t own a fantastic, if smallish pair of breasts that the world should see and appreciate. Even Agent Sikes was having difficulty shaking her somewhat questionable femininity to capture the enigma that was Angela.
However, listening to Angela trying to coach someone on how to be her was almost worth the price of admission.
“So remember, you’re bookish. You won’t be window-shopping. You’re working out sixteen different things in your head, and you don’t have time to make eye contact. That leads to conversations that take up brain matter. But you’re perceptive because you’re a listener, so don’t talk too much. And I was born with low ears so my glasses never fit right.”
To her credit, the agent nodded politely.
“She’s a decoy, Angela. She’s not auditioning for King Lear.”
Angela did that pinched-face again.
“Aha…did you see that?” said Samson.
The agent nodded.
“That’s the only face you need right there. She has a nervous blink in her right eye when you call her out on something, she fidgets with her fingers when she’s in an uncomfortable situation, she uses ten dollar words when quarter words would work just as well. And she offers her opinion, all the time, about everything.”
Angela’s mouth dropped open. “Do not.”
“Guys sound like a married couple,” said the agent.
“As if I would ever marry such an odious barbarian.”
“See?” said Samson.
Again, the agent nodded. She straightened the Von Trapp dress Samson had first seen Angela wearing and a sharp deja-vu notion hit him like a rogue wave.
Agent Sikes perched a pair of horn-rimmed eyeglasses on the bridge of her nose. “How do I look?”
“Passable,” said Angela.
“Uncanny,” Samson said at the same moment.
Rockwell buzzed his phone. Samson stepped away from the swarm of agents testing Agent Sikes’s mic to answer. He couldn’t play dodge-the-boss forever.
“Please tell me you didn’t do what I think you did.” Rockwell’s voice sounded like someone had his balls in a meat grinder.
Samson pressed a finger to his other ear to slice the chatter of the operation in final prep mode behind him. “It’s not what you think.”
“Really? Because I’m thinking you made a judgment call that broke the cardinal rule in this business.”
First defense is your brain. Fuck. He couldn’t argue there.
“The success of this hangs on how well this agent can pull off Angela. I wasn’t about to leave her brother’s life to chance.”
“Her brother’s life is not your concern,” snapped Rockwell. “If you’re not back at the safe house by nightfall, Doctor McAllister in tow, you can bend over and kiss your career as a security agent goodbye.”
“Yes, sir.”
The line went dead.
Samson wanted to unleash a punch hard enough to kick his own ass. Order received. He was grabbing Angela’s hand and they were getting out of there, asap.
He turned to the swarm of dark-suited agents and impressive bank of computer screens and equipment. His eyes locked in on Angela’s dowdy beige dress and frizzy hair. A swell of relief warred with a lurch of something else, a chill that rode up his shoulder blades and turned his body ice-cold.
Angela’s dowdy beige dress was Agent Sikes.
Then where the hell was Angela?
He scanned the sea of agents once more, asked after her whereabouts to everyone unfortunate enough to cross his search path, and damned-near shook a startled Agent Sikes out of her wig. He didn’t have to check the restrooms or the surveillance van or the grainy images lining the wall.
Angela had hustled him. Again.
***
Angela glanced up at the zenith of the black and white striped art. The flagpole-like feature was as tall as the decades-old palm fronds. Vertigo made her stomach lurch more than the thought of being bait.
Samson had been so on her since they left the safe house that he might as well have crawled up inside her womb. She had lost heart that it was possible to give him the slip, so when the opportunity presented, she took it without precognition. No calculations, no pills, no plan—nothing but the singular focus of getting to the spot and saving Mike. But the longer she stood there, the moving crowd like a noisy beast with unpredictable tentacles, enduring the unshakeable feeling that she was not only being watched but assessed and critiqued and studied like a specimen in a petri dish, the more her kneecaps tremored and challenged her ability to stand.
Her breath scratched against her windpipe. God, no…not now. She focused on how irate Samson would be so that she wouldn’t focus on the very real possibility that today might be the final day she drew that imperfect breath. Somehow, the thought of Samson with his hands all over her lessened the burden on her lungs.
A bald guy with a severe-set mouth and a cleft chin made a tangential cross to the place where she stood. He was too dressed for a southern California day.
Angela’s heart nearly walloped right out of her rib cage.
“Nice to see you showed.”
