Lethal Cure

by S A Gardner

  You, amor, are worth nothing.

  An act. I’d made him do it. I’d given him cues in our code, and he’d picked it up by the next heartbeat, played his part far beyond Academy Award performances. His men had bought it. Hell, I had. Even knowing, going in with eyes wide open.

  Made you wonder when he stopped acting. Made me wonder how my feelings remained constant when he was a chameleon.

  I finally exhaled. “Maybe. But you’re my ‘not worth it.’”

  He raised a reddened eye, the gold eclipsed with so much emotion—God, so much. Was it real?

  Then he whispered, “Do I need to tell you that what he said I did to you, to Ayesha and the others, was a lie?”

  That easy? He thought he’d be off the hook with one “about to weep for the first time in my ultra-macho life” look? Was I supposed to follow with an “Of course not!” to appease his agony?

  Really didn’t think so. “I once told you I can’t pick and choose what to believe in what you say, Damian.”

  He slumped into his seat on a trembling exhalation. “Do I get a hearing? Or did I forfeit that, too?”

  “Don’t start talking if you don’t intend to tell me the truth, the whole truth or even God won’t help you if I later discover more juicy details that you left out.”

  “Fair enough.” A moment of silence, then he began. “After Russia I dug into Jake’s allegations that he was holding both TOP’s and PACT’s strings. He was a master manipulator, but he still built his lies around a core of truth, to make them harder hitting, more convincing. I found only evidence that my PACT team was uncorrupted. That’s the PACT I’ve been defending to you. The core team I trusted with my life, the old-schoolers. That is, until the day before I came offering to go on the tugurios mission alone with you. I finally found out how PACT and I were duped into taking the mission to Russia.”

  I gave a disbelieving laugh. He exhaled. “Stranger things happen. You know we started out as a branch of The Order for Peace, but I’ve been moving us away, cutting the umbilical cord. I didn’t appreciate some of TOP’s directives, and thought PACT would be well rid of their influence. I was planning Russia when TOP higher-ups added two conditions in return for not impeding the autonomy I was establishing. Taking you on, and bringing back the research.”

  I’d known he had lied, had read it all over him back in the plane. I’d still prayed I’d read him wrong, as usual. Self-deception was inexhaustible, wasn’t it? Pain razed me all over again.

  “So Jake told the truth. And you lied all along.”

  He turned, angry, supplicant. “He told a couple of truths among a hundred lies. To make them all sound like the truth.”

  “These are the only important truths—and lies. He asked for me, and you delivered. Then you gave them an apocalyptic weapon in return for funding, gadgets and a longer leash!”

  “It wasn’t like that. You know I tried to stop you from coming. Remember, it was you who thwarted me, insisted on coming, on staying every step of the way. But I would have chained you in a dungeon if I’d known why they insisted you come along, that they were delivering you to Jake. At the time I had no reason to doubt them. I’ve known these people for fifteen years, and though I disagreed with some of their policies, at the time they rationalized it all to my satisfaction. It was only just before Colombia that I discovered these TOP people haven’t been in control, have been fronts and mouthpieces for a good while now, that a radical group of ex-intelligence moguls are holding their strings in diabolical ways. They’re the ones implementing the new MO to work with terrorists like Jake, to bring other terrorists of their choice down.”

  “I don’t care who did what,” I said, seething. “It all boils down to this—you’re the reason all this happened!”

  His despondent frown admitted it all. “Yeah, I salvaged Jake’s research and it all followed. But even without knowing the real situation, I regretted it the moment my men turned it in while I lay in IC. I’ve been trying to fix my mistake ever since. But I was sure I had time to prevent any damage, believing the agent wasn’t being produced.”

  I’d blacken his other eye any minute now! “Really? You believed those good people you knew for so long would just put the research in a safe, and guard it from falling into the wrong hands? You, the world’s leading hardened, ruthless cynic?”

