Authors: Nicola Claire
No. I feel. I’ve felt every damn thing since this man walked into my life. Since blue became my favourite colour.
I swallowed.
“Kill him!” the Director growled.
I raised my gun. My firing hand shaking. Sweat beading my brow. I felt sick. I swallowed back bile. Stomach cramps made it difficult to breathe.
“Let
me
,” blue-eyes said. Adam. That was his name. Adam.
I held his gaze, nodded my head slowly, and spun when he lifted his own gun, firing off three shots each, in quick succession. Together. The sound of double bullets firing in sync reverberated around the room. Primer floated on the air. Hot and smoky. Familiar.
I sank onto my butt, my mind fuzzy, my head reeling, my stomach churning.
“You fired your gun,” Adam said, sounding stunned and in awe. “You broke the conditioning.”
I lifted a heavy head to look him in the eyes; eyes I’d never tire of staring into.
“What?” I said ineloquently. The world was spinning; I was damned if I’d let it win now.
“Amber says you broke through the mind control. But the trigger needed to be pulled, before you could do it. Even then, she and Nick weren’t sure that you could fight its compulsion. But you did.”
I nodded, not really comprehending Adam’s words.
Then clarity hit.
Nick
. I scrambled across the floor, in the direction of the front of the store, trying valiantly to ignore all the puzzle pieces coming together inside my head, only to be caught between going to Abi or going to ASI’s bossman. Abi won in the end. Because Nick was groaning, I told myself.
I heard Adam move behind me, and then say the words, “Clear. It’s clear.” Presumably over the earpieces. But my focus was solely on a splash of platinum hair.
I collapsed next to the blonde, my heart in my throat, words spilling from my lips so quickly, I wasn’t even aware of what I was saying.
“It’s OK,” Abi mumbled. “It’s all right,” she insisted, even as my hands frantically undid her Kevlar vest and searched for breaches in its material.
No bullet had passed through. She’d be bruised. Winded. Maybe have a cracked rib. But not dead.
I sat back on my butt and stared at nothing.
“Charlie,” she said, reaching over and squeezing my arm softly. I felt it. Even if she had the strength of a lamb. “It’s OK.”
“I shot you,” I murmured.
“Yes,” she agreed. “But you missed.”
I hadn’t missed. I never miss. And we both knew it. But somehow I had disobeyed my training. Fought PSYOPS and won.
Two to the chest. One to the head. Except in battle.
I reached up and brushed the blonde strands off her face, staring at the centre of her forehead.
“Fuck me,” a voice, I instantly recognised, said over my shoulder. “How the hell did you do that, Charles?”
“And can you teach us?” Ava added. “Like now. Before our own handlers catch up with what’s just gone down and pay us a visit.”
I looked over my shoulder at my friends, at my former family - a family I hadn’t known I’d had, but who’d come when asked and risked everything - just as Ben came barrelling through the door and smashed his way to his woman.
He glared at me, then wrapped Abi up in his arms, whispering words of love as she whispered words of reassurance back at him.
I moved away. Too full of emotions to remain so near such an inferno. And took in the devastation of Sweet Seduction. It was a mess, but it still stood. It’d just need a make-over. Somehow the fact that I wouldn’t be here to see it left me feeling sad.
“Fallout’s gonna be a bitch,” Caleb was saying. But my feet had taken me across the room to the one body I couldn’t afford to ignore any longer.
I crouched down next to the Director -
Yǐngzi
they’d called him - and felt for a pulse. Ludicrous. He had exactly four bullets in the chest, all stopped by his Kevlar. They hadn’t killed him, just stunned him enough to get the last two off.
Two precise holes, rimmed in red, sat side by side on his forehead. Adam’s and mine. Equally as lethal. Either one could have delivered the final blow. But I knew, somehow, that they’d landed in unison. Perfection.
He was my match in every way.
That’s why it hurt.
I stood up and dusted myself off, looking towards where Mal lay, still out cold, but a witness to events. A suspect to take into custody. I stared at him, at someone who’d been a part of my life for the past ten years, almost daily. I felt too much right then.
The others, like him, would need to be found, though. And he might know where they would slink away to and hide. Because hide they would. From me. From all of us. The fallout was indeed going to be a bitch. Whoever else had been involved in Operation Evolution would know their time was up and needed to be found; neutralised. Whoever else my…
uncle
had pulled into his nefarious plans, convinced us to trust, needed to be contained once and for all.
The task was enormous. I looked across the room to Ava and Caleb, saw them watching me. They both nodded their heads in solidarity. In understanding. They may have been a family I didn’t know existed until only recently, a family I was convinced I couldn’t be a part of forever - too many ghosts lay that way, I was sure - but they
were
family. Of a sort. And I would
not
let them face this alone.
