DAY TWO
The Prize
2
The car windows began to steam, Kylie feeling the man’s hands fumbling inexpertly at her bra, half of her brain begging him to figure it out while the other half focused on his belt. She felt the strap on her back release and had a split second of regret, wondering if she should stop the train of hormones raging in the cloistered confines. Get back to just talking, like she’d promised herself would happen.
She thought of what her Scottish roommate had told her just before she’d left, after she’d emphatically stated yet again that she wasn’t seeing anyone. An impish grin on her face, the roommate had said, “I know what you Americans call this. When I did my student exchange to Virginia, it was all about ‘what happens on an exchange stays on the exchange.’”
And now she was in the backseat of a car, not with a British aristocrat, but an American soldier. Someone she’d been trying hard not to like, but had been failing. Her mother would lose her mind if she knew she was seeing someone in the military, which is why she’d been so secretive—even in a foreign country.
But maybe that was part of the attraction.
He parted her shirt and leaned forward, using his mouth, causing an involuntary gasp. She forgot about his belt and arched her back, wrapping her hands in his hair with her eyes closed.
She heard metal hammer the window behind her and felt an explosion of glass rain down. Her date jerked upright, shouting something unintelligible, and then it was a tangle of confusion, men all over her, dragging her out of the car.
She heard, “What the fuck is this? He was supposed to be alone.”
Irish.
Her date began to fight like a wild thing until he was cuffed in the head with the barrel of a pistol. He shouted and rolled onto the ground, holding his skull. He was hoisted to his knees and shown the gun.
He said, “What do you want? Money? The car? Take it.”
The man jammed the barrel into his mouth, the tear on his scalp from the earlier blow leaking blood down his cheek. The man twisted the barrel until the front sight grated against the teeth, saying, “Shut. Up.”
The one holding her said, “What do we do now? Kill her?”
She tried to cover her naked breasts, and the man jerked her arms to the rear, saying, “Don’t move.”
The first man removed the pistol from her date’s mouth and walked to her, a slow, measured pace.
Her date said, “Don’t fucking touch her. I mean it.”
The man smiled and cupped her breast, bouncing it slightly. She felt the tears form and began to tremble. She heard him say, “Why? Is she special?”
Her date remained silent, and the man laughed. He said, “Sterilize the area and leave the Morocco receipt. Don’t make it obvious. Make them find it.”
The man holding her said, “And the girl?”
“Pack her up. We can’t have a body found around here.”
Which was a mistake. Had he left her broken corpse on the deserted English road, he might have lived to see another birthday. Unlike her date, she had no value to be traded, no pedigree that could leverage powerful political forces, but she was special to some.
Very special.
* * *
I stomped inside, freezing from the run and grouchy that Jennifer had forced me to do it. I hated cold weather, and for some reason Charleston had turned into the arctic the last two winters. As far as I was concerned, jogging in anything below fifty degrees was flat-out stupid and exactly why treadmills were invented, but Jennifer hated running in place. Even when the temperature was close to freezing.
Global warming my ass.
Last night, she’d asked if I wanted to run the Ravenel Bridge, and after secretly checking the weather, I’d said yes. Of course, that damn prediction had been wrong. When I’d stepped out onto our balcony this morning, I’d immediately tried to change her mind. She’d shamed me, and we’d taken off, running up East Bay toward the bridge spanning the Cooper River, the cold making me more pissed off the farther I went. We’d crossed and headed back, the steep uphill climb whipped by a bone-chilling wind coming from the lack of protection and the height. I’d stepped it out at that point, leaving her behind, my pace fueled by my aggravation and absolute desire to get out of the cold.
I kicked the door closed, knowing Jennifer wasn’t far behind me and that she’d be peeved about me deserting her. I was pretty sure she could have hung with me, but it would have been hard. And she had no time for mental games anyway.
I moved into the kitchen of our little apartment, the top floor of an antique row house just off East Bay. It was old and sometimes cranky about things like hot water, but the kitchen had been renovated and the location was perfect. All in all, one of the reasons I loved the Holy City.
I put on a pot of coffee and began making Jennifer’s favorite healthy goop of berries, granola, and Greek yogurt, moving into the required apology mode. Our cat came out from underneath the table and hissed at me. I was thinking about kicking the shit out of him when the door opened. Jennifer saw me glaring down and said, “Don’t you dare!”
Caught in the act, I just stuttered, trying to pretend I had been contemplating something else besides squashing the beast’s skeevy head.
Saying he was “our” cat was giving a little too much credit. Jennifer had rescued him from a garbage can outside of our place, and he showed her every bit of love in his vicious little soul in return. He hated me, and believe me, the feeling was mutual.
He was a skinny calico with a potbelly and bald patches from some unknown disease. I couldn’t count the number of times he’d jumped on me when I was sound asleep, tearing his claws into my back.
He twitched his tail in disdain and trotted over to her, rubbing up against her legs and purring. She picked him up with one arm, cooing in a faux baby voice directed at me. “Was Pike mean to my little Knuckles? Hmmm?” The cat looked at me, and I swear he was smiling.
One day, you little shit.
The only good thing about him was his name. Jennifer had decided to anoint him with the callsign of my best friend as a little punishment. Knuckles had given her the callsign Koko on a mission—as in the talking gorilla—and it was something she despised but couldn’t shake. Everyone on our team perpetuated the name no matter what she did. Calling the rat with claws “Knuckles” was her version of payback, although it fell a little short because the satanic beast treated his human namesake just like he treated Jennifer. Apparently, I was the only one worthy of his ire.
Jennifer dropped him to the floor, and he sauntered away, now supreme in his kingdom with the queen preventing any harm. She looked at me, and I prepared to start my defense, but I saw no anger. Before I could begin my groveling she held up a letter in her hand.
“We got something from Blaisdell Consulting.”
Which was really odd. All the transactions for our company ran through Blaisdell for pay purposes—an umbrella cover company for the counterterrorist unit that employed us—but electronic transmissions were the order of the day. Snail mail was some old-school stuff we didn’t do.
She said, “Well, you want to open it, or you want me to?”
Feeling a little flow of adrenaline, I sat down, saying, “Go ahead. Must be pretty important.” Which meant it must be a mission outside the usual scope. Something even crazier than what we habitually did. A little high adventure that had the potential to be a lot of fun.
She slit it open, and I saw her eyes scrunch up. She looked at me in confusion. I said, “Well? Where do they need the expert services of Grolier Recovery? Bali? Phuket?”
She said, “We’ve been fired.”