Jad Bell: Bravo Part 17

She wonders if she and her Lover will ever make children. Until this moment, she has never considered it, and she is self-aware enough to know that she is thinking this now because of what she is here to do. She wants children, she realizes, and though they have never spoken of it, she feels, absolutely, that her Lover does not. He is her Lover; he is not a husband.

She heads back down the stairs, wondering about what might have been. She does not have to do this, she tells herself.

Then she hears the garage door opening, the grinding of the motor, the sound of the car. She puts the mask on and steps around the corner to the hall, out of sight. Jordan hears their voices before the door is open. They're talking about dinner. The door falls closed, heavy, pushed, and the woman pa.s.ses the open archway to the hall, not six feet from where Jordan is standing, a bag of groceries in her arm, sliding her purse down her other arm, sets both on the counter together. Her keys clatter on the tile. She's shorter than Jordan, and older, in her late thirties or even early forties, black hair in a bob, a little on the heavy side. Jordan thinks her clothes are like the decor in the master bedroom-trying too hard.

"Go get cleaned up," the woman says. "I'll have dinner ready in fifteen minutes."

The girl rounds the corner into the hall and sees Jordan and for a moment she has no idea what she's looking at. From what her Lover said, Jordan knows the girl is twelve, but like her mother, she's dressing to be something she isn't.

The moment of shock breaks, the girl starts to take a step back, starts to open her mouth. Jordan moves forward before she can, takes hold of her by the throat, points the gun in her face. Pushes the girl back into the kitchen.

There's the sound of gla.s.s shattering, and a strangled cry, and Jordan sees the woman turning away, lunging for the far counter.

"Don't," Jordan says.

The woman doesn't listen, spins back around, the biggest knife from the rack in her hand. She's holding it wrong, Jordan can see that, but even wrong, it can still kill her. The woman holds the blade out, the cooking island now between her and Jordan and the girl.

"Let her go!" the woman says. "You f.u.c.king let her go or I will kill you."

Jordan considers this. She needs them alive to do what her Lover requires, at least for now. In her hand, she can feel the girl shaking.

"Drop the knife," Jordan says.

"f.u.c.k you! I will end you! Let my daughter go!"

Jordan releases the girl, and the girl recoils, both her hands going to her throat. The moment she's clear, her mother is moving, the knife high, and Jordan pivots inside the strike, slams her left forearm across the woman's jaw, snapping her head back. The woman staggers, tries to right herself, and Jordan hits her in the face again, this time with her elbow. The woman hits the counter, collapses to the floor, landing hard on her behind, the knife clattering away. Blood is flowing from her nose and mouth.

In her periphery, Jordan sees the girl start to move, and she turns, bringing the Walther up again. The girl freezes, one arm already extended. Jordan points to the roll of duct tape on the counter.

"Take that, start tearing strips," Jordan says.

She's about to add that she doesn't want to hurt them, either of them, when pain blasts along her right leg, out from the side of her knee, and she's falling, has to put her free hand out to catch herself. She twists just as the woman kicks at her again, and the blow misses the joint and lands on the inside of Jordan's thigh.

Jordan jerks back, trying to keep her feet, sees the woman is now pulling herself up, the blood still running from her nose. The girl is moving, too, again going for the knife on the floor, and in the way that adrenaline makes such realizations clear, Jordan thinks the girl is being stupid, that it would be much quicker to just grab another knife from the rack.

Jordan also thinks that this was not at all what she had planned.

The woman is charging at her, heedless of the gun, or perhaps realizing that Jordan doesn't want to shoot them, or perhaps not caring for anything but the safety of her daughter. There's no time to get out of the way, and Jordan tries to twist with the impact. The woman is heavy and has velocity, and together she and Jordan smash into the kitchen table. Both the woman's hands are on Jordan's wrist, fighting for control of the gun.

"Callie!" the woman says. "Run!"

Jordan punches with her left, the way she was taught by the man in Singapore, her fourth teacher. She hits the woman in the side, hears her grunt, hits her again twice more in the same place, and the woman's weight changes as her legs go weak. Jordan uses her knee, slams it into the woman's crotch, and the grip around her wrist slips, and she shoves, hard, and the woman again hits the floor.

The girl, Callie, is halfway down the front hall.

Jordan points the Walther at the woman on the floor.

"You open that door and I will kill your mother," Jordan says.

The girl skids to a halt, one arm extended, already reaching for the door.

"You open that door, I will kill your mother," Jordan says. "I will do it."

The girl doesn't move.

