A Secret Life

by Laura Peyton Roberts

  “Yeah. What did you do with Madame Monique? Is she dead? Or did you just knock her out and tie her up?”

  “Um . . .”

  Noah rubbed his sore wrist, his expression almost jovial. “Personally, I'm hoping for beat her to a pulp and then killed her, but so long as she's not coming back here I—”

  “I didn't kill her,” Sydney interrupted.

  Noah shrugged. “So she's just tied up. It's a loose end, but—”

  “I didn't do anything to her,” Sydney said urgently. “I hid in the hallway until she passed, and then I ran straight down here. We have to hurry.”

  “You did what?” Noah's eyes snapped fully open, no longer the least bit cheerful. “You mean to tell me she's still walking around out there? Armed?”

  “I don't know where she is,” Sydney admitted. “We have to leave before she comes back.”

  “And how are we supposed to do that?” he demanded, struggling to his feet. “How are we supposed to get out of here without seeing her again?”

  “If we hurry—”

  Noah shook his head impatiently. “I have no weapons, you have one, and for all we know, Larousse went to call in her backup. Do you really want to meet up with them in that tunnel?”

  Considering the risk she'd just taken for him, it seemed to Sydney that Noah could be more grateful.

  “You're right. I probably should have left you down here,” she said.

  He opened his mouth to speak, then abruptly shut it again. Turning to the first metal shelving unit, he yanked aside a tarp and stood surveying its exposed contents. Sydney saw automatic weapons, heavy artillery shells, and even rocket launchers. Based on her CIA training, she judged the equipment to be Russian, and not of the most recent issue.

  “Well, at least we know what they're up to now,” Noah said sarcastically. “There's nothing like gunrunning for raising extra cash.”

  “Where do you think they got this stuff?”

  Noah shrugged. “It could be K-Directorate's castoffs. Or maybe they lifted it from the military. Either way, it solves my problem.”

  Snatching an Uzi off the shelf, he began searching for ammunition. “Check in those boxes,” he told Sydney, pointing. “If I can get this loaded, old Madame Monique had better look out.”

  Sydney hurried to the stacks of metal crates—and found four big cardboard boxes completely full of cash. None of the currencies was familiar, but the quantities were amazing.

  “Look at all the money!” she gasped, holding up a bundled stack of bills. “What country is this from?”

  “Not one we want armed,” Noah said grimly, crossing to her side. “Here, watch out. These must be the ammunition cases.”

  He tried the nearest metal crate, only to find it locked. The barrel-style combination device under its handle was composed of seven numbered dials, all of which had to be turned to the proper position before the case could be opened. Noah spun them wildly while Sydney started checking other cases.

  All of them were locked.

  “Give me your extra ammunition,” Noah said suddenly, abandoning the cases to run back to the shelves. “Maybe I can find another gun your bullets will work in.”

  She had barely retrieved her backpack when a noise down the passageway made them both freeze. Footsteps were coming—lots of footsteps.

  And now they heard voices as well. A woman spoke and a man answered. More male voices jumped into the mix, arguing in Russian. Three men altogether—and not one of them seemed afraid of being overheard.

  Sydney drew her gun and pointed it at the open doorway.

  “They think it's just you down here, helpless,” she whispered to Noah.

  Noah nodded, a trapped look on his face. “They've got the helpless part right.”

  12

  “WHAT ARE WE GOING to do?” Sydney asked desperately, her lone gun still trained on the doorway. The voices of the K-Directorate agents were getting louder by the second, and she was sure there were four of them now. “Noah! Do something!”

  He cast about the room in a panic, looking for something to use in a fight. The problem was, there wasn't going to be a fight—if all of those agents were armed, there was going to be a slaughter.

  Suddenly Noah shouted out. “Sydney! Here we go!”

  She turned her head to see him pulling on the steel ring he'd been cuffed to, swinging up a large section of floor. The ring was the handle to a trapdoor! She ran to him, elated.

  And then she looked down.