His two-pack-a-day voice grated her eardrum. She catalogued him like a species: pock-marks on his cheeks; fleshy, veined nose; light green eyes that would be captivating had he not been her entry portal into a terrorist underworld. He chewed something, his flat-tire lips closed. She pict
ured human flesh in his molars.
“Shall we?” he asked, as if he were inviting her to a macabre dance.
“Not until I speak to Mike.”
He chewed a bit longer then reached into his pocket and withdrew a cell phone. The feed was already cued. Grainy, streaked images whizzed by the screen. She wasn’t sure what she expected, but a vacant, indoor seating area in the middle of a third-world country wasn’t it. The image jostled and settled diagonally on her brother’s face.
Alive.
Dizziness grabbed hold. She curled her toes inside her sensible shoes so her body would remain grounded.
Mike spoke, but the noise of the marketplace devoured his words.
“I can’t hear him,” she pleaded to Julian’s goon.
The guy removed a set of ear buds from his jacket and slid the connector into the phone. He put one end in his ear and handed her the other end. She wiggled the audio piece in place.
“Mike? Mike? Can you hear me? Can you see me?”
“Angie?”
Mike’s head lolled on his neck as if he had been drugged. Even in the scant lighting, his face showed signs of trauma—the purplish-yellow of old bruises, the swell of his eyelids, a hole where his flawless front teeth had been. Her name was gritty on his tongue.
“I’m here, Mike. I love you.”
Mike echoed her sentiment, his thick-tongued thrust of the word love past his bloody lip broke every last vessel in her heart.
Her face scorched, her ire amped. She no longer cared about the henchman next to her or someone named Julian playing God elsewhere. She gripped the lapels on the guy’s jacket, her demands blistering and shrill.
“What did you do to him? He can barely speak.”
She was in the henchman’s face before she had thought through such an assault. He severed the call and ripped the earpiece from her ear. A crippling clench of her bicep had her struggling on her feet. His jaw rotated one decisive chew.
“Nice and easy, bitch.”
He shepherded her on the balls of her feet to take the pavement at a faster pace than her small legs could carry her. She had to be insane to go with this guy, to allow him to shuttle her into the unknown, away from the safety of the crowds, to God-knew-where. And yet, somewhere, Mike was still alive and knew she was there for him. She had come this far, and she had one of Samson’s single-action revolvers stowed in a holster around her thigh.
They reached the delivery bay of a high-end housewares store where a sleek, tinted van awaited, engine running. He ushered her into the back, more like a well-apportioned, high-tech armored vehicle with two bench seats facing each other and a steel-cage barrier door sealed off from the driver. She hesitated at the door.
He cupped her on the ass and shoved her in.
Angela turned to protest but saw nothing but the truck’s open doors, the alleyway and pedestrians milling about at a good distance. The guy was gone, replaced by odd noises coming from the side of the van. She poked her head out in time to witness Samson collapse her escort to the pavement in a three-part, sweeping move.
His chest heaved with effort; his stare lasered hers. He reached for her hand at the precise moment the cha-click of a gun sounded against her temple.
Her heart stopped.
A powerful arm seized her in a wrestle-hold at her neck and hauled her back into the van’s cargo hold. Two more men swarmed and overpowered Samson. Still, he struggled. Still, he held her gaze, as if letting go of that connection severed his oath to protect her. A storm of despair eclipsed his eyes, the same storm that had boiled up when he spoke of his wife’s violent end.
She had done this to him.
“Let him go,” she yelled. “He knows nothing.”
Movement on a nearby mounted screen snagged her attention. A pale man with dark-rimmed eyes and salt-and-pepper hair spoke in a matter-of-fact, totally-in-control manner. She didn’t need voice recognition software to know it was the same man who called her phone, making demands against Mike’s life.
“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong, Doctor. You see, Samson Caine has known me from the beginning.”
“Wha—?”
She turned in time to see Samson’s captors avail him of two concealed handguns and shove him into the van’s hold, zip ties cinching his hands behind him. Her aggressor seized her hands in the same manner and hauled her to the bench seat before exiting the van and slamming the doors closed behind him. A series of metal tumblers grinding against each other left no doubt they were locked inside.
“Go ahead, Doc. Ask him. It may be your last chance.”
The screen went black. Through the floorboards, the van’s engine roared. Without windows, the dim track bulbs at the ceiling provided the only light. They both jostled sharp right then forward, unable to properly brace themselves as the van sped away.
