Athena Force: Books 1-6

by Justine Davis, Amy J. Fetzer, Katherine Garbera, Meredith Fletcher, Catherine Mann

  She was conscious of the Suburban driver’s attention on her in the rearview mirror. The passenger sat with his hand wrapped around the barrel of the .12-gauge shotgun tucked between the seats.

  From the corner of her eye, Sam watched Riley cross the cemetery to the grave site. Panic welled up inside her and almost burst loose. Riley couldn’t talk to Alex or Darcy or any of the others. That wasn’t right. Whatever business Riley had with her, it wasn’t supposed to touch the Cassandras. Her friends had been through enough in losing Rainy.

  She watched Riley, wondering why he had chosen to confront the people at the grave site. Surely his instructions hadn’t included interviewing the people she had known back in school.

  The big agent who had interceded on her behalf shifted outside the Suburban as he took a call over his cell phone. He blocked Sam’s view of the grave site. She had to bite her lip to keep from telling him to move.

  Minutes passed. The two agents in front talked about the coming football season.

  Then the big agent moved again. Riley walked toward the Suburban.

  Unable to totally assess the situation through her peripheral vision, Sam looked past Riley. The attendees drifted apart, going their own ways in small groups.

  Riley opened the door. His sunglasses covered his eyes and helped mask his expression.

  “Turn around, St. John,” he ordered. “It’s a long ride to the airport.”

  Without a word, Sam turned and presented her handcuffs to him.

  Riley opened one of the cuffs and allowed her to bring her hands around in front of her. Then he took a length of chain from the Suburban’s driver and secured the cuffs to the D-ring mounted on the vehicle’s floor.

  Sam felt the heaviness of the chains around her wrists. At least in her current position she could sit comfortably.

  “I got you something,” Riley said, sounding a little unsure of himself.

  Surprised, Sam looked at him.

  “I know the Carrington woman was a friend of yours,” Riley said. “I know coming here had to have been hard.”

  “Why did you go down there?” Sam demanded. “Who did you talk to?”

  “I got you this.” Riley held out a single white rose.

  Sam made no move to take the rose.

  “I didn’t know if you would want it or not,” Riley said, looking more than a little uncomfortable. “My mother always kept a flower from the funerals of people she loved. From both my grandfathers and one of my grandmothers. From her sister’s.”

  Sam sat silent and still.

  “I didn’t know if you were like that, St. John,” Riley apologized. “But if you wanted something to remember your friend by, I wanted you to have something.”

  Hypnotized by the rose and all that it represented, that it meant she would never again see Rainy, Sam found she couldn’t move. The grief pressed down on her, paralyzing her with pain that she refused to show.

  “Sorry,” Riley said. “I presumed too much.” He started to walk away.

  “Wait.” Sam’s voice came out strained and cracked at the end.

  Riley looked at her. He didn’t speak.

  Struggling to control the sudden grief that assailed her, Sam reached out for the rose. Riley laid it in her cupped hands. The flower felt soft and fragile against her fingers and palms.

  A look of surprise touched Riley’s handsome face for a moment, then he twitched his full lips and the expression was gone.

  “What does your mother do with the flowers?” Sam asked. She turned her gaze from Riley. She didn’t want to have to deal with him looking at her.

  “She dries them out,” Riley said softly. “She presses them between the pages of her family Bible and saves them in a memory book.” He paused. “Sometimes she says doing that is foolish, that it’s more trouble than it’s worth, and that it gives her one more thing to worry about and grieve over when it’s gone. Then she says that sometimes the things that are the most trouble are actually worth the most.”

  When he closed the door, Sam watched him walk away without turning her head. She was alone in the rear of the Suburban. A moment later the big vehicle got underway. Sam kept her eyes open, taking in the final sight of Rainy’s coffin perched on the metal device that would lower it into the ground.

  When she could no longer see that, she closed her eyes and retreated into the small corner of her mind that she had created for herself all those years ago when she was a little girl. Some of the counselors had claimed she was helpless when she did that, but Sam had learned that she was invulnerable there.

  Chapter 7

  For nine days Sam was kept in one of the holding cells in a building in Langley. Her contact with people was nonexistent, because she didn’t even get to see them. Three times a day, someone—maybe not even the same someone—brought her meals to the cell and slid the tray through the opening at the bottom of the heavy steel door.

  Often, Sam wondered why she had been locked up. Especially since she had no human contact. What did they think she had done? Why didn’t they talk to her? Those questions were in her head every day, but she had no answers. Nor did it seem those answers were going to come any time soon.

  Sam ate the meals, all under the watchful eyes of whoever manned the protected video cameras that kept surveillance inside the cell. When she was finished with her meals, and she made certain she finished because she’d retreated to her childhood survival system and even saved back wedges of apples and cheese and crackers for snacks later when she got hungry, she passed the tray back through the slot. She never once tried to see whoever brought the food or took the tray later. Whoever watched her would have seen that as weakness on her part.

  The cell was a little larger than solitary confinement in prison. After days of pacing, she was certain it measured twelve feet wide by fourteen feet long and had about an eight-foot ceiling. Chains held a single bed screwed into the wall suspended off the floor. Cubbies for her clothing occupied the space beneath the bed.

