Into the Storm (4 page)

Out in the reception area, Tracy was making copies as she tried to keep up with answering the phones. Slender, but with curves in all the right places, with long brown hair, startlingly blue eyes, and an exotically beautiful face, she could have made a fortune as a fashion model if only she were five inches taller.

She teetered precariously on the too-high heels of those ridiculous three-hundred-dollar shoes, as she ran back and forth between the copier and the phones.

“Oh, hi, Sam,” she said, as she answered the phone, putting on a sugary voice reserved for anyone who had dangling genitalia. “No, Decker hasn’t called in. Can I help?” The other lines were all lighting up, and the copy machine had stopped, but Tracy ignored it all because Sam Starrett was on the phone.

Lindsey sighed, and went to the other desk, picking up the ringing lines. “Troubleshooters Incorporated. Hold please. Troubleshooters Incorporated, sorry, can you hold?”

Tracy Shapiro was beautiful, there was no question about that. She had a body that all women wished for but few ever achieved. She seemed friendly enough—a little too friendly where Sam Starrett was concerned, though. And, yes, okay, maybe Lindsey was wrong about the no-brains thing. Maybe she was a rocket scientist. Some of the rocket scientists Lindsey had met at UCLA couldn’t answer more than one phone at a time, either.

There was a lot Lindsey didn’t know about Tracy, but there was one thing she would’ve bet big money on if she’d found a taker.

And that was that the Tracy Shapiros of the world didn’t hook up with the Mark Jenkinses.

The man didn’t have a Smurf’s chance in a wolf fight.

Which seriously increased Lindsey’s odds of getting skewered.

She pushed the last lit button as Tracy dragged out her phone call with Sam by asking him about the traffic on the Five. Jesus. If Lindsey were Sam’s wife Alyssa, she’d sit down right here in the lobby, at this desk across from Tracy’s. And she’d clean her entire collection of handguns. Hint, hint, beeyotch. “Troubleshooters Incorporated, how may I direct your call?”

L
OCATION
: U
NCERTAIN
D
ATE
: U
NKNOWN

She was cold. Always cold.

Hungry, too.

He kept the damp basement freezing, kept her carefully underfed.

And almost always in the dark. There were no windows. No way to tell the difference between night and day.

Sometimes he turned on the lights just to disorient her. There was never any rhyme to it, never any reason.

She tried to keep track of time, but it was impossible to do, especially during days like these, when she hadn’t heard his footsteps in the kitchen overhead for what felt like weeks on end.

She couldn’t remember the last time he’d brought her food. All she knew was that the supply she’d been hoarding was gone. She started to believe that she would starve to death, locked down here, cold and alone.

She tried to tell herself that that would be okay. It would be better than what he’d done to Number Four.

But then she heard it. Footsteps overhead.

His
footsteps. She’d know them anywhere.

He was sliding something across the kitchen floor.

Someone.

She knew that he hadn’t been shopping while he was gone all that time. She knew it wasn’t a hundred-pound bag of potatoes that he’d dragged in from his car.

There was little she could be certain of in her life—in this nightmare that her life had become. But that he hadn’t come home alone was definite.

And sure enough, he opened the door and came partly down the stairs. The glow from the kitchen spilled into the basement, lighting him from behind, making it hard for her to see his face.

“I’m back, Number Five. Did you miss me?”

She couldn’t remember what he looked like. And she’d never really seen his eyes. Not without the sunglasses he’d worn when she’d gotten into his car. Time was a blur, but she knew it had been months since he’d first locked her down here. Maybe even years.

She’d had a name once—Beth. But now she was a number. Five.

He called her that, called her his champion, too, in his flat Yankee accent, when he opened the door to bring her food. Sometimes he brought fresh water, so she wouldn’t have to drink the brackish liquid that seeped up in a pool, in the corner of this prison.

Lord, how she hated him, how she feared him—yet how she looked forward to those dazzling moments of light.

This time, he threw something at her. She ducked, and it hit the wall before she realized what it was. A loaf of bread. A jar of peanut butter. She tore it open and ate it, as quickly as she could. Because she’d learned that everything he gave her, he could easily take away.

