Johanna hadn’t slept. The bright fluorescent lights over her head never went off, leaving her in constant daylight. She sat in the corner of a windowless room, her wrists and ankles in shackles. The room was empty except for a stainless steel toilet—no lid, no seat—and a camera watching her twenty-four hours a day from a mount on the high ceiling. She’d tried to keep track of the time since the Treadstone agents had hijacked her at the Hollywood Bowl, but eventually the endless light had played tricks on her mind. It had been at least twenty-four hours. She was sure of that. But it could have been much more, and she wouldn’t have known the difference.
They’d left food for her, although she’d eaten nothing so far. Power bars. Plastic bottles of Gatorade. Smart. If they brought trays of food on a regular basis, they’d be giving her a chance to overpower whoever came inside. She appreciated that Shadow had respect for her skills.
But what came next?
Why was she here?
She was surprised that she was still alive. That probably meant Shadow hadn’t been able to retrieve the Files that night. Something had gone wrong. But Johanna wasn’t fooling herself about the future. As long as the Files were out there, then her skills might be needed, but as soon as Shadow had the laptop in her hands, then she would do what she’d wanted to do all along.
Kill Johanna.
She shook her head in frustration. God, she hated to lose. And especially to her.
Johanna pushed herself to her feet. The metal of the cuffs bit into her skin, and the chains rattled. She paced around the walls, counting off exactly one hundred transits. As she did, she played math games and word puzzles in her head. That was her way to stay limber and loose and keep her mind agile. If an opportunity came to escape, she wanted to be ready. To act immediately. And sooner or later, an opportunity would come. Someone would walk through that door.
When she was done with her workout, she decided not to resist her hunger anymore. Food was energy, and she needed to stay at peak energy. So she ate two power bars and drank an entire bottle of Gatorade. When she had to pee, she dropped her pants before sitting on the toilet and extended a middle finger at the camera.
Thoughts came to her. Questions and answers.
Where was she? Almost certainly still in the Los Angeles area. She’d regained consciousness in a Treadstone van, and they hadn’t driven far. A couple of hours at most. They’d put a hood over her head, so she’d seen nothing when they unloaded her, and they’d only removed the hood when she was in this room. But if she was close to L.A., then Shadow was close, too.
So was Jason.
Jason.
Was he really still nearby? Was he even still alive? It seemed impossible that Shadow would kill him, but she’d learned long ago that Shadow was capable of anything. She didn’t care about people. People were tools, nothing but means to her ends.
Johanna sat back down in the corner. She found herself getting tired. Crazy tired. The overhead lights made the room as bright as the sun, but her eyes drifted shut anyway. She wondered if they would wake her up by blasting Def Leppard into the room—keep her awake, keep her vulnerable—but she found her head sinking against the wall, and she slept without interruption. All she had were surreal dreams of sex and death. She had a vision of finding Jason in bed with Shadow, and she killed them both, stabbing their naked bodies over and over until their blood rose high enough to wash her away like a flood.
When she finally awoke, she had no idea how many hours had passed. But she realized immediately that this hadn’t been sleep. She’d been unconscious. They’d drugged her. Fuck, fuck, fuck, it had been the power bars or the Gatorade! In the interim, they’d come into the windowless room and carried her away.
She sat in a new room now. It was larger, more like an office suite. There were windows, but the curtains were drawn, so she couldn’t see where she was. She sat at a rectangular wooden table, and when she tried to move it, she found that the table was bolted to the floor. Her wrists were handcuffed to two metal rings, and her feet were shackled to similar rings on the floor.
Another camera watched her from the ceiling. She mouthed, Fuck you.
They were watching. They knew she was awake. Not even five minutes later, the heavy door to the room opened, and Shadow came inside. She closed the door behind her, and the lock clicked shut.
“Storm,” Shadow said. “I thought we should have a chat.”
Johanna said nothing. She hated being at a disadvantage to this woman. To her nemesis. It wasn’t just that Shadow was free, whereas she was a prisoner chained to the table. It was also the fact that Shadow looked so annoyingly perfect, as she always did. Johanna wore the same clothes she’d been wearing at the Hollywood Bowl, and she was dirty, and she smelled, and her long blond hair clung to her skin in greasy strands. Shadow, by contrast, wore a smartly tailored burgundy business suit, every detail of her look perfect and attractive. Her hair swept over her head like an ocean wave, her blood-red lips had that kiss-me fullness, and her long, creamy white nails didn’t show a single chip.
She carried no files, no pen, no phone. Instead, those elegant fingers bent around the butt of a Ruger LCP. As Shadow sat down across from Johanna, she put the gun on the table. The Ruger was part of the flag series, its rack decorated in red, white, and blue.
