Integrity, p.4
Integrity, page 4
Both his eyebrows shot up. “What?”
“It’s Doctor Martin. I have a PhD, which I imagine you know if you know this much about what I was doing”—a quick glance at the time told me it was just after one a.m.—“yesterday. If you’re going to break into my apartment and threaten me, then it’d be nice if you could at least address me correctly.” It was a pointless assertation to make at that moment, but I needed to buy myself time.
“My apologies,” he drawled, laying on the fake sincerity. “Doctor Martin, please get up and get dressed.” He moved to stand six feet from my bed, his bearing confident and commanding, yet totally relaxed, as if he knew he had the upper hand. Which he obviously did. My nudity was a great equalizer. As was the fact he had a gun, and I didn’t.
“I actually don’t know what specifically you’re talking about. After a while all intel starts to look the same.” I tightened my grip on the sheet.
He sighed, playing up his exasperation. “This isn’t a game you want to play. Not with me. Now get out of bed and get dressed.” Almost as an afterthought, he added a smiling, facetious, “Please. Unless you want me to pull you out of bed and dress you?”
“That’s a solid no thanks.”
“I thought as much. You have twenty seconds, and then…” He made a you know gesture with his hand.
My brain, previously just trundling along on This Is Not Great mode, kicked into What The Fuck? mode. The issue of what he wanted aside, whose team was he playing for? Independent agent? Foreign agent? US Government agent? Regardless, it all pointed to one thing. Not good. Really not good. “I’m not a fan of going places with people I don’t know. Stranger Danger and all that. May I see some identification?”
“You may not.”
“Can you at least tell me your name?”
He shook his head.
“Does the Fourth Amendment mean anything to you?”
“Please get out of bed and get dressed.”
I opened my mouth to decline the invite again, but he casually moved his right hand toward the left side of his ribs. Okay then, reading you loud and clear. I swallowed, hating myself for my obvious discomfort, and tried one last thing. “I’m not the only person who knows about this.”
“I’m aware, and that fact isn’t relevant right now.” He undid the button on his suit jacket, and reached inside. The snap of the holster clasp was deafening.
Ohh-kaayy, yep, I’d run out of time. I raised my hands, then remembered they were doing the very important job of covering my boobs and slowly brought one down to drag the sheet up over myself again. “Can I at least have some privacy to get dressed?”
He swept his arm back and half-bowed. “By all means.” The fake gentleman act was incredibly annoying. After a few seconds, he averted his eyes.
I made a spinning motion with my forefinger. “Seriously. I’m naked here and you haven’t even told me your name, so you don’t get to sneak a peek. Can you turn around?”
He paused before slowly turning one-eighty degrees. I knew every tactical bone in his body would hate giving me even that leeway. With good reason. He probably registered the sound of me reaching under the other pillow, then the distinctive sound of the baton’s extension—doesn’t everyone keep a tactical baton under their pillows?—a millisecond before it connected with the back of his head and then his jaw as he turned. He stumbled forward…sideways…forward, smashing his face against the wall before he slumped facedown on the carpet.
Well, that went far better than I’d expected. Apparently I still had it. I resisted the urge to crack triumphant knuckles, and leapt out of bed. His suit jacket had pulled up, revealing handcuffs in a pouch on his belt. Good, because my sadly neglected kinky-times-drawer handcuffs wouldn’t hold him, and I didn’t have any heavy-duty zip ties. While kneeling on his legs, I dragged uncooperative arms behind his back and restrained him with his own handcuffs. And because I wasn’t completely without a heart, I turned him onto his side so he wouldn’t die of puke aspiration. And then, because I wasn’t totally stupid, I took his gun, spare magazine, and the suppressor he had fitted into a slot on his holster. Handcuffs, suppressor? This guy was serious.
Fuuuuck. Fuck! Fuckfuckfuck. Fuckity fuck.
Okay okay, think. Think.