  He took my flaying, subdued, accepting. “It made sense when they said we needed it, to understand and counteract it, in case it was already dispersed. But afterward I decided destroying every trace of it was the only answer. And I believed there was no agent, not because I’m a trusting soul, but because the research had missing parts that rendered it useless—parts Jake kept in his mind so he’d be indispensable.”

  That slowed down the chain reaction of fury inside me. Jake had said something like that, back in Russia, during his detailed confessions. Before I killed him the first time.

  Damin was going on. “I still wasn’t gambling on anyone managing to fill the holes, and deciding to use it, and was about to retrieve it from TOP, when duplicate research surfaced in Colombia with the missing info. I still thought development was some time off, until you tied your friends’ affliction to their being in Colombia. It’s only now I realize Jake resurfaced there, and struck a deal with those holding the bulk of his work. They spend and protect, he completes the job, everyone’s a happy demon.”

  Yeah. And what a happy, exonerating explanation. Not! “So you found out the conspiracy, and just went ahead and exposed me and my team to danger, while your team helped Jake!”

  “I gave TOP and PACT every possible proof to believe your mission was purely humanitarian, and that I was going with you for personal reasons. And those Judases are not my team. You know my team. Those men were foisted on me to train while I recovered. I did train them for a while, until I got out of it. I had no reason to suspect them then, but my objection was that I didn’t want a bigger team, didn’t have time to train anyone to my specs. Needless to say, I didn’t trust them with any important stuff.”

  Heat shot off me, shimmering the air around me, distorting his face even more. “Like following me around?”

  “That—and the search for the Colombian plant.”

  “Funny how the team you didn’t trust ended up with your original team there! God—to think you knew all that and kept me in the dark!”

  “I didn’t. I didn’t suspect Jake was alive. I believe in your lethality too much.”

  Okay. I bought that. When I killed someone, they stayed dead. But Jake was a fluke in every way possible. Had been one.

  “I only understand it all now,” he continued. “And how he got to your friends. Jake, with his far-reaching liaisons with Russian mobs and Colombian drug cartels, and through his surveillance of you, must have found out about your friends’ mission and sent the paramilitaries to the tugurios at the same time they arrived to strike two home runs. Road test his agent, and send you a calling card, the crumbs as you said, to lead you into his grasp.

  “The infected refugees were the community leaders, the only people who knew who your friends really were, and Jake must have had them infect Matt and the others with a different form of agent, as a puzzle to further test your genius , what he was so proud of. You, and his need to recapture you, were the two predictable things about him. His fatal weaknesses.”

  Made sense. Added up. Didn’t mean I couldn’t be mean. “An easier explanation would be, you got rid of my friends to get your paws on me. You always said you’d do anything for me.”

  My jab struck. His pummeled face twisted. “For you. Not against you. I’d never coerce you, or hurt you to control you. I don’t want to control you. I want you only if you choose me, if I’m what makes you happy, what completes your already full life.”

  That was Ayesha’s exact unshakable belief.

  He misread my wry huff, went on, impassioned now. “Even if I were such a monster, I couldn’t have infected them because I didn’t have the agent. No one had it
but Jake. He even leveled the plant before we left. He was dedicated to making sure he never became redundant. I’ll get you evidence to every word I’m saying, no matter what it takes.”

  “No way will you ever conclusively prove any of it, Damian.”

  Defeat, total and final, extinguished him before my eye.

  He believed I actually suspected him, huh? And it had never even registered as a possibility. Weird thing, faith. Against all logic and evidence. Weirder coming from me.

  He finally smiled, the smile of one who’d lost everything, cared no more. “And I went to all these lengths to hide what I did back in Russia, hoping to erase my mistake without having to confess it, so I wouldn’t lose your trust. And I never had it.”

  In pain, the poor baby? Good. Maybe it’d teach him to stop lying to me. For a month or so. “So—if your corrupted superiors weren’t on to you, how did we end up in Jake’s hands?”

  He fell silent. Until I thought he wouldn’t talk again. It must have been half an hour before he whispered, “Ed.”

  The name hit me like a crippling blow to the spine. “No!”

  He didn’t answer. I couldn’t talk. Couldn’t breathe even. For almost an hour.

