Sake Bomb (28 page)

“Get it out, or get out,” Xander said, tired
of the stalling. “I don’t have all night.”

“You promised I could shoot her,” Kizzie
reminded, tone just north of dead serious. “Twice…” Phil’s chuckle
from the doorway morphed into a cough.

“She…she plans to use it.”

Kizzie stiffened beside him. “What’s the
target?”

“She plans to use the bomb,” Sumi repeated
somewhat hysterical now. Her sniffling increased, and her voice
rose. “I swear I didn’t know… I tried to make her see reason.”

“When and where?”

Sumi continued as though she didn’t hear.
“Sir, that’s why she—”

Kizzie flew from the armrest and Xander
hooked her elbow. In one swift move he pulled the gun from her
waistband and tugged her down until her knee hit the floor. “Sit,”
—to Sumi—“She’ll kill you because you want to stop her from harming
your fellow human beings?”

She nodded earnestly.

Xander looked to Phil; Phil looked to
Xander.

And then they both laughed.

“It’s true!”

“For all I know, she sent you in here the
same way she sent you into Sacha’s.” Xander paused thoughtfully,
touching the barrel of the gun to his temple. “Pick a number, five
to twenty, Sumi.”

Those wide eyes blinked again. “S-seven,
Sir.”

“Didn’t give yourself much time at all…” He
tsked. “Start talking, and quick. ‘Cause when I get to zero, I’m
gonna kill you myself.” The smile dropped and he raised the SIG,
aiming at her head. “Seven…”

Sumi’s eyes bulged, then her face crumpled.
“Please, Sir, I…I…” In a panic, she turned toward Phil, perhaps
hoping to find some help there. “You’re the only one—”

“Six…”

“—who can stop her. She’s afraid of you,
Sir.”

That “Sir” was
really
starting to
wear on Xander’s nerves.

“Five…” He always kept the pistol decocked,
so all he had to do was pull the trigger. Was anyone in the room
behind Sumi? The bullet might pass through her skull and keep
going…

“Papa Nikolay said to give it to you. Said
it was yours. But she never—”

“Four…”

Kizzie rolled to her knees and moved away to
be out of range of the loud retort.

“She killed Akari. Killed Chiho. She’d kill
us all to keep her secret safe. Fay’s—” Sumi hiccupped, breathing
hitched, nose runny and face red with tears. She opened her mouth,
giving Xander an even wider target than the spot between her eyes.
“Please, believe me. I know you are a dangerous man. I
wouldn’t–”

“
That
,” Xander tipped his head toward
Phil, “is a dangerous man.” His voice came out so dark even he
didn’t recognize it. “I’m a savage.

“Three…”

Sumi begged again, shifting from English to
Japanese to Russian. Xander had to strain to make out the
rapid-fire speech. “
Kanojo wa anata no osorete
! I wouldn’t
lie!
Pover’te mne
! She’s afraid of you because—”

“Two….”

“—You’re a
Yūrei
! A
Privideniye
! She always said!
Vsegda
!” Sumi threw her
arms over her head and curled forward until her face met her knees.
“Please, don’t kill me! I don’t want to die!”

Counting gave way to silence.

Thick silence.

Eerie
silence—a stillness that belied
Xander’s busy mind as he connected dots he didn’t know existed.
Save the clenched jaw, he was the picture of calm. But Nikolay
Sokoviev better be damn glad he was already dead. Whatever torture
he might have endured at Sacha’s hands would’ve been a mercy
compared to what Xander wanted to do to the bastard.

Frightened, dark eyes lifted enough to peek
at him. “She said—”

Xander shook his head, stopping Sumi’s
groveling. He felt Kizzie’s curious gaze on him, knew she had a ton
of questions he couldn’t answer. He glanced at Phil, not the least
bit surprised at the smirk on the man’s face.

Tied hands.

Xander needed Harvey—he had a buyer to
please and a reputation to protect.

He wanted Kizzie.
Really
wanted her.
But she was too good an agent to let him keep the nuke.

It’d be a risk, a huge risk, but now there
was only one way he might get both.

Xander slowly lowered the pistol and pushed
out of the chair. “Pack up, Phil. We’re out.”

“O
ut
?”
Kizzie hopped up from the floor, annoyed at being disarmed and
wondering why Xander went from murderous to indifferent in a blink.
“The hell d’you me—” He shot her a look that made her ass ache.
“Sir, can I speak to you in private?”

