Third Strike

CHAPTER 31

They separated us. It was the first thing they did.

Collingwood had me and my mother hustled out of the lobby and taken through into the security area. They had a holding cell back there, presumably used as a secure place to stash intruders until the local law enforcement arrived. Vondie opened the door and shoved my mother inside, twisting a painful lock onto her wrist when the older woman attempted to resist.

My anger flared afresh. I stepped forwards instinctively, but Vondie let go of my mother with a shove and yanked the barred door shut, separating us.

“Sorry,” Vondie said, smiling. “No family rooms in this hotel.”

The outer door behind us burst open and Terry elbowed her way through. She was struggling against the two security men who were trying, somewhat halfheartedly, to detain her.

“Collingwood, you can’t do this!” she snapped. “You’ve violated their legal rights. Even if you had any kind of a case against these people, it will never get to a courtroom if you deny them their right to legal counsel. I’ll stand—”

“You have a sister in San Francisco, don’t you, Terry?” Collingwood interrupted, his voice gentle.

Terry stopped, baffled. “Yes,” she said, frowning. “What—”

“How would you like her hounded by the IRS? How would you like your cousin’s work visa to the UK revoked and her deported in leg irons? How would you like your parents in Concord accused of harboring terrorists and thrown in jail?”

Collingwood jabbed a finger to emphasize each point, jolting her with every new threat, pushing her back. And when she was reeling, he paused, smiled at her almost kindly, let his voice turn coaxing. “You want to do your duty, don’t you, Terry?”

“Of course,” she said. “But—”

“Well, you’ve done it. Now let us do ours.”

For a long few seconds, Terry wavered, gaze skittering between us. She bit her lip, wouldn’t quite meet my eyes. Then, at last, she nodded slowly. “I’m sorry, Charlie,” she said, her voice low, and went out.

The two Storax guards had been standing, dumbfounded, listening to the threats Collingwood made against Terry’s family. They clearly had no wish for their own relations to come under that kind of official scrutiny. All it took to send the pair of them scrambling for the exit was for Collingwood’s gaze to swing in their direction. The door closed behind them with a grim finality.

“You choose your people well, Collingwood,” I said, bitter, aware of a faintly shiny taste in the back of my mouth. I faced him. “But if you’re not being paid by Storax to clear the way for the licensing of this new drug, what the hell are you up to?”

Collingwood didn’t answer right away, just jerked his head again and Buzz-cut closed in on me, the pickup driver keeping his injured leg at a safe distance. I must have just nicked him, otherwise he’d be on crutches.

I braced myself, glancing across at my mother, who was pale as death behind the bars.

“I’m not going anywhere without her,” I said.

Collingwood swung round, got right in my face.

“Come now, Charlie,” he murmured. “Do you really want her to see what we’re about to do to you?”

The soft words hit harder than Vondie’s punch to the gut. Before I knew it, I’d allowed myself to be dragged out, down a short corridor, into another room. It was empty with painted block walls, a concrete floor, and concealed lighting panels in the ceiling. It might have been a storeroom or an empty office, but it felt like a cell, or worse.

It was a reasonably sized space, but with Collingwood and Vondie, and the two men, it felt oppressively overcrowded in there.

Vondie set about searching through my pockets and quickly found the switched-off mobile phone. I’d emptied out everything else before we’d left Terry’s house. I thought of Sean’s phone and hoped that he was using it to call Parker right now.

I don’t know how much cavalry I can rustle up if you get yourselves into trouble, Parker had told me, but I’ll do what I can.

The only thing I could do was give them both a little time.

Vondie showed the phone to Collingwood, who nodded back towards me.

“Let her turn it on, just in case.”

“Do you really think we’ve rigged it?” I asked. “Wow, you’re more scared of us than we thought.”

The pickup driver stepped up behind me and cut the PlastiCuffs. I flexed my hands a few times, then obligingly thumbed the phone into life. Vondie snatched it out of my hands and pressed a few keys, scowling.

“Nothing.”

“It’s called being a professional,” I said sweetly. “You should try it some time.”

“Where will Meyer have taken your father?” Collingwood asked, folding his arms and leaning against one wall.

I shrugged. “Who knows,” I said. “He could go anywhere. I hear Phoenix is nice this time of year.”

“How much have you told your boss?”

