Authors: Nicola Claire
I
was being followed
. Somewhere between leaving Adam at Ben and Abi’s house - which seemed as safe a place as anywhere to stash him - and ASI, I’d picked up a tail. It didn’t feel like Caleb, his style was more covert. This person wanted to be seen. Was waiting until I was ready to confront them. Giving me the opportunity to pick the time and location that would suit best.
Ava had arrived.
I glanced down at my watch and noted it had taken her only eight hours to get here. Either she’d lied, or taken a private jet, bypassing the delays inherent in international commercial travel. Knowing Ava, it had been a plane owned by a billionaire businessman who owed her a favour, probably his life.
I checked my location, taking in the CCTV footage and any possible threats. The question now remained, how much did I trust Ava?
The fact that Adam’s Monster had indeed had a GPS tracker on it - aside from the one I knew was linked into ASI’s control - had me feeling on edge. More so than I had been for a very long time. Someone was playing me. This was
my
assignment. Either everything I suspected was true and I was being tested by the Department or there was another player in this game as yet unidentified.
I turned the bike south on the motorway, heading away from ASI; my original destination. I’d be pushing it, arriving late for my assessment. But ignoring Ava’s presence when so much was hanging in the balance couldn’t be avoided for now. I picked up speed, merging with the southbound traffic, feeling my shadow slip in behind a truck and bide her time.
Could I trust her? Did I have a choice? She’d come when called. But was it out of some form of friendship or was it because she had been ordered to?
“Mal,” I said into the mouthpiece, waiting for the dial tone after the Bluetooth device did its thing.
Calling him now was a risk, but with so many players, and still the board half in black, I needed to be bold. Trepidation could get me killed.
“Speak to me.”
“Target acquired,” I said, my pulse spiking, my words betraying none of that.
“Does he know anything?”
“He’s hooked, I’ll have that answer tonight. We’ll be on a hunt together.”
“Hunting what?”
“A meth dealer in South Auckland. A bee in the local authority’s bonnet.”
Silence for a stretch. Unlike Mal. Not this kind of silence. Usually our conversations were perfunctory, not enough emotion to warrant a pause.
“Are you sure he can be trusted?” he finally asked. “Is he yours or has he fooled you?”
Now why would you ask that, Mal? Because you suspect Adam found his tracker and destroyed it?
“Oh, he’s mine,” I said, forcing myself to say the words, despite how foul they tasted on my tongue. “Amazing what a man will do for a public blow-job.”
“Nice work,” Mal replied. No inflection in his tone to indicate he meant the words. Just a statement that let me know he was not surprised. Had he watched it on his screen, hacked into some expensive beachfront property’s security cameras and looked on as I did my fucking job on my knees across the street?
I felt sick. I’d never felt nausea so real when on assignment before.
Checking the rear vision mirror, I took the offramp at Mangere, noticing a black SUV some distance back follow my lead. It could have been one of ASI’s, but the license plate didn’t match. Ava was blending in with local vehicles, choosing a car that was popular in more than just ASI’s line of work.
“Today I’m stripping the team,” I said, keeping my voice level and devoid of emotions.
“Send a report through this evening and take note of any change in behaviour patterns.” He suspected ASI was on to us. On to me or the Department?
“Will do.” I disconnected the phone as I pulled into the storage facility I was using as a fall-back.
Mal was ordinarily a suspicious character; all of us were to some extent. But his comments let me know one thing. The most important thing. The deactivated GPS tracker sitting in my jacket pocket, formerly attached to Adam Savill’s motorbike, was Department issue and he’d had it put there.
Motherfucker! This was real.
The SUV pulled up behind me, tinted windows, even across the windshield - which was illegal for New Zealand roads - the first thing to catch my eye. How the fuck had Ava pulled that off? A short, slim brunette climbed down from the over-height driver’s door and clipped towards me in high heeled shoes and a designer dress. She didn’t smile and I knew a gun was within easy reach, although for the life of me, I couldn’t see where she hid it on that slinky dress.
“Charlie,” she said, coming to stop a few feet away. Just far enough not to wear a knife across her throat or a foot to the gut.
