“Down’s easier,” Reichart opined as she slung his arm over her shoulders. Alisha let go a painful chuckle.
“Yeah, that’s why we’re going up. Two floors, c’mon, quick as we can, you sloppy bastard,” she added under her breath.
“I heard that.”
“Shut up and concentrate on walking.” They made it four floors before neither of them had the wind to go farther, Reichart’s steps splaying and going every direction but up.
“Now where?” Reichart asked cheerily as they staggered through the door and leaned on it, both panting. Alisha shot him a look that bordered on laughter.
“Hell if I know. My picklock tools are in my purse in your room.”
“Mmm.” Reichart squinted, leaning toward her heavily. “Hem,” he said after several long seconds. Alisha scowled back at him, then closed her hand on the soft leather jacket she’d nicked from his closet.
“Oh, God bless you. I thought it might have papers in it, that’s why I took it.” She let him go, propping him against the wall, and lifted the coat’s hem, running her fingers around it. Faint stiffness met her search at the kick pleat and she ripped the seam with no compunction, spilling slender wires and a strong stiffer piece into her palm. “Don’t go anywhere,” she ordered, and Reichart gave an evocative snort that made her grin in spite of everything.
It felt like an eternity before the locked door across the hall from the fire stairs clicked open. Alisha’s shoulders dropped in a sudden release of adrenaline and she pushed the door open cautiously, holding her breath.
“It’s empty.” She toed a shoe off to wedge the door open before retreating across the hall to take Reichart’s weight again. In a few seconds they were both inside, the shoe removed, and together they sank down against the inside of the door. Alisha leaned her head back against the wood, breathing deeply through her nose. With endorphins fading, the cut on her stomach throbbed, and dull warmth emanated from a numb upper arm. In a moment she would have to get to her feet again and deal with the injuries. “I’m bleeding all over your nice coat,” she said absently. “Who the hell is that woman?”
Reichart stirred beside her. “Alisha…”
“No.” Alisha giggled, a high, abrupt sound that she cut off. “I’m Alisha. I’m pretty certain that woman isn’t me.” She cut the words off, too, clenching her teeth together. Hysterics, while tempting, would do no good. Reichart shoved himself into more of a sitting position, the effort clearly costing him. Alisha turned her head toward him, as heavy and deliberate a movement as those he was making. “Why was she trying to kill you?”
Reichart, with all the concentration in the world, lifted a hand to Alisha’s face and drew her in for a kiss.
Chapter 18
He had big hands, Alisha recalled distantly. She’d forgotten how his touch against her cheek always made her feel fragile, the brush of his thumb against her cheekbone playing up a delicacy of her own features that she rarely felt otherwise. Like a grip that would hold a bird, she thought, soft and gentle, not threatening or caging in any way.
The kiss lacked the edge of competition that so often marked Reichart’s advances. Warm, hungry, uncertain: vulnerability, Alisha thought, was an unfair card to play. And yet she let herself linger in it, remembering the man’s taste and scent more intimately than she’d allowed herself to for years.
Not until his fingers slid back into her hair did Alisha groan and push him away, opening her eyes again. “Knock it off, Reichart.” She rolled her shoulders forward, making a barricade of her own body against him as she shook her head. “I’m bleeding and you’re stoned. This is really not a good idea.” Stiff not just with pain, but also discomfort at the situation, Alisha pushed away from the door, climbing to her feet. Reichart watched her with an intensity born from drugged thought, needing to focus everything in order to say or do anything.
“What if we weren’t?”
Alisha looked down at him wearily. “What if we weren’t what? Bleeding and stoned? It’d still be a bad idea.” One she would almost certainly give in to. No need to mention that to the man at her feet. Alisha offered her left hand, and Reichart slapped his hand into hers, another too-exaggerated movement. She had to step back and brace herself through the thighs, using the hotel-room floor to ground herself and borrow its strength, to pull him to his feet. Partly her own physical weakness, partly his drug-induced stupor. Well, it was her own fault.
