MadetoBeBroken

by Lyra Byrnes

  “Where are you taking me? You must think I’m awfully stupid.”

  He did not turn around to answer. “Nyet. Better for me if you were. We are here.”

  She looked up at the imposing marble building. “The National Gallery of Art, are you kidding me? This is a museum.”

  A wide smile transformed his face. “You see? Not stupid.”

  “The hell—?” Coco muttered as she mounted the steps. She was thankful at least for the comfortable shoes. Footwear was always to the male’s advantage in espionage. Well, almost always, depending on what else the woman had on.

  “I don’t like London,” Alexi was saying, mounting the steps. “So I come here to escape it. In museum, whole world is open.”

  His smile was like the sun coming out. Damn him for acting so at ease, Coco thought. She herself was coiled like a spring, tense and suspicious and, to her shame, she felt frumpy in her tourist costume.

  She followed him up another flight of wide marble stairs, pausing at a lurid painting of Salome holding up John the Baptist’s head in triumph. Alexi was hopping up the steps two at a time while she rallied behind him. Not at full strength yet, she had to admit. This might not bode well for when she finally had him in the safe house. That’s where firearms came in—a shot to the kneecap would put the advantage back in her hands.

  She spotted his boot heel whisking around a corner and emerged into a small, deserted gallery, panting. Alexi was already seated on a leather bench, staring intently at a painting. It was of no great size and depicted a darkish lake surrounded by fearsome mountains.

  “‘Landscape, thought to be Sardinian, circa 1792,’” she read from the tag on the wall next to it. “Great.”

  “Sit with me, krahsniy.” He sounded tired. “Do you love your country?”

  Her eyes widened. “I work for the government, you already know that.”

  “Answer question. Do you love it?”

  “Of course.” America, eagles, apple pie, freedom—how could she not love it? She would never have agreed to try out for the FBI after she graduated college if she didn’t want to serve her country. It was a young woman in her boxing class who approached her, a petite Asian girl who was the only opponent who had ever given Coco trouble in the ring.

  Leilani was in officer school in the Marines. She took Coco aside after a sparring session and confessed that, while she herself was too short to apply for an FBI position, she’d like to see another woman as strong and smart as she was take up a post in that venerable institution. But after Coco’s FBI interview she was pulled aside again, and a business card slipped into her hand. “We need someone young, smart and strong, but not here,” the interviewer had said. “The Bureau has plenty of viable candidates. OSO takes only the cream of the crop. I see something in you, Miss Fiori. If you’re interested in going deeper into national security and special operations, I believe they will make a place for you. Good luck.”

  She had fingered the card until the type was smeared and sweat-stained. Finally she made the call. Joining OSO had been the smartest decision of her life. The dumbest one had been to think that sleeping with that preening ass Rod Templeton was a good idea.

  Alexi’s rumbling voice jolted her back to the present. “‘Of course’. Is good enough answer for an immigrant.”

  “I’m not an immigrant!”

  “Your people are what—Irish?”

  “Half-Scottish, some French and Italian,” she answered. “But we’ve been here for at least a hundred—” Her voice died away as he turned to her, his face serious. She realized they weren’t talking about the same thing, but how could he know that for seventeen years, America was as much of a dream to her as to any immigrant? His eyes were lighter than his hair, strangely otherworldly with that glittering splash of gold, and slightly almond shaped.

  “I love my country,” he said. “Everything I do is to preserve it. The beauty, the culture, the people. Do you know what it is to see that slipping away, to fight so it stays?”

  Coco stared back at him, stunned. America had always been at the top of the world heap. There was never any question that the country would lose its power and its value. Everything she did, she did to keep her nation at the top, not to fight for its survival.

  “No. We have never had to do that. My job is to keep things the same, protect the status quo,” she answered.

  “Look. Here is circle of civilization.” He touched his middle fingers and thumbs together to demonstrate. “Persia, India, China, Greece, Rome, Europe. Inventing mathematics, astronomy, plumbing, typography, democracy. In the wheel of history, many nations were here.” He tapped his middle fingers together at the apex of the circle. “You believe America will always be up top, krahsniy? What are you fighting to preserve?”

