Dying Commitment (Lucky Thirteen)

by S. M. Butler

  I stopped, taking in the implications of what he was saying. “Who is she?”

  “My daughter. She’s seventeen now. That picture’s from before…” He frowned and slapped his hand over it, pulling it back toward him. He slipped it back in his wallet. “I see her as often as I want to, as long as I do my job.”

  “Killing people for Alex Giroux?”

  Just when you thought someone couldn’t become any more of a monster, they took another step off the deep end. Alex Giroux was holding a kid, a teenager, to control her father. I didn’t even know that Jack had a kid.

  This put a whole new spin on things, and I didn’t like it. Five years of hate were melting away and I didn’t like it. I wanted that hate, that anger. I wanted to hold it close and never let it go.

  A small sardonic smile flittered across his face before it vanished. “I didn’t show you her so you could feel bad for me, Cady. But I do want you know that I was not the monster you thought I was.”

  “Was?”

  “I’ve become the monster I had to be, to save her.” He shook his head. “She doesn’t know everything. She’s well-treated.”

  He cleared his throat. “Now, here’s the problem I have now. Alex wants the information on this laptop. He’s had his best guys on it, and nothing. I need you to open it up.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t do that.”

  “This needs to happen, sweet pea. You know what I’ll do to achieve the goal.”

  “He had her before? When you shot me?” I asked, calmly.

  He nodded. “You were supposed to die. I got the drive with the information on SEAL Team Thirteen.”

  “But I didn’t die.”

  “Nope. You didn’t. And you laid a trap in the files.”

  I grinned at him. “Found my present, did you?”

  “Managed to copy about half the information before the drive fried.” That was why the files on the team had been incomplete when we’d recovered Marie’s laptop. Because he’d triggered the fail safe trying to crack my encryption.

  “Aww, that’s too bad.”

  “Unlock the laptop.”

  “No.”

  “Cady, don’t make me do something that’s going to hurt you.”

  “Don’t act like you give a shit about hurting me. You’re not getting anything from me.”

  He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose tightly. “Change your mind, Cady. Change it, and this will all go away.”

  Slowly, I turned my head side to side, keeping my eyes on his.

  He stood up. “Please, Cady. I don’t want to do this. Last time. Unlock the laptop.”

  “I will die a second time before I give you information that will let you kill men that have families and wives. Men I consider friends.”

  “Oh, Cady…Killing you was never in the plan. Not this time.”

  He strode over to the door and pulled it open. The two goons were outside. “Take her to the basement.”

  “Aren’t we in the basement?”

  “There’s a second one below us. Soundproof.” Because of course there was a second basement. There was always a second basement. When I met Jack’s eyes, as his goons came over and pulled me from my seat, they had turned cold and hard, but even with that wall of ice, I could see the regret deep within them.

  ~*~*~

  Metal chairs were uncomfortable. Especially when you were tied down to one. I was woozy, mostly because they’d injected me with something, and it kept making me tired. My vision spun if I moved too much, even if it was just my head. Not that I could move too much. My hands were tied to the arms of the chair and my legs were strapped to chair legs there too.

  Jack leaned over me, searching my eyes. “How we feeling, Cady?”

  I flicked my eyes over to where he was, though he wasn’t too far from me anyway. “I feel… you’re an asshole.”

  He chuckled, but it echoed inside my head. “Good. You’re learning. I gave you a nice little un-inhibitor, sweet pea. It won’t hurt you, but you’ll start talking a whole lot more soon. Then we can find out all about what’s on the laptop, okay?”

  “Hate you.”

  “Understandable. If I were you, I’d hate me too.” He pulled up a chair and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “Your eyes are a little dilated. Not enough juice, I don’t think. We have a few minutes, so let’s get another dose inside you and then I think we can get started.”

  “You don’t have to do this. We could rescue her.” I could hear my own breathing like I was wearing headphones.

  Jack didn’t meet my eyes. Instead, he busied himself with readying another needle. “Look at you, all ready to talk… too bad it’s about things that are already settled and done.”

