Her words obliterated Jenna’s pain. In its place a white hot rage seeped outward from the center of her body, aimed like a bullet at the woman sitting across from her. Jenna hated her. Her hands itched to reach across the table. Slap her. Shake her until she understood the cruelty of her words. The pain of hearing her daughter’s name in the mouth of someone who didn’t care one whit about her.
“I’ll only speak to Agent Braden Kane of the FBI.”
“You are doing yourself a disservice. And your daughter as well.”
Jenna stood, knocking over the cup of coffee. “Shut up! Don’t you say her name. Don’t you ever say her name.”
She was outside her body as two more officers entered the room, crossed to the table, restrained her, replaced the cuffs around her wrists as Officer Firmin watched dispassionately.
Then she was secured to the table leg once again, and the officers were leaving the room. Leaving her alone. She watched as the coffee seeped to the edge of the table, spilled over onto the floor.
Sixteen
“I will not speak to anyone but Agent Braden Kane.”
Farrell had lost count of the number of times he’d repeated the phrase since he’d regained the use of his faculties. The taser had been a bitch — like being hit with a ten-ton truck and remaining conscious through the whole thing — and it had taken a good twenty minutes to shake the feeling that he’d been peeled from his own skin and poured back in with a spoon.
He was only vaguely aware of being carried into the small interrogation room where he lay on the cold concrete floor, trying to force his body to shake off the effects of the taser so he could help Jenna.
Jenna…
The thought of her alone and afraid, locked up in a room like this one, wondering what had happened to him, what was going to happen to her, what would happen to Lily… It was almost more than he could bear, and he’d had to force himself to take deep breaths, to maintain control, the only thing that would get them out of this mess. Because once he started talking, he was going to sound crazy to half of the people at DGSI, MI6, the CIA.
And anyone who wasn’t suspicious deserved a prime spot on his potential Rat List.
Because he knew there were rats in MI6, and probably in DGSI and the CIA, too. It’s why he was insisting on talking to Braden Kane, why he’d instructed Jenna to do the same before the bastards had ripped them apart.
He still believed the bioweapon was the brainchild of someone powerful — and maybe more than one person. Bernard Morse was almost certainly involved, but Farrell had become even more certain the conspiracy went above him.
That meant Clive Hewitt, head of the Labour Party.
And if Hewitt was involved, anyone in British government or intelligence could be involved. Which is why he wasn’t telling them a fucking thing. Fifty-fifty chance if he did, he and Jenna would be dead by morning, probably in what would look like a suicide.
He wouldn’t let that happen.
“You are only making this more difficult on yourself.” The man in front of him was named Officer Pacquet. Small and wiry, he had thinning brown hair and the build of someone who’d been behind a desk his entire career. Farrell wished he could take him out into the hall and acquaint the man’s face with his fist. “We know you were involved in Denmark and possibly in London as well.”
They didn’t know anything. Not really. That’s why they were fishing. Fifteen years ago, it would have been illegal to even hold him or Jenna on so little evidence. That wasn’t true anymore. Every country in the world was on high alert, determined to fend off anything that even smelled like terrorism.
Which was the only upside to the whole fiasco.
Someone, somewhere had gotten wind of the bioweapon, or at the very least had been alerted to some kind of terrorist threat. He’d known that much the minute he and Jenna had been taken into custody by a joint task force between MI6, DGSI, and the CIA.
All of which were intelligence agencies designed to thwart both domestic and international threats.
If Farrell and Jenna were suspected of being involved in a garden variety murder, they wouldn’t currently be hosted by the big guns of three first world countries — they’d be on some low level list along with all the other everyday criminals.
Yet another reason he would only talk to Kane. It was possible Farrell and Jenna had been brought in to aid the agencies in thwarting a known terrorist threat. But it was just as possible they’d been brought in at the behest of someone involved in the threat, someone high enough in the food chain to orchestrate a seemingly routine hunt for suspected criminals in the hopes of finding out how much they really knew — and eliminating them if they knew too much.
