“Put the guns down, Alisha,” Cristina said, more urgently. “I don’t want to have to kill you.”
“I didn’t want to have to kill you, either.” Alisha heard her voice go light and thin again. “Funny old thing, life.”
Cristina dropped her chin to her chest. “Protocol alpha seven nine nine—”
A buzz so deep it felt like it was bursting from her chest rattled Alisha, making sick shivers race over her body. She looked away from Cristina, guns still held steady, to find Brandon hefting his weapon with a grim expression darkening his face.
“—four one,” Cristina went on, voice lifted slightly. “Termination program activated.”
Brandon pulled the trigger.
Chapter 30
A physical wave of invisible power slammed into Alisha. She staggered, clutching her stomach against nausea that seemed to have no source. Electrical sparks flew, the scent of ozone burning the air, sickly familiar. Startled whines and bloops emanated from the drones, their firepower seemingly lost. In her peripheral vision, one of the Attengee’s legs sprawled out from under it, turning it into a sudden mass of tangled metal. An instant later the Firebird above it crashed down, tremendous clatter making Alisha’s eardrums ache.
She, like everyone, twisted at the sounds of metal crashing to the ground. Brandon, pinch-faced and angry, stood amongst the wreckage of all his prototypes, the weapon he’d held now lowered. “I didn’t know,” he said to Alisha, voice dull and flat. “Delivering you to the caves, letting you go again—they were Simone’s orders. I didn’t know you were meant to draw Boyer out. I’m sorry.” He transferred his focus to Reichart, skin ashen. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “It’s not enough, but it’s all I can offer.”
Cords stood out in Reichart’s neck before he spoke. “She made her choices. What,” he added, “the hell was that?” One short sharp nod toward Brandon’s gun made the blond man lift it a little, then let it drop again.
“EMP gun. The drones can’t be easily defeated by conventional weaponry. I thought there needed to be something to level the playing field.” He looked back at Alisha. “It was your idea.”
“Me?” Alisha stared at the lifeless machines littering the floor around Brandon, tension still pounding a beat in her temples. “An EMP? An electromagnetic pulse gun? I told you to build one?”
“You fried the drone back in Moscow with electricity,” Brandon said with a shrug. “The EMP was the next obvious step.”
“Of course.” Alisha stared another moment, then turned away, voice growing cold. “Cristina, get away from her.” She could see that Simone’s chest still rose and fell, though the woman didn’t otherwise move. Cristina herself didn’t seem to have moved, arm still uplifted for the strike that would end Simone’s life. “Cristina.”
“Will you shoot me, Alisha?”
“If you make me, yes.” Make me, Alisha thought, the idea distant. It was an inappropriate phrase; Cristina couldn’t force her to shoot. At best, she could decide on her own actions, which would dictate whether Alisha chose to pull the trigger or not.
“I didn’t think you could do it, you know that?” She turned her head, clear blue eyes finding Alisha’s. “I’ll never forget how loud that shot was, the one that went over my head. It seemed like it echoed in the mountains for a lifetime. I was honestly shocked.”
“Then you should know I can do it again. Get up, Cristina.”
Slowly, gracefully, Cristina unfolded herself from above Simone and stepped back, her hands lifted. “Could you? Could you pull the trigger a second time?”
“If you don’t shut up,” Reichart growled, “I’m going to do it for her.”
Despite herself, Alisha found a little grin waiting in response to Reichart’s threat. “Get Simone up,” she ordered to no one in particular. Simone snarled and pushed up to her feet on her own, lip curled as Alisha followed her with a gun.
“Reichart, call one of your contacts. Get us secure passage out of here. We’re all going back to Langley. Even you,” she added to the challenging rise of his eyebrows. “I need somebody I can trust at my back.”
Neutrality slid into place on Reichart’s face so quickly Alisha knew it masked surprised pleasure. “What happens when we get there?”