Reichart staggered as he came to his feet, then locked his knees to keep himself from tumbling over again. He let go of Alisha’s hand to put his hands on her waist instead, and her stomach clenched, both in response to the touch and out of fear that the expanse of his hands against her waist would smack the reopened cut there.
“Leesh…” He ducked his head as if to steal another kiss, and misjudged the distance. Their foreheads collided, white spots exploding in Alisha’s vision. She laughed, a startled sound of pain, and clapped a hand against her head.
“Ow! Christ, Reichart, you see? Go lie down. Come on.” She wrangled him to the bed, realizing the last of her strength was draining as she did so. “Sit. Down. Give me a chance to…” She let the words trail away as she slipped his leather coat off. Blood stained the inside of her right arm, the bandages over torn stitches unable to absorb all the scarlet liquid. A smear of red told her the arm of the jacket was already stained, but it could be salvaged as long as she washed it before the blood dried. Alisha flared her nostrils and went into the bathroom to strip her shirt and pull the bandages from her arm.
Ripped stitches looked much worse than even the original injury had. Alisha breathed a curse and sat down on the edge of the counter, mouth pulled in a sick grimace as she pulled the threads out of her flesh. Every tug sent a wave of nausea through her, sweat beading on her forehead. She didn’t dare look at her reflection, afraid of the paleness she’d see there. “Tell me what the hell is going on with you, Reichart,” she said loudly enough for him to hear her. Anything to distract her from the job she was doing, and the questions had to be asked before the drugs wore off. “Tell me what you were doing at the Sicarii base.”
“Infiltrating,” Reichart said airily. “S’why I had to give you up. Sorry, Leesh.”
“Brandon said you were one of his interrogators.”
Reichart snorted again, a broad dismissive sound. She heard him mumble, “Pansy,” before saying, more clearly, “Had to. It was a test.”
“Keep talking.” Alisha ground her teeth together as she dug for a thread deeper inside the wound.
“Went to ’em about a year ago,” Reichart said agreeably. “All that Tudor shit you told me, apparently it’s true. True enough to make ’em consider me, anyway. Think I’d be a good dictator, Leesh?”
“Yeah,” Alisha muttered. “You like having all the secrets to yourself. So what happened?” she asked aloud. Her head hurt from concentrating on pulling stitches out.
“They didn’t trust me. Go figure. Even when I brought the Attengee plans to them.”
“They already had them.” Alisha straightened, unable to focus on the stitches any longer. The pain would recede, she told herself, and then she could finish the job.
“Sure, but I thought it was a nice show of faith. Anyway.” A crash sounded in the main room, and the light went dimmer. There was a longish pause before Reichart said, “Oops,” and went on with his story, leaving Alisha with a painful little grin directed at the mirrored closet door. She could see him lying on the bed, and could see the reflection of the lamp he’d knocked to the side, fallen down between the nightstand and the wall.
“I spent the last year tryin’ to work m’way high enough to get some real data on ’em.” Alisha watched him try to push up on an elbow and then flop back into the bed, giving it up as a bad job. “I was s’posed to meet the one they call Phoenix the night you came barging in. She’s way up there in their echelon.
“Echelon,” he added after a moment, sounding pleased with himself. “Pretty good for a ston
ed guy, huh?”
Alisha ducked her chin to her chest, grinning. “Very good.”
“But you and Parker fucked it up,” Reichart went on. “Of all the…”
“Gin joints to walk into?” Alisha asked. Reichart snorted again, indelicately.
“Yeah. Something like that. Of all the nights, Leesh. So I had to give you up, or they’d’ve figured it was all a setup. Didn’t want ’em thinking I was with the Company.”
“Who are you with, Frank?” Alisha looked up, watching his reflection in the mirror. He lifted an arm and dropped it over his eyes dramatically, going silent for long moments. She could see his jaw working, a struggle against the drug-induced impulse to answer blithely and without regard for consequence. When silence had gone on long enough, Alisha took a washcloth from the towel rack and stuffed it under her arm, stopping the bleeding as she walked back into the main room. “Who are you with, Frank?”