On the floor, the woman, Callie's mother, says, "Run, baby." The words come out on a wet wheeze.

"I will do it," Jordan says. She says this quite calmly, despite her racing heart and the ache in her right knee and the swirl of thoughts all saying that she should not be here, that she should have walked away, that she cannot fail at this, she cannot fail her Lover. "I don't want to do it, but I will."

The girl's hand is on the doork.n.o.b now.

"I don't want to hurt either of you. I don't want to kill either of you. But if you open that door, I'll do it. You'll make me do it."

"Lying," Callie's mother says.

"No," Jordan says. "Trust me."

Callie's hand drops. Her body sags. She turns around, looks at Jordan with an expression of hopeless confusion.

On the floor, Jordan hears her mother release a single, agonized sob.

"Come over here," Jordan says.

Callie comes over.

"Why are you doing this?" the girl asks. It's plaintive, almost bewildered. "What do you want?"

"I want you to call your dad," Jordan says.

Chapter Nineteen.

SHE AWAKENS AND is once again unsure of where she is, sunlight cutting across a strange room, a ceiling unfamiliar. She smells coffee and eggs and bacon, the muted sound of a single voice in a one-sided conversation. The sheets are cotton. This is not a hotel room, and it is not Tashkent. She strains for the voice, recognizes it as Bell's and that he must be speaking on the phone. The memory of the previous night comes back. She feels a muted shame at herself, not for sharing her weakness but for admitting to it. Elisabetta shows no weakness; it's Petra Nessuno who doesn't know if she's coming or going.

Nessuno rises, drags fingers through her hair. It's still too long, outside of regulation. Elisabetta's hair. She knows she should have cut it by now.

She leaves his bedroom and returns to hers, the bed as pristine as the night before. She couldn't even bring herself to lie down on it. She grabs her jeans from where they're heaped in the corner, pulls them on, not bothering with shoes or socks, then heads in the direction of the scents and the sounds.

"No, I already confirmed," Bell is saying, his phone wedged between shoulder and ear. He's at the stove and cooking a genuine heart attack, eggs and bacon together. He catches her eye and motions to the coffee pot with the spatula in his hand. "It's a two-man team, they're supposed to be there, just let them do their job."

Nessuno fills a mug from the pot.

"Have her text me," he's saying. "I don't know. I haven't been here long enough to check."

Nessuno sips her coffee. She doesn't bother to pretend she's not listening, and Bell certainly doesn't seem to care, so she suspects whatever the conversation is, it's not operational.

"I don't know." This time, there's the edge of exasperation in his voice. "She'll have to text me until I know. As soon as I can get online, I'll let her know. But it's a standard detail, Amy. They're doing their job."

Whatever is said in response takes a while, and Nessuno watches as Bell tenses. He gives the pan a sharp jerk, makes the bacon and eggs jump, spattering grease.

"I will not ask them to be removed. No." A pause, and he catches her eye again, indicates one of the cabinets with the spatula. Nessuno opens it, finds gla.s.sware, opens the one beside it, finds plates. She takes down two, balances one in each hand. Bell serves up equal portions from the pan. He grins slightly, says, "I'm going to talk to someone about it, don't worry. At the least, she shouldn't have been able to spot them, let alone slip them...Amy...Amy...Amy, I am taking this seriously. That's a serious concern."

Nessuno takes the plates to the table, looks to Bell again, mimes for silverware. He shrugs. She begins going through kitchen drawers, all of them with generic contents, as if whoever stocked the house had done the shopping in one go at the nearest Walmart.

"Have her text me," Bell says, now putting pan and spatula in the sink. He frees the phone, brings it with him to the table, sets it beside his plate when he takes the seat opposite Nessuno.

"You cook," Nessuno says.

"And clean and sew. I'm a complete soldier." He gets up again, realizing that he has no coffee. "Juice in the fridge."

"I'm fine."

He returns with the pot and his cup, tops off her mug.

"What was that?"

"My daughter made the security watching her and my wife," Bell says, cracking bacon with his fork. "But she didn't know it was security, and it scared the h.e.l.l out of her."

"Counterintelligence?"

"Yeah. They're keeping an eye on them."

"How old's your daughter?"

"Sixteen."

"And she spotted them? Were they being sloppy?"

Bell mixes broken bacon with his scrambled eggs. "She's deaf, so she's a watcher by nature. She doesn't miss much."

"I'd never thought of that."

"Most people don't."

"That's why she has to text."

"We do video when we can so we can sign, but I haven't had a minute to find out if they set up wireless with the house. Jorge's place has all the bells and whistles. I'll try to reach her from there later."