Xander turned toward the door. “Phil?”

“What do you want me to do with the girl?”
Phil asked, getting to his feet.

“
Sir
, I really need to—”

“I’d never interrupt my Master,” Sumi
whispered between sniffles, as though helping a friend cheat on a
test. “A submissive should be seen, not heard.”

“Absolutely right. And Gigi knows I don’t
reward bratty behavior. I’ll have to start keeping your ball gag in
my pocket again,” Xander added morosely, hand coming down vice-like
on the back of Kizzie’s neck. “I’ll have to improvise.” He fiddled
with the button of his slacks and Phil sniggered, shaking his head
as he escorted Sumi from the room.

The door closed and Kizzie shook off
Xander’s hold. His chuckle was like a screeching cat sharpening its
claws on violin strings. “You think this is funny?”

“What happened to ‘Sir?’” Xander frowned,
buttoning his shirt. “And it’s hard to take you seriously with the
pigtails.” She growled and unfastened the clips holding the
lavender wig to her head, yanked it off and tossed it aside.

“The outfit is sort of distracting, too?”
Xander added, sounding hopeful.

Her nostrils flared. By some miracle Sumi
was in their care. Now was not the time for his games. “What
are—”

“Would you really have shot me to get to
her?” He pressed the heel of his hand to his chest and rubbed small
circles over his heart. “With my own gun?”

She opened her mouth to speak, checked
herself. “Don’t make me answer that.”

A grin slid across his face. “You wouldn’t
have shot me.” He slipped his hand into the loose brown hair at her
nape, sending a shiver over her.

“I need you to expl—”

“Could’ve stopped at ‘you.’” He searched her
face, lingered on her mouth before he sighed. “No, you couldn’t
have, could you? All work and no play—”

“Makes Kizzie a damn good agent,” she
finished, proud her voice didn’t wobble.

“And that means something to you, doesn’t
it, Princess?”

Something? Of course it meant something. It
was what she did, who she was.
Be a good agent
crawled like
ticker tape along the bottom edge of her mind.

Xander brushed his knuckles along her cheek.
“Is that the only thing that means something to you?”

She swallowed down feelings primed before
Sumi’s appearance, forced some steel into her husky tone. “This
isn’t a game.”

“Couldn’t be more wrong,
Agent
Baldwin.” Head shaking, he released her and went to sit at the
table. Resting his SIG on the tabletop, Xander pulled her Beretta
from his waistband and thumbed the button on the side with obvious
ease. The magazine dropped into his palm and he set it in front of
the chair opposite his. Tugging back the slide ejected the unspent
cartridge and he deftly caught it, positioned it near the rest.

“You should have this cleaned. I don’t like
the way the slide hitches.” The gun went beside its efficiently
dismantled components and he leaned back in the chair. Then he
spoke again, voice dispassionate. “What’s so urgent you interrupted
your Master?”

“Harvey.”

“Obviously.”

“What do you mean you’re out?” Kizzie went
over to the table and reloaded her gun, vowing to keep from killing
him.

“I told you, Harvey was mine to sell. Sumi’s
Mistress is planning to use it so I can’t very well sell it, now
can I? Which means I’m out. Better this way, really. Now you and I
won’t have to fight over who gets it.” A pause. “You’re more than
welcome to come with me, Kizzie.”

“Help me stop her.”

His deep laugh filled the room. “Saving the
world’s not at the top of my to-do list. Actually,” he muttered,
“it’s not on my list at all.”

“You’re in for six million.”

“I’ll make it back.”

Shrugging at a six million dollar loss?
Kizzie wasn’t buying his aloof attitude. She didn’t know him well,
but Xander wasn’t the apathetic type. “You feel no
moral
obligation—”

“My moral compass is only right when I’m
walking south, Princess. It’s ‘right’ a lot.” He gave her a
lopsided smile. “You’re not surprised. You’ve got a dossier on me,
know what I’m capable of. I wouldn’t have thought twice about
putting a bullet in Sumi’s head.”

“But you didn’t.” She sank into the chair
carefully, the press of the hard seat a reminder of his heavy hand.
“What does that mean, what she said? ‘Yūrei
…
Privideniye.’
She called you a…phantom, and you stopped.”