“I’ll keep it simple for you,” Farrell said to Pacquet. “Braden Kane.”
The other man paced the room. “You are making a grave mistake, Monsieur Black. Agent Kane is with the FBI. This task force is being run in conjunction with the CIA and Homeland Security in the US. Not the FBI. Agent Kane can not help you. We can help you. If you are not involved in these killings, you have nothing to fear in telling us what you know.”
Farrell almost laughed aloud. How stupid did these people think he was? He let his gaze travel to the darkened glass at one side of the room. Was Morse back there right now? Hewitt? Maybe even that bastard Alexander Petrov who’d killed Jenna’s father? Or were they hiding like the cowards they were? Letting these foot soldiers do their dirty work?
Pacquet was still talking, pontificating about the benefits of cooperating. Farrell tuned him out, thought about Jenna, most likely being held in another part of the building. He wanted to believe he could break free of the handcuffs tying him to the metal table, steal Pacquet’s gun, turn the place upside down until he got Jenna out of here.
But he knew it was impossible. The place was heavily guarded by trained, armed soldiers. His body was still humming with a little extra current to prove the point. And the two-way mirror was giving someone a perfect view of everything that happened in the room. Even if he managed to break free of the cuffs and steal Pacquet’s gun, he’d be stopped before he ever hit the hall.
Which is why he needed Kane. Not just for himself, but for Jenna. She didn’t deserve to be here, and he would do anything — say anything — to get her out.
He looked up as Pacquet sighed.
“I pity you, Monsieur Black.” The words sent a river of fury through Farrell’s body. It was the only thing Pacquet had said that got under his skin. “You have an opportunity to help yourself, to help Mademoiselle Carver, yet you refuse.” He hesitated, seemingly giving Farrell one more chance, the condescending bastard. “Very well.”
He turned on his heels and left the room. The door closed, and Farrell heard it lock from the other side. He sat back in the chair, thinking back to the vineyard, to Helene Chevalier and the sniper who’d chased them through the fields, trying to put the pieces together. He had a vague sense of them, the shape and color of the picture they would make, but he couldn’t get his head around the details.
He tapped his foot against the floor, wondering what would be next. Would they let him stew for awhile, give him time to come around? Would they threaten him? Threaten Jenna? Would they go even further by employing interrogation techniques that were currently frowned on — but still used in secret — by most of the so-called civilized countries in the world?
He wouldn’t blame them. He wasn’t exactly opposed to violence. He knew better than anyone that sometimes it was the only way to get what you wanted. What you needed. To expect anyone to show him a courtesy he wasn’t willing to give others would make him a hypocrite. He was a lot of things — none of them good — but he wasn’t that.
All of which was fine for him, but he’d meant what he’d said when they first brought him in; if he found out they’d touched a hair on Jenna’s head, they were dead.
All of them.
The door opened, and he braced himself for another less-than-stimulating conversation wi
th Pacquet. But the man who stepped through the door was tall and imposing, his dark hair cut close to his head, mossy eyes shrewd and knowing. Farrell recognized his posture. It was the posture of a man used to getting his way. A man whose power was bigger than scare tactics and power plays.
He closed the door and sat across from Farrell, studying him for a long moment before finally speaking. “You rang?”
“Yeah, I fucking rang,” Farrell said. “Nice of you to finally grace me with your presence.”
“I wasn’t in the country,” Braden Kane said, leaning back in the chair. “And I don’t come at your fucking beck and call.”
Farrell resisted the urge to unload on him. He didn’t make idle threats, and he wasn’t exactly in a position to follow through. Besides, he needed Kane. Jenna needed Kane.
“I’ll talk, but only to you, and only off the record.” He looked at the two-way mirror. “No eyes. No ears. I want your word.”
“You’re not in a position to negotiate,” Kane said.