“I’m locking all of them,” Alisha said with a wave of her gun, “in protective custody until I can verify in God’s own handwriting that every single one of their stories is straight.”
“Who died and put you in charge?” Cristina wondered. Alisha’s expression went icy, her voice full of implied danger.
“Director Richard Boyer.”
“Actually—”
“Shut up, Greg.” Alisha turned her head enough to see her handler. Former handler, she thought, with cold-crystal clarity. No matter what else happened, she would not work under the man again. There was too much she hadn’t understood in the brief grimace of satisfaction she’d seen on his face.
“How,” Simone said through her teeth, “do you expect to verify or debunk any of this?”
Alisha thought of the box in her pocket, weighing down the coat, and gave Simone a toothy, nasty smile. “Your behavior, for one.” She would leave the box a secret—her trump card, she thought, until she had seen its contents for herself. “Reichart?”
He palmed a cell phone from somewhere inside his jacket and lifted it. “On the way.” A few long strides took him away from the group, though Alisha could still hear his voice as he placed the call for their transportation. Dressed all in white and with his bleached hair, he looked like some sort of dangerous avenging angel.
“Alisha.” Brandon’s voice from behind her, sounding exhausted. “We’ll need something big enough to discreetly get these drones out of here.” He came up to her side, abandoning his awkward gun to rub his hands over his face.
“Reichart will handle it.” Someone she could trust, Alisha thought, and found herself looking at Cristina again. No. She couldn’t trust Reichart; he hadn’t told her that Cristina was alive. But then, she reminded herself with an inaudible sigh, she hadn’t told him she was carrying the black box that had begun the whole mess, either. There was no place in a life of espionage for the romance of utter trust. Even under the best of circumstances, she kept secrets and tried to ferret them out from others. Alisha shook her head and glanced down, tucking her second .45 into the back waistband of her jeans. All in white, she thought again. No good for sneaking around in, or subtlety. And somehow the outfit had gone unstained. A faint smile crept over her mouth. Maybe that would have to be enough.
One skittering step on the concrete was all the warning she had. Brandon crashed into her shoulder even as she looked up, barking a wordless alert through the sound of gunfire. Two shots, fired so quickly their reports were almost one.
Brandon jerked convulsively, full-body twitch that said something vital had gone wrong. Alisha put her arms out to catch him without thinking of her own safety, grunting as his weight went dead. She knelt with him, knowing without looking that she would see blood blossoming over his shirt. The crimson of her tank top wettened without staining, sprayed spots of blood bright and trickling on her coat, round and red on her jeans.
“Brandon.” There was nothing to her voice, only a breath of disbelief. He forced a ghostly smile, eyes crushed shut, and whispered, “Maybe now you’ll be willing to talk about Rome.” The words cost him and he gasped, gritting his teeth together.
“Open your eyes, Brandon. Look at me.” Fierce anger gave Alisha’s voice strength. “I’m not losing somebody else this way. Brandon, look at me. Goddamn it, look at me.” Even as she spoke she dared one brief glance up, and in a moment’s look realized that she had miscounted. More than two shots had been fired.
Susan Simone’s body lay barely an arm’s reach away, pocketed with three distinct bullet wounds. There was utter silence in the warehouse, two men and a single woman standing over Alisha and Brandon’s shivering form, each of them holding a smoking gun.
Epilog
ue
So I’m in therapy. For once even I think it’s a good idea. Reyes is decent, for a shrink, and on the days when I just want to sit there and stare at the wall, she doesn’t push me to talk. There are a lot of those days, to tell the truth.
The one thing I still haven’t been able to figure out is why Simone went after me. The only reason I can come up with is that I was the only one she thought she couldn’t buy. That’s not an answer I like, but I don’t think I’m going to get a better one out of a dead woman.
Every piece of paperwork was in place regarding Cristina. Eight years of undercover work, reports filed everywhere. They gave me the security clearance to read them, in hopes of convincing me to stay on. But they’ve made Cris the European director in Simone’s place, and Greg’s taken Boyer’s job, and I…wish I could stay.
