Ice Cold (41 page)

She pressed a spot on the wall. A large section silently pivoted open. “The stairs are through here.”

Of course. She was the spy with all the cool spy gadgets. “But the footprints lead there,” he observed, pointing to the puddles gleaming on the floor, a good six feet away. A semicircular table obviously pushed aside in haste as indicated by the indentations made by table’s legs in the plush cream area rug. The dark water stain on the carpet and scattered flowers indicated haste.

“They took the elevator.”

Didn’t everyone have an elevator down to their basement? “What are we waiting for?”

Holding the SIG like she meant business, Honey said coldly, “Not a damn thing.”

The panel slid soundlessly shut behind them. The steep flight of cement stairs to the first level was pitch-dark and stuffy from disuse. She didn’t bother bringing the goggles back into place, she knew her way by feel, brushing her fingertips along the rough textured cement. She’d designed the secondary entrance to the basement as a precaution, but it was rarely used. Pollack complained his knees killed him when he used these stairs. Honey’s heart pinched. He’d climbed
up
them,
once
.

The muffled susurrus of their soft footfalls broke the silence. Just on the other side of the four-foot-thick cement wall was a small circular elevator, which she and Dolan had used to transport all the components for the array and everything else she needed in the secret subbasement lab. They’d made hundreds of trips up and down in those first six months. While the two entrances were side by side, they were completely separate, each hidden from the other. Savage was expecting them, but would not necessarily anticipate that they had another way to come downstairs. Most of her attention would be on the elevator. Honey knew better than to count on Savage being completely unprepared for surprises of any kind.

At the landing, they encountered a titanium door. Not built for two, the space was cramped and Rafael crowded against her as Honey activated the locks. As soon as the door soundlessly opened, light flooded the space from below, and cool, fresh-scented air wafted up to greet them. Scrubbers kept the air dust-free and at a constant temperature of sixty-five degrees for the computers.

“You got here faster than I expected.” Savage’s voice drifted up, colder than the air conditioning.

The stairs were intentionally narrow, and a straight shot to the dogleg turn halfway down, so she couldn’t see her nemesis. Once they turned that corner, they’d be in full view.

“Oh, and Winston?” Liverpool tinged the venom in her voice. “Chuck down all your weapons, there’s a luv, because dear old Pollack here is half dead already. One wrong move and I’ll finish him off before you turn that corner and say your tearful good-byes—Oh, right. No tears for our little Ice Princess, right?” Her voice suddenly became admiring, cheerful; the shift was unnerving. “Something I always admired about you, Winston. Your complete lack of emotion. You’ve been playing on the wrong team, luv.”

Honey checked the screen in her goggles; the battle outside was almost over, with Savage’s team beaten handily, but that would mean nothing if the battle inside were lost. She shoved them back on top of her head.

A chair rolled across the floor. “You know that I don’t like having to repeat myself, Winston. Stay where you are and throw everything out here before you come the rest of the way.” Savage’s voice was no longer faux friendly. “And that goes for Navarro as well. Hi, lover, glad you could make it to the finale.”

“Let Winston take Pollack upstairs, and you can deal with me.” Rafael’s tone was grim.

“Now see?” Savage’s voice teased. “I thought
nothing
could surprise me anymore. The Spanish Stallion still trying to play the hero? For a piece of ass?” She laughed, but there was no humor in it, only sadistic satisfaction. “I thought better of you, Navarro, I really did. Didn’t you learn your lesson with poor little Rachel? Now
there
was a fucked-up little coward who never did do what she was told—I’m not seeing any weapons,” she called in a sweet, singsong manner, and then her voice went hard again. “Get the lead out people, I have things to do and places to go. Good.” She applauded when Honey tossed her SIG around the corner. Rafael followed suit with his H&K. Both clattered down the last few steps out of sight. It was a given that they be disarmed when they reached Savage. No skillfully hidden weapons would make it past the ex-T-FLAC operative’s scrutiny. They’d all had the same training, knew the same tricks. Had used the same playbook.

“Don’t bore me or waste my time! Backup guns, knives, and that nasty little sticker you always keep in your boot, Navarro. Yes, just like sex, I want it all until it hurts. I’ll let you know when you can come down the rest of the way and join the party. The longer you take, the more blood this old geezer will leak. You didn’t work this hard to save little Rachel, what makes you think I’ll go any easier on your new whore?”

Rafael removed the knife from his boot and another H&K from the small of his back, tossing both so they skittered down the stairs. “What did Rachel ever do to you?”

“Other than scream a lot and beg me not to kill her because she was—boohoo—pregnant? Nothing,” she said briskly. “It was what
you
did that signed her death warrant.”

“What did
he
do?” Honey demanded, reaching back to find Rafael’s hand. Lacing her fingers with his, she turned her head, meeting his stony expression and bleak eyes, telegraphing her empathy. Dear God. He hadn’t known. “Tell you no?”

Releasing his hand with a little squeeze, Honey took one more step down.
Focus. Breathe. Do your job.

“He was confused. I figured once Rachel was out of the way, I’d give him another chance to make the
right
choice.” Savage heaved a dramatic sigh. “And
once again,
you chose poorly. Dickwad.”

The familiar tapping sounds of acrylic nails against a keyboard made the small hairs on the back of Honey’s neck lift. She knew Savage couldn’t get into T-FLAC’s database. True, Honey learned a lot of her hacking skills from Catherine, but the student had surpassed the teacher by light-years, long ago.

