Reichart thinned his lips. “Does your prisoner-taking policy include getting a thirsty man a glass of water?”
“You’re feeling better,” Alisha muttered, but got him the water. “You should be loopy for another six hours, at least.”
“I wouldn’t want to trust me with my life just yet,” Reichart offered as he drank the water. “My tongue’s working better than my brain right now.”
“Yeah, well,” Alisha said before she could think to regret it, “you were always good with your tongue.”
Reichart choked and spat a mouthful of water out, looking up with tears of surprised laughter in his eyes. Alisha crinkled her face. “Don’t suppose you could forget I said that.”
“Oh, hell no,” Reichart said fervently. “Alisha…Leesh. Come down here.” He made an impatient gesture and Alisha knelt cautiously, unwilling to crouch and scrape her stomach with her thighs. Reichart brushed his fingers across her cheek, slipping a curl of hair behind her ear. “You’ve fucked up my life, you know that?” he asked with good-natured weariness. “No, I wouldn’t have told you, not when we were together, not for years. You were too wedded to king and country back then, sweetheart. You even saw me as a rescue project.”
“You’re stoned, Reichart. Stop talking. You’ll embarrass both of us.” Alisha started to stand again, but Reichart tightened his fingers against her face, a plea for her to stay.
“I’m stoned,” he agreed, “so I’m past being embarrassed. I knew better than to fall for a girl like you, all wide-eyed idealism and in love with serving her country. You’re better suited for me now.” He gave her a crooked smile tinged with regret. “My Leesh never would’ve taken a walk, back in the day. A woman who’s willing to is more the kind I need. Why’d you do it, Leesh?”
“Because I finally needed answers from you more than I needed the job,” Alisha answered quietly.
“Does that mean we’re in this together, kid?”
Irritation exploded through Alisha, making her pull back despite Reichart’s protest. “God, I hated it when you called me that! You’re five years older than me, Frank. That doesn’t make me a kid, for Christ’s sake. How many times have I told you that?”
Surprise filtered through Reichart’s expression and he let his hand fall. “I didn’t think you meant it.”
“Yet another reason it’s over between us. You never listened to me.” Alisha set her jaw, glaring down at him. “You need a hand up?”
“…no,” Reichart said. “No. I can make it on my own.”
Chapter 19
Alisha kept her eyes turned away as Reichart pushed himself up, an uncomfortable sense of guilt lingering as he fought against the drug in his system. You couldn’t have known, Leesh, she reminded herself. “Your Sicarii friends are going to keep looking for you.”
“You should’ve thought of that before you shot me,” Reichart muttered.
“You should’ve told me what was going on with you years ago,” Alisha countered, then set her teeth together, struggling to not go down the too-familiar path of bantering and one-upmanship. “Can we set aside the coulda-shoulda-wouldas?” she asked, wanting to make it an order but knowing that doing so would end any possibility of further discourse between them. “Can we just…try working together? The Sicarii know who I am. This—” she twitched a lock of coppery hair “—won’t throw them off for long, if at all, and if they put you together with the Agency you’re screwed, Frank.”
“Blued, and tattooed,” he agreed. “Fifteen months, Leesh,” he added in a frustrated growl. “You just blew fifteen months of work.”
“Then I’d say we’re even.” Alisha heard coolness come into her voice and for once was grateful for the training that allowed her to switch from hot to cold inside a breath. “Since you pushed me out of a job.” The accusation was as fair as the one Reichart made, and she watched irritation glimmer in his expression even through the haze of the drug.
“All right,” he said after a few seconds. “We’ll call it even.”
Until one of us has the chance to pull the wool over the other’s eyes again, Alisha thought, but she nodded. “They’re going to be all over the building for a couple of hours, trying to find us. You should sleep some of that stuff off.”
“And you?”
“I’ll keep watch. Unless you wanted to just go turn yourself over to your blond friend to see what happens.”
“She’s not my friend, Alisha.” Reichart edged around the bathroom door toward the bed, steadier on his feet than Alisha expected, but still far short of his usual grace. “How the hell’d you follow me to the drop? You were back in the States.”
