Payback (7 page)

Mark gathered her against his chest until he could rest his chin on the top of her head. His violent need to exact revenge on her behalf shocked him. The fact that she actually let him comfort her filled him with an unfamiliar glow.

“When I saw the house burning on the news, I thought maybe one of the guards had snapped a photo of you and identified you using facial recognition software,” he told her. “But on second thought, given that you were already in the car and it was dark, I don’t think that’s it. Besides,” he stroked his hand over her hair. “You were wearing a different wig the other night.”

He sighed. “I hope some day you’ll trust me enough to reveal the real you.”

Faith ignored his comment. “So, if Jamieson’s guards didn’t discover my identity, and you didn’t tell anyone, who burned down my home?”

Mark checked their surroundings. Across the parking lot a trio of young men piled into a Jeep, laughing and punching each other on the shoulder. No one else was in sight. Still, “Not here. Come home with me and we can talk this out. Or let me take you to the safe house. But we need to get someplace where we can’t be observed or overheard.”

Faith stepped away from him. Her eyes searched his face. For the first time since he’d been a small child, Mark let his expression show all the crazy emotions she stirred in him.

“Please, Faith. Let me keep you safe. Let me help you.”

After several agonizing minutes, she nodded. “Okay.”

T
his might just be the dumbest thing she’d ever done, Faith thought as she let herself into her room at the budget hotel chain. After taking a number of evasive actions to get here, including switching vehicles, Mark had reluctantly agreed to stay in the car while she fetched her things. What he didn’t realize was that every day she uploaded her notes to a secure server and also mailed copies of them to a postal holding service that had an account shared by her and Toby. There was very little she’d be taking with her that Mark could use against her, if she’d made a mistake and he couldn’t be trusted.

But that was the whole issue. She did trust him. Lashing out at him had been her way of dealing with the fear, grief, and sheer fury of seeing her house burning on the news. Now that she had time to think about it, the fire more likely had been set by whoever held Toby.

Faith shuddered. She hated to think of her brother being tortured, and knew that his training would help him hold out a very long time, but it wasn’t impossible to think that he’d eventually reveal that he’d sent his notes to Faith. What better first step toward destroying the evidence than burning down her house?

Too bad for them she’d already been on the run.

She pursed her lips. In that case, why hadn’t they done the same thing to Toby’s place? True, he lived in a high-rise apartment complex with top notch security. Still, even the best security would eventually fall to a determined assailant. So, was it possible that they’d only gone after Faith’s home to send her a message? Or had they already tossed Toby’s place and discovered that he really didn’t keep any notes at home?

She’d have to check the police reports for Toby’s neighborhood to see if there was any mention of his apartment being broken into or otherwise damaged. Not that he was around to report a break-in, but maybe a neighbor had noticed something odd.

Faith shoved her few toiletries into her backpack, then used one of her burner phones to access her secure voicemail box, relieved when a message confirmed that Siobahn had checked in on time.

When she called Siobahn back, the call went straight to voicemail. “Hi, Mom. It’s me,” she said, using their code phrase. “The weather here in Nassau is beautiful. Wish you were here. Tell Sissy I miss her. Love you. Bye.”

Faith told herself she was disappointed to have missed talking to her friend directly, but she knew she lied. She didn’t want to have to deal with Siobahn’s questions and concern right now.

On her way out of the hotel, she turned off the phone and threw it in the dumpster before returning to Mark.

“Okay,” she said as she slipped into the passenger seat. “Where are we going?”

“Safe house.” He glanced sideways at her. “Jamieson is monitoring me.”

Faith’s hand twitched toward the door handle.

“Relax. I’ve got an anti-bug device in the glove box that will jam any attempt to track us electronically. By the time we get to the safe house no one will be following us and no one will recognize us.” He pulled the car out of the parking lot. “The safe house was bought under another identity buried so deep that it would take months for the CIA to tie it back to me.”

She gave him a look laden with suspicion. “You were serious before when you said that you have a private safe house?”

Mark smiled. “Absolutely. Spies don’t trust anyone. Including, and often particularly, their bosses. We’re tools. Valuable only as long as we’re useful. Disposable when there’s trouble.”