  The toilet and shower, outfitted with opaque windows, offered her a little privacy. She took care of showers and her private needs in the dark after lights-out. Possibly the surveillance teams had access to night-vision systems on the cameras, but she didn’t see any sign of it. She also told herself that the night crews probably weren’t as alert as the day crews.

  However, the possibility existed that Riley might sit in on the surveillance sessions.

  Sam didn’t know how she felt about that. She tried hard not to feel anything. But it was impossible not to feel trapped. The room had no windows and only the one door.

  Or maybe Riley wasn’t there at all. By now he was probably released from Medical and returned to duty. She was just another takedown he’d arranged, another success that had gone into his dossier.

  Given the solitude, she worked on coming to grips with Rainy’s death. Letting go of her friend was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. She’d never lost anyone close to her. She’d never let anyone close to her outside of the Cassandras.

  The white rose that Riley had gotten for her sat in one of the cubbies beneath the bed as a grim reminder of Rainy’s loss. She wondered what her friends thought about her continued absence. Maybe they thought she was on a mission; they knew she was in the CIA. Without a phone or a means of contact with the outside world, she had no way of knowing.

  All she had was the rose.

  During the plane trip to Washington, D.C., she’d had to ask Riley how to preserve the flower. He’d told her that his mother had always hung the flowers upside down for a few days if she didn’t immediately press them into the family Bible.

  Sam didn’t have a Bible. She didn’t have a book of any kind. She’d hung the rose upside down from one of the cubbies until it was dry.

  After that, there had been nothing to do. With all of the dead hours in the day and the night, Sam’s mind played with possibilities. If she hadn’t been self-taught in discipline and waiting, the building anxiety could hav
e been agony.

  Instead, she chose to take the time to consider her future moves. With her CIA career obviously in flames for some reason, she didn’t know what she would do once she was released. If she was released.

  She had money saved up. Money meant freedom. As soon as she had started working as a teen, she’d saved money, putting back everything she could. That habit had continued in the Agency.

  She could live for a few months. Then, depending on what the circumstances were when the CIA eventually let her go, she could always return to New York and use her linguistic skills for corporations. The work had been offered before while she was in college, but she hadn’t been interested. She wasn’t now, but having a plan was a step toward freedom and out of the cage where the Agency held her.

  Once she had made tentative plans, the hours of the passing days grew longer. Where she had once thought CIA interviewers would be in at any moment, she now began to think they weren’t coming at all. The new Homeland Security regulations that had been passed after 9/11 effectively stripped a person suspected of terrorism or espionage of any rights. As long as they thought she was guilty of whatever the hell they thought her guilty of, they could hold her forever.

  The certainty that she’d been forgotten grew a little more every day. Whatever the Agency had brought her in for might have gotten put on a back burner, and her with it. She’d read about Chinese illegals who had gotten arrested in NewYork and were currently being confined years later because the United States Government didn’t know what to do with them.

  The Triad, the Chinese Mafia, had sworn to kill the people being detained if they went back to that country, making it impossible for the United States to return them to their native land. On the other hand, the American Government couldn’t allow someone to forcibly enter the country and become a citizen.

  Those people, Sam knew, existed apart.

  And that was how she existed—minute by minute, hour by hour and, lately, day by day. Apart.

  She wore a sleeveless gray top and unflattering dark-gray sweatpants. They’d taken her shoes and not given her anything to wear. Being barefoot in a controlled climate wasn’t much of a hardship.

  As she did every day, she exercised, going through her martial arts forms one after the other effortlessly. Staying fit while incarcerated was a problem, but she knew she couldn’t afford to lose her edge. In the beginning she went slow, loosening and warming her muscles. Then she started pushing, stressing her training and her endurance. Her arms and legs moved automatically.

  She didn’t think about anything but the movements and the motion. In her mind, she was no longer in the cell. She was in Master Chong’s dojo, where she’d first started learning, paying for her schooling by sweeping the floors and doing laundry after class.

  She’d only been seven years old, slipping away again because supervision in the home where she’d stayed had been a joke. If she’d wanted to, if she’d had a place to go, she could have been gone in a heartbeat.

  After she had gone through all of the forms, had her heart rate up so that blood exploded through her and the exercise had turned anaerobic, she changed to tai chi. A lot of the movements were the same as her forms and called on the same level of discipline, but they relaxed her and gave her a chance to breathe normally.

  And, like always, time disappeared.

  “How long has she been at this?”

  “Hours.”

  “Man, you’re kidding me.”

  “No. She’s incredible. Never seen anybody like her.”

  “How long has she been locked up?”

  “Eleven days.”

  “And she’s done this every day?”

  “Every day.”

  “What’s she in for?”

  “Nobody’s saying.”

  “So you haven’t even caught a whisper?”

  Standing in the doorway to the security observation post cued in to Samantha St. John’s holding cell, Riley McLane curbed the immediate anger he felt at the two young agents pulling the night security detail. Still, his voice was sharp when he spoke.

  “If you were supposed to know what she was in for, you’d have been briefed.”