“Why do you even know that, Reichart? You have someone keeping tabs on me?”
He shot her a look that answered the question, the drugs in his system overriding his usual emotional remoteness. Cold surprise laced through Alisha’s stomach, making the cut there hurt, and she pressed her hand over it without touching the injury. “Who? Not Greg.”
Reichart curled a lip and sat down on the bed’s edge. Sweat stood out along his hairline and on his upper lip, and he lowered his head into his hands, moving as if doing so increased his nausea. “Not Greg.”
“Who, Reichart?” Alisha took a few long steps to crouch in front of him, trying to inhale away the protesting pain in her stomach. “Brandon said you’d gotten me into this whole mess. What was he talking about? Is he your guy?”
Reichart exhaled a dismissive snort. “Nah. I don’t like blondes that much.” He swallowed thickly, as if trying to wash away the answer to her questions, but the serum compelled him. “I tipped Boyer off to the research facility in Kazakhstan. I even recommended you for the job because I knew you wouldn’t make any lethal choices regarding Brandon Parker. Not with Greg still being your handler after all this time.”
“Boyer?” Alisha asked incredulously. “Director Boyer’s your inside man in the Agency? Does he—is he—part of the Infitialis? Why was it important to keep Brandon alive?”
Reichart jerked his head in a short denial. “Just a sympathizer. He knew my mother. We go back a long way. The Parkers are part of the Sicarii, Leesh. Keeping him alive and putting you on him gave us access to their activities in a way we hadn’t had the opportunity to explore before. It even flushed Greg and him into public together.” He let a shoulder rise and fall in a small shrug. “Not very public,” he admitted, “but you and I saw it.”
“In China.” Alisha straightened out of her crouch, taking a few steps away. “Director Simone provided the paperwork for that whole operation, Reichart. Everything was aboveboard.”
Reichart crashed over on his back, arms spread wide across the bed, his feet still on the floor. “Unless Simone’s dirty, too.”
Alisha closed her eyes against the thought and murmured, “Go to sleep, Frank. I’ll wake you up in a couple of hours.” The only response was a grunt that faded into steady breathing. Alisha turned the solitary light off and stepped over to the windows, brushing the curtain aside just enough to watch the street five floors below.
Unless Simone’s dirty, too. She hadn’t quite put words to the idea in her own mind, more reluctant to do so than she wanted to admit. “We’re supposed to be the good guys,” she whispered to the nighttime reflections beyond her. It was possible, yes, possible, that there was a line of corruption running through the CIA into high-enough departments and levels that an entire mission could be fabricated with the support documents to prove it. Certainly if the Sicarii were possible, if Reichart’s Fas Infitialis was possible, then deadly factions within the Agency itself were possible.
A smile creased the corner of Alisha’s mouth. Even to her own mind, she sounded naive. As in any company, there were rival factions inside the CIA. Connections to interests outside of the United States’ were almost certainly much more regular than Alisha wanted to believe. You’re not so far gone from that girl Reichart was talking about, Leesh. The bright-eyed idealist, whose faith in her country overrode any d
oubts she might have.
Alisha sank down against the curtains, keeping the crack in them open just wide enough to continue watching. There were no balconies on this side of the street, only a fire escape several rooms down marring the building’s line as it rose up from the earth. The business of the road below told her that it was only seven-thirty or eight at night, though she felt it must be close to midnight. It was raining again, streetlights reflecting in the sheen on the sidewalks, and umbrellas were cropping up, hiding the people below from her vision.
What did she become, Alisha wondered, if she lost that idealism? A yoga teacher, she thought wryly, and then with more honesty, a cynic. Like Reichart. She shook her head against the curtain, minute movement. Reichart’s cynicism seemed to mask a man she’d never even known existed. The Fas Infitialis he claimed to work for only existed in the shadows, but so too did the Sicarii, and she had ample experience with the latter to believe in their existence.
