by Sable Jordan
A long pause from Sumi as her eyes floated closed. She dabbed at the corners with the tissue, inhaled a shaky breath and spoke again. “I went to the party hoping to find a temporary Master, but She saw me, threatened me—”
“She was there?” Kizzie cut in.
Xander held up his hand. “Her name?”
“Mistress,” Sumi answered plainly. Xander pulled in a slow breath. “Mistress Shinari.”
He made the translation: Resistant to being bent. The word that appeared on the shoulder of the two dead women, and on the shoulder of this woman on the couch. First name? Real name?
“She was born…Fay.” Sumi slapped her hand to her mouth, as though surprised by her betrayal.
“Surname?” If Kizzie was right, it’d be Ohayashi, and Xander hoped she was. It would make her that much easier to find.
“I’ve never known.” Sumi shook her head. “She plans…” More pausing, more trembling chin and cheeks.
“Get it out, or get out,” Xander said, tired of the stalling. “I don’t have all night.”
“You promised I could shoot her,” Kizzie reminded, tone just north of dead serious. “Twice…” Phil’s chuckle from the doorway morphed into a cough.
“She…she plans to use it.”
Kizzie stiffened beside him. “What’s the target?”
“She plans to use the bomb,” Sumi repeated somewhat hysterical now. Her sniffling increased, and her voice rose. “I swear I didn’t know… I tried to make her see reason.”
“When and where?”
Sumi continued as though she didn’t hear. “Sir, that’s why she—”
Kizzie flew from the armrest and Xander hooked her elbow. In one swift move he pulled the gun from her waistband and tugged her down until her knee hit the floor. “Sit,” —to Sumi—“She’ll kill you because you want to stop her from harming your fellow human beings?”
She nodded earnestly.
Xander looked to Phil; Phil looked to Xander.
And then they both laughed.
“It’s true!”
“For all I know, she sent you in here the same way she sent you into Sacha’s.” Xander paused thoughtfully, touching the barrel of the gun to his temple. “Pick a number, five to twenty, Sumi.”
Those wide eyes blinked again. “S-seven, Sir.”
“Didn’t give yourself much time at all…” He tsked. “Start talking, and quick. ‘Cause when I get to zero, I’m gonna kill you myself.” The smile dropped and he raised the SIG, aiming at her head. “Seven…”
Sumi’s eyes bulged, then her face crumpled. “Please, Sir, I…I…” In a panic, she turned toward Phil, perhaps hoping to find some help there. “You’re the only one—”
“Six…”
“—who can stop her. She’s afraid of you, Sir.”
That “Sir” was really starting to wear on Xander’s nerves.
“Five…” He always kept the pistol decocked, so all he had to do was pull the trigger. Was anyone in the room behind Sumi? The bullet might pass through her skull and keep going…
“Papa Nikolay said to give it to you. Said it was yours. But she never—”
“Four…”
Kizzie rolled to her knees and moved away to be out of range of the loud retort.
“She killed Akari. Killed Chiho. She’d kill us all to keep her secret safe. Fay’s—” Sumi hiccupped, breathing hitched, nose runny and face red with tears. She opened her mouth, giving Xander an even wider target than the spot between her eyes. “Please, believe me. I know you are a dangerous man. I wouldn’t–”
“That,” Xander tipped his head toward Phil, “is a dangerous man.” His voice came out so dark even he didn’t recognize it. “I’m a savage.
“Three…”
Sumi begged again, shifting from English to Japanese to Russian. Xander had to strain to make out the rapid-fire speech. “Kanojo wa anata no osorete! I wouldn’t lie! Pover’te mne! She’s afraid of you because—”
“Two….”
“—You’re a Yūrei! A Privideniye! She always said! Vsegda!” Sumi threw her arms over her head and curled forward until her face met her knees. “Please, don’t kill me! I don’t want to die!”
Counting gave way to silence.
Thick silence.