  I blinked to clear my vision and tried to focus on him again. “I’m serious. Thirteen could help you.”

  “What makes you think that I’m not happy? Maybe it started out as me trying to keep my daughter safe. Maybe I was altruistic there. But maybe I became the monster Alex needed me to be and liked it enough to stay. It’s been five years Cady. I’m not the same guy.”

  “I know you, Jack,” I said, my mouth tingling. It was getting harder to speak without slurring. “You weren’t a bad man. I don’t think you are now.”

  He flicked at the vein in my elbow. “Yeah, you’re giving me too much credit.” The needle plunged into my arm. I hissed as the contents emptied out into my blood. Within seconds, I couldn’t even see straight anymore. My body broke out in a sweaty mess.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them wide. My chest felt tight.

  “What’s your name, darling?”

  “You know my name.” The words ran together even to my ears.

  “Humor me.”

  “Cadence Long.”

  “What’s your occupation?”

  I blinked, but all the colors in the room were blurring together like a wet watercolor. “I work for Lucky Thirteen.”

  “Really? Now that’s interesting, Cady. What happened to the NSA?”

  “I got fired,” I said flatly. I scanned the room, or I tried to. I wasn’t really listening to what Jack was saying. I turned my head back to him, almost in rag doll fashion. “Looking for yoooooou.”

  “What do you do for Lucky Thirteen now?”

  “Stuff. Computer stuff.” I nodded and instantly regretted it. My vision swam around, all the colors and lines of the room swirling together like a Van Gogh. I was glad I was sitting because I would have face planted. “Stuff is a funny word. St-Uff. Stu-ff.” I giggled and turned my head to face Jack. “I don’t like you. I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Yeah, I bet you don’t.” He sighed. “What are you working on for Lucky Thirteen now?”

  “Screw you,” I said, and then burst into giggles. That was a funny word too. Ska-rooo. Skcroooo. I repeated it out loud a few times, paying attention to the way my lips formed the “ooo” sound.

  “Cady… this is important.”

  Important? What was important? I shrugged and kept making the “ooo” movement with my mouth.

  “You’re playing with me. I get it. You’ve always had a high tolerance for drugs.” He sighed. “I don’t want to have to get the big guns out. I don’t want to hurt you, Cady.”

  “And yet,” I paused in my “ooo” game for a moment of seriousness. “That’s all you seem to do.” I wiggled in the chair and forced myself to concentrate on Jack’s face, even though if I didn’t keep it tight, my vision would start to swirl again. I wasn’t immune to the effects of the drug in my system. I just refused to lose control. “I don’t think you really like what you do. I think you’ve given up. And that’s sad, too.”

  Jack picked up another syringe and held it out toward me. “Do you know what this is?”

  The amber liquid had a little bit of a blue-ish reflection. Only one drug I knew of had that kind of iridescence. This wasn’t good.

  “This is kalozine.”

  Fuck. I’d underestimated Jack and his determ
ination to get the job done. One would have thought I would know better by now. I shook my head as he cleaned off my arm with an antiseptic wipe. “Don’t, Jack.”

  “So, you’re going to help me unlock the computer?”

  I glanced at the laptop on the table, and then back at the syringe. I’d never experienced kalozine before. I’d seen it used. The US didn’t use it because it was brutal. It altered perceptions in the brain, made you think your whole body was burning with pain even though it wasn’t.

  “No.”

  “Then I guess neither of us have any more to talk about.”

  “No, Jack, don’t!” The needle plunged into my skin and he emptied the contents. Cold was the first thing I felt, though I wasn’t sure if that was the result of the drug. I also wasn’t sure how long the drug took to get through my blood stream. I had a fast metabolism. It was all the working out I did. Which meant I didn’t have long before that burning sensation would start.

  Jack stood up and tossed the syringe in the wastebasket by the table. He smoothed his jacket out and shrugged it on. “You know what the best part of kalozine is?”