It was bitter dredges, she thought, that the best way for an organization to help others was to remain so secretive that no one could foul up their missions with external politics. Still, if that was the Infitialis philosophy, then by its nature Alisha liked it better than the Sicarii.
Unless she happened to be that grab-bag princess that Brandon had suggested. Alisha flashed a quick smile toward the street below, shaking her head again. Even if, the idea of predestination was ludicrous.
Brandon, despite Reichart’s beliefs, couldn’t be a part of it. Alisha thinned her lips, trying to hold on to that confidence but feeling it waver. If Simone was dirty—
If Simone was dirty, Alisha was going to have to take action and make choices that might put her even further off the path she’d once thought was her own. She’d already taken a walk, the euphemism meaning she’d left the CIA’s fold, but if Director Simone was part of the Sicarii network, then neither Alisha nor anyone with any true Company loyalty could afford to ignore it. Simone had too much access to too much information. Her deception could be the undoing of everything Alisha held dear.
“In for a lamb,” she murmured softly enough to not disturb Reichart’s sleep, and pushed the curtain a little further open to watch the street below.
“Wake up.” Alisha knew better than to shake Reichart awake, and spoke quietly from the door, where she cast quick glances through the peephole, making sure the hall remained clear. “Wake up, Frank. We’ve got to go.”
“What time is it?” Reichart’s voice was muzzy from sleep, but no longer held the thickness lent it by the drug.
“Almost one. We’ve got to go,” Alisha repeated. “There’s trouble.”
“With you and me, babe, there always was.” Reichart came to his feet, moving more easily, though he scrubbed a hand over his eyes. “One. I thought you were going to let me sleep for two hours.”
“I wanted to make sure the drug had worn off.” Alisha tossed him the leather jacket she’d taken from his closet in the other room. “You weigh too much for me to haul around.”
“Not last I checked.” Reichart slid the jacket on, checking the breast pocket.
“Last you checked I was in full fighting condition.” Alisha lifted her arms, forearms bound with what had been extra pillowcases in the closet, now ripped into strips and wrapped around the welts and bruises. “I’m not right now. Your papers are there,” she added, quiet and impatient. “Rodney Evans. You don’t look like a Rodney.”
“What does a Rodney look like?”
“Thinner. Balding. Are you ready?”
“What’s the rush?” Reichart finally focused on her more clearly, sleep burning away to leave intensity in his dark eyes. “We made?”
Alisha tilted her head at the curtained window. “Leave the lights off.”
Frowning, Reichart strode across the room and flicked the curtains back enough to look down. A moment’s observation was all that was required before his shoulders tensed and Reichart scowled over his shoulder at her. “We’re fucked.”
“I know. Let’s go.” Alisha cast one more look out the peephole, then eased the door open. The hall beyond was empty, but she shook her head even as she moved. “There’s no way to get to the next buildings over via the roofs,” she murmured. “We’re going to have to risk the ground floor.”
“Elevator,” Reichart answered. “How’re your hot-wiring skills these days?”
“Fantastic. How are you at ripping steel plates off walls?” Alisha ran down the hall on her toes, light long strides, and without discussion took up the opposite side of the elevator door from Reichart, both of them standing with their backs pressed to the walls. “You ever wonder what Joe Average would think if he saw us doing this?”
The elevator doors dinged and a young couple reeking of wine staggered out, giggling at each other. The woman stopped with a delighted gasp as Reichart made a swift turn toward the elevator, his presence abruptly commanding. “Clear,” he said to Alisha, and the woman goggled at them as Alisha took a few quick steps that put her inside the elevator car.
“Shh.” She lifted a finger to her lips, making a shushing motion at the wide-eyed young woman. “National security, miss. Nothing to see here. Move along.”
The doors slid shut on the couple’s startled expressions, and Reichart gave Alisha a smile mixed with amusement and chagrin. “I don’t have to, with you around. I forgot you did things like that.”
“Only around you.” Alisha knelt in front of the control panel, examining it for screws or a loose weld. It was true: it didn’t take rereading her chronicles to know that the moments of lightest heart were ones spent in Reichart’s presence. “You bring it out in me. Remember the hotel in Prague?”