  “It's flooded!” she cried, losing hope.

  Inky black water filled the large vertical shaft beneath the trapdoor, rising to within two feet of the metal bunker floor. Any escape that might once have been possible by that route was not an option now.

  A flurry of running began in the tunnel; the K-Directorate agents had heard them.Sydney turned anxiously back to Noah—just in time to see him leap into the flooded shaft.

  Dark water splashed out and then swallowed him up. The second it took his head to resurface seemed like an eternity. He dog-paddled in the six-foot-square shaft, his head sheltered by the overhanging bunker floor.

  “Come on! Get in!” he yelled.

  “I'm not jumping in there,” she protested, glancing frantically from him to the noisy passageway. “Are you crazy?”

  “Get in here now!”

  His tone left no room to argue—and neither did the approaching agents. Her heart in her throat, Sydney jumped.

  Freezing water rushed up past her head. Her feet scrabbled frantically for the bottom, but found only one slimy vertical wall of the chute. The first thing she saw when she surfaced was Noah pulling the trapdoor closed, using a chain on its underside. The heavy steel door clanged into place and Sydney heard a bolt shoot home. The darkness around her was absolute.

  “There!” Noah breathed, satisfied. “That ought to hold them a few minutes.”

  In nearly the same instant, heavy boots clattered onto the floor overhead, accompanied by Russian curses.

  “They didn't see that coming,” Noah added with a chuckle.

  “How can you laugh?” Sydney demanded, treading water.

  She couldn't see Noah at all—couldn't see her own hand in front of her face—and that he found anything amusing in their situation was impossible to comprehend. Overhead, the K-Directorate agents labored to pull the trapdoor open, temporarily foiled by Noah's locked bolt. The din of their boots echoed painfully in the small airspace between the water's surface and the underside of the bunker floor.

  “We're going to die in here!” she said, her voice rising hysterically. “We're going to drown like rats in a drain!”

  “Not if they shoot us first.”

  As if to underscore his point, a bullet hit the steel over their heads and whined off into the bunker. Agent Larousse barked out something, touching off another argument. Sydney clapped her hands to her ears, her senses overloading with fear.

  All of a sudden, a light switched on. Noah had found a row of waterproof flashlights hanging from pegs under the floor. He grabbed a second light and pressed it into Sydney's hand.

  “How are you at holding your breath?” he asked.

  Sydney's eyes bugged out. She had thought that she couldn't be more terrified, but if she understood what he was proposing . . .

  “I am not swimming under this water! No way.”

  The idea of swimming straight down in that vertical shaft took her panic right over the edge. The water was so murky that a flashlight would be almost useless, and there was no way of knowing how long they'd be under—or if they would ever come up. Sydney's breathing went ragged; her body quaked out of control. Noah cupped her cheek with one wet hand, trying to force her to meet his gaze.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “This is the only way out.”

  “You don't know that!” she flung back. “You don't know where this chute goes, or if it even goes anywhere!”

  Her feet thrashed wildly back and forth, still nothing but water beneath them
.

  “These flashlights must be here for a reason,” he said. “And I like my odds underwater a lot better than up there with those guys.”

  The trapdoor strained at its bolt again, more significantly this time. One of the agents had found a pry bar to leverage through the ring handle.

  Noah stripped off her backpack and jacket, dropping them before she could argue. She felt a tug on her utility belt and it fell away too, yanking her transmitter earpiece down with it.

  “What are you doing?” she cried, grasping futilely at her sinking gear. Her gun slipped out of her fumbling fingers and was lost with everything else. Only the waterproof flashlight bobbed back up to the surface.

  “You can't swim with all that weight,” he said.

  “I'm not swimming!” she screamed fearfully.

  He pointed his flashlight at her face, staring as if astonished. Then his brown eyes narrowed coldly.

  “You're swimming,” he told her. “This isn't a negotiation.”

  She shook her head determinedly, tears streaming down her face.

