Codename: Nightshade (Deadly Seven Strike Force) (10 page)

His eyes widen. “What is?”

“That water.”

The SUV hits us again, and that’s it.

“Marko,” I scream as the world drops out from under us.

Gravity shifts, and for a second, I’m weightless. The car is suspended midair, Marko and I floating in the middle of it. A large shadow stands at the ledge, aiming a gun straight for us.

It’s an impossible hit. He’d have to shoot between the broken windows and hope for the best. Very few people could ever make the shot. I've only ever known one.

Even so, I use what’s left of my energy to throw my body toward Marko, but I’m too late. A bullet whizzes into the cabin a second before we plunge into the river.

It’s October. The weather has just begun to shift, and the leaves are red and yellow in the trees that line the banks. The water is ice when I hit it. It locks my lungs, seizing every inch of my body at once.

This can’t be the end.

I told myself a long time ago I wouldn’t go out like this.

I remember when I was a kid—maybe three or four. My mother would let me spend some time alone in the tub after she finished washing my hair. She’d leave the bathroom door open just in case I needed her help. I’d splash and play, imagining my toys were submarines on secret missions.

I never felt threatened by the water, never feared being alone in it.

But then, that water had been warm and comforting. My mother was only a few feet away, ready to save me if needed be.

The water I find myself in now is freezing—ice slashing at my skin and ripping me apart. I’m held down, forced to feel it, to face the pain.

My mommy isn’t going to help me now.

As brutally as I'm shoved under, I’m yanked right back above the surface. Water spews from my lips, and I gag as I try to breathe.

“You’re useless,” a voice shouts, the cruelty of the man's voice is nothing compared to the sincerity of his words. His hands are gripped like vices to my shirt.

I can’t take a full breath, can’t defend myself in any way before he plunges me under the water again. This time is worse. This time I’m caught off guard. I didn’t get enough air into my lungs before he did it. My arms and legs are dead weight, pulling down like lead anchors. I’m not kicking and fighting anymore.

I can’t.

Darkness bleeds into my vision. Somehow the cold is turning into comforting warmth.

“Come on.” I hear a muffled, warped voice yelling. I’m detached from my body, detached from my mind, floating someplace I can’t describe. “No, you don’t. You hear me? You are not allowed to die!”

Those words strike me as funny, and I want to laugh. If I still had lungs, I would laugh. I didn’t want to die, either. I just wanted to feel like I belonged somewhere for once in my life. Why did I think agreeing to this training would do that for me?

“Breathe.” The command is ferocious. I’m pretty sure my lungs begin to move simply from fear.

I hear a weak, shredded gasp a second before I feel my lungs contract. Feeling returns to my body slowly. Eventually I realize I’ve become a fish, flopping mindlessly on the ground. I’m soaking and shaking.

My eyes clear, and I see he’s inches from my face—angry.

“What am I going to do with you, Recruit Vincent?” General Zolkov gives me a hard stare that somehow makes my numb body shiver. “You’re a disgrace.”

“I’ll do better, sir,” I say through chattering teeth.

He shakes his head, dropping me right there on the ground like a heap of garbage.

“I told them I believed you have what it takes.”

I lay on my side, panting. I can feel my heart in my chest. Every vessel straining as it pulls and pushes. My blood is slowing down, each beat exaggerated. My skin is so cold it’s burning from the inside out as my body fights for life.

I stare at his boots. I feel like dog shit smudged on the bottom of those boots.

“I do, sir,” I say between strangled breaths.

“You’ve yet to prove it to me, Recruit.”

“I will, sir.”

General Zolkov squats in front of me. I’ve only known him for two weeks, but I’ve already decided I hate him—hate him so much I
have
to prove him wrong.

His eyes are so dark I don’t know if he has pupils. Maybe he’s like an eagle. Maybe his entire eye is a pupil, open and sharp. Maybe that’s why I can’t get away with taking one second to catch my breath.

He sees everything.

“You bet your ass you will,” he says, grabbing me without warning.

I’m thrust back into the freezing Hell. Despite what I just told him, I want to give up. I want to close my eyes and just let the darkness take me.

I tell that voice inside my head to shut up. I can see his smug expression through the water. It’s distorted by the ripples my struggling causes. I want nothing more in that moment than to rise up and drag him under. To be strong enough to hold
him
down instead.

I’m not going to give up.

I’m going to prove I’ve got what it takes.

I’ll be goddamned if I let General Zolkov be the man who kills me.

3

“Can you tell me your name?”

“Penelope,” I say. It hurts to talk. My lungs burn, preventing me from taking a full breath. I feel like an elephant is sitting on my chest.

Bright light shines in my eyes.

“Can you tell me where you were tonight?”

“No.”

I don’t know where I am. I don’t know what’s happening.

“You were in a car accident.”

My own scream fills my fuzzy mind as memories flash before my eyes. “Marko—”

“That’s right,” the voice says. “You were with Marko Veltriv. You were in a car accident.”

“Attack,” I say. Too many words are in my brain, and my mouth doesn’t seem to understand how to speak them.

“Conserve your energy, Penelope. You’re alright. Just some bumps and bruises. A few broken bones, but you’ll be fine.”

“Marko,” I say again. I feel like I’m playing some twisted childish game. I keep calling 'Marko' but no one is saying 'Polo'. “Where is he?”

“He’s in surgery right now.”

Surgery? Why? What's wrong with him?

I have so many questions, but all of a sudden, my lips are too heavy. My body floats away from me.

Recruit Vincent, do you think sleeping is going to keep you safe from an attack? Because it won’t.

I startle awake. The whole world is a throbbing ache that pulses from my skin. I was dreaming of Nikolai, of the first days of my training. He was such a bastard back then.