Farrell leaned forward. “That’s where you’re wrong. Because I have information that might allow you to stop the biggest terrorist attack the world has ever seen. And I’m not talking unless you agree to my terms.”
“Those are dangerous words in these times.” There was a warning in Kane’s voice.
“It’s not a threat. And it’s not coming from me.” He met Kane’s eyes, hoping the man would understand the meaning in his words. “I stumbled onto something. Something big.”
He didn’t want to trust anyone, but if he had to trust someone besides Jenna, besides Leo, it would be Braden Kane. Nico had worked with him to bring down the Syndicate, and Kane had come through, giving Nico the immunity he’d promised, allowing Nico to start over with Angel on that beach in Bali. He was a good man, even if they were on opposite sides of the law.
“Sit tight.”
Kane got up, left the room. He returned two minutes later with an armed soldier who unlocked Farrell’s cuffs, and they led Farrell out of the small room and out into the hall. It was narrow and generic, painted a pale gray and tiled with dark gray linoleum. It could have been anywhere in the world, although Farrell knew it was in Paris because he’d seen the Eiffel Tower when they’d flown in on the chopper.
He walked between Kane and the other man until they reached a bland, metal door near. Kane unlocked it, and the solider escorted him inside. This time there was no two-way mirror. Kane nodded, and the solider unlocked Farrell’s cuffs, then disappeared into the hall.
“You sure you can trust me?” Farrell asked, rubbing his wrists.
Kane met his eyes. “You sure you can trust me?”
They stared each other down. Finally Kane gestured to one of the chairs near a table identical to the one in the room they’d just left.
“Talk,” Kane said when they were both sitting.
Farrell did, starting with the death of Jenna’s father, the key card, the research papers they’d found in the safe deposit box in Madrid. Kane asked questions when Farrell got to the part about Adam, about his suspicions that Adam had been working for Morse, that they might be the tip of the iceberg in terms of the power behind the bioweapon.
“Where are the papers now?” Kane asked after Farrell had gone through their time in Amsterdam, Erik Karlsen’s death, the wire transfer that had led them to Le Mason des Chevalier.
“In a safe place,” Farrell said.
“Don’t fuck with me.”
“I need to know you’re going to let Jenna and I out of here.”
“Show me the papers first. Then we’ll talk,” Kane said.
“Not a chance.”
Kane leaned back. “What do you want?”
“I want to walk out of here,” Farrell said. “With Jenna. Tonight.”
Kane smiled. “You now that’s a non-starter.”
“Not if you want those papers.”
Kane held his gaze. “You’re a real motherfucker sometimes, you know that, Black?”
Farrell shrugged. “Tell me something I don’t know, mate.”
Kane sighed, then stood and pointed at him. “Don’t move.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
He watched as Kane left the room, slamming the door behind him. Kane hadn’t rejected the offer outright, at least, and he hadn’t been as incredulous as Farrell expected, which only validated his belief that they knew something was up.
It wasn’t unusual. Communication channels across the world were monitored by every intelligence community in the world — MI6, Homeland Security, DGSI, and plenty of others no one had heard of. The surveillance rarely resulted in a rock solid threat. More often they got pieces. Rumors. Chatter.
Chatter was a big indicator that something big was coming. It rarely contained specifics, but sometimes the powers that be were able to piece everything together, make arrests before something actually happened. That’s what was going on here, Farrell was almost sure of it. They’d picked up chatter through their surveillance that indicated there might be a terrorist attack, but they didn’t know exactly what or when. If they had, they would’t have bothered with Farrell and Jenna.
The realization wasn’t comforting. It meant the threat was real. And probably close to becoming a reality.
The door opened and Kane re-entered the room. “Come on,” he said to Farrell.
Farrell got up, stalked to the door, anxious to see Jenna. He was almost into the hall when Kane’s hand clamped down on his arm.
“If you like that hand, I’d get it off my arm,” Farrell said.
“Hey,” Kane said.
Farrell looked at him.