There I go singing again. Hard to tell when it’s pen and ink on parchment paper, but you’ll have to trust that the words are music in my mind. The short version is I don’t trust any of them, and I can’t stay without at least some degree of belief in what I’m doing. Three people fired bullets to save my life, and a fourth took a bullet for me, and I don’t trust any of it anymore.
It took two weeks for Erika to unscramble the box’s tape. It’s a nice system. The Firebird’s got a video feed to go along with the audio reel, all burned to DVD under some kind of encryption code that Erika was alternately thrilled and bitter with. She kept saying she’d know Brandon’s work anywhere, but it didn’t help her unravel it much faster.
But I know this much now: Simone was dirty. I only watched enough to be sure of that, but whether it was Sicarii or arms dealing or terrorism, Simone looked like she had a hand in it. The Firebird had been on her for days, clips of all kinds of meetings saved on its DVD. It’s a sneaky bird, or she’d have caught on to it earlier. Brandon did a good job with it.
He’s out of the hospital and healing nicely, apparently. I haven’t seen him. I don’t know if I’m going to. God, I don’t know. I’m not used to saying that so much, but it feels like the only thing I can say right now. He took a bullet for me, which is probably a sign that he’s on the side of the angels, but I’m still not ready to trust that.
Which is probably why getting out of this business for good would be the smartest idea. When a handsome blonde takes a bullet for you and you still don’t know if he’s one of the good guys, your worldview needs some adjusting. And I can’t get past that look on Greg’s face. I still don’t understand who’d done what right, there in the warehouse, and I’m not willing to ask him, because I believe he’ll lie to me.
And I think I know what it was I saw in his face when I told them Boyer was dead. I’ve replayed that moment in my memory a hundred times, trying to read it.
I think it was triumph.
I’ve lost track of Reichart again, but I can’t imagine he’s out of my life for good. Some days I regret that, and sometimes I hope I’ll look up and see him leaning in the doorway with that cocky grin. At least I finally know what his agenda is. I told him I didn’t have nightmares about the day he shot me, and it’s true. Still, learning he’s the man I always hoped he was helps me sleep better.
Boyer asked me what I would do if I wasn’t an agent. The idea made me sick, then. Now…
Now I’m ready to walk away from a job I’ve spent more than ten years doing. I’m only thirty-one. I could have a whole different career ahead of me, a whole new life. I could become someone else, literally, if I wanted to—though that would mean leaving my family behind, and I don’t think I’m ready to do that. But I might be ready to try that kind of life. An ordinary life, one that’s not based on telling lies and deceiving people. There’s usually a house up for sale on my sister’s block, and it’d be great to spend more time with her kids.
I don’t know if that’s what I want, either. Teaching yoga, maybe settling down with someone who doesn’t think shooting me is a good way to save my life, with no one from my past coming back from the grave to haunt me. It sounds boring, and boring sounds perfect.
I feel the past fifteen months have been a bad reflection of my life, like I haven’t been seeing clearly. I think I’m ready to wipe away all the fog and take a good hard look in the mirror to see what’s really there.
So this may be the last chronicle I write. I’m in Paris now, and there’s already a strongbox with my name—or one of them, anyway—on it. I’ve never gone back to any of them, but maybe just this once I will. There’s something in that box I think I might want to have, if I’m starting over. Something to remind me that the past doesn’t have to just haunt me, but can help define me, too.
I’ve always said till next time when I’ve finished these journals. It seems like what might be the last is a bad place to break tradition, though, so I’ll say it even if I’m not sure there’ll be one:
Till next time, then.
—Agent Alisha MacAleer
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5451-4
THE FIREBIRD DECEPTION
Copyright © 2006 by C. E. MURPHY
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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*The Strongbox Chronicles
*The Strongbox Chronicles
The Firebird Deception Page 25