“Everything,” I said without hesitation. “We’ve kept him fully briefed and he’s making moves as we speak to have the pair of you hauled in for treason—if that’s a recognized crime over here. Back home, you’d probably be sent to the Tower of London and beheaded with an ax for what you’ve done.”

Collingwood’s face showed emotion for the first time. “I’m doing my job,” he said, darkening with the fervor of a true fanatic. “My superiors may not like my, ah, methods, but I love my country, and if we don’t get the jump on this nation’s enemies, you can be sure as hell they’ll try and get the jump on us.”

“Your superiors don’t know what you’re up to,” I said. “Come to that, if you’re not taking a backhander from Storax, why the hell are you trying to bury a drug that doesn’t work?”

“But it does work,” Collingwood said, levering himself off the wall abruptly and pacing, and there was a zealous gleam in his eyes now. “It targets a particular genetic code. Do you have any idea what could be done with that?”

I stared at him blankly. “You’re talking about a bioweapon,” I said. I laughed. “Jeremy Lee’s family were originally from Korea. Is that what this is all about? You’ve gone to all this trouble for the possibility of developing a side effect into a weapon. What are you intending to do, Collingwood, stand on the battlefield and wait for your enemies’ bones to crumble?”

Collingwood stared at me for a moment, then shook his head. “You don’t understand the possibilities, just like the bureaucrats above me when I first got wind of this. The Storax people were trying to play down the whole thing, so they could get their license, but I saw what could be done with it, even if they didn’t.”

I didn’t want to let him reel me in, but I couldn’t help asking, “How ?”

He gave the slightest of smiles, as though he’d known I wouldn’t be able to resist his rhetoric.

“Any company that handles government contracts has to be checked out regularly,” he said. “I have unlimited access to Storax’s files and I like to be thorough.”

“So you’re a glorified filing clerk,” I said.

His face tightened. “You’re not an American, Charlie, and you don’t understand the threats facing this country,” he said. “But, right now, you’re one of them.” He glanced across at Vondie. “We need to contain this as fast as possible. Find out what she knows and who she’s talked to—and where Meyer and Foxcroft are likely to be,” he said. “Do it, but with no … outward damage. If we have to trade her, she needs to look to be in one piece, if nothing else.”

“There won’t be a mark on her,” Vondie promised, almost a purr. “Don’t you worry about that.”

Collingwood nodded and walked out without a backward glance. The door closed behind him.

“Well, hardly a mark,” Vondie amended. She eyed me, triumphant, savoring the moment. “Okay, boys,” she said. “Strip her.”

I fought them then, hard and dirty. Knowing what they were trying to do set off all kinds of echoes back down the line, reaching viciously into the past and slashing through reason and training to carve a strake of outright bloody fear.

Even through the white-hot smear of rage, I recognized the fact they had their hands tied. They’d been told not to do anything to me that was going to show, and I was giving it everything I had and a little more besides. So, even outnumbered, I was more than holding my own and I reckoned we were pretty much at stalemate.

And then, as Buzz-cut staggered back, doubled over and starting to retch as he clutched at his balls, Vondie finally stepped in with an exasperated bark of, “Oh, for fuck’s sake …” and stunned me.

I didn’t see her pull it. She reached under my thrashing arms and dug the double electrodes of the TASER directly into my rib cage just below my left breast, which was probably as close to my heart as she could get it.

There was an almost infinitesimal delay, then the stunner’s electro-muscular disruption technology stampeded over my neural pathways with all the tact and delicacy of a boot camp drill sergeant. It didn’t bother trying to modify the control signals from my brain to my muscles, it blasted them into the ether, screeching commands in their place that I was unable to ignore or defy.

I’d been trained against the older type of stun guns, to focus and to fight through the charge they delivered, but this was like nothing I’d experienced before. I gave it a damn good go, flailing, but my coordination was blown to shit. Fifty thousand volts through your chest will do that to you.

The pain had a jagged quality all its own, ripping out chunks of my nervous system and spinning them away like debris from an explosion, so that some parts of my mind seemed magnified a hundred times and others were just big blank holes of frenzied nothingness.

Next thing I knew I was on the floor, my body rigid. I was peripherally aware that my head was banging on the concrete and that was probably not a good thing, but I couldn’t stop the twitching dance of my limbs. My hands had distorted into the twisted claws of an arthritis-ravaged geriatric. I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. It was the worst cramp I’d ever had in my life, the most violent fever, the meanest hangover, all rolled into one.