  He tightened his grip on her cheek. “If you stay here, you'll die. They're going to get that trapdoor open and kill you. Now dive.”

  “No.”

  “No?” His expression became so angry she had to look away.

  “I can't,” she whimpered. “I won't.”

  For a moment the only sounds were pounding boots and the prying overhead. Then Noah let go of her face.

  “Suit yourself,” he said, disgusted. “I don't have time for this rookie crap.”

  He dove, both he and his beam of light disappearing at the same time.

  Sydney was left behind, alone in total darkness. Her groping hands recovered the floating flash- light, but several seconds passed before she rallied enough to switch it on. Reaching up over her head, she fingered the trapdoor bolt. If she were to open the door and surrender, would they kill her anyway?

  A stinging barrage of bullets thundered down on the steel door. She snatched back her smarting hand, any thought of surrendering now abandoned. They would kill her—and probably torture her first. Noah had been right; swimming underwater was her only chance. But for her, underwater was no chance at all. Lowering her flashlight beneath the surface, Sydney shone it straight down. Its beam was all but swallowed up, barely illuminating her kicking feet in the darkness that swirled around them. She was choking back sobs as she drew her last breath and forced herself to sink, the light dangling uselessly from her wrist.

  The freezing black water closed over her head, extinguishing her last hope. She couldn't see, couldn't think. Above her was a small army of gun-toting K-Directorate; below her, darkness and certain death. She was paralyzed by fear.

  Suddenly, a hand reached up and grabbed her, pulling her down, down, down, ignoring her feeble attempts to kick. Her final gasp of air burned in her lungs. In less than a minute, she'd have to breathe. Reflex would force her mouth open, and she'd suck down water instead of air. To die like this, in a foreign country, unknown and unclaimed . . . in the dark . . .

  Another hand grabbed her wrist, the one that held the forgotten flashlight, and pointed it to a spot directly in front of her—a horizontal connecting tunnel.

  Sydney snapped to her senses. Noah had found a way out! He was shining his own light on his face now, motioning for her to follow him into the tunnel. She did, kicking for all she was worth.

  The beam of her flashlight barely pierced the murky water in front of her. Bits of black goop floated past her face, stirred up by Noah's passing. The tunnel walls seemed to be closing in. Was the passage really getting narrower, or was it only claustrophobia? She kept her eyes straight ahead and kicked, fighting to control her churning mind. Either she'd reach the way out now or she'd drown trying—she had gone too far to swim back.

  Suddenly the tunnel walls fell away. She and Noah emerged into a huge open area. The water was less cloudy here, and Sydney trained her light upward, following Noah's kicking feet. He was heading for the surface! She could see a row of shimmering lights like blurry halos above him. Her lungs were exploding. Her legs felt like lead. But she was so close now. . . .

  Her head burst through the surface as she inhaled, breathing in water as well as air. She choked and coughed, but barely noticed.

  Somehow she'd just emerged in the Seine.

  “You okay?” Noah asked, slapping her on the back. “You breathing?”

  She nodded mutely, still looking around in wonder.

  “I'm sorry, but you made me do that.”

  “Thank you,” she gasped past the lump in her throat.

  The Paris lights were so achingly beautiful. They twinkled all around her like something from a dream. She found herself crying again, the tears running down her face unheeded. There was no cold, no wet, no mission . . . just an overwhelming happiness that she was alive to see this moment.

  She had made it. She had survived.

  She was just turning back to Noah when something slapped the water inches from their heads.

  A bullet.

  13

  “DIVE!” NOAH SAID, PUSHING her back under.

  Sydney barely had time to grab a breath before they were off again, frog-kicking two feet beneath the surface of the Seine. Noah dropped his flashlight and she did the same, needing both hands more than the light now. When they came up again, they had traveled a long way toward the center of the river.

  “Sydney!” Noah hissed. “Keep your head down and drift with the current. When we get to the other bank, we'll look for someplace safe to climb out.”