“Fas Infitialis,” Reichart replied, voice low and full of frustration. “Leesh, don’t do this.”
Hairs stood up on Alisha’s arm, a wave of delighted triumph. “What’s Fas Infitialis? Latin, I know that, but what does it mean? Who are they? Are they the ones making medical drops worldwide without any apparent government support?”
Reichart flopped his arm away from his eyes, surprise washing through the drugs enough to give him a moment’s clarity. “I caught a lucky break,” Alisha said, choosing her words carefully. “I found a pattern to follow in the news stories. Who are they, Frank? Who are you?” She leaned against the wall, letting its pressure help stop the bleeding in her upper arm, and watched her ex-fiancé’s lips thin with muted anger.
“This is unforgivable, Leesh.” His response was a raw warning, the words spoken carefully and clearly. Alisha’s heart twisted, a pang of regret lancing through her. Without thought, her left hand came up to brush the all-but-invisible scar just below her collarbone, and she lifted her chin.
“I’ll take my chances. Tell me what Fas Infitialis is.”
Reichart closed his eyes. “No fate. It means no fate, no destiny. You might consider them the Sicarii’s sworn enemy.”
Alisha laughed, a short hard sound. “Thanks. That clears up a lot. What the hell does that mean?”
He opened his eyes again, focus gone soft and weary. “You’re still bleeding,” he said quietly. “Patch yourself up and I’ll tell you.”
Alisha pressed her lips together and retreated into the bathroom. “I’m listening.” A thud and a muffled curse followed her, and she peered at the closet mirror. Reichart’s reflection showed he’d fallen off the bed and was holding his forehead as he crawled awkwardly toward the bathroom door. “I told you to lie down,” Alisha said.
“Didn’t say stay there.” Reichart hauled himself around to the bathroom door, where he slumped, boneless. “Stuff’s making me agreeable, not spineless. I’m not a dog, Alisha.” He watched her in the closet mirror, a knee cocked so he could prop his elbow against it and hold his head upright. “The red suits you,” he said again.
Alisha twitched a tangle of curls over her shoulder to glance down at it and shrugged. “Thanks. Fas Infitialis, Frank.”
“My mother was a member.” Alisha heard the dull smack of sound as he let his head fall back against the wall. “I grew up thinking it was how the world worked.” A little bark of derision followed, the dark shadow of his hair moving as he shook his head. “Mothers slipping around quietly leaving desperately needed drugs and medical care and food in remote locations. I was probably twelve, fourteen, when I realized it wasn’t normal.”
Alisha dug the last threads out of her arm and sat down on the toilet, holding her head against waves of dizziness. She took a deep breath as it passed and reached for one of the hotel towels, swallowing a whimper as she ripped a length of the fabric free to create a makeshift bandage with. “I’m not following, Reichart. Start at the beginning.”
“I am. Where it began for me, anyway. The Sicarii date back to the Magna Carta, Leesh, at least formally. The Fas Infitialis goes back to Rome. Days of blood and roses.”
“What is it? You’re talking in circles.” Alisha threw a painful smile at the bathroom tile as she wrested the bandage into place over her biceps. “Probably on purpose, but knock it off.”
Reichart shoved himself into a more upright position, as if doing so would lend strength to his clarity of thought. “You know how the United Nations tries to help improve the world’s status quo?”
“Yeah,” Alisha said patiently. “And?”
“And they’re stymied by lack of funding, by politics, by governmental changes within its member nations.” Reichart’s voice was clearing, threads of passion warming it. “The Fas Infitialis is a private organization that answers only to itself and is funded by its own members which shares the same, uh…” His focus split again and he rubbed his eyes. “Ideals,” he said after a moment, wearily.
Alisha laughed, a disbelieving sound. “Are you telling me you work for a group that’s trying to save the world?”
Reichart nodded heavily. “Yeah.”