She would have liked to save it, because she never knew if the food and water he’d brought was all she’d get for God knows how long. If he’d gone right back up the stairs, she would have rationed it, both dreading and praying for his swift return.

Sometimes he left food well out of range of her chains, with no way for her to reach it. She’d sit in the darkness, starving, smelling it, even over the constant stench of death.

Sometimes he took and emptied the bucket he’d given her for her waste. Sometimes he wouldn’t bring it back downstairs again for days on end. Sometimes he did. Sometimes he threw it at her, covering her with her own filth if she didn’t move quickly enough out of the way.

All the while calling her Number Five. “You’ve been a good girl, Number Five.”

“You’ve been a bad girl, Number Five.”

It didn’t matter what she did. God knows she tried being good, doing what she thought he wanted, but it soon became clear that the very thing she was praised for on one day would invoke his wrath on the next.

It was an awful way to live.

Only one thing was certain.

After he’d been gone for so long, he’d tell her it was time to get cleaned up. He’d get out his hose and spray her with water that stung and bruised her, that left her soaked and colder than ever. He’d toss her the key that would unlock the chain around her ankle.

But before that, he’d say the words she dreaded hearing, words she could count on hearing, words he spoke to her now.

“I’ve brought you a new friend.”

S
AN
D
IEGO
, C
ALIFORNIA
F
RIDAY
, D
ECEMBER
2, 2005

Dave brought two mugs of coffee into her office.

“Did you make that?” Sophia asked.

He nodded as he slumped down into the chair across from her desk. He had terrible posture. Maybe his brain was just too heavy, and he didn’t have the strength to hold his head up for great lengths of time. “Yeah. I arranged for an accident with the previous pot.”

“So,” Sophia said as she took a sip. “She can’t make coffee, she can’t work the voice mail system, the copies of my report went out missing page five…”

“She’s only been here a few days,” Dave said mildly. “Give her a chance.”

“The Phoenix client was on hold for twenty minutes,” Sophia said. “And I’m sorry, but it was a six-page document. How hard could it be to make sure page five was there?”

“I’ve taken a nonscientific poll. Lindsey hates her as much as you do.” Dave leaned even farther back in his chair, stretching his legs out in front of him. “Alyssa grits her teeth and Tess rolls her eyes whenever her name is mentioned. The
men,
on the other hand, all agree that the job just might be harder than it looks.”

“So what are you saying?” Sophia asked. “That we’re insecure and jealous? Or that you’re all just blinded by the wonder of Tracy’s sweater?”

“It is a lovely sweater,” he agreed. Out of all the people she’d met since coming to work for Troubleshooters Incorporated, David Malkoff was the most unassuming. He dressed like tech support, in stoner T-shirts and baggy shorts, with long hair waving around what was very definitely not a long-haired face. “It matches the color of her eyes.”

Sophia laughed. “Yes, I’m sure the color was what everyone noticed.”

“I did,” he told her. He looked, in fact, like an accountant dressed up as Jerry Garcia for Halloween.

“Right.”

Dave sat up slightly, blinking at her in mild offense. “I
did
.”

He looked, well…silly, to be honest. Ignorable. The gelding in a stable of stallions.

He was, in fact, a former CIA operative—brilliant and extremely capable.

“You know, you’ve got a shirt that you sometimes wear,” he continued earnestly. “It’s kind of like a T-shirt only fancier. It’s the same color blue as
your
eyes. It’s striking. And of course the fabric manages to…hang isn’t the right word, but you know what I mean. It clings. To you. As does the shirt you’re wearing right now, which is…” He was actually starting to blush. “Also very nice. But it’s the color. Blue. Of the T-shirt. It’s the same color as your eyes, that…I noticed. First.”

It was quite possible that Sophia was blushing now, too. Considering her checkered past, she made a point never to dress provocatively. The blouse she was wearing today was nothing special. It covered her—even with the top button comfortably undone. Yet it wasn’t a cardboard box. The fabric did drape around her body.

A body that Dave—among plenty of others—had seen, completely unclad. It wasn’t something they’d ever discussed, but there were times—such as this one—where Sophia could see the memory of her nakedness in his eyes.