After that, I don’t remember much. They handled me roughly, yanked at my clothes, stuck something sharp in my arm. I think I heard someone groaning out the word, “Bitch!” over and over.

Then the corners of the room folded in neatly over my head, and I went under.

The first things that struck me, when I came round, was the nagging ache in my shoulders and wrists, and the nasty tingling in my fingers. I’d been sleeping, but something was very wrong with the angle. My head was lolling forwards into space, overextending my neck muscles.

They had strung me up, I realized belatedly, with all my weight hanging from restraints round my wrists. Padded restraints, by the feel of it, so they didn’t mark me. How kind.

I lifted my head, miscalculated how heavy it had suddenly become and had to right myself with a jerk that did nothing for the pain everywhere else. I wondered how long I’d been left like that. Not long, I reckoned, or I would have suffocated like a crucifixion victim.

“Back with us, huh?” said a woman’s voice I couldn’t immediately place. There was something familiar about the words, though. I waded sluggishly through my memory, sifting. My father. That was it. He’d said the same thing when I came round in hospital after I was shot. Shot. My father. My mother. New York. Boston. Parker. Texas. Storax. Terry. Vondie.

Reality arrived like a subway train, bringing with it a wheezing rush of information. On reflection, I think I preferred things when they were more fuzzy.

I opened my eyes. Somebody had brought in an easy chair and Vondie was reclining elegantly on it in front of me. The chair had been carefully placed out of my reach, even if I’d had the energy to try. She was leafing through a file contained in a thick manila folder and swinging her crossed foot negligently.

She’d taken the time to primp while I’d been gone, I saw. Her platinum blond hair was immaculately pleated behind her head and her makeup was flawless. It helped to disguise the thick nose I’d given her, even if it failed to conceal the damage completely.

It didn’t take long to work out why she’d gone to the trouble, and the realization sent a greasy slither of fear coiling through my belly. They’d stripped me naked before they’d dangled me from the ceiling. Never a state of affairs that’s going to make you compare well to another woman and feel good about yourself. Not when she’s tall and slim and wearing a fistful of designer labels, at any rate. Quite a change from the chainstore brands she’d sported on the UK job.

I forced my stiffened legs to uncurl, biting back a groan as I straightened my feet out with slow, deliberate effort onto the cold floor beneath them, so I could take some weight off my arms.

They’d hung me just high enough so that, when I stood upright, the best I could do with my arms was bend my elbows a little, but they were still largely numb from the restricted blood flow. Eventually being cut down, I recognized ruefully, was going to hurt like a bastard.

“Did I miss anything exciting while I was asleep?” I said around a furred tongue.

Vondie smiled without looking up from her study, as though I wasn’t worth any greater response. I waited in silence, muscles shivering, while she played her games, knowing I’d been through this before, or something very like it, and emerged more or less intact.

When I’d been undergoing my Special Forces training, they’d allowed the full-fledged boys to have first crack at interrogating us. It was a matter of pride that they broke us, as they’d been broken in their time, and though I’d held out longer than most, they got to me in the end. They got to everybody in the end.

Vondie finished reading her page and looked up with a smile.

“Your record’s impressive, Charlie—in places,” she said. “Shame you didn’t make the grade for Special Forces, though. That must have stung—being one of the dropouts. The failures. Tell me, were you really raped, or were you just hoping you could screw your way to a pass? Should have started with the instructors. Oh, wait a minute—” She glanced back at the page briefly, raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. “You did.”

“Why?” I asked, still breathless from the constriction in my chest. “Is that how you managed to make it?”

Her smile didn’t waver, but something tightened around her eyes. “I passed out in the top five percent of my class,” she said, and there was no mistaking the pride.

“Yeah,” I drawled, aiming for languid as I rolled my head round a few times, trying to work out the giant kinks. “I’ve heard that can happen in a slack year.”

Vondie let her breath out fast. She closed the file, held it over the arm of her chair and let it go, very deliberately, so it hit the floor with a sharp smack. Of no further interest.

I blinked a few times. I don’t know what they’d given me, but it was dispersing fast. I’d lost the muzzy feeling in my head and my vision was almost clear.

“Where’s my mother?” I said. My mind revolted at the thought of them doing this to her, treating her like this. She didn’t have the resources, the resolve, to cope. It would finish her.

Vondie got to her feet and came closer, the limp I’d given her in Cheshire almost imperceptible now. She was smiling broadly. “Well, well, I have to admit that normally it takes my interviewees a little longer to cry for their mommies,” she said, making a big show of looking at her platinum wristwatch. “Congratulations, Charlie—I think that’s a new record.”