Reichart laughed, so loud and unexpected that Alisha’s grin turned into a laugh itself. “I hadn’t,” he said. “Until now. Did you ever go back to explain?”
“What could I say?” Alisha demanded. “‘I’m sorry for playing Lady Godiva through your lobby, but it was that or risk a civil uprising that would have preceded World War Three?’ Of course I didn’t go back. This thing’s locked up like a vestal virgin, Reichart.” She slid the picklocks out of the suit jacket, shaking her head. “As long as nobody calls the elevator I should—”
The car jerked, then hummed. Alisha looked up and Reichart snorted out a laugh. “At least we’re going up.”
“Mmm. Let’s hope it’s not our friends looking for us.” Alisha slid the smaller pick into the control panel’s keyhole, eyes closed and head tilted to the side as she listened for the telltale click that would announce the panel’s opening.
“Up,” Reichart said the instant before the elevator stopped. Alisha came to her feet in a graceful motion that belied the stiff pain lancing across her stomach, and Reichart swept her into his arms, murmuring “Sorry” as she grunted against his chest. The apology was all that kept Alisha from biting his lip as he lowered his head to steal a no-nonsense kiss.
“Oops,” a flustered American said as the doors opened. “Er, sorry. Uh. Ah. I’ll, uh…”
Reichart lifted his head and suggested, “You could join us, no?” in an outrageous French accent. The American stumbled backward, waving his hands in distressed surprise, and the doors slid shut again as Alisha fought back laughter.
“What would you have done if he’d said yes?” She pushed him away and knelt again, ignoring the elevator’s downward journey.
“Punched him,” Reichart said cheerfully. Alisha grinned and tapped the straight wire inside the lock. It clicked satisfyingly and the panel popped open. “Basement,” Reichart said, as Alisha twisted the wires to push the keyhole far enough to allow basement access.
“I’m going to be very disappointed in you if there’s no way out of the basement, Reichart.”
“I thought disappointment in me was a perennial state.”
“It is,” Alisha said, knowing the words would cut, but meaning them less harshly than they sounded. “You’re never what I hope you’ll be.”
“You still believe
that?”
“I need to talk to Boyer before I’m sure I’m willing to accept your story,” Alisha answered. “And damn it, Frank, handing over that black box would be a good show of faith on your part. What in God’s name does your Infitialis need with it? I know why I need it.”
“Do you?” The doors dinged and slid open again, harsh fluorescent lights glaring down on the maintenance areas of the hotel. Everywhere else the lighting was gentler, the guests’ comfort at obvious odds with the employees’ comfort. Alisha squinted against the brightness, stepping out in tandem with Reichart as they both scoped the hall.
“Laundry’s to the left,” Reichart murmured, conversation set aside in favor of stealth. “Kitchen’s to the right.”
“Stand up, sit down, fight fight fight,” Alisha said under her breath. “Where’s the exit?”
“Laundry’s more likely to be quiet, even at this hour.” Reichart nodded down the hall, and took point, Alisha trailing a step or two back and watching the hall behind them.
The laundry room was deserted, enormous dryers silent, washing machines not producing a hum of activity. White flooded Alisha’s gaze, neatly folded towels and sheets all of one color, waiting to be brought upstairs during the new day. “This way,” Reichart said, still quietly, though Alisha could read the exit sign as easily as he could. She held back the retort, hoping she’d remember to use it later, and followed Reichart out into the suddenly dark night.
An Attengee drone, silver dome reflecting amber streetlights, rose up on ratcheted legs in front of them, lasers already primed for attack.
Chapter 20
“You know,” Reichart said into the respite between observation and action, “I don’t remember dating you being this dangerous.”
Explosive red blasts of heat seared the darkness, leaving smoking scores in the building walls. Alisha and Reichart leaped in opposite directions, racing against laser fire. Even if only one of them got away, Alisha thought. She could see, across the alley, the way the glowing striations followed Reichart’s path as he ran, and didn’t dare look back to see the same deadly evidence splashed over the walls behind her.
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