Eerie silence—a stillness that belied Xander’s busy mind as he connected dots he didn’t know existed. Save the clenched jaw, he was the picture of calm. But Nikolay Sokoviev better be damn glad he was already dead. Whatever torture he might have endured at Sacha’s hands would’ve been a mercy compared to what Xander wanted to do to the bastard.
Frightened, dark eyes lifted enough to peek at him. “She said—”
Xander shook his head, stopping Sumi’s groveling. He felt Kizzie’s curious gaze on him, knew she had a ton of questions he couldn’t answer. He glanced at Phil, not the least bit surprised at the smirk on the man’s face.
Tied hands.
Xander needed Harvey—he had a buyer to please and a reputation to protect.
He wanted Kizzie. Really wanted her. But she was too good an agent to let him keep the nuke.
It’d be a risk, a huge risk, but now there was only one way he might get both.
Xander slowly lowered the pistol and pushed out of the chair. “Pack up, Phil. We’re out.”
“Out?” Kizzie hopped up from the floor, annoyed at being disarmed and wondering why Xander went from murderous to indifferent in a blink. “The hell d’you me—” He shot her a look that made her ass ache. “Sir, can I speak to you in private?”
Xander turned toward the door. “Phil?”
“What do you want me to do with the girl?” Phil asked, getting to his feet.
“Sir, I really need to—”
“I’d never interrupt my Master,” Sumi whispered between sniffles, as though helping a friend cheat on a test. “A submissive should be seen, not heard.”
“Absolutely right. And Gigi knows I don’t reward bratty behavior. I’ll have to start keeping your ball gag in my pocket again,” Xander added morosely, hand coming down vice-like on the back of Kizzie’s neck. “I’ll have to improvise.” He fiddled with the button of his slacks and Phil sniggered, shaking his head as he escorted Sumi from the room.
The door closed and Kizzie shook off Xander’s hold. His chuckle was like a screeching cat sharpening its claws on violin strings. “You think this is funny?”
“What happened to ‘Sir?’” Xander frowned, buttoning his shirt. “And it’s hard to take you seriously with the pigtails.” She growled and unfastened the clips holding the lavender wig to her head, yanked it off and tossed it aside.
“The outfit is sort of distracting, too?” Xander added, sounding hopeful.
Her nostrils flared. By some miracle Sumi was in their care. Now was not the time for his games. “What are—”
“Would you really have shot me to get to her?” He pressed the heel of his hand to his chest and rubbed small circles over his heart. “With my own gun?”
She opened her mouth to speak, checked herself. “Don’t make me answer that.”
A grin slid across his face. “You wouldn’t have shot me.” He slipped his hand into the loose brown hair at her nape, sending a shiver over her.
“I need you to expl—”
“Could’ve stopped at ‘you.’” He searched her face, lingered on her mouth before he sighed. “No, you couldn’t have, could you? All work and no play—”
“Makes Kizzie a damn good agent,” she finished, proud her voice didn’t wobble.
“And that means something to you, doesn’t it, Princess?”
Something? Of course it meant something. It was what she did, who she was. Be a good agent crawled like ticker tape along the bottom edge of her mind.
Xander brushed his knuckles along her cheek. “Is that the only thing that means something to you?”
She swallowed down feelings primed before Sumi’s appearance, forced some steel into her husky tone. “This isn’t
a game.”
“Couldn’t be more wrong, Agent Baldwin.” Head shaking, he released her and went to sit at the table. Resting his SIG on the tabletop, Xander pulled her Beretta from his waistband and thumbed the button on the side with obvious ease. The magazine dropped into his palm and he set it in front of the chair opposite his. Tugging back the slide ejected the unspent cartridge and he deftly caught it, positioned it near the rest.
“You should have this cleaned. I don’t like the way the slide hitches.” The gun went beside its efficiently dismantled components and he leaned back in the chair. Then he spoke again, voice dispassionate. “What’s so urgent you interrupted your Master?”
“Harvey.”
“Obviously.”
“What do you mean you’re out?” Kizzie went over to the table and reloaded her gun, vowing to keep from killing him.