First things first. I needed clothes. My good friend Adrenaline focused my attention and sped up my movement. I had to work fast before I came down the other side of the adrenaline mountain and hit trembly uselessness. I dragged on underwear and bra, jeans, a tee, and a flannel shirt to turn myself into a boring, nondescript person. The guy groaned as I was tying the laces on my Doc Martens. I grabbed my worn leather duffel and empty laptop backpack from the top shelf in the closet.
I’d packed like this before, given less than ten minutes warning that I had to move, and it was second nature. The trick was to not think, just pack on instinct. And to leave half the shit you really want to take, but that’s actually useless, behind. Important things only, you can always buy your basic necessities. I opened the safe inside my closet, and stuffed its contents—flash drives, my laptop, my lockbox of “not me” IDs and prepaid Visas I hadn’t needed since my last assignment overseas, and the always-kept-charged blue-cased phone I hardly used—into my Faraday backpack, which I zipped and shrugged into. Pocketknife in my front jeans pocket. I packed an assortment of clothes and shoes in record time and on a whim, stuffed in the dry-cleaning bag full of work suits and shirts that I’d collected on my way home. Plenty of room in the duffel for my personal handgun and the tactical baton which had followed me around the world and slept under countless pillows beside me, and which had finally come in handy. Less than five minutes. Not a new record, but not bad.
The guy came to and began squirming, trying unsuccessfully to free his hands. I pulled on my well-traveled Patagonia shell jacket. “Right, so it’s been wonderful, but I might go now. Who’s outside?”
He was silent, his eyes a mix of defiance and embarrassment. Understandable. I’d be embarrassed too if a naked woman half my size managed to disarm me. His tough-guy act might have been more convincing if not for his watering eyes and the blood running from his obviously broken nose, over his lips and down his chin. That was going to require medical attention for him. And new bedroom carpet for me. Oh…and a wall repair too. Oops.
“Come on, I know you’re not alone. I won’t tell them you told me, and I really don’t want to have to shoot you in the leg to make this look convincing. So, who’s outside and where?”
“Just one on the front entrance,” he mumbled, bloody spittle spraying from his mouth. “Silver car across the street.”
“Thank you. I assume they’ll come up here when you don’t return with me, so…good luck. I’ll put the key to those cuffs in my freezer so your friend can release you when they get up here. Please lock the front door when you leave.” I put my work and personal phones in my pockets and offered an automatic and totally stupid wave goodbye. I received snarly lips in response.
Right, time to get the hell out of Dodge.
I tossed the cuffs key into the freezer, hidden behind frozen meals, ice cream, and bags of frozen vegetables. Gun, gun, gun. What to do with his? I didn’t need it, I had mine. I quickly broke down the firearm, thumbing ammo from both magazines onto the floor and tossing gun parts around the living room. That should slow him down further once his partner freed him. After locking the front door and pocketing my keys, I took the elevator down to the parking garage and slipped out the back door. From across the street, his partner could see the exit of the underground garage and given the things they knew, they would also know my car.
I wanted to sprint away from my building, but forced myself to walk slowly, calmly. My skin crawled and my neck felt tight with the sensation someone was behind me and about to tackle or nab me. I kept to the side of the sidewalk farthest from the street, just walking, nothing to see here. I needed somewhere safe for the rest of the night, and a hotel was the obvious choice. Then tomorrow…tomorrow…I…had no fucking idea what I was going to do. Call Derek? Wait, no, should I call Derek now?
I shut that thought right down. Given there were only two people at work who knew about Hadim’s call and the files I’d received—me and Derek—calling Derek to have a freakout about the fact someone had broken into my house and threatened me for said files did not feel like a good idea. Because logically, he was the simplest route for whoever was in my bedroom to have known about it.
Oh hi, Derek, sorry about the early-morning call, but there’s a guy in my bedroom, hahaha yeah I know, that hasn’t happened since my dad last tucked me in when I was ten, but this one wasn’t there to read me a story, and about that intel I said felt icky, well it seems I was right, and you know how only you and me knew about it, well…I gotta ask—did you send a goon to my house to threaten me?