He was still a bastard later. He was just
my
bastard then.

“What did I tell ya? I think she truly loves me.”

Laughter draws my attention to the left side of the bed. A knife twirls in the air.

Claymore. He smirks at me. “Good to see you awake, lass.”

A haughty huff from the right side of the bed pulls my eyes too quickly in that direction. “She’s only awake because I kissed her,” Ace says.

“Great, I'm surrounded by Dopey and Happy," I mumble. "This is the worst reproduction of
Snow White
ever.”

“You should have been awake an hour ago,” a third voice says nearby. I fumble around for the controls and sit my bed up. A tall, thin blonde woman with a sharp chin and tiny nose stands there. Countess, our Russian operative. “They were playing poker on your chest.”

Her accent gives her a deeper voice than one would expect from such a tiny frame. Her lips pinch together as she surveys me.

“As long as they were playing a card game and not literally poking my tits, I’m all good,” I say.

Countess sighs. She’s like some royal cat with how she slinks closer to the bed. She has no patience for my sense of humor—or for me, really.

I’m frankly surprised she’s here.

“Do not look like I am apparition floating in air,” she says. “I am who received distress signal and notified Moe and Curly.”

Ace sits on the edge of my bed, mock whispering, “She was in tears when she called us. All torn up that the only other chick in the bunch would be gone.”

“Aye,” Claymore adds, “she was deeply troubled. I think it took her a solid minute before she suggested they begin a new recruitment for the American position.”

Countess doesn’t react. Her expression remains blank, deadpan. “You were white like zombie when we found you. It was logical suggestion.”

When we found you.

“You guys found me? How? Where?” I vaguely remember making the distress call right before the limo was shoved into the river. I don’t remember anything after that.

Trauma, the doctors will call it. Circumstances so intense that the body is unable to process them. I consider it a tactical maneuver. The ice dip washed away most of my memory from the entire night. I just remember being terrified and Marko—

“Marko,” I say, scooting up in my seat. Big mistake. Everything pulls and stretches. Pain zings up my spine and explodes out through my body in the form of a sharp scream.

“Take it easy,” Claymore says. He spins his knife over, implanting the tip in the bedside table as his hand settles on my shoulder. "You've been through a lot."

“How long have I been out?”

“Three days,” Ace says, leaning back so his head’s on my lap. “And
I
found you. You somehow managed to get yourself and Veltriv out of the limo and swam upstream. You were both passed out on the shore a mile away from where you said to look.”

“Really?” I glance between him and Claymore.

There’s a hard set to Claymore’s jaw, a distant distracted look in his eyes, but he nods. “Aye. Countess and I were out of the country. We didn’t get here until you were already being inspected.”

“Marko?” I ask no one in particular, still waiting for that damn 'Polo'. I look to each face in the room, my eyes stopping on Countess.

“Representative Veltriv is… stable.”

Stable.
I’ve known the man for five years, and I have a dictionary full of words I’d call him. Stable would never be one.

“What happened?” I ask. I’m so confused. Everything is just past my reach. I know we were in the limo. I know we were shot at. I just can’t put anything together about how it all ended.

Ace turns so his chin rests on my stomach. “He was shot through the right shoulder. Clean wound, really, but he lost a lot of blood by the time we got you guys to the hospital. And the hypothermia you both were suffering from by then didn’t help.”

It might have. Hypothermia slows the blood. Technically, he should have bled
less
thanks to the freeze.

“But he’s alive,” I say, repeating it more for the sake of comforting myself.

“Aye, barely,” Claymore says, that look in his eyes having melted into distress. He’s gone paler than usual.

Something is bothering him.

“Any info on what hit us?” I ask, hoping that’s where his worry resides.

“That is job for us today,” Countess says.

“Today?” I echo. “You haven’t been out there looking before?”

“Settle down, Pineapple,” Ace says. I hate when calls me that. “We
have
, but we've had to share with local authorities. You guys were in a high speed chase with a shitload of bullets in the middle of one the most populated cities in the world. We couldn’t really hope it would go unnoticed.”

“Furthermore,” Claymore adds, “Veltriv’s father is furious. He’s been frothing at the mouth for your arrest.”

Again, my sight bounces around the room. “Arrest
me
? Why?”

Ace half-heartedly shrugs. “Russians are illogical and passionate people.”

“I have license to kill you,” Countess says, pointing a deadly finger at him.

“She’ll do it, pretty boy,” Claymore says. “You better watch out.”

“Worry about your own back, Coog.” Ace stands, stretching like a cat. “Pretty sure she’ll kill us all in our sleep someday.”

“Is not entirely unreasonable assumption,” Countess says, patting my foot like she’s comforting me, but she’s worried I’m going to pass some infectious disease to her. “Rest, delicate American flower.” My eye twitches. She’s trying to be nice, but I take offense to how weak her words make me sound. “We will find who attacked you and eradicate threat.”

Ace kisses my cheek and follows her out the door. Claymore stays behind. He’s retrieved his knife and flips it as high as his forehead.

I can see troubles are still deep inside him. “What is it?”

“Nothing.”

I know that look. I wear it a lot myself. It’s not the look of
nothing
.

“Why aren’t you helping them?”

He catches the handle and flips the blade back into it before sliding it in his pocket. He stares at the wall for fifteen seconds. I know. I count.

“It doesn’t add up,” he finally says.

My insides feel like someone smashed me with a giant hammer. I can’t take a full, deep breath. “What doesn’t add up?”

“Why would someone attack him?”

Him
. He says it so subtly, and if I weren’t trained in the art of reading people, I might have missed it. There's a sense of familiarity in his voice. He
knows
Marko.