“Nice gun,” Johanna said. “What do you want me to do? Sing the national anthem?”
A tight smile flickered across Shadow’s mouth. “You may find this hard to believe, Storm, but I’ve always liked you.”
“Well then, why don’t you let me go?”
“Actually, I may do that,” Shadow replied.
Johanna snorted. “Yeah, right. What do you want?”
“I want to end the vendetta between us.”
“It ends when one of us is dead,” Johanna replied.
“Yes, that’s one option. But I’d like to propose an alternative.”
“I’m not interested.”
“Hear me out,” Shadow said. “Don’t you want to know what’s going on? In case you were wondering, the Files are still out there. I don’t have them yet.”
“I figured.”
“Callie Faith did a deal. She’s free and clear.”
“Of course she did. She’s a survivor.”
“So that leaves you in here, Storm. You’re the only one paying the price for Callie’s sins. Which is a waste of your considerable skills.”
“Then why not test my skills?” Johanna replied. “Take off the cuffs. Leave the Ruger in the middle there, and let’s see which one of us is fastest.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’d win.”
“You’re right.”
Shadow was quiet for a while, her stare looking inside Johanna’s head like an X-ray. “You haven’t asked about Jason.”
“I figured you’d lie to me. Is he okay?”
“He’s fine. He texted me a report this morning. He suffered a knife wound, but it’s not serious. Garrett Parker is dead. Abbey was shot, and she’s in the hospital. The bond between those two seems quite strong, doesn’t it? I really thought he’d moved on from her. But apparently not.”
Johanna’s mouth tightened. She couldn’t hide that Shadow had touched a nerve by throwing Jason and Abbey in her face. “Fuck you.”
“Vix has the Files,” Shadow went on, with an expression that said she’d gotten the reaction she wanted. “Callie thought she was dead, but she’s alive and kicking. I imagine she’s going to try to get out of the country with the laptop. Once she’s overseas, she’ll be able to find any number of rogue buyers. We need to stop her.”
“Is that why you’re here?” Johanna said. “Do you want me to get the Files for you? Because the answer is no. I’m not going to help you.”
“No, I told Jason to go after Vix. I have faith in his skills. He’ll find Vix before she gets away, and he’ll get the laptop from her. He’s very good. You both are, but in fairness, Jason understands people better than you do. He can read them. Anticipate them. Whereas with you, your amazing abilities are limited by what you are.”
“Oh? And what’s that?”
“You’re a narcissist, Storm. The world is all about you. You can’t sacrifice yourself for anyone else. You always come first.”
Johanna shook her head. “Don’t play your fucking Treadstone mind games with me and pretend you know who I am. We’ve been down that road before.”
“Yes, we have. But that’s why I know you better than you know yourself. I know Jason inside and out, too. In every situation, I know what the two of you will do before you have a chance to make up your minds and do it. That’s my superpower. You can’t play chess without knowing how to manipulate your pieces.”
“You just want to fuck him again,” Johanna snapped. “Now that he knows who you are, he’s never going to let you do that.”
Shadow leaned across the table, an arrogant sultriness in her blue eyes. “Please. If I want Jason in my bed, all I have to do is snap—my—fingers. Trust me, he’ll come running, and he’ll never go back to you.”
Johanna jerked at the chains on her wrists, but they refused to yield.
Shadow sat back in the chair, a smile of smug satisfaction on her face. “Are you ready to hear my offer?”
“Take your offer and shove it up your ass.”
“You haven’t heard it yet.”
“I don’t need to.”
“Give me five minutes, Storm. I have a mission, and you’re the only one who can do it. I wouldn’t trust this assignment to anyone else.”
Johanna hesitated.
She was curious—and she was tempted—despite her hatred for the woman sitting in front of her. She wanted to spit, watching the expression on Shadow’s face, but the bitch was right. She really did know how to get inside Johanna’s head and push all of the right buttons.
“If I say yes?” Johanna asked cautiously.
“If you say yes, you’ll be taken out of here. You’ll be free. You’ll have money, weapons, and access to the Treadstone jet to take you where you need to go. When the mission is done, you can trust me, come back to Treadstone, and I’ll put you on the payroll as an agent again. Or you can take the cash I put in your account and go on your way. Either way, the vendetta will be done as far as I’m concerned. I won’t be coming after you again.” Shadow’s face darkened. “Unless, of course, you make the mistake of coming after me.”
Johanna’s rage vied with her need to know more.
What mission was worth that?
“And what if I say no?” she asked.
Shadow picked up the Ruger and racked the slide. “If you say no, I’ll put a bullet in your head right now. That will end the vendetta, too.”