  It was only when the flight attendant placed a meal in front of us and actually shook us to make sure we hadn’t died in our seats that I binged on an inhalation, moaning with the stabs in my rib cage, and every other magnified ache.

  “Are you sure?” Ed. In Russia, he’d been my ally in Damian’s team. And he was Damian’s right arm—his soul brother. The only one above all suspicion.

  Damian gave a dejected nod.

  So this was how Jake had all that knowledge about me, and about everything that had happened. I’d said it was like he’d been there. And he had been. Through Ed, who knew our every move and word through Damian, and the rest of his team.

  Damian at last spoke, his voice hushed, thick. “He sold my life for Anna’s.”

  Anna was another member of Damian’s trusted team.

  “We discovered coming back from Russia that she has a rare and progressive autoimmune disorder, that seemed to have been triggered by her latest injuries. It’s invariably fatal. But there is an experimental treatment program that’s been securing results, from slowing the disease’s progression, to actual cures, but which costs millions and which is conducted in top-secret research facilities that even the world’s billionaires have no access to. Jake got to Ed, offered it. Ed asked me to understand as they overpowered me. And I do. I don’t blame him for a second. I’d choose you, too.”

  I remembered now, how Ed felt for Anna, how gutted he’d been over a minor injury she’d gotten in Russia.

  Damian’s acceptance of Ed’s motive grated most of all. “Hell, Damian. It doesn’t work that way. You don’t sacrifice innocents for your loved ones. It makes you worse than the monsters we fight.”

  “I’m no innocent, querida. She is—at least, the baby she’s carrying is. It’s Ed’s. But he did one mitigating thing. He sacrificed only me. At the last moment, he warned the rest of my team, told them to disappear before the new team arrived. I pray they and the ones back home weren’t hunted down.”

  “But now Jake is gone, why hunt them down?”

  He gave me an incredulous look, before huffing. “You’re totaled, aren’t you. My former bosses and their puppeteers know now that I wasn’t on their side, that I cost them their precious new ally and ultimate weapon. Reason enough for anyone loyal to me to be hunted. Ad infinitum.”

  A moment’s silence, then he hissed, “Is this beyond repair? Is this the end? Madre de Dios, Calista, just tell me.”

  “And you’ll what? Give up and blend into the background, Agent Chameleon? Leave me be to move on and love another man?” He jerked as if with a close-range bullet. Amazing didn’t begin to describe it. The dizzying range of emotions the man could project. “My God, Damian. I can practically see jealousy taking a machete to your insides, and despair an ax to your heart. Back on the plane you were as—”

  He cut me off. “Faked rifts were part of our strategic and psychological warfare training. You acted, too. You were just as convincing!”

  “I was genuinely pissed, yet I still didn’t get half as creatively abusive as you did. I bet it was your performance they bought.”

  Both hands rose in a please-no-more gesture.“Misericordia, amor. It was your life, and the lives of millions in the balance. Nothing less could have forced me to go that far. I had to say the worst—the absolute opposite of the truth—for it to work.”

  “Yet said ‘absolute opposite’ is indistinguishable from said alleged truth.”

  And here, I was treated to a completely new sight. Damian at his wits’ end.

  “You want the truth, Calista? I don’t want to feel this way for you. Yet I can no longer live without feeling it. But I can’t go on not knowing, either. So just tell me!”

  I should have been angry. I should have been all sorts of things. I wasn’t. We’d averted a disaster, won a battle, but mostly having him alive against all odds—what could I say? Plenty here to intoxicate a woman clear out of all judgment and reservations.

  You’ll regret it.

  Ah, logic having a say at last. And getting the gag.

  Was this the end? He could bet his gorgeous bod—not. What it was, was open to debate.

  A surge of unthinking kindness had me sharing my conclusions. “This isn’t the end, Damian.”

  Relief and elated sensuality radiated off him like a furnace blast. Whoa. Why did I feel I’d just fallen into the slot he’d inched me toward?