“Pull the other one, Frank, it tickles.” Alisha stood up and turned to face the mirror again, wincing as she tugged bandage tape off the long slice over her belly. “I’ve known you ten years,” she said through gritted teeth. “I’ve watched you drop the ball on things that really would help the world in order to collect on a bigger paycheck a dozen times.” The wound on her stomach oozed thin red blood and the sticky clear material of forming scabs. Alisha curled her fingers, trying not to scratch, then reached for a washcloth to clean the injury again. She would need new tape, preferably from an out-of-the-way corner store, to rebind the cut properly.
Reichart lifted a shoulder and let it fall again. “Never said saving the world had to be totally altruistic. Nothing wrong with getting a little rich on the side.” He shook his head. “I’m like a double agent, Leesh. You’re right. I sell out all the time. But I’m doing it for the greater good.”
“What exactly,” Alisha asked, still through her teeth, “was the greater good in shooting me? Or stealing the Attengee schematics? Is building an army of your own part of the Fas Infitialis game plan? Hostile takeover?”
“Infitialis. We just call it the Infitialis, usually. The Attengee’s a great piece of work,” Reichart said quietly. “But we didn’t want it for an army of our own. We wanted to modify it, create a delivery system out of indestructible drones, send them in where it’s hard to get people in and out safely. Civil-war zones, natural-disaster sites. Is that drug supposed to make me nauseous?”
“It’s not not supposed to.” Alisha looked over her shoulder at him. “You okay?”
“Would I have asked if it was supposed to make me sick if I didn’t feel sick?” Reichart asked irritably. “Of course I’m not okay. My ex-girlfriend put a knife in my thigh and then set me up on a drug cocktail.” He rolled away from the bracing wall and crawled past Alisha’s knees toward the toilet. She watched him without sympathy.
“You shot me,” she pointed out, “and I’m not going to get started on the rest of the list. What greater good did shooting me serve?”
Reichart’s answer was a groan that did elicit a sympathetic wince, though Alisha frowned to cover it. “You’re a lot more coherent on that stuff than most people,” she muttered. Reichart put his forehead against the edge of the toilet bowl and gave her a one-eyed dirty look.
“It’s like iocane powder. Work up resistance to will-bending substances. I’d think you’d be the same.”
“I am,” Alisha admitted. “Part of the training. The adrenaline burst probably didn’t hurt your body’s attempt to burn through it, either.”
“Yeah. That was pretty good, by the way.” Reichart rolled his head back over the toilet with another gut-wrenching groan. “Too bad you rescued me from the woman who was supposed to bring me back in to the Sicarii. That was the drop at the cathedral. The Sicarii shot down that glider, Leesh. They just couldn’t get to the
box. My whole mission was to retrieve it and bring it back to them. You screwed it up in Rome. This was my chance to make good.” He fumbled for the toilet’s handle, flushing before pushing himself into the space between the counter and the toilet, his bulk fitting surprisingly well. “A verification,” he added. “How the holy living hell did you find me?”
“The woman had a derringer, Reichart. It takes a gun to bring you in?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Didn’t you just shoot me?”
Alisha pushed her lips and looked away. “Yeah, okay. How’d shooting me serve the greater good?”
“You’re kind of hung up on that, aren’t you?”
“Reichart, I swear to God—”
“It kept you alive.” The answer came in a snap, much sharper than anything he’d said since the drug had entered his system. “It was a pure shit situation, Alisha. They knew the Cardinal had a CIA contact. They’d been watching for ten months. It was the fourth drop you’d made with him. They knew you were the contact, and you were both on the hit list. The only way I could think to keep you alive was to take you down before they had a chance to.”
“You couldn’t have told me not to make the drop?” Alisha asked incredulously. Reichart gave her a baleful look.
“Would you have listened?”
“Not without a goddamned good reason,” Alisha retorted. “Which you wouldn’t have provided.”
He shrugged and turned a hand up in agreement, then let it fall before saying, quite softly, “I just wanted to keep you safe.”
“Funny damned way you’ve got of showing it.” There was less rancor in her voice than she wanted there to be, more than six years of healing time, both physical and mental, giving her room to be calm. “Were you ever going to tell me about any of this, Reichart? The Sicarii? The Infitialis? Any of it?”
The Firebird Deception Page 15