“Don’t make me regret this, Black.”
Farrell nodded, and then he was in the hall and on his way back to Jenna.
Seventeen
Jenna pulled three beers from the fridge, handed two of them to Farrell and Braden Kane, then took hers to the bathroom. There was obviously some serious Alpha male tension between the two men, and she wanted no part of it. In fact, just about the only thing she wanted was to take a hot shower, put on clean clothes, and hear her daughter’s voice.
She turned on the shower and stepped into the water with a sigh, tipping her head back and letting the spray soak her hair. It seemed like a lifetime ago that she’d taken a bath in Arbois before they’d gone to the vineyard.
The vineyard… she could hardly think about it without shuddering. The chase through the field had been terrifying, the darkness all-consuming. Her terror had been second only to the moment she’d realized Lily was in the barn in Cornwall just as the property was breached by Adam Denman and his men. Then she feared only for her daughter. This time she feared she might not live to see her. That she’d be gunned down in the vineyard, would be left to die without ever seeing her daughter’s face again.
And while she’d been relieved to realize the men pouring from the chopper were the good guys, her relief had quickly turned to a new fear — the fear that she would be taken from Lily another way. That she and Farrell would be blamed for the death of Mrs. Hodges and Erik Karlsen. That they would be imprisoned and kept from Lily for the rest of her childhood.
But Farrell had delivered her from both eventualities with his insistence that she speak only to Braden Kane. She didn’t know the man, couldn’t get a read on why he was trying to help them, but Farrell had been right to speak only to him. They were free — for now, at least.
She took a deep breath, tried to calm her frazzled nerves as she soaped her body. The past was behind them, and it wouldn’t do any good to worry about the future. The threats you expected usually didn’t materialize. New ones appeared in their place, threats you didn’t see coming. The only way to survive without going mad was to live in the moment, take things as they came, have a little faith.
And she did have faith. Not in a god or in the universe or anything so intangible, but in Farrell and the belief that she would always be okay because he would see to it that she was. And Lily, too. His strength
, their love, had become her religion. More than anything else in her life, it had saved her. She would bet on him — on them — any day of the week.
She dried off and put on a clean pair of linen pants with a soft, drapey T-shirt. She immediately felt better. She was still shaken, her nerves still raw and exposed. She wanted to be surrounded by softness, by the familiar, by Farrell.
She found him in the living room, sitting on the sofa opposite Kane, who occupied one of the wing chairs near the old fireplace. She opened the terrace doors and went to the kitchen for a glass of water, using the opportunity to study Braden Kane.
He was a big man, an incongruous sight in the delicately carved wing chair. He was American, probably ex-military of some sort, both because of his extremely short hair — rare for men who made their living in suits — and because of the way he carried himself. His face was a study in symmetry, and she imagined that in another life he could have been a model or actor. Farrell would call him a pretty boy. He might even be right. But Jenna had the feeling there was a lot more hiding under the surface of Braden Kane.
She sat on the other end of the couch and looked from Kane to Farrell. “Did I miss it?”
“Miss what?” Farrell asked her.
“The pissing contest that decided who was the bigger man.”
Farrell smirked. “No need for a contest to know the winner of that title, love.”
“Is that your way of saying you’re afraid to test the theory?” Kane asked.
She rolled her eyes. “Right. So what now?”
“Now I take these papers back to headquarters,” Kane said, tapping the research papers on the coffee table. “And you stay right here where we can find you if we need you.”
“I don’t recommend that approach,” Farrell said.
“And why is that?”
“Because we have more information, and we’re not handing it over unless you work with us.”
Jenna hadn’t been privy to the conversation between Farrell and Kane before they’d been released, but she’d assumed Farrell had given Kane everything. Now she wondered how much had been said — and what had been left out. Had he omitted Bernard Morse’s connection to David Hewitt? The fact that Alex Petrov was obviously involved? Or was he bluffing?
Eternal (London Mob Book 3) Page 9