“What did
I
ever do to you?” Honey called out as she underhanded her baby SIG and heard it slide along the perforated steel, electrostatic, raised floor. At the same time, she touched the frame of her goggles to contact Dolan, allowing him to eavesdrop on the conversation and pinpoint their location. “I thought we were friends, Catherine.”

“I don’t
have
girlfriends. What did you think we’d do? Go shoe shopping and do lunch? Get real. You had skills I could utilize, Winston. But you couldn’t see the potential.”

Honey strained her ears for any other sound. She heard nothing other than Savage’s voice and the click of the keys.

Was Pollack even down here? She closed her eyes, concentrated harder, and finally heard him breathing. It sounded weak and thready, but it was music to her ears.
Hang on, Pollack; I’m coming.

And while she didn’t hear anyone else, Savage wouldn’t be down here without backup. The question was, how many and where were they?

“Please don’t hurt Pollack—” She let some of her concern color her voice, hoping Savage would take the bait and consider her compromised by emotion and less of a threat. She refused to visualize her old friend, because to do so would make her dangerously distracted and undisciplined.

Focus. Breathe. Do your job.

“Collateral damage. That’s how these things go. Step down now, and keep your hands where I can see them.”

The basement clean room took up most of the footprint of the house. It was a huge, well-lit space of almost six thousand square feet, most of it taken up by rows of racks holding the computer array. Her long console, with twelve screens, was on the far wall. From that position, Savage could not only watch a three-sixty view of the property, she could see every room in the house with the flip of a switch.

Rafael tried to block Honey’s descent with a tighter grip on her shoulder, putting himself in the line of fire. She glanced back and shook her head. He gave her a ferocious look. The stairs were too narrow for him to push past her, and she turned and walked the rest of the way down ahead of him.

Images flashed through her mind like a series of snapshots, processed and assimilated in seconds. Ceiling-high racks, neatly filled with multiple data storage systems, capable of executing five hundred trillion floating point operations per second.

Pollack on the floor to the right. White-faced, still, blood on his crisp white shirt. Gut wound?

Nine o’clock, six black-garbed men. Three men at the three position. Assault weapons. They flanked Savage, who sat, booted feet crossed on Honey’s console, the keyboard and a Makarov semiautomatic pistol on her lap. The moment Honey and Rafael stood on the air-cooled floor, four of the men broke from the pack to grab their arms. Neither of them bothered to struggle. No point. This was going to be a matter of wits, not muscle.

On her left—bald, built like a Mack truck, big muscles, solid. On her right—a thin, wiry, dude with greasy, dirty blond hair and an unpleasant leer.

“Check them both for weapons,” Savage ordered in Russian, addressing the cluster of men nearby. “Check well. Then take all the weapons upstairs and await further orders.”

Honey sucked in a shocked breath, not giving a damn as she was searched roughly in places no weapon would fit. It wasn’t at the two men holding her that she stared, however.

The shape of Savage’s face, the curve of her jaw and shape of her nose, were eerily identical to the face Honey saw in the mirror every day. Dressed in jeans that could’ve been taken from Honey’s own closet, and a cream-colored, cable-knit sweater that
had
been taken from her dresser, the resemblance was spot-on. It was no wonder everyone had been fooled when her double had shown up at the door, injured and unannounced.

The pale blond wig, styled in a low ponytail, as Honey herself wore it when working, was secured with the black nylon tie Honey kept in the dainty English teacup Pollack had given her for Christmas. “Perfect, right?” Savage turned the chair from side to side, giving them a good look at her transformation.

“Not even close,” Rafael snapped. “The two of you are as dissimilar as platinum and an aluminum pie plate.” Her guards were a Korean guy, with sweat-shiny skin, and a man with a jagged scar across his chin. Both held their weapons like an extension of their arms.

Two other men collected the pile of discarded weapons and left. The three beside Savage covered Rafe and Honey without wavering, taking no chances. Savage had them well trained.

Savage laughed, but there was an edge to the sound, a tightening around the carefully sculpted lips. “Are you saying you wouldn’t fuck me, looking like this? Looking
exactly
like your little honeypot?”

“I wouldn’t fuck you looking like that or any other way.”

“We’ll see how you respond—later.” Her sly, sideways smile turned Honey’s stomach. Savage reached up to yank the wig off, letting her own dark red hair, tightly braided, fall over her shoulder like a slash of blood against the light sweater. Now it was almost worse looking at her. Honey’s own face superimposed on Savage’s persona.

“Push off the headgear and lose the goggles,” she told them briskly, tossing the wig aside. “I like to see the whites of my victims’ eyes as life leaves their bodies. Although I trust it won’t come to that.” She gave them a knowing smile and swung her legs off the desk, placing the keyboard back in front of the main monitor but kept the pistol loosely in her hand.

“Black Rose.” Rafael moved subtly to his left, just a few inches at a time, taking Scar and Sweaty with him as he shoved the cowl down and the goggles up. Difficult since his arms were restricted. “Or do you prefer the name Kuroi Bara?” Divide and conquer. Honey also shifted her feet, a fraction to her right, as she reached up to fiddle with the goggles but didn’t remove them.

Savage shrugged. “Six of one, half a dozen of the other.” Settling the fingers of one hand on Honey’s favorite keyboard, she looked impatiently over her shoulder. “Houston, we have a problem.” Then in a lightning-fast switch of moods, she said cheerfully, “I want her over here, gents.” She waved at the two men holding Honey, pointing her weapon to indicate where she wanted her. Savage’s moods were so mercurial Honey had whiplash trying to keep up.