  “That position!” she answered stoutly. “Whatever the future brings, we are on top now, and it’s thanks to people like me. People like you only seek to destroy all the good we do in the world, and ruin your own nation in the process.”

  “My nation? Is what—some farms, some mountains, some lakes. One city.” He turned again to the painting. “But beautiful still. So, alone American agent, you play at being art student. Tell me what you see.”

  The painting wasn’t much to look at, but it had a certain dark power. A small landscape, framed in gold more elaborate than the simple scene it depicted, the painting sported a dark, grayish-blue lake surrounded by mountains, jagged-topped and menacing. The trees that dotted the hills listed slightly as if windblown. Coco could taste the fresh, bitter wind, smell the sharp scent of pine and the glorious clean musk of water lapping on stones.

  “A place with beauty,” she admitted, “a rough kind. It looks like living there would take hard work just to eke out simple joys. But the joys would be all the more satisfying because of what went into pulling them out of the land.”

  But I’d rather have a microwave and scented dryer sheets, she finished inwardly.

  They sat in silence for a time. Coco dared not catch his eye. Somehow she wanted her answer to please him, and a disappointed or angry look would crumble her.

  “Is all that, yes,” he said finally. “But is another thing, something you will never have, little red bird whose wings brought you to this country, free to fly away again. To me, is home.”

  Home¼ He had to be crazy, Coco mused as they exited the museum. Only a madman would insist that home was a place that had birthed and buried your ancestors from time immemorial. If that was his definition, he was enslaved by an accident of place, and fealty to that notion drove him to destroy the land he claimed to love in an effort to free it. His answer sounded gentle enough, even sentimental, but to Coco it was evidence of a dangerous rigidity. Here was an unbending soul who saw the world in black and white, and whoever got in the way of his mission—whether enemies or innocents—was collateral damage. This would be a hard man to break.

  Which reminded her, she was still expecting those questions from OSO. She pulled out her phone.

  “Tied by bellybutton to your little device,” he said. “Like all Westerners.”

  “Don’t you have one?”

  “Nyet.”

  She scrolled down, vaguely wondering why he was still hanging around. They were almost back at her hotel.

  “Now you’re lying to me,” she answered distractedly.

  “I am not, but if I had such a device, I would give it to you to gain your trust. Then take it back after I kill you.”

  “Hm.” Still no text; what was Templeton playing at? She opened her purse again to drop the phone back inside. Before she could look up, his hands were around her throat, pressing. She gagged as the edges of her vision began to darken like an ink stain leaking into her eyes. Air, she needed air desperately.

  The thought that Alexi’s face, impassive, would be the last thing she’d ever see sent a tiny rush of adrenaline shooting through her body. Something hard slammed into her back and she realized that he had shoved her against the panel of the whi
te van. If I can feel then I’m not dead yet. Forget about the lungs. What in my body still works? Her fingers touched the grip of the Walther PPK and feebly tried to locate the trigger. She could see nothing now but a fire-burst of stars against blackness, feel nothing but his thumbs pressing on her windpipe. All she wanted was to breathe. All she wanted was to lie down and let the sleep take her.

  The most important rule of all. Don’t die.

  The shot blew them both backward, Coco’s head slamming hard against the van. Coughing, fighting the urge to throw up, she blinked her vision clear. When the stars receded, she saw him lying in the street. She managed to fish out the gun and aim it at his head, walking slowly toward the prone figure.

  He wasn’t dead—the bullet seemed to have gone clean through his thigh, if the blooming stain of blood on his jeans was any indication—but he seemed to have passed out from shock. She would have only seconds to get him cuffed and into the van. Better use the needle first.

  He was indeed two-hundred-plus pounds of solid muscle. It took all of her strength to drag Alexi’s body, dead weight from the chemicals she had plunged into his neck, onto the sidewalk and up into the van. She made more work for herself propping him in the backseat on the passenger side, but she wanted to be able to keep an eye on him while she drove. Inside, the van was clean, too clean. There was no sign of useful supplies or even a rag. Sighing, she tore off her scarf and bound up his still-seeping leg above the wound.