Faith wished she didn’t understand. But she’d seen too much cruelty and indifference. Experienced situations where human beings were considered nothing but expendable commodities. She imagined that’s how Jamieson, or whoever had kidnapped Toby, viewed both Faith and her brother. “I’m sorry.”

Mark shrugged. “It was my choice. I could have followed my stepfather into his import-export business. Instead, I decided I liked the thrill of outmaneuvering other spies who operate in the shadows of the business world.”

“Sounds like you have lots of interesting stories to tell.” She tilted her head. “Unless they’re all classified?”

“I’m certain I can come up with one or two I could share.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “What would I get in return?”

The gleam in his eye let her know exactly what he wanted. “I—” Her stomach gurgled loudly. She felt her cheeks heat. “Sorry.”

Mark laughed softly. “Don’t apologize. We can grab lunch before we hit the safe house.”

A
fter enough evasive action to satisfy even Faith’s paranoia, they ended up sharing fried chicken and biscuits at a picnic table in a deserted corner of a beachside park. The look of faint disdain on Mark’s face as he ate the meal almost made Faith laugh, but she knew he’d take it the wrong way. He was just so cute when he got all fussy and arrogant. But eating at an upscale restaurant would have been out of character for their worn jeans and threadbare t-shirts. Mark even wore a ragged army jacket that made him look dangerously sexy.

Although, from the look on his face, Mark didn’t approve of their apparel any more than he did their food. And if the way he’d carefully brushed off the picnic table and bench was any indication, he wasn’t a fan of eating outdoors. While she found his fastidiousness odd—with his training he had to have slummed it from time to time on a mission—she felt a warm glow in the vicinity of her heart knowing that he was willing to ignore his distaste in order to help keep her safe.

“So,” she said after she’d devoured several pieces of chicken and two biscuits, “I finally cracked the code on the remaining file on Toby’s flash drive. There wasn’t much new there, except he quoted several sources as claiming that some of Kerberos’s special teams were going to help out the President on an unspecified mission.”

Mark’s hand froze on the way to his mouth, then he set down the piece of chicken he’d been about to eat.

“That means something to you,” Faith said.

“Maybe.”

“What—”

“No, Faith. I can’t tell you.”

The chill in his voice raised her hackles. As she opened her mouth to protest, he shook his head. “All I have now are a few vague rumors. Are you certain there were no specifics in Toby’s notes?”

She nodded.

“Okay. I’ll have to look into this. If I find out anything concrete, I’ll let you know.”

Faith knew she’d have to settle for that. “So, what do you have for me on Toby’s disappearance?”

Mark cleaned his greasy fingers with a wet wipe before answering. “I haven’t found any mention of your brother yet. But Jamieson has assigned me to search lists of military and law enforcement personnel and identify potential candidates for the enhanced soldier program.”

“Did you…” Faith forced herself not to scoot away as alarm flashed through her. “Did you actually pick men out to be kidnapped?”

He sighed. Neatly stacked his lunch debris in a small pile before answering. “Yes.”

Oh, God. Had she been wrong about him?

She started to push to her feet, but Mark tugged gently on her wrist. “Sit down, Faith. It’s not as bad as it seems. Yes, I provided names of potential candidates to Jamieson. But as I mentioned before, I’m working against him. I also gave the data to a privately run special operations group called the Surgical Strike Unit. The SSU’s goal is to shut the scientific program down. They’ll make certain no harm comes to the men.”

Some of the tension drained out of her, leaving her shaky.

“Just how much do you know about the program, Faith?”

She shrugged. “Basically what I told you before. Toby’s notes make it clear that the aim of the program is to create superhuman soldiers, but he never explains what that means. Only that the subjects appear to end up with bulkier bodies and to suffer from insane rages.”

“Okay.” He nodded, as if coming to a decision. “What I’m about to tell you has to stay between us, Faith. No future articles by you or any of your contacts. Promise?”

“No.”