No way could I make that call. At least not yet. Not until I was safe. I’d trusted Derek with my life, literally, and the thought he’d known about this capture attempt made me feel sick. Possibly known. Like my dad used to say, never make something a certainty until you’re certain it’s certain. But if it looks like a duck etcetera. I shook the thought out. Think about that later. For now, get safe, make sure the intel is safe and then figure out the next step.
Strolling the brightly lit streets, I tried to look like a woman who’d just randomly packed her bags and decided to leave home for a walk to spend the night at her girlfriend’s house. At one thirty in the morning. Totally normal. Totally not someone fleeing a possibly murderous intruder who might work for a government, country unspecified. Or who might be a solo operator. Either way, not great. The adrenaline that had been so helpful before now had my skin twitching, and every approaching car was someone coming for me. By the fourth car, I was almost running and had to force myself to slow down so as to not draw attention to myself.
I needed to get inside, safe, away from eyes both human and electronic. As I walked, I Googled hotels, filtered by twenty-four-hour check-in, and within five minutes was inside an Uber and on my way to a place on the edge of town. It was only when I was safely upstairs in a room behind locks and chains that I took a full breath.
I dumped everything on the bed and pulled out my laptop. My first priority was to secure what I’d received from Hadim so Thuggy McHousebreaker and his friends couldn’t wipe it from existence. Clearly, it was valuable, and I couldn’t risk them getting rid of the evidence of…something I wasn’t sure of yet. But I was sure it was important. I’d known that before my middle-of-the-night visitor had woken me up, and now I was utterly certain there was more to it than I’d first imagined.
Despite being on an unsecured Internet connection, my laptop was as secure as it could be. And I wouldn’t be long, just a quick login via the portal to grab what I wanted, then out again. If someone who’d break into an apartment and threaten the occupant wanted this intel, then it was up to me to keep those files safe.
It took a few seconds to connect through my VPN routing service and bounce via California to sneak through cyberspace and into the encrypted portal we used when working in the field. As soon as I entered my credentials, I was met with a simple message. Not the big red flashing animation that movies and television always show to make sure the audience immediately understands that the protagonist is screwed, but a boring: Incorrect Password, Portal Access Denied.
I spluttered, groaned, and finally managed a raging, “Oh they did not. Bastards!” How had they locked me out already? A rhetorical question of course. They’d probably put a cyberwall around everything of mine before bringing me in. Correction—before trying to bring me in.
I tried again in case my 2:27 a.m. brain was simply being stupid. Nope. Same again. I closed down all browsers and my VPN, disconnected then reconnected to the Internet and VPN before routing through Sydney, Australia because why not. Once I’d connected, I navigated to the encrypted login page again. Only this time I didn’t enter AEMARTIN but SCGORDON and Sam’s password of ILoVeMuFfIn54321*. I’m not even joking, and best not to ask how I knew it. The number of people working in one of the securest government departments who had passwords like password123 or 012345678910 or even their names was astounding.
Nope again. Okay. Relax, and think. So they’ve closed down all secure external access. The timing was beyond suspicious, and my good friend Logic pointed out that it was because of me. I took the laptop offline, calmly closed it, and wandered into the bathroom to puke in the sink. Adrenaline’s great. Until it isn’t. I ate a couple of the mints I’d grabbed from the bowl at the front desk and stared around the room, trying to figure out my next move. My next move was more staring and trying to figure out my next move.
Knowing mindless tasks would help me refocus, I unpacked my hastily thrown-together bag, set the dry cleaning flat on the bed, used my emergency handbag charger to top up my personal phone, then neatly repacked my duffel. There, just like a person on vacation. A working vacation. Thanking myself for having the foresight to grab my handbag, I rummaged for my headphones and the travel kit of toiletries I always kept in there. Years of travel, lost luggage, and working odd hours had taught me that keeping spare necessities in easy-to-access places was a smart idea.