  Both agents jerked around, whipping their heads back to look at Riley.

  “Special Agent McLane.” Tom Lackland, the senior of the two agents, looked embarrassed and relieved. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “Good thing I’m one of the good guys,” Riley said lightly.

  “Yeah.”

  On the screen, Sam stepped up her exercise routine again. She whirled and kicked, feinted and punched. Her motions were compact and deadly.

  “When is lights-out?” Riley asked.

  Lackland consulted his watch. “Seven minutes. Eleven o’clock.”

  Riley nodded. “Why don’t the two of you take a break? I’ll watch the monitors for a while.”

  “All right.” Lackland and his partner left the room.

  Leaning against the side wall, Riley watched Sam go through her forms. He wondered what it would be like to face her in combat. Even with the size difference he had over her, it would be a close match. She was much better at martial arts than he was. Every move was smooth, fluid. Her focus was complete.

  Watching the single-minded purpose she maintained, Riley envied her ability to stay calm. Eleven days had passed since she’d had a conversation with anyone. He’d put her in the cell and walked away. She had never tried to talk to any of the people that brought her meals. She was good at waiting. Riley didn’t think he could have lasted this long.

  Stone Mitchell felt certain that the process might take a little longer, but the director was confident that Sam would break in the end. Riley didn’t think that was the case at all. He’d pushed at Mitchell to let him interview her.

  With the turn of events that had happened that afternoon, Riley knew the director wasn’t going to be able to hold out much longer. Despite St. John’s personal agenda, she had good friends. Those friends also had a certain amount of political pull.

  Riley wondered if those women would stand by Sam so adamantly if they knew what she was accused of doing.

  Sam went through a series of cool-down exercises.

  Riley looked at the smooth lines of Sam’s small breasts, made visible by the way the soaked sleeveless shirt clung to her. The loose, baggy sweat pants couldn’t hide the swell of her hips or the long legs for her build.

  At precisely 11:00 p.m., the room went dark.

  Riley blinked at the darkness. He closed the door to the security room, shut down the computer monitors, and switched out the room’s lights, dampening the light in the room, as well. He stood in the darkness for a moment, listening to his heartbeat in his ears and feeling the power of it in his chest.

  He stared at the dark monitor and thought he could make out movement. He actually couldn’t, but he knew what was going on. Somewhere in that darkness, Sam St. John was stripping off for her nightly shower.

  Unable to stop himself, Riley tapped Lackland’s keyboard, shifting the camera feed over to the backup systems while he used the manual controls. The monitor blinked, then fuzzed for a moment and presented a green-tinted picture. Another moment passed and picture cleared.

  The night-vision-capable cameras planted in the room revealed Sam St. John as she pulled the sweat-soaked top over her head, unveiling her dark bra and gleaming flesh.

  Riley’s breath caught in the back of his throat at the sight. His arousal was immediate and painful.

  Nine days ago he had discovered that Sam waited until after lights-out to take her shower before going to bed. He’d walked in on the two agents watching the surveillance camera and listened to the derogatory comments they’d made at Sam’s expense. Riley had shut the night-vision capabilities down and stood watch for the next hour.

  The next day Riley had transferred the men from the detail and brought in Tom Lackland and a female agent who had been reassigned that evening. With the female agent in the room, La
ckland hadn’t used the night-vision capability. There had been no need, and the female agent would have protested and probably reported him.

  Knowing that two male agents were in charge of surveillance that night, Riley had decided to step in to maintain Sam’s privacy.

  Not exactly what you’re doing here, is it? Irritated with his inability to control his impulse, Riley reached for the control.

  At that moment Sam skinned out of the sweatpants. In the artificial-light enhancement, Riley couldn’t see what color her panties were. They probably matched the black or navy or dark green of her bra. Riley knew those colors were possible because he’d checked the list of clothing Sam was issued. He hadn’t intended to; he’d just thought about that while looking over her list of personal items inside the cell.

  His gaze traveled up the expanse of legs and over Sam’s slim, rounded bottom. Other cameras in the room provided different views, but he keyed in the one from the rear. His mouth went dry and his pulse beat at his temples.

  Sam stepped out of the sweatpants and placed them in the dirty clothes hamper along with the sleeveless shirt. With a sinuous movement that was sexy as hell by nature rather than design, she reached behind her back with both hands and unfastened her bra, stripping the material away.

  Riley’s gaze followed the swell of her breasts. He breathed in, as though he could catch her scent through the monitor if he tried hard enough. He barely stopped himself from tapping the keyboard and shifting the cameras to look at her from the front.

  Then she hooked her thumbs in her panties and hiked the wisp of cloth down over her rounded buttocks. In spite of her slim build, she had generous hips. As active as she was, as small as she was, Riley hadn’t expected that.

  A growl sounded in the surveillance room. Riley realized with a start that the sound came from him.

  On the screen, Sam tossed her underthings into the dirty clothes hamper and stepped into the shower. The opaque plastic prevented the night vision from penetrating the shower walls, but her shadow still showed through. She turned the water on and stood beneath the spray for a while, luxuriating in the feel of the water cascading over her body.