His mouth thinned. “Then—”

She raised her hand in a stopping gesture. “Hold your horses, mister. I’m not done. I promise not to share what you’re about to tell me unless I think the information needs to be released in order to save Toby’s life or the life of anyone else. I also can’t promise that my colleagues won’t eventually manage to ferret out the information on their own.” She’d lay odds that Siobahn would manage to find the truth if she dug hard enough.

Mark’s shoulders lowered and he nodded. “Okay, that’s fair.”

Suspecting that it was hard for him to confide in anyone, let alone a near stranger, Faith squeezed his hand.

He responded with a faint smile. “I’ll try to make this as short as possible. For several years the Department of Defense and the CIA jointly supported a lab with the goal of creating men with enhanced skills that would better suit their mission objectives. Increased strength for the DOD. More speed and improved mental abilities for the CIA. Little need for sleep. An inability to feel pain.”

“But…how?”

“I’m not sure of the details, but my understanding is that the scientists used a combination of steroids and other drugs, including custom created chemicals. There may also have been hypnosis, gene manipulation, and torture. They wanted a soldier who could carry out his mission without stopping to sleep or eat, and who was so focused on the objective that only his death would stop him.”

“That sounds like something out of a science fiction movie!”

“It gets worse. The scientists found a way to alter their subjects’ brains and make them susceptible to mind control.”

Faith shivered. Had anyone else been telling her this, she’d have brushed them off as delusional or too easily fooled. But Mark seemed too coldly pragmatic to believe in wild speculation. And hadn’t Toby’s note mentioned he might be turned into a creature that would kill her on their order? At the time, Faith hadn’t known what he meant, so she’d dismissed it as hype. Now, though, she was beginning to understand.

Mark pushed his lunch debris into a tighter pile, then brushed a few crumbs off the tabletop. “The head scientist at the lab, Dr. Mikhail Nevsky, was close to achieving his objectives, but there were deadly side effects. Insanity. Uncontrollable rage. Massive organ shutdown. Before he could perfect his program, Nevsky died in a fire that consumed his lab. However, he’d saved copies of his notes on a microchip.”

He turned his head to look at her. “Word got out about the existence of the chip. Every criminal and governmental organization wanted the microchip—most particularly the military and the intelligence agencies. Jamieson ordered me to find the chip and bring it to him before he’d give me the name of the man who killed my father. That offer was, of course, made before I discovered that Jamieson was the one responsible for my father’s death.” His expression hardened. “I countered with a demand that in exchange for the chip, he also let me into Kerberos.”

Faith sucked in a breath.

“Back then,” Mark continued, “I approved of what I knew of the organization’s mission. Kerberos’s goal is to strike at our country’s enemies in the most effective way possible, without regard to the law. I’ve seen too much damage done by short-sighted politicians to want to be shackled by their lack of courage. So I joined the hunt for the microchip.”

Mark tapped his fingers against the table. “However, it turned out that Nevsky’s right-hand man, a scientist named Dr. Leonard Kaufmann, had survived the fire and started his own lab. Funded, as your brother discovered, by Jamieson and Kerberos.” Mark laced his fingers through hers. “Faith, if Jamieson ordered Toby kidnapped and sent over to Kaufmann’s lab, you have to understand what this means. The men in the program don’t just become susceptible to mind control. They lose their ability to think at more than a basic level.”

She yanked her hand away and stood up. “What are you saying?”

“One of the SSU’s agents, Rafe Andros, was recently captured during a mission to investigate Kaufmann’s lab. By the time the SSU rescued him, Andros could only communicate in grunts and monosyllables, because the drugs he’d been given blocked his intelligence. He acted like a rabid animal—snapping and lashing out at everyone who came near him. Faith, he tried to kill his own brother. Apparently they brainwashed him into thinking all his family members and close friends were enemies who needed to be destroyed.”

Faith shook her head and moved away from the picnic table, nearly blinded by panic. She’d suspected that Toby had been conscripted into the program, but she’d assumed that the effects would be something he could fight against. That the insanity and rages would stop once the harmful drugs were out of his system.

Now Mark wanted her to believe that her sharp, witty brother would end up no better than some dumb beast, under the influence of mind control that would make him try to kill his own sister.