“You can’t not know that your…figure is…what it is,” Dave slogged on, hip deep in dangerous territory, but honing in on his point. “And yet you wear that blue shirt. Or the shirt you have on. Instead of a Kevlar vest, which would completely conceal…you know. You. Tracy is a beautiful woman, too. It’s not her fault that she—same as you—looks good in the clothes she wears to work.”

“Maybe I
should
get a Kevlar vest,” Sophia said. She slipped her arms into her jacket, needing to feel more covered. Dave, the least threatening man on the planet, was aware of her body.

“I’m sorry,” he said, visibly distressed. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” Like a true gentleman, he changed the subject. “Have you decided yet if you’re going to Boston?”

Leave it to Dave to leap upon the one subject that made her equally uncomfortable. Going to Boston—or not—was not something she wanted to
think
about, let alone discuss. Not even with him.

“Have you talked to Tom about that team leader position he wants you to take?” she countered.

He grimaced, clearly recognizing her subtext. His answer was as giant a
no
as hers. Still, he hesitated. “You know, if you decide you want to talk about it…”

“Ditto with the job thing,” Sophia told him.

Their boss, Tom Paoletti, was convinced Dave would make a top-notch team leader. Sophia agreed. Dave was fair, he was honest—yes, sometimes brutally so—and he was highly respected. It was time for him to start giving orders, not taking them.

But the words that Dave had used when they’d last discussed it included “not a chance in hell” and “over my dead body.” There was no need for it, he insisted. Not so long as he worked for a company where there were already plenty of people with team leader written all over them.

Alyssa Locke, Tom Paoletti’s second-in-command at TS Inc, was former FBI, as well as a former naval officer. Her husband, Sam Starrett was, like Tom, former SEAL. Lindsey Fontaine was former LAPD. Tess Bailey and Jimmy Nash had both worked at a mysterious no-name agency. PJ Prescott had been an Air Force Pararescue Jumper.

“Deck’s coming in this afternoon,” Dave reported now.

And then there was Lawrence Decker.

Former chief in the Navy SEALs, former Agency operative, champion of freedom, protector of the downtrodden, dedicated to truth and justice, Decker was quietly, relentlessly a true American hero.

He’d made only one mistake in his entire life—and it was when he’d first met Sophia Ghaffari.

He’d yet to forgive himself for it.

He’d yet to forgive her, as well.

Sophia nodded, shuffling the files on her desk, unable to meet the now-steady kindness of Dave’s gaze. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

This was the real reason he’d stopped in. The coffee was just a cover, the talk about the new receptionist just a distraction. Even the mention of Boston was a warm-up to an even more difficult topic.

Dave was a good friend—always looking out for her. He was always taking care of her, even while making it clear that he knew she was completely capable of taking care of herself.

“I overheard Tom talking to Lindsey,” Dave told her. “We’re doing some kind of war-gaming thing with SEAL Team Sixteen.”

Sophia nodded, her heart sinking. She already knew. About the impending op, not about Decker.

Lindsey had stopped in to see if Sophia wanted to help out. The way she’d described it had sounded fun. A training mission—low-key and casual. A chance to get to know the SEALs in Team Sixteen.

It was, at the very least, an opportunity to get dressed up in cammie gear and war paint, and run around in the woods. Sophia didn’t have that kind of training—the work she did for Troubleshooters Incorporated was mostly client interface. Presentations, meetings, business matters.

She’d actually been excited at the idea of trying something new.

But now…

“Deck’s coming in to be part of that,” Dave confirmed her suspicions. “We’re all supposed to participate. Everyone who’s not currently on assignment. Which includes you, by the way.”

She looked up at him at that. She’d just finished that report for Cleveland and hadn’t yet scheduled her impending trip to Phoenix. But…“Deck won’t work with me.”

Dave shrugged. “I don’t think he has a choice this time.”

She put her hand on her telephone, ready to call Phoenix. That’s all it would take—one phone call—to change her status instantly to
on assignment.
But Dave knew what she was thinking, and he leaned forward, covering her hand with his own, so she couldn’t lift the handset.

“Deck comes in, you go out for lunch. Or to Cleveland,” he continued.