Finally,
finally
, my eyes found Adam’s. He waited off to the side, ignoring the appearance of a guy I knew to be Detective Sergeant Pierce. Away from his colleagues who’d all taken a bullet… from me.
For me
. Separate and waiting, patiently, but not. His feet fidgeted. His eyes blazed with urgency and need. His face flushed that amusing, yet somehow enticing, crimson. Anger. Fear. I’m not sure which it was.
But he knew.
And he was already shaking his head.
“I’ll come with you. Help you,” he said as soon as I approached.
I reached up and clasped the back of his neck and then hauled his face down to mine and kissed him.
So many emotions. So many feelings I’d forgotten existed. I felt them all. I conveyed them all in that kiss. Our bodies pressed together. Our limbs interlocked as if that alone would prevent the parting to come. Our tongues tangled in a language as old as time, as tears streamed down my face and onto his cheeks.
“I’ll come with you,” he repeated, the words a whisper just for me.
I pulled back and stared into blue so vivid it made my heart hurt. I stared for as long as time would allow, which would never be long enough.
I wanted to say the words. I wanted to voice them, I was sure they were true. But conditioning, PSYOP or not, made it impossible.
The kiss was meant to have conveyed them, anyway. And if it didn’t, then he hadn’t felt it. And it wasn’t meant to be.
I could hear Caleb talking in the background. To Pierce. To the Police. He was smoothing things over. The thought almost making me snort out loud. Smoothing this over was going to take time and effort and possibly jail sentences. Maybe even a one-way ticket to never-never-land for Ava, him and me. But he was playing the role of international specialist. The email had gone out, but not yet been accepted as truth, it seemed. For now, we held sway. Immunity given us by the man lying dead on the floor mere feet away.
We had to act quickly. There were more to find. I had to finish this.
“I’m sorry,” I said. So not the words I’d been thinking.
Wait for me
. “This is Department business,” I added, just making it worse, but unable to stop myself from speaking.
He looked so hurt. So lost. So in agony.
I understood. I sympathised. Because I felt
everything
.
Wait for me.
Ah, fuck it!
“Tell Nick thanks,” I offered, then checked my weapons - a specialist always makes sure she leaves the scene clean - and turned away.
Ava met me halfway across the floor. Her eyes had softened. It must have been a trick of the light. Caleb met us at the door to the café. His eyes were set. Hard. Agent Hart at your service. Whiskey Echo in attendance. I couldn’t complain. There was no way we could walk away from this without one of us assuming the mantle of spook.
And yet I knew we hadn’t walked away from anything. There were still so many triggers to find.
“Tempus fugit, Charles,” he announced, as we turned to walk out the door.
I looked back at Sweet Seduction, at a life I’d only glimpsed at, but knew I wanted above all others and could never have. I looked back at where the better part of me remained. With a man who had the most extraordinary blue eyes I’d ever seen, a past just as sorrowful as mine, and skills that constantly challenged me.
He was my match in every way. And as we turned our backs on the mayhem on High Street, and lost ourselves in ASI’s thriving city - just one of the crowd, nothing to see - I wondered if I’d ever find such perfection ever again.
I knew the answer.
For people like me.
I
lasted three weeks
.
And then I hunted her arse down.
Much had come out after the three musketeers disappeared into a shell-shocked Auckland City. Pierce had smoothed things over, slipped us intel that wasn’t strictly public ready. Gave us tips, clues as to where the Department had gone to. Offered us insight into the world of international espionage.
The Department was Top Secret. I’d-tell-you-but-I’d-have-to-kill-you sort of thing. The New Zealand Government, like many overseas, kept their security service secret. Top Secret. Because secrets could get you killed.
Or lose you an election.
The Rainbow Warrior incident in 1985 had placed a dent in New Zealand’s side. More than that. It had placed a big fucking hole in our national psyche. Opération Satanique. French intelligence service agents bombing a Greenpeace vessel in the middle of downtown Auckland was not something you got over lightly.
And New Zealand hadn’t. The Director, otherwise known as Francis David Bryce, elder brother to Paul Malcolm Bryce, and uncle to Charisse Catherine Bryce, took advantage of the panic. And established the Department. Reporting to the Prime Minister only - and even then the less the PM knew the better - he’d had unlimited resources and reach to establish an agency that could infiltrate possible security threats internationally, neutralise them before they landed on our shore, and thereby protect our nation from future fallout. Fallout like that which had occurred after the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior.
It was a perfect opportunity for someone like Bryce to try out his PSYOPS training. And Operation Evolution was formed.