  The pressure started at the base of my head, right by my spine. “What’s that?”

  “I don’t even have to break a sweat.”

  The guy he called Gene came in the room, and whispered something in his ear. Jack frowned. “Take care of it.”

  “It’s the kid. The one with her.” Gene pointed at me. My body began to tremble as my blood started pumping harder and harder, pushing the kalozine through my system. Sweat broke out over my skin.

  Dylan. He was here? Why? Why was he here when I was doing everything to make sure he didn’t come? Seriously, was he insane? Oh, crap. He’d been tracking me with that damn chip. And then it would have gone offline and Dylan being Dylan, he would have investigated.

  Jack swiveled around so he could see me. He grinned. “You know what? Don’t kill him. Bring him here.”

  Shit. Things just got half a fuckton worse.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Dylan

  According Cady’s last known location, she was supposed to be here. The neon sign outside said the Atrix was the name of this place. I frowned and sat down on the park bench, which was about a hundred feet from the entrance of the restaurant.

  It said she was there, but it’d had gone dark about three hours ago.

  I pulled out my phone and dialed, impatiently waiting for Murphy to answer. Were they still in the air? For commercial airlines, it was a eighteen hour flight, maybe more with layovers, but for the new jets Lucky Thirteen had in its arsenal, it would only be half as long.

  “Yeah?” Murphy’s voice was a welcome sound.

  “I think I found her. There’s a restaurant here. The signal stops here.”

  “We’re getting off the plane now. We still have to get permission from the royal council to enter Valonia proper. It’s going to be at least an hour.”

  “That’s too much time!” I told him. “What if she’s in trouble?”

  “What’s the place?”

  “Atrix.”

  It was quiet, but I heard the barely audible “shit” come through the phone.

  “What is it?”

  Murphy sighed. “Atrix. Addison mentioned that restaurant a lot in the briefings. Alex Giroux owns it.”

  “Shit,” I echoed. “She went in there. She knew, didn’t she?”

  “I’d guess she went straight for the source. Listen, Urban. Give us an hour to get to you. We’ll do some recon and figure out a plan, okay?” I swallowed hard. An hour. She’d be in there for an hour, on her own, without backup. After three hours of silence already.

  What the hell had she been thinking? It wasn’t as if she was an unknown. Her face was all over the files we’d recovered from Marie Giroux’s laptop three years ago, and the computers we’d taken from the raid on Alex Giroux’s house last year where we’d found Addison Hardy. They knew her, and they knew that she had a lot of knowledge on them.

  “Dylan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We have to be careful here. This is Valonia, not Aruguay. We can’t just throw our collective weight around.”

  “Come when you can. I’m going to scout out the perimeter.” I clicked off the phone before he could protest, because I knew he would. Then I powered it down, and shoved it into my pocket.

  Careful to remain inconspicuous, I walked around the restaurant toward the back alley. I knew Cadence well enough that I knew she had gone in the front. She was like a bulldozer most days, but when she had her mind set to something, her determination was like a fucking wrecking ball.

  At the back end of the restaurant, in the alley, there were three doors. Two were single doors, meant for foot traffic in and out of the place. One opened a lot, mostly kitchen workers coming out to toss the trash or to smoke a cigarette. One never did. It probably went to an office or something. The third door was for a delivery truck, bigger, and one of those that rolled up instead of side hinges.

  I kept walking, not wanting to call attention to myself. But as I neared the corner of the building, a change in the air alerted me to something wrong. But I wasn’t fast enough. A gun pressed to my temple. “I’m sorry, sir. This area is off limits to the public.”

  The man was large, covered from neck to toe in tattoos, brightly colored and mostly offensive in subject matter. Anywhere his skin showed, there was a tattoo showing. His dark suit covered most of his body, except his head, which conveniently was the only place he didn’t have tats.

  His eyes burned into mine as he stepped closer and out into the open. He had about six inches in height on me, and maybe sixty pounds. “Sorry, I must have taken a wrong turn. Tell me, where’s the national park?”