“I told you, Harvey was mine to sell. Sumi’s Mistress is planning to use it so I can’t very well sell it, now can I? Which means I’m out. Better this way, really. Now you and I won’t have to fight over who gets it.” A pause. “You’re more than welcome to come with me, Kizzie.”
“Help me stop her.”
His deep laugh filled the room. “Saving the world’s not at the top of my to-do list. Actually,” he muttered, “it’s not on my list at all.”
“You’re in for six million.”
“I’ll make it back.”
Shrugging at a six million dollar loss? Kizzie wasn’t buying his aloof attitude. She didn’t know him well, but Xander wasn’t the apathetic type. “You feel no moral obligation—”
“My moral compass is only right when I’m walking south, Princess. It’s ‘right’ a lot.” He gave her a lopsided smile. “You’re not surprised. You’ve got a dossier on me, know what I’m capable of. I wouldn’t have thought twice about putting a bullet in Sumi’s head.”
“But you didn’t.” She sank into the chair carefully, the press of the hard seat a reminder of his heavy hand. “What does that mean, what she said? ‘Yūrei… Privideniye.’ She called you a…phantom, and you stopped.”
“Told you before, torturing people makes them say anything. They’re focused on not dying. Sumi would have named me king of all that is holy to keep from eating lead. Now, tell me what your problem is.”
Kizzie took a controlled breath. “We don’t know where this Fay/Shinari person will detonate Harvey. Don’t know her motives, don’t know what this is about yet. But let’s say this bomb goes off someplace outside of the U.S. Given the advanced technology you claim it now has, who do you think is gonna have the finger pointed at them?”
“America.” He shrugged.
“And if it goes off in America?” He paused as if thinking it over and she answered for him. “It doesn’t frickin’ matter. They bomb us, we bomb them—with something bigger and nastier. Suicide. If this thing is what you say it is…if this thing happens, it’s a pebble dropped into a lake.
“Harvey is the opening line to a movie I don’t want to see, and it might start there, but how long before we’re at Nagasaki all over again? Everywhere. Your cutesy little picnic bomb could very well lead to the last world war, ‘cause once the dust settles there won’t be anybody left to push a button.”
Xander lifted his hands, palms connecting repeatedly. The patronizing clapping set her teeth on edge.
“While I’m moved by your patriotic speech, I’m still not tracking. Harvey’s out there,” he extended his arm toward the window, “you’re aware of its potential. Call in your white hats and save the day. What do you need me for?”
She leaned back in her chair and sighed. “I’ve called it in—did it when I first left Oman. There’s no chatter on Harvey. There’s no record of a Project Harvey ever being green-lit.”
“If we didn’t build it, it doesn’t exist. And if it doesn’t exist, it’s not a threat.” Kizzie bobbed her head, happy he was beginning to catch on. “Connolly?”
Connolly wasn’t an option, not until she had something concrete. He’d have her hide if he knew she wasn’t sipping martinis and getting sand in uncomfortable places. If it took losing her job to stop this bomb, she’d do it in a heartbeat, but she wouldn’t drag Connolly in unless she was certain. Which left Fletcher, who was deliberately avoiding her and therefore not an option either.
Which left Kizzie.
And, hopefully, Xander.
She kept her face neutral. “I can’t go through my official channels on this, but then, I think you know that.”
Xander’s brow creased. “He doesn’t know you’re here, does he? With me?” A combination of discovery and hope colored his tone. “You trust my word more than the man you’ve known your entire career?”
“No,” Kizzie said. “I trust my gut. The only reason I’m off-grid with a half-assed story culled from a rank-and-file member of the ICBG is because I trust my gut.”
He rubbed his thumb across his lip, lust in his eyes. “Before Sumi showed up, were you trusting your gut?”
She wet her lips. This was why agents didn’t get emotionally involved with a target. When it came time to make the hard decisions, the “involved” agent inevitably hesitated.
Kizzie wouldn’t be that agent.