  A little backup, she thought ruefully, would not have been fucking unwelcome, Western Ops. Or is that Western Oops?

  She climbed into the driver’s seat and indulged in the simplest, most necessary act of being alive—deep, cleansing breaths, the sweetest she had ever taken.

  Chapter Six

  Her legs were shaking, she was desperately thirsty and she had not eaten for almost twenty-four hours, but none of that mattered. She looked at the map, looked up and looked at the map again. This had to be it—MacHeath Hall, Invergarten, Scotland.

  The safe house was hardly worthy of the grand title “hall”, but still perfect for her needs—secluded, on a small, wooded rise above a loch, like a lakeside cabin in the States, if such a thing was outfitted with a nice kitchen, a fireplace and better yet, shackles attached to the ceiling, walls and bed. There was also a supply of bindings, blindfolds, cuffs, collars, lashes and, for some reason, a shelf of condoms in the bedroom armoire. That’s what set her to humming as she clipped a very groggy Alexi by the wrists and ankles. The only hard part had been holding him upright long enough to fasten him to the wall. The distributor cap to the van was in her purse and her prisoner was stuck to the wall like an insect pinned on a card.

  She stood back and observed her work—not bad. His head hung down, a mane of dark hair over his face, but he was sentient enough to will some tension into his muscles so that the restraints would not pull his arms from their sockets. The dark T-shirt stretched tightly over his wide chest and flat belly, the denim on his left leg sported a hydrangea-sized blossom of blood.

  Dismissing a passing impulse to kick him in the balls for good measure, she made a circuit of the cabin, discovering with gratitude that a place fully stocked with implements of torture and restraint also boasted a well-stocked infirmary. She gathered antiseptic, towels, bandages and tape for him then helped herself to an apple from the kitchen.

  The file had made it clear that she was to keep him alive until he answered all of her questions, which he unfortunately must have figured out, because she hadn’t shot him in the head. Alexi knew he would be in for some pain, but that would be the worst he’d have to endure. She wondered how much he could take, a man of his strength. She far preferred a clean shot. The results of examination by slow torture were always spurious.

  At any rate, a man that powerful would not perish from a blasted thigh and a little blood loss. Plenty of time to bind it up after he had suffered for a while, just to give him a taste of what he was getting into. Her throat was still tender and the memory of those hands cutting off her air supply angered her all over again, and the anger stiffened her spine. It was nice to have the advantage over this monster. When she came back to check on her captive, he was awake and glowering at her with those strange, brown-gold eyes.

  “Sooka!” he spat.

  “I’ll assume that’s not the Russian word for ‘sweetheart’,” she replied, munching the apple.

  “You shot me.”

  Coco approached the prisoner, humming again. Delicately she wrapped her free hand around his neck and positioned her thumb over his Adam’s apple. The look in his eyes—pure rage—gave her great pleasure.

  “We are not in the same business, Alexi, but we share some of the same tricks, don’t we? Like this little number.” She pressed her thumb on the nerve bundle at his throat, eliciting a satisfying groan of pain. Her thumb dug into the flesh, feeling the ridge of his larynx. He made an awful gargling sound.

  “Does that hurt? It sure hurt the fuck out of me when you did it. Then again, you didn’t take your time while trying to choke me to death. Lucky for you, I’m patient.”

  As swift as a cobra, his head dipped and he clamped his teeth on the tender web between her thumb and forefinger. Coco cried out in pain and shock. Before she could jerk her arm back, her thumb slid into his mouth.

  She wanted to pull away, to wrest back control of the situation, but her hand felt numb, as if it wasn’t attached to her body. Her mouth hung open and she forgot to breathe as Alexi sucked on her thumb then moved to her next two fingers, running his tongue across her skin, sucking gently, eyes locked on hers. His mouth was warm and wet and his scent rose into her nostrils—tobacco, leather, sweat and autumn leaves.