  My splint in his ribs stopped any passionate displays. “Not so fast. You say you fear your team will be hunted. Didn’t hear you mention yourself. Any reason you’re exempt?”

  One caress broke through my barricade. “I died in that plane crash, remember? And so did you.”

  “Huh? We’ve been seen alive by tons of people.”

  “In Russia. The best place to crash-land in. All info is suppressed on a mandatory basis. Russian authorities didn’t allow independent news investigators on the crash scene, they announced the total destruction of the plane and its occupants in a spectacular explosion. Under my advisement. They agreed they should make an accident out of it and not the militant act I convinced them it was. So—until PACT and TOP prove or even suspect otherwise, we’re dead along with Jake and their men.”

  So he’d conducted deep-cover measures even as he recovered from cyanide poisoning. Got a foreign government to play it his way. Unbelievable.

  I huffed. “What happens when no epidemic sweeps the area around the crash site? They’ll know the agent wasn’t dispersed.”

  He had no ready answer for that. At last he frowned. “Maybe they’ll think it got destroyed in the explosion. Maybe they don’t know it’s heat resistant, or maybe Jake was lying about that to buy himself time to get away.”

  Too many maybes. Hated the critters. And then there was one more thing. “I know Sir Ashton cut a huge deal with the highest Russian authorities to return us and the plane, no questions asked. But their intelligence must be hard at work investigating the whole thing. They’ll piece it together sooner or later.”

  “And you think they’ll share their findings with their PACT and TOP counterparts?”

  In about a million years, yeah. PACT and TOP would have to penetrate the maze of Russian intelligence before they got any intel.

  Still, they’d do it. And there was another thing. “What about all the people with us now?”

  “I contacted Sir Ashton, made sure he realized the full measure of the danger.”

  So that was how Sir Ashton had already been on the job! Damian beat me to it.

  “He said he was sending us his most discreet people. He gave them the manufactured story, and the false identities I recommended for extra security.”

  So he’d made Sir Ashton his accomplice again, left him no choice but to get mired in convoluted, highest-risk black-ops stuf
f. Guess I had, too, the minute I threw the responsibility of spiriting the agent away in his lap. And if our enemies found out…

  Oh God—Sir Ashton, what have we done to you?

  But maybe they wouldn’t. Not before we managed to clean up the mess. For now, we were dead, and the agent and its creator, gone. Even to Ed and the rest of Damian’s team. There was no way for them to know what happened after we boarded that plane.

  Damian didn’t let me breathe the self-deceiving placations long. “Though I believe Jake didn’t share the info about the counteraction method with his TOP and PACT allies, they’ll find out about it, about everything, sooner or later. Then they’ll do anything to get their weapon package. And us.”

  So we had a breather, nothing more.

  But the others might not have even that. “How will you alert your team to retaliatory actions? They’re probably confused about the whole thing now, not knowing what to do or who to trust.”

  “I have ways of contacting each of them, without the others knowing. Once they’re clear on everything, they can take care of themselves. It’s your team I’m worried about.”

  My blood stopped in my veins, congealed. “You think Ed will give my secrets, my people to them, too?”

  His struggle with having to say it, to face it, thrashed on his face, in my chest.

  At last, he said, “He’s a broken link now. Anything’s possible.”

  My blood suddenly gushed with dread and denial. “What about your mother?” I whispered. “Do they know about her?”

  He frowned. “They don’t. But Ed does. I’ll alert her.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Dios, I almost wish they’d try something. Desideria would probably bring them down single-handedly. She once brought down a dictatorship. The snipers around the house are hers, not mine, by the way.”

  He talked tough. I could still see fear for her blossom in his mind, trickle down his battered features.

  I groped for a way out. “Maybe if we bury this deep enough…”

  “Nothing can ever be buried deep enough, Calista.”

  And he’d know. I closed my eyes.

  A long time later, I exhaled. “I’ll have to take drastic action to protect my team. As for Dad, he has his army of ex-cons. PACT and TOP would probably lose in a war with him. Do you think Sir Ashton may be targeted, too?”