  She gave a single nod, took a deep breath, and dove, just moments before more bullets smacked into the water around her. They sliced through the shallows, trailing bubbles in their wakes, but in the aftermath of her swim through the tunnel, she regarded them with a strange sense of calm. Maybe she had already faced her worst fear, or maybe her body simply didn't have any adrenaline left. Either way, the woman swimming down the Seine now, surfacing only for short, measured breaths, was not the same girl who had been paralyzed by terror back at the fashion house.

  She felt set free, at peace with herself and with whatever happened. And even if her sense of well-being didn't last, some instinct told her that fear would never have quite the same hold on her again. She kept track of Noah, but didn't panic when she occasionally lost him in the dark. For the first time in her life she truly believed that she could take care of herself.

  “That looks like a good spot,” Noah whispered the next time they came up together.

  They had drifted far downstream and crossed all but the last twenty feet of the river. The area Noah pointed to was low and unlit, allowing for an easy climb out and, hopefully, a stealthy getaway.

  “Where do you think the shooter is?” Sydney whispered back as they breaststroked quietly to shore. No shots had been fired for several minutes, and she dared to hope they had lost their pursuer instead of simply swimming out of range.

  “I doubt there's only one,” he replied. “If I were Larousse, I'd put at least two people on tracking us down. Even so, they're going to have to cross a bridge, then double back to get here. I plan to be gone by then.”

  He pulled himself onto the deserted bank and turned to offer a hand to Sydney, but she was already right behind him.

  “I'm freezing,” she said, her hair and clothes streaming water down to the pavement. “And we stick out like drenched rats.”

  “Worse than that, we're going to leave a wet trail. Too bad it isn't raining.”

  Noah took off at a trot, and Sydney followed gladly, too cold to stand still. Their shoes squished and oozed water as they ran, but Sydney was glad she hadn't kicked hers off in the river, the way they'd taught her at summer camp. In a life-or-death situation, a swimmer could reduce drag that way, but she'd known that if she lived, she would end up running.

  Besides, we lost everything else, she thought, tailing Noah down a dark side street. Both backpacks, our guns, all our tools . . .<
br />
  The only things she had left were in the money belt around her waist: cash, her passport, and her SD-6 telephone—assuming it still worked after that dunking.

  Noah changed direction again, darting down a different, even darker street. Sydney's breathing came faster, but she stayed behind him easily, grateful for her years of track. They leaped a fence, cut through someone's property, then jumped a wall on the other side. In this part of the city there wasn't much greenery, making good hiding places scarce.

  Their wet clothes and hair gradually stopped dripping as they ran, scaling additional walls and doubling back to confuse any would-be pursuers. Sydney was totally lost long before Noah led her down an especially narrow street and stopped in the sheltering alcove of a dark doorway.

  He bent over his heaving rib cage, more out of breath than she. “Well,” he gasped at last. “That was fun.”

  Sydney eased her head out of the alcove and peered both ways down the street. “I don't see anyone following us.”

  “No. We ran a pretty good pattern. They'd need a dog or dumb luck to find us now.” He took a deep breath and straightened up. “Never rule out luck. We can't stay here long.”

  “What do we do next?”

  “Good question.”

  “You mean you don't know?” she blurted out.

  “This one isn't in the manual, all right? Just give me a couple of minutes.”

  She waited silently while Noah thought, each second excruciating. She hadn't much liked his in-charge attitude, but seeing him without a plan was worse. Especially when she didn't have one either.

  “Okay,” he finally said. “Let's look at what we know, and what we can guess. I'm assuming Larousse was driving the boat that chased us. While we were at the cemetery, she caught another boat downriver and beat us to the fashion house arsenal by swimming in through the underwater tunnel.”

  Sydney nodded. “That makes sense. She was wet, and so was the floor.”

  “But once she found me, she knew security was breached, so she called in her reinforcements.”

  “What do you think they're doing right now?”

  “Desperately looking for us,” he said grimly. “We know their fashion house is a front to run guns and launder the proceeds. That's not news K-Directorate is going to want spread around.”