It was a perfect opportunity for someone like Bryce to cull out the bad blood in his family tree. And parentless Charlie Delta was formed.
She wasn’t his only target or asset, though. At last count the Department had nine operatives. All designated Class A. All extremely lethal. Highly trained. Isolated from any support other than the Department’s.
Fucking orphans. They’re a dime a dozen and no one gives a flying fuck about them.
But that’s all we knew. Other than the fact that those nine operatives had vanished. Disappeared. Cleaned out their base of operations in Wellington and blown away on the wind.
Parliament was up in arms.
The public knew jack shit.
But I knew. I knew who was helping them. I knew she didn’t realise she had an out. And I knew I’d find her. All I needed was to hunt.
Hunting is what I do best.
I smiled to myself as I watched a black SUV, with blacked out windows, crawl into a warehouse garage in Glen Innes. The trail had gone cold in Wellington. I’d wasted a full week chasing my tail, following crumbs I imagined that fucker Hart had laid to confuse people like me. A whole fucking week. Then an extra few days refusing to return to Auckland and admit defeat.
I’d known they’d be good. I’d known I was up against the best. But I’d also had a healthy amount of confidence in my own ability. And I’d been
sure
if I just stayed a little longer in Wellington, looked a little harder, searched a little more deeply, I’d find them.
I hadn’t.
Ten days after picking up their trail, I admitted to myself that I’d lost it. And returned to Auckland City.
The guys hadn’t ribbed me too much. Carmel had even baked me a cake. But it chafed. And it hurt. Fuck did it hurt. Charlie was mine, damn it! And I was determined to find her and haul her very fine arse back like the fucking caveman I apparently was.
Out of desperation I went to her back-up shack in Mangere. Pierce had agreed to leave it as is. The Police had taken their evidence, but Charlie was cleared of wrong-doing in Thibault’s death, and the garage was rented to her. So it had sat as she’d left it. Shot up and abandoned.
Or at least so we’d thought.
Instead it had been empty. And suddenly I had a hot trail again.
They had left Wellington, a move that made sense. The Department had been based in the capital to be close to Parliament and the PM. Staying there would have been asking for trouble. All of ASI had feared they’d gone overseas, escaped persecution in New Zealand, used their international contacts to slip away unseen.
But I knew Charlie. And I was thinking I knew Ava and that fucker Hart too. They may have been groomed for this life. They may have been conditioned beyond anything a normal person could comprehend. But they did this for a reason. A personal reason.
They did this for their country.
Prevent. Protect. Provide.
They prevented disasters. They protected their fellow countrymen. They provided the Government with intelligence in order to do both of those things.
That’s what the tagline said. That’s what they believed, even if that belief had been shattered by the actions of the Director.
They did this for their country. There’s no way they’d leave.
So where would they go?
Wellington’s not that big, but big enough to get lost in. No other city in our small nation, bar one, can come close.
Auckland. The City of Sails. Our city.
They’d come here.
And I’d just found them. In a warehouse in industrial Glen Innes. Hiding in plain sight like Abi does. Working in the shadows like Ben. Staying under the radar, but keeping their ear to the ground. Like ASI.
Yeah, we’d got our arses kicked because we’d made a bit of a name for ourselves recently. But normally we operated with one foot in the underground and one foot out. Slipping between the two worlds when necessity required. Doing what we had to do to protect our city.
Keeping a low profile.
What was left of the former Department was keeping an extremely low profile as well. This had been the first time in two weeks that I’d been able to confirm this was them.
A black SUV driven by Ava.
Charlie was in there. And part of me wanted to walk straight up to the door and break it down. Part of me wanted to get this over with, go home, and play with my spoils. Part of me was clearly a fucking douche!
I slid through the shadows, my prey in sight, and settled against the south wall of the building. Sleeping quarters were on the second floor; I’d figured that much out. Along with the kitchen, bathrooms, and office. Pressure sensors and laser trip wires covered the roof. Awesome!
Ground floor housed the gym, armoury at a guess, and parking for their cars. It also housed their meeting room. In the middle of the grand space, well away from any walls or windows. Well away from any keen ears.
I leaned my shoulder against the building’s wall and steadied my heartbeat. Adrenaline; hope, excitement, anticipation. It was all happening, and my hands twitched with a bucket full of let’s-get-this-on.
I pulled my remote control out and started up the screen. An upside down image of the garage came into focus, the clip-clop of Ava’s fuck-me boots sounded out through my earpiece. I released the device, watched as the screen showed the world turning right-side-up as the bug fell from the side of the car and settled on its feet. Or ball-bearings as the case may be.