  She jerked her hand away.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Your skin is so white, like cream. I wanted to taste you.”

  She stepped back, out of reach from his head. “You won’t be trying that again.”

  “Not until you beg me to, krahsniy.”

  “Funny. There’s a whole closet full of restraints that says different.”

  His eyebrows managed a weak elevation. “Is there? Is what you like, little bird?”

  “I ask the questions here.” She retrieved a knife from her purse and knelt before him.

  “Is good position, agent,” she heard him chuckle. “Stay down and I tell you everything.”

  Once she’d cut the denim off, the wound appeared mid-thigh, nowhere near the femoral artery or the bone, but there was a lot of blood, both crusted and tacky, to clean. Alexi did not flinch when, none too gently, she began to wipe it off with a wet towel.

  “Your superior wants me alive,” he said.

  Ugh, so he did know. And double ugh that technically, Templeton was her boss for this mission. How he must be relishing the tin-can operation he’d given her. She grunted around the roll of tape between her teeth. “I don’t have a superior.”

  Coco sat back on her heels. The gauze looked tidy, only a little blood was seeping through. She couldn’t help thinking that such a magnificent male specimen deserved better than to be strung up like this, unless it was at his request for his own pleasure and that of a swarm of supple females.

  It wasn’t often she encountered an enemy who behaved like a human being, with all the kaleidoscopic shades of humanity on display. Usually she was assigned to a frustrating negotiation in an airless room or stifling tent, or told to aim very carefully at the eye and disappear without leaving a trail. Some had been intelligent, some even amusing or hospitable, but without exception, the men she had dealt with were loathsome creatures who toiled in fields of poison flowers—egomaniacal, destructive and as willing to put a bullet in her head as she was in theirs. No one had ever sat in front of a painting with her and talked about home. And none had ever invaded her dreams. She willed her eyes away from his crotch.

  “Is a dream for me, you know.”

  She looked up sharply. “What?”

  “Just last nig
ht I picked up trashy girl, red hair like you. She sucked my dick—terrible, how you say, method?”

  “Technique,” she said automatically.

  “And now you are here on your knees ready to give me much better sucking. Rule number two.”

  She stood. “And what’s that?”

  “You know but you won’t say, hard-head American tough girl. You like when I lick your finger, makes your nipples hard. But is weakness, krahsniy. Desire makes you weak. Rule Number Two, show no weakness.”

  “Then you’re losing strength by the second,” she said dryly, glancing at the bulge in his crotch.

  He smiled wolfishly. “You, not me. It makes me only stronger. Let me out of these chains and I will show you the lie of that until you are raw and screaming.”

  Water, she had to have water. She filled a glass in the kitchen, dug a tablet out of her bag and returned to her victim, who by now was less pale and had seemed to have regained a little strength.

  “Ask me your questions. ‘How hard are you gonna fuck me, Alexi?’”

  She tipped the water into his mouth and slipped in the pill.

  “Don’t be an asshole. It’s an antibiotic. And I’d be happy to shoot you in the other leg just to shut you up.”

  “‘You want me to worship your cock with my mouth, Alexi?’” he teased. “Do it and I answer one question.”

  At this, she laughed. “I’ll get my answers the old-fashioned way. Maybe trading sex for secrets is how they do it in Chechnya, but not in my country.”

  He raised his eyebrows as coolly as if they were in the middle of a cocktail-party conversation. “Is true? My little red bird trades her moans for nothing at all last night. Better to let me take care of your wet pussy, and you make boss happy. Everybody wins.”

  “Or better yet, I shoot you in the dick and score a victory for The US of Fucking A.” She sounded full of bravado, but inwardly, Coco was perturbed. So he had witnessed her red-hot four-way then gone out to pick up some slut to satisfy him. What would she have done if he’d stripped off, shoved the men out of the way and taken over while she was naked, wet and panting? Opened her legs for him? Let him run his tongue over her nipple, slide his cock between her breasts, fuck her in the mouth?