“Ohgod, ohgod. This is all my fault. I’m sorry. Ohgod.” Her last utterance squeezed out, painful, warning. She didn’t know if picturing Samson naked could stem back the tide of asthma, especially not with him looking at her with that bulletproof stare.
“Breathe,” he said, much as he had done in the phone booth. He wriggled to a seated position. “Come sit on my lap.”
“I hardly….think…this is the time…ohgod.” Her lungs tightened; beads of sweat erupted at her hairline, beneath her arms.
“I have an inhaler. Front pocket, right side. Hurry.”
Angela stood just as the van took a hairpin turn. She tumbled in the opposite direction, tripped over Samson’s sizeable feet and landed on his lap with the grace of a hydrogen bomb.
A not-so-small rush of air erupted from his lips. His teeth clenched. She was pretty sure she had racked him with her knee, but her oxygen levels dipped to the point where she would have done an exotic lap dance to get to that inhaler. Hands cinched behind her, she slid low and fumbled close to his denim pocket, missing it several times for a pocket of pliability that would have been a full-on grope had she not been fighting for her life.
Samson stretched his leg out. Her fingertips wiggled past his pocket seam and landed against something steel-hard. They found purchase and slid the apparatus free.
“Get it to my hand.” He rotated beneath her so his grip met hers. She passed him the inhaler as the bronchospasms rippled through her airway, mostly because she could no longer muster thoughts or plans. Her vision clouded.
“Now sit.”
Samson stood and braced himself, feet planted crazy-wide like a captain on the deck of a deep-sea fishing ship caught in a hurricane. Mostly she just watched, unable to act. He backed up until his hands were at face level and commanded her to stay with him.
“Angela, lean forward. Come on.”
She did as she was told because the lights were low and there was so much movement of his flawless ass in her line of sight and the world dropped away.
“Angela, stay with me.”
“This…wasn’t…. supposed… to… happen.”
“Don’t talk. Put your lips around it, Angela.”
She did. He squeezed the inhaler in his grip.
A cool puff of air blasted past the roof of her mouth and into her airway. She unsealed her lips and started her four-count breaths, eyes closed. In four, out four. In four, out four.
Her lung sacs stopped quaking like dry leaves, but she still had no room to think or plan or be. She leaned forward for another dose.
Samson complied. Again and again, five times in all, until Angela felt as normal as was possible while being abducted and imagining the shadowed, dimpled contours of Samson’s ass, naked.
“You should keep this on you.”
“Pocket?”
“They may find. Use it for compliance. Bra would be better.”
He reached for her collar then cursed. “Why do you keep so buttoned up?”
“There was a chill in the air.”
“Liar.”
The interior was dark, confessional. She thought she might be able to say anything without re
percussions, but she stopped herself just short of the truth: because I’m afraid of what will happen if I don’t.
Despite the jostling of the van, Samson zeroed in on a button near her chest, unfastened it, and slid the inhaler past the crest of her boob to nestle it where her strap met the cup. His large hand filled her shirt’s opening completely, so much so that the taut fabric between buttons was reluctant to release him. He dropped beside her on the bench.
In all the ways she had fantasized his first touch, careening down the road in near-darkness to an unsure fate didn’t come close. She imagined his disappointment at her size, so far from all those lacy underthings at the safe house. She imagined that he thought it an unpalatable necessity, touching someone who had betrayed him so intimately. Worst of all, she imagined it destroyed any chance that it would ever happen again.
“Sam—”
“Don’t.” He tipped his head back to rest against the side of the van. “Just don’t. We’re going to get out of here and get you to a safe place. Then you can finish that sentence.”
“What if we don’t?”
“What ifs aren’t an option for me.” He slid off the bench, knees to the floorboard. “I know it’s dark, but I need to you to do what I do, exactly as I tell you. No going rogue this time.”
“I promise.”
“Sit on the floor and slide your bound hands under your rear. Thread your legs through the opening your arms make so the zip ties are in front.”
He demonstrated. Mostly her brain was still back on the boob thing.
“In front. Got it.” She did as he instructed. Three advanced degrees and that simple move wouldn’t have occurred to her. She straightened her catawampus glasses.
He rose to his feet, did something with his mouth near the ties, and in one swift motion his arms broke free.
“How did you do that?”
His hands reached for her ties. “These have to be tight for it to work. Sorry.” He cinched them until the plastic bit into her skin, and she felt her brisk heartbeat throb through her hands.