My stomach rumbled, demanding sustenance to fuel thought—I always got hungry if I happened to be awake in the middle of the night. Time to raid the room for overpriced snacks. Once I’d cleaned out the chips and chocolate, I flopped backward on the bed, covered my mouth with both hands and blew out a long breath that whistled through my fingers.
Okay. These were the things I knew…
One of my trusted sources had given me intel about an American pushing a suspected Russian militia group to use a new and illegal chemical weapon on foreign civilians. I had come by this information through acceptable and reliable channels. My boss knew about this incident. An unpleasant man had tried to threaten and coerce naked me into a, forgetting what I knew, and b, going into the office to wipe the files from the servers even though they were capable of finding the files and pressing Delete themselves. My agency had initiated a lockdown of those servers. Oh, and this was a fabulous hotel bed. Pity I wouldn’t get to sleep in it.
I took a moment to run over everything again. Yes, that was pretty much all of it. So, what’s the logical conclusion here? I drew in a deep breath and let it out again as I unbuttoned and unzipped my jeans, kicking out of them while I unfastened my bra and Houdini-ed it through the arms of my tee. I cleared some space to lie flat on my back with my legs up against the wall. Eyes closed. Deep, slow breaths. Elongated breathing…slow breathing… Thinking of nothing but my breaths, pushing the negativity and anxiety out on each long exhalation. After fifty inhale-exhales, the stress had abated somewhat, but the anxiety of someone breaking into my house, my safe space, remained.
Crawling across the soft carpet to a spot with nothing nearby, I relaxed into Child’s Pose and focused on feeling my fingers and forehead in the carpet, the sensation of my big toes touching, my breath moving in and out through my lungs and around my body. I was safe here, safe in my body, my mind. Breathing in and out. The grounding pose slowly soothed the anxiety, and I stayed with it until all the intrusive thoughts had left my brain. I sloughed away more tension and negative energy with Sun Salutations and rolling through Bridge Poses until my body and brain felt like my own again.
I walked slowly back and forth across the room, concentrating on my footfalls, the swing of my arms, the sensation of my breathing sustaining my body. The mindfulness had eased my upset, brought some clarity. There really was only one logical conclusion. There was something in those files, or someone more likely, that had the power to cause a national scandal or an international diplomatic nightmare. The chemical weapon incident would be spun as us protecting our assets, and they’d argue semantics to wriggle out of it, so there had to be more. Using Russian militia against their tentative allies made no sense, especially not when you added our government trying to forge—mmph—ties with Russia to make that happen.
Don’t force it. Let it come to you.
But it wouldn’t.
I lowered myself to the floor and went through twenty slow pushups. The connection with my body and the movement cleared my mind again. Okay, so now we’ve established you don’t know what’s going on with this intel, let’s figure out what you’re going to do next.
More pacing. More pushups. More yoga.
You are in possession of intel that a potentially negative player wants—not ideal. You don’t know who you can trust—bad. You have a stupid need to always work for the greater good—noble, but sometimes annoying. So, what are your options, Lexie? Call Derek and explain what’s happening, despite having the awful and sickening feeling he might be involved, and if he’s involved, then this might end up somewhere it shouldn’t, or more likely…end up nowhere. Bypass him and try to go higher up the chain? Bypass my agency altogether and make a call on the blue-cased cell phone?
Every scenario I went through felt like a dead end. And who knew what would happen to Hadim’s intel. My trusty gut said it would magically go away, that nobody would ever know, nobody would ever be held accountable. And that meant this chemical weapon could be used again. And that was unacceptable. Unthinkable. Yeah, maybe I needed to use the blue phone…
The distinctive app ringtone of the phone I hardly used made me jump, partly because I’d just been thinking about using it and was freaked out that they might somehow know my thoughts. I blew a raspberry at that ridiculous notion. Not answering was never an option and the timing of a call on this phone couldn’t be coincidental. I inhaled a steadying breath and answered with a calm, “Yes?”