Nessuno tries the eggs. They're moist and taste good, and she can practically feel her arteries seizing from the bacon fat. It's an American breakfast, the first one she's had in as long as she can remember, too heavy for her. In Tashkent, it was always tea and bread and milk. Bell is watching her as she sets her fork aside, the meal unfinished. She wishes she could read him, wishes she knew what he was thinking, and it frustrates her that she can't. He cleans his plate, then takes both to the sink and begins washing up. When he finishes, he dries his hands on a dish towel.

"Chaindragger stuck his head in before you got up," Bell says. "We'll start when you're ready, you want to shower or anything first."

She wants to say yes, anything to forestall the inevitable. Instead she says, "I'll save it for after. That's when I'll need it."

It's a semifinished bas.e.m.e.nt with a washer and dryer stuck in one corner, an old couch in another, some cardboard boxes labeled in black marker with different words: CLOTHES, PERSONAL, BABY STUFF. The walls are open post with wooden boards, and on the north side, five feet from the corner, there's a metal light switch box. Bell pops it open, and there's a separate switch inside. He throws it, and Nessuno doesn't hear anything, doesn't see anything change.

"Letting them know we're coming," Bell says.

He reaches up behind one of the crossbeams, fiddles with something, then pushes on a section of the wall and the wall swings open, becoming a door. The tunnel she sees is wider than she'd expected, finished concrete, with fluorescent fixtures running in a straight line along the center of the ceiling. Bell lets her in first, then closes up behind them. They walk abreast, and she can smell moisture and the faint traces of gunpowder.

"Very high speed," she says.

"Isn't it just."

"They do this for every team?"

"I wouldn't know," he says. She can't tell if he's lying or not. She can't tell if the distance she's suddenly feeling from him is the shift to operational stance or if it's a distrust of her. The vague, indefinable sense that something ominous is approaching. The instinct that tried to warn her that night in Prague, is whispering to her.

About twenty-five feet along, they pa.s.s an open room on her right, small, storage. The brief glimpse she gets tells her enough; it's a loadout room, weapons and gear. Another twenty feet past, this time on the left, is the range, lights on inside, and she sees the man called Steelriver at the bench. He's got range gla.s.ses over his eyes, his ear protection around his neck, and two pistols in front of him, one of them in pieces. He looks up when Bell stops.

"Master Sergeant," he says.

"Master Sergeant," Bell says.

Steelriver grins at Nessuno. "Blackfriars. Gonna give that son of a b.i.t.c.h one h.e.l.l of a jolt when he sees you, huh?"

"Yeah, that's the plan." It comes out flat. Nessuno's words, not Elisabetta's.

She sees Steelriver's grin falter, then fade, a new gravity apparent. Nessuno thinks it may be sympathy, or at least empathy, but maybe it's something else.

"No easy days," Steelriver says.

"Only if you're a marine," Nessuno says.

Bell's laugh surprises her. Steelriver goes back to rebuilding his pistol. "Holler if you need me," he says.

The hard room is just beyond the midway point of the tunnel, its door to Nessuno's right. There's a keypad beside it, but Bell ignores that, just taps the door three times, and the one called Cardboard opens it immediately.

It's a larger room than Nessuno expects, almost twenty by twenty, with an industrial carpet that she's sure is called seafoam or ocean mist or like that, which she can feel through her boots has been laid over the same cold concrete that lines the hall. Walls and ceiling covered with waffle pattern acoustic tile, and an open archway off to the far left. She can hear the sound of running water, the distinct slap of it hitting plastic, and Nessuno concludes that it's a basic bathroom, a shower and s.h.i.tter and not much else. The one called Chaindragger is leaning against the wall by the opening, but he straightens up when they enter. Nessuno sees a cot against the far wall, blanket folded, pillow atop, a set of clothes beside them. A sink and mini fridge are to the right, along with a couple of folding chairs. In the center of the room is a six-foot-long table that folds width-wise in the center, and it matches the chairs, all from the same set. In two of the corners, where the ceiling meets the walls, she sees cameras, small and black and gla.s.sy-eyed.

"We're recording?" Nessuno asks.

"Yeah," Cardboard says. He's got a southern drawl she hadn't noted before. "So watch your language, missy."

"Bone still asleep?" Bell asks.

"Presumably."

"How about you?"

"We're both awake, even if we don't look it."

Bell takes his .45 from his hip, makes it safe, then hands it to Cardboard. "You two watch the feed."