| |
––––––––
I OPENED THE BATHROOM closet, expecting to find a first aid kit. That was the standard location, and I was pleased to see exactly what I was looking for. It was a hefty box, no tiny lunch pail type thing that mothers with minivans carried to tend to their children. This one had massive amounts of gauze, sterile needles and thread, vials of morphine for pain, and tweezers for extracting bullets.
I grabbed Clark’s hand, expecting her to fight me. She gave it up easily, though, making me feel like at least we were making progress. I still felt a little groggy from the injection she’d forced upon me, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle.
I pressed at the sides of the wound, trying to determine if I should put a stitch or two in it. Clark winced but didn’t pull back, proving once again how tough she was. I thought I saw a hint of exhaustion in her eyes and that, more than the blood, made me nervous. Of course I’d had a serious nap while she was out doing whatever the hell had gotten her in trouble.
“Talk,” I instructed her as I held her hand over the sink so that I could douse the flesh with alcohol.
She inhaled sharply but continued to boss the pain. “I received intel on Vinny’s contacts,” she began, looking at her hand instead of at me. “The CIA was able to crack the encryption and found someone they thought would be willing to talk.”
“Were they willing to talk?” I asked. I unwound a strip of gauze and loaded it up with antibiotics before pressing it to her palm.
“No,” she reported succinctly.
“How does the other guy look?” I teased, reaching for the surgical tape to bind the gauze to the wound.
“He escaped,” she admitted.
“Are you sure the phone isn’t being tracked?” I asked. Considering her level of expertise, bringing an unknown phone to the safehouse wasn’t the smartest thing in the world.
“It’s a burner,” she answered, testing my nursing skills by flexing her fingers.
“Doesn’t mean it’s not being tracked,” I informed her.
“Let’s open it,” she suggested.
We trooped back into the living room to examine the phone. Taking it apart, we found the SIM card and extracted it. I couldn’t find any indication of a tracking device, at least not one that I was familiar with. Possibly this phone was the real deal, and not just a bid to end our lives.
“He said I should answer it when it rings,” Clark explained.
“We should put it back together then,” I replied.
But first, I uploaded the data from the SIM card to my contact at MI6. At least then we could learn if the tip from the CIA was legitimate. We fit the card back into its slot and restored functionality to the device. Then we set it on the coffee table to look at it.
“It was reckless of you to go off on your own,” I observed.
“Hmm,” she said, leaning heavily toward me. Her head nearly touched my shoulder, indicating a level of exhaustion that shocked me. I knew she hadn’t slept in a while, but this seemed excessive.
“Are you okay?” I asked. My thoughts immediately drifted toward the injury, and if there had been something more to the cut than a deep scratch. What if she had been poisoned somehow?
“I’m fine,” she muttered.
“How did you get injured?” I demanded, needing more information to make a diagnosis.
“He hit me with a lamp,” she replied, tipping forward to put her head in her hands.
“Come on,” I commanded, hauling her to her feet.
“No.” She fought me, but her movements were so weak they hardly mattered.
I told myself that we had cleaned the wound thoroughly, and that blood was the body’s own system for flushing contaminants away. She’d probably worn herself out by driving all night, getting into a fight and driving back, all without the prerequisite eight hours of sleep. It was normal for the body to maintain its energy through adrenaline as long as there was danger. But the moment you reached a safehouse and the threats were mitigated, that’s when your stamina gave out on you.
I would monitor her closely to make sure that there were no ill effects from the cut. But what she needed was sleep. I helped her back to the bedroom against her protests. Nearly forcing her to lie down, I pulled the blanket up to her chin. She was in no shape to take off her shoes or change into something so comforting as pajamas. But at least she was horizontal.
“If you kill me...” she whispered.
I took out my gun and laid it on the mattress beside her. And that was all she needed. Wrapping her fingers around the stock, she closed her eyes and allowed sleep to overtake her. I tiptoed out of the room and shut the door, not wanting to be shot over my good deed.
What a woman. Her desire for control was off the charts. I’d never met anyone, male or female, who was so passionate about working alone. Every interaction with her was a struggle, and even when she let her guard down enough to reveal personal details, the conversation felt like a tug of war.
I wondered if we would ever get to a point where she would begin to trust me. That was vital if I was going to be able to do my job. I certainly wasn’t going to be fooled by the vision of her in a towel again. Once was enough to teach me that I couldn’t trust her any farther than I could throw her. Although it felt like we were making progress. At least we weren’t trying to kill each other anymore.
She clearly didn’t want me to interfere with her activities in the field, but I had to appreciate her choice of injections. She could easily have put me to sleep permanently, as she’d done with so many other unfortunate men.
I went to the windows to check for suspicious activity but found none. She hadn’t been followed. There was a new car in the driveway, an older German model that wasn’t likely to attract much attention.
I pulled out my company-issued phone and made a call to Graham. I filled him in on the activities up to that point, leaving out the fact that Clark had gotten the jump on me. That particular detail didn’t make me look good, and it wouldn’t sit well with the higherups. We were supposed to be working together, and if I could somehow manage to crack Clark’s deeply embedded defenses, I felt like that was a possibility. I didn’t want to hinder our progress by telling the teacher, so to speak.
“The CIA has the download from Carmini’s phone,” I informed Graham. “They gave us a name: Jay.”
“I’ll look into it,” Graham promised.
“See what you can find out about Clark Abrams,” I said, thinking I needed some more ammo in my fight against my new partner.
Graham indulged me and looked into the first tier of information available to him over the phone. “There’s no one of that name in the CIA database.”
“Don’t tell me how you got access,” I teased.
“Just because we’re allies doesn’t mean we’re not spying on them,” Graham replied. “But you know that.”
“Is there a Clark?” I asked, wondering why she would have lied about her name, and whether any of it was real.
“There’s a Ryan Abrams,” Graham said.
“Tell me about him,” I demanded.
“He’s listed as killed in the line of duty,” Graham answered.
“I need everything you can find on him,” I said quickly, hanging up before Graham could ask me why.
Ryan must have been Clark’s “friend” who was killed by Dark Sparrow. He was the same man she’d suspected me of killing those many years ago when we had targeted each other in the bar. Apparently, she’d taken his name when he died, a sentimental action that I would have thought she was too cold to adopt.
There was a lot I didn’t know about the scrappy American lying in the adjoining room. Her pain ran deep, and that was something I could appreciate. While I didn’t share that particular trauma of losing a lover to the job, I’d had my share of difficult experiences. I hoped that I could convince her that I was on her side so that we could put away our knives and begin to work together. And maybe I could even admit to myself that I found her attractive.