“I don’t have anything specific to give them—no when or where. You’re a smart guy, Xander. Without details I’m not gonna nudge the needle on the threat level. It’ll get logged and lost in a pile of memos. Harvey explodes and then there’s the 24-hour news loop about how the attack could have been prevented.”
The indifferent chocolate gaze didn’t budge.
“Of course,” Kizzie said, a decided shift in her tone, “my other option is to give you up as my source, which will get back to Connolly and superiors nastier than he is. And then they’ll want to know why I didn’t bring you in; why I didn’t bring you down.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Who says I won’t? The shit’s hip-high, Xander, and rising fast. You, Phil, the pretty wife-sub tucked away in Paris…” His eyes narrowed there and she scored a point for herself. “Threats to national security. Right now I’m more use to you as a quasi-ally than an enemy. However”—a pause for effect—“If you want, I can be that enemy.”
“Asking for help and threatening me in the same breath. I see why Connolly keeps you around. Very intimidating, Prin—”
“Don’t mock me, Xander. The only person with info is that crazy little puppet out there, and the only alpha she’s willing to talk to is you. Which buys your ass some time.” She stood and pressed her palms onto the tabletop. “So go smack the crap out of her, tie her up, play pin the tail on the subbie—I don’t care. Do whatever your inner Dom has to, but get me that info.”
Xander chuckled again, angering her further. “You really think you’re running this, huh? What happens if I don’t—”
“Said it yourself…I’m scary good with a blade, Duquesne,” Kizzie said, voice deceptively soft. “And it’s not as hard as you think. Doesn’t stay with you that long either.”
“There’s one critical point you’ve missed: no profit in peace.” It was his turn to stand, moving so close she had to tilt her head back to stare into his eyes. “War does nothing but fill my pockets. So whether Harvey goes off in Iran or America or Australia,” he shrugged, “I bank either way.”
Kizzie shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”
“Your call. I’m touched you think I have some redeeming qualities, but… maybe I don’t. Maybe I do what I do to get paid and it’s as simple as that.”
She blew a derisive laugh through her nose. “Money. The whole goddamned world is chasing money. All these really rich people who are nowhere near happy.”
“Did I say I want happy? I don’t even know what that is.” He stared her in the eyes, voice hardening. “What’s personal between us is personal between us, Kizzie. That’s not gonna change. But since we’re back on the business side, adding in the ‘untidy bits’—back to you being an impatient agent and me the
ruthless criminal—last warning. I’m not usually one of the good guys, Princess. Believe me.”
Xander brushed past her and headed into the bedroom, leaving Kizzie standing in the common area to contend with her anger. Why was she fighting this so hard? Her gut said don’t trust him, same way it said don’t trust delivery boys or blue-haired old ladies. But it also said this man—the same man who wanted to make love to her, had kissed her like she was the most precious part of his universe—wasn’t as heartless as he claimed.
Maybe she just didn’t want him to be.
She should walk away from this, believe—
“So what was Zlata, then?” Kizzie marched through the double doors. Xander was at the closet, starting to pull clothes from the hangers. He stopped and faced her. “Business or personal? ‘Cause you didn’t have to help her, but I asked you to and you did. Phil told me you set her up somewhere Sacha Sokoviev’s men could never find her. But Sacha and his men are dead…” Her voice took on an accusatory tone. “I wonder who killed them.”
“Zlata was…” Xander exhaled audibly, set the clothes back on the rack. “She didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Why, then?” Kizzie asked, poking at the small chink in his armor. “You’re Master Don’t Give a Damn About the World. Why not leave her behind when the crap hit the fan? Why not leave me behind, huh? You could’ve let me die in that dungeon. You knew who I was, who I work for. ”
“I needed you to get Harvey.”
“Bull, Duquesne. You could’ve done it without me then, same way you could do it without me now,” Kizzie fired, hardly taking a breath. She took the step needed to completely close the gap between them. “I was gone…. Halfway around the world doing what I do and then you called me back—”
“And you came.”
Three little words sucked the wind right out of her sails, the implication hitting harder than a horse kick to the head.