In a flash it was chasing the sniper, making it through the key-code locked door before it swung shut behind her. I held my breath, waiting for a six inch heel to come down on top of the right-this-second-too-fucking-obvious-mini-bug. But all I saw was the swing of Ava’s hips as she sauntered into the meeting room.
Bug followed, scurrying into a dark corner of the room with the flick of my hand on the joystick.
I was in.
“Did you get it?” someone asked. A voice I couldn’t identify. I adjusted the viewing angle of the bug’s cameras, switching to wide angle. It distorted things should I need to move, but for stationary surveillance it rocked. I’d have to give Amber a big smooch when I saw her next.
I smiled at the reaction we’d get from Eric.
“Oh, yeah, I got it,” Ava purred in that come-here-big-boy voice she used, as she slid into a seat, back to me, blocking some of my view. I needed to move, but movement now was too risky.
“Then let’s get started,” another male, different from the first said. “Mal isn’t talking.”
“We knew he wouldn’t.” Hart. I’d recognise that fucker’s tone anywhere.
“We had to try.” First male again.
“And risk exposure.” Second male. Disgruntled. I picked him out at the end of the long table. He wore a hat. Inside. Dickhead.
“Irrelevant. We can dismiss him now,” Ava said. “The question is,” she went on, “where to next? Do we stay here and assume the other handlers are in New Zealand? Or do we start calling in favours overseas?”
“Travel carries greater risks,” first male replied.
“Risks‘R Us,” Hart drawled.
“But we can, at the very least, minimise it,” a female added. Not Ava. And not Charlie. Where the fuck was she?
“Agreed,” first male said. I was picking he was the one in charge now, which surprised me, because I thought Hart would be. Why? I’m not sure. I just found it hard to believe the guy could take orders.
Clearly his don’t-fuck-with-me attitude had all been an act put on for me. My lips spread in a wide grin. Sucker!
“One at a time, then,” leader dude said. “We slip out, assess exposure, and then monitor until it’s safe for another of us to leave.”
“Are they overseas, though?” Ava asked.
“That’s the point,” hatted dick said. “We can’t find them here, but we won’t know that they’ve actually fled the country until we look.”
“Have you managed to get anything on the Net, Joel?” Leader again.
“Only what we already know.” He was the hat dick. Figures he’d be their IT geek, too. Eric could be a pain in the arse as well when he tried. “The Beehive is in lockdown. The Wanganui Computer has been pulled. They’re taking us seriously. We’re the threat. Not the handlers.”
“Are you sure?” leader dude asked. “It takes a lot to make the New Zealand Police deactivate their law enforcement computer.”
“Right now the whole country is in lockdown,” the Joel guy replied. “Right now they expect
us
to go boom!”
“Maybe we should.” And there she was. Out of the bug’s line of sight. But there. I damn near dropped the fucking remote control my hands shook so fucking much.
Charlie. My Charlie. Messing around with a bunch of loser spies when she didn’t need to. Yeah, they were the only family she knew. But she had another. She didn’t need to be here. Risking her freedom so overtly.
She could risk it covertly with us.
Time was up. They had their backs against a wall. I’d suspected as much; Pierce had told us that everything electronic in the country that they could use had been shutdown. There was nowhere for them to go. They could leave; I was sure they’d manage to fool customs if they wanted to. And maybe, from what they’d said, they needed to. Stealthily, as their new leader dude suggested.
But not with Charlie.
No, if they had any hope of finding those handlers they needed a man on the inside.
ASI wasn’t exactly on the inside. But we had one foot in and one foot out, and that made us perfect.
At least, I fucking hoped so.
I switched the bug off and slipped its remote screen into my vest pocket. Standing up from my crouch beside the wall, I started to climb the storm pipe.
I could have knocked.
I could have jimmied the door lock and crept in.
But I was a nostalgic fuck, and I was going with the sensor pads on the roof. I knew Charlie would appreciate it.
I rolled onto the surface of the roof, landing on my back, and stared up into the early evening sky. No alarm sounded out. No whirring red light flashing a warning. Just a seagull swooping over the buildings and flying out of sight.
It took them two minutes. One minute longer than I thought it would. But I was guessing, Hart had been cursing up a storm when he’d seen who lay on his roof. I smiled.
And the sound of four guns being cocked rang out in the still air.
“What the fuck?” someone said. I think it was the Joel guy.
“This him?” someone else asked casually.
“The one and only,” Hart, the fucker, replied.
“Well, you better bring him inside, then” leader dude announced.
I bounced to my feet, eyes searching for Charlie and coming up blank. The letdown was a hit to the guts, but I covered. I smirked at Hart, nodded to the others, and followed their leader inside.
All the while counting down the seconds until I found her.
Caught her.
Claimed her.
And made her mine.