I stopped forcing my eyes to lock onto different distances around the bare room and focused totally on her instead.

“If you’ve hurt her, you know I will find you and I will kill you,” I said with utter calm. I’d never meant a promise more, but I felt nothing. No emotion, no anger. Just certainty. Utter, cold, glittering, diamond-tipped certainty.

Vondie flinched before she could control it, saw that I’d registered her involuntary reaction, and damped down a scowl. Instead, she began to circle, lips pursed, eyes flicking up and down my body in slow, deliberate insult.

“I kind of thought you’d be in better shape—someone in your profession,” she said in a beautifully disparaging tone.

I didn’t respond. She disappeared out of my field of view and I forced myself not to move my head to try and follow her path. But I couldn’t stop myself tensing up, like seeing the fin slice under the surface of the water and waiting for the first crushing bite from the depths.

When it came, her touch was almost a caress, and far more creepy because of that. I felt a cool finger very softly trace the ugly scar of the bullet wound in my right shoulder blade and forced myself not to twist out from under it.

“Got it in the back, huh?” Her voice was soft, too, and very close to my ear. “Running away, were you, Charlie?”

I let my head come up a fraction, just enough to reinforce the memory of the head butt that had smashed her nose. I heard her quick sidestep, the little gasp the sudden movement provoked, and knew I was walking a very dangerous line here.

She stalked back round to stare me in the eye—but not too close. “What a pity you took Don out like that,” she said, her voice regretful. “They’re still not sure if he’ll lose the arm.” She paused for another dismissive visual sweep. “He would have had such fun with you … .”

“Like to watch that kind of thing, do you?” I said, ice in my chest now, flooding my limbs with such cold I struggled not to tremble. “Is that how you get your kicks?”

She smiled, and it wasn’t a pleasant smile. “You can indulge yourself in this little round of bravado all you like,” she said. “But it’s all going to be for nothing. News flash, honey, this is a pharmaceutical company. They got stuff here that will have you screaming for mercy and spilling your guts—in every sense of the word—in minutes.”

She gestured to my left. I twisted my head and noticed, for the first time, that someone had wheeled in a little trolley, on which was a steel tray containing several sets of latex gloves and a number of hypodermic syringes. I had no idea what was in them, and even less desire to find out.

I felt my chin come up. “So, what’s keeping you?”

She sat down again, smoothing her skirt as she did so. “We want you to suffer, not to die,” she said casually. “We took a little blood while you were out and the lab boys have been running a full tox screen, just to make sure there’s no danger of anything unexpected happening to you.” She checked her watch again and shrugged. “You’ve been out for a while. They should be back with the results any time now. Soon as they are, we can get this party started.”

A moment later—so soon I swear Vondie must have orchestrated it—there was a tap at the door. They’d hung me with my back to it so, when anyone came in or out, I’d have the fear of anticipating their identity and purpose to add to the humiliation they were already putting me through. A nastily sophisticated little touch.

Vondie threw me a triumphant glance as she rose to meet the new arrival. I didn’t see who it was. Male, by the tonal frequency of the voice. Harried—shocked, even. I let my body droop slightly, like I was really hurting until I heard the door close again. Not much acting involved.

I expected Vondie to regain her seat for a leisurely read, but she stayed behind me at first, so all I heard was the rapid flick of turning pages.

“You’ve been a bad girl, Charlie,” she said at last, apparent pleasure in her tone. “According to the lab boys, you have Vicodin in your system. Something hurts, huh?”

This time when it came, her touch—in the deep scar at the back of my left thigh—was a sharp jab. My leg buckled and I swung precariously, gulping down the pain with enough air to swallow the noises I was desperate not to make.

By the time I’d staggered upright enough to have my feet and my breath back under me, she was seated again, watching.

“Not enough of it for you to be addicted,” she went on, as though there’d been no interruption. “But we could soon change that.”

She smiled at my frozen expression for a moment, milking it, then dipped her eyes back to the lab report. She’d almost scanned right to the bottom of the page when she stopped abruptly.

I saw her shoulders stiffen, the paper quiver as her fingers did the same. My gut tightened the same way, like we had some kind of visceral connection.

She looked up again, eyes glinting. “So, tell me, Charlie,” she said softly. “Who’s the father?”