“Ava,” I replied, turning my back on her and sticking my key in the padlock on the garage door.
It wasn’t recklessness; I was attuned to her every breath, every move. I was ready for the attack I hoped would not be coming. It was an offer of peace; an invitation to tango. As colleagues. Maybe not trusted, but allied, nonetheless.
The roller door on the garage rattled its way up and I stepped into the dark recesses of the storage space. I flicked a light switch, just as Ava pulled the door down at our backs.
“Charming,” she commented, taking in the Formica topped table and single plastic chair.
“Needs a few home comforts, but I’m sure you can arrange something.”
“You have got to be freakin’ kidding me,” she muttered. “You really are a card, Charlie.”
I spun the laptop on the table around for her to see.
“Now
that
I could be happy with,” she said walking toward the device and running a long, elegant, lacquered finger across its lid. “Secured Wi-Fi?”
“All the usual bells and whistles and some I designed myself.”
“Brilliant. Who’s the target?”
I stared at her, leaning back against the wall with my arms crossed over my chest. I would have looked relaxed, contemplative. The only true emotion was the last. Could I trust her?
I brought her here, I might as well find out.
“I’m being tested,” I said, watching every minute reaction on her perfectly made-up face.
She made a show of pulling out the plastic chair, frowning down at it with obvious distaste, and then taking a seat; legs crossed at the knee, Christian Louboutin shoe tapping away on thin air.
“OK,” she said, as if my being tested was a regular occurrence in our line of work. Maybe it was. Maybe I’d been lucky up until now.
But I didn’t think so. Ava could hide in plain sight, in the same position for twenty-four hours, staring down the scope of an M24 SWS Remington and not blink an eyelash or twitch a muscle. The woman was made of ice. On the outside at least. She had a way of compartmentalising. Doing her job, taking out a target, and then going home to her fire and cat and the current beau she was using as a cover.
She wasn’t a shell like me. She was an ice cube. Frigid when it counted. Loving pet owner and girlfriend when needed. The real her was somewhere in between. And I doubted she let anyone truly see it.
“You suspect they’re using Caleb,” she said, once she’d surveyed the storage space as a distraction for long enough.
I breathed out a lungful of air, unaware I’d been holding it. Ava had cut to the chase in customary ice queen style.
“He sent a Department email stating he was in town and we should meet up.”
“Department?”
I nodded. “I deleted it.”
“Bad move.” I realised that now. It was tantamount to admitting my guilt. Guilt of what yet, I didn’t know.
“My target is a security firm,” I added. “Thought to be tied up in organised crime. At least, that’s what the dossier said.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“Too early to say.”
Ava sighed. “Please don’t tell me you called me here because of a hunch. I was relaxing on a secluded beach with a very generous donor.”
I smiled. Ava always called her covers “donors.” As in they donated their wealth to her cause.
“I found a tracker on my sub-target’s bike.” I pulled the GPS device from my jacket and placed it on the table between us.
“Government issue,” Ava said, staring at the little piece of electronic equipment as though it could blow up at any given moment. “Not necessarily a clue, just an observation.”
“I know.”
“I gather you didn’t place it there?”
I shook my head.
“Third player?”
“Unsure at this time,” I admitted. It had crossed my mind, but I couldn’t see it. Who else would be after ASI?
Another sigh, this time definitely contemplative as Ava stared at the tracker, still not reaching out to touch it.
“Give me something else to go on, Charles,” she said, using the nickname she and Caleb had given me in Hong Kong. She’d done it on purpose. Reminding me of what we’d shared. What Caleb meant to her. They were closer than I was to either of them. Possibly even trusted each other. Which made me realise she’d come here for him and not for me. She’d come to head me off.
Fuck.
I checked my watch. “Listen, I need to get to work; I’m late. Do what you can with that.” I nodded at the tracker. “Try and locate Caleb, but don’t approach him if you can help it. I’ll see what I can uncover at ASI. If they are guilty of destabilising the government through organised crime I’ll find it. But I’m not putting my neck on the block unless I deserve it.”