“Told you before, torturing people makes
them say anything. They’re focused on not dying. Sumi would have
named me king of all that is holy to keep from eating lead. Now,
tell me what your problem is.”

Kizzie took a controlled breath. “We don’t
know where this Fay/Shinari person will detonate Harvey. Don’t know
her motives, don’t know what this is about yet. But let’s say this
bomb goes off someplace outside of the U.S. Given the advanced
technology you claim it now has, who do you think is gonna have the
finger pointed at them?”

“America.” He shrugged.

“And if it goes off in America?” He paused
as if thinking it over and she answered for him. “It doesn’t
frickin’ matter. They bomb us, we bomb them—with something bigger
and nastier. Suicide. If this thing is what you say it is…if this
thing
happens
, it’s a pebble dropped into a lake.

“Harvey is the opening line to a movie I
don’t want to see, and it might start there, but how long before
we’re at Nagasaki all over again?
Everywhere
. Your cutesy
little picnic bomb could very well lead to the last world war,
‘cause once the dust settles there won’t be anybody left to push a
button.”

Xander lifted his hands, palms connecting
repeatedly. The patronizing clapping set her teeth on edge.

“While I’m moved by your patriotic speech,
I’m still not tracking. Harvey’s out there,” he extended his arm
toward the window, “you’re aware of its potential. Call in your
white hats and save the day. What do you need me for?”

She leaned back in her chair and sighed.
“I’ve called it in—did it when I first left Oman. There’s no
chatter on Harvey. There’s no record of a Project Harvey ever being
green-lit.”

“If we didn’t build it, it doesn’t exist.
And if it doesn’t exist, it’s not a threat.” Kizzie bobbed her
head, happy he was beginning to catch on. “Connolly?”

Connolly wasn’t an option, not until she had
something concrete. He’d have her hide if he knew she wasn’t
sipping martinis and getting sand in uncomfortable places. If it
took losing her job to stop this bomb, she’d do it in a heartbeat,
but she wouldn’t drag Connolly in unless she was certain. Which
left Fletcher, who was deliberately avoiding her and therefore not
an option either.

Which left Kizzie.

And, hopefully, Xander.

She kept her face neutral. “I can’t go
through my official channels on this, but then, I think you know
that.”

Xander’s brow creased. “He doesn’t know
you’re here, does he? With me?” A combination of discovery and hope
colored his tone. “You trust my word more than the man you’ve known
your entire career?”

“No,” Kizzie said. “I trust my gut. The only
reason I’m off-grid with a half-assed story culled from a
rank-and-file member of the ICBG is because I trust my gut.”

He rubbed his thumb across his lip, lust in
his eyes. “Before Sumi showed up, were you trusting your gut?”

She wet her lips.
This
was why agents
didn’t get emotionally involved with a target. When it came time to
make the hard decisions, the “involved” agent inevitably
hesitated.

Kizzie wouldn’t be that agent.

“I don’t have anything specific to give
them—no when or where. You’re a smart guy, Xander. Without details
I’m not gonna nudge the needle on the threat level. It’ll get
logged and lost in a pile of memos. Harvey explodes and then
there’s the 24-hour news loop about how the attack could have been
prevented.”

The indifferent chocolate gaze didn’t
budge.

“Of course,” Kizzie said, a decided shift in
her tone, “my other option is to give you up as my source, which
will
get back to Connolly and superiors nastier than he is.
And then they’ll want to know why I didn’t bring you in; why I
didn’t bring you down.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Who says I won’t? The shit’s hip-high,
Xander, and rising fast. You, Phil, the pretty wife-sub tucked away
in Paris…” His eyes narrowed there and she scored a point for
herself. “Threats to national security. Right now I’m more use to
you as a quasi-ally than an enemy. However”—a pause for effect—“If
you want, I can be that enemy.”

“Asking for help and threatening me in the
same breath. I see why Connolly keeps you around. Very
intimidating, Prin—”

“Don’t mock me, Xander. The only person with
info is that crazy little puppet out there, and the only alpha
she’s willing to talk to is you. Which buys your ass some time.”
She stood and pressed her palms onto the tabletop. “So go smack the
crap out of her, tie her up, play pin the tail on the subbie—I
don’t care. Do whatever your inner Dom has to, but get me that
info.”

Xander chuckled again, angering her further.
“You really think you’re running this, huh? What happens if I
don’t—”