  Tattoo Guy’s eyes narrowed considerably. I smiled. Then I grabbed the wrist holding the gun, and slammed it on my knee, knocking the weapon from his hand. I continued to pull his arm forward, causing him to lose his balance. As he fell forward, I slammed my knee into the soft part of his side, just below his ribs. He groaned, but didn’t fall to the ground like I expected. Instead, he twisted his body and tackled me to the ground.

  We rolled, both of us trying to get the upper hand on the other. We struggled until he managed to get a punch across my jaw. My head snapped to the side, and the force of the blow sent me face down on the pavement. He took advantage, wrapping a beefy arm around my neck and pulling back.

  I grabbed at his arm, trying to knock it loose, but he was too good, too strong. I couldn’t knock him loose. Dark blooms threatened to take me over, my body weakening as the airflow cut off. I dug my fingernails into his arm and pulled, but he wasn’t giving at all.

  Slowly, the darkness crept in, taking over my consciousness. But just before the darkness closed in on me, an image of Cady as she had been the night before, beautiful and naked, her mouth slightly parted in ecstasy, fell like a veil over my eyes. And then even she was gone.

  ~*~*~

  Cadence

  Hours passed in a blurring of pain and disorientation. The pain was just to limber me up, so I’d be off guard when the other stuff started working. Five years ago, that technique probably would have worked. I would have broken. But hell, five years ago, I was barely out of the academy. There was a lifetime between who I was now and who I used to be.

  Jack tried what he could. I could see the frustration building in him, even though it felt like there was a frosted glass separating us. He wasn’t getting what he wanted from me, what Alex Giroux wanted from me. I wasn’t sure how long it had been since we’d started. After the kalozine wore off, he’d asked me questions again, to see if I’d limbered up any.

  Pretty soon, he leaned back. “I think you need a break for a bit. If I give you anything more, you’ll probably pass out on me anyway.” I just glared at him, or I thought I did. The muscles in my face weren’t exactly cooperating the way I needed them to at the moment. That point in Forrest Gump, where he runs and runs and runs… I felt like I’d jus
t finished that run. I was exhausted, and my entire body was limp-noodled.

  He untied my legs, and paused as he looked up at me. I wanted to kick him, but I just didn’t have the energy to even lift my leg at that point. “I wish it was as easy as getting my daughter, Cady. I really do. But it’s not. Not anymore.” I just stayed silent, the fury swirling about more than my vision was. He untied both my hands next. As soon as the second one was free, I lunged at him, and swung my fist at his face.

  I was too slow, though, my reflexes tempered by exhaustion. He grabbed my wrist before it even came close. I had so much of that drug in my system that I couldn’t even stand. I crumpled to the floor, feeling a bit like I’d had too much to drink the night before.

  “I hate seeing you like this, sweet pea.” He shook his head, and roughly hauled my limp body over his shoulder and into the next room. He lowered me carefully to the floor again, my back against the wall. “We’ll continue this conversation later. Cady… Just tell me what I need to know. Then this will all be over.”

  “FuckoffJack,” I slurred, letting my head loll back against the wall.

  “What comes next is going to be painful for you. I have to escalate to get the answers Alex wants. If I don’t give him something, he’ll know.”

  Why did he keep doing that? Warning me that what was next was going to hurt? That he didn’t want to do it? Because regardless of his feelings on the subject, it was happening. I wasn’t going to talk and he was going to do what he did best, which was hurt me. I tried to push myself up to a better sitting position, but it wasn’t working. My arms kept giving out.

  “Get some rest, Cady. I’ll be back for you later.”

  I blinked a few times after he left, trying to rein in the crazy way my vision was moving. He was probably still watching, because even after the interrogation was finished, it wasn’t really finished. What the interviewee did on their own was just as telling as what they did during active interrogation. I slumped against the wall. What Jack said was a reprieve wasn’t really one. It was the passive interrogation, where he watched and hoped that I gave him a clue as to what he wanted to know.