“And you don’t deserve it, Charlie?” Ava asked, eyeing me innocently from beneath hooded lids.
There was nothing innocent about this lady.
“I sure as hell don’t deserve to be tested.”
“Then why do you think you are?”
Good question. Besides the obvious. Why me?
“What about your last assignment?” she asked. “Anything set off alarm bells there?”
“Drug related. Part of that ring Interpol was tracking. I was an asset locating one branch of what appeared an international set-up.”
“Where?”
“France.”
“You get your man?”
I nodded my head. I’d got him all right. Right after he’d betrayed me.
“Anything raise the hackles on your back?”
“Why the third degree on my last assignment, Ava?”
“Nothing happens when it isn’t meant to happen. Coincidences are for civilians and inept agents. You are neither of those things.”
It was a compliment. Of a sort.
“I’ll think on it,” I said slowly. She nodded and lifted the lid on the laptop. I watched her for a second and then mentally shook off the warning bell clanging inside my head. I was late. Not the best way to get Nick Anscombe to trust me on my first day at the job.
I lifted the garage door, the rattle clanging in my ears and setting my teeth on edge.
When I turned around, Ava was watching me.
“How long?” she asked.
“How long what?” This assignment? Here in NZ? What?
“How long have you been doing this? I’ve known you, what? Seven years?”
I nodded. “Ten.”
“Ah,” she said, typing a command into the laptop. She didn’t elaborate. The next words were, “You won’t mind if I redecorate, do you?”
I smiled. There was fuck all else to grin about.
“Sure. Have at it.”
“Brilliant,” she said, turning her attention to the computer, probably hacking my credit card, and ordering up a storm.
I closed the door and scanned the parking area. Everything looked safe. But what was safe anymore? Had I ever really known it?
Mal was testing me, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out a handler would only act on command from the Director. Caleb was in town; warning me or setting me up. I wasn’t sure. And I’d just invited Frosty, the designer Asp, who could put a hollow point bullet in a man’s forehead at eight-hundred metres, into the thick of things.
Fucking A.
I was half an hour late by the time I arrived at ASI. Adam’s Monster was already parked up under cover. I flicked my gaze over it, noting the absence of a tracker where one had been only hours before. Then headed into the firing line. I had a job to do, despite the questions that clamoured for attention inside my mind. Despite the reaction my body had to a certain sub-target. Despite the lack of light that seemed to be shining on my little part of the world.
If I was being tested, then why? What did the Director think I had done? Ava was on to something with my last assignment being a key, but I couldn’t pinpoint what. Sometimes assignments went belly up. Take Guangzhou. Paris had been considered a success; I’d delivered my target. Done my job.
But it hadn’t been as easy as all of that. Jacques had betrayed me. Almost cost me my life. At the time I’d thought it ignorance. I wondered now if there was something more to it than that.
I didn’t know if bringing Ava in was a wise idea. But I needed a second pair of eyes. And ASI was proving too complicated to use in that regard now. Too messy. Too emotional. Too
everything
it seemed.
So where did I turn? Toward a potential enemy. If Caleb was part of the test, sent here by the Director, then Ava could be a liability.
Or a deadly weapon.
She trusted him; I was sure of it. I trusted no one. But that usually left me on my own to face betrayal and death. It was time to diversify.
Hell, where the fuck had that come from?
I pushed through the door into ASI reception, coming face to face with a shotgun.
“Down, tiger,” I muttered.
“You’re late,” Carmel advised. Not withdrawing the Kel-Tec.
“Couldn’t find clean underwear.”
“That’s not gonna help you when Nick rips you a new one.”
“Always a pleasure, Carmel,” I commented, and pushed through the main door to ASI. It was surprisingly unlocked. She’d done it and I hadn’t even seen how.
It also let me know she’d appreciated my attitude. The dragon liked fighting fire with fire.
Good to know.
My upbeat mood lasted until I made the staffroom, almost believing I was home free.
Fucking ceiling mounted cameras.
Nick stepped out of the kitchen with a coffee cup in one hand and a tablet computer in the other.
“Firing range,” he said without preamble. “And your timing couldn’t be better.”