Redemption (29 page)

He’d also bought a jar of multivitamins, a pair of sunglasses and high-factor sunscreen for Anya. He’d noticed her screwing up her eyes when the sun was out. No wonder – she hadn’t seen it in years.

He threw the carrier bag full of supplies on the bed, then laid down the takeaway food boxes more carefully. ‘I didn’t know what you wanted, so I kind of ordered a bit of everything.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Food is food.’ She walked back into the bathroom to retrieve her clothes, unwound her towel and casually dropped it on the tiled floor at her feet.

Drake stopped, unable to keep from staring.

He had met plenty of people in life who kept themselves in good physical shape, either for professional reasons or for sheer vanity. But there were a few people, a very few, who he could only describe as looking
right
– people who weren’t struggling against their weight or trying to shape their body into something it wasn’t. People who looked the way they did because that was exactly what they were meant to be.

Anya was such a person. Lithe and strong and finely made, the contours and lines of her body were moulded and sculpted in elegant harmony, all combined together in a form that embodied both strength and uncompromising beauty.

She was tall for a woman, perhaps 5 foot 9. But there was no hint of the gangly awkwardness that often came with such height. She stood confident and unselfconscious, shoulders back, chin up.

Her physique was lean and muscular, partly because of the deprivations she had endured during her imprisonment. But more than that, she remained physically fit,
with
taut, sinewy muscle visible beneath her skin as she moved. Her stomach was flat and hard, her arms and shoulders sculpted by years of physical activity.

Her body possessed the compact, efficient musculature of a gymnast or a dancer, combining both strength and agility. He had seen for himself the bursts of sudden, explosive speed she was capable of, and their devastating effects.

But for all her deadly strength, she remained unquestionably female. His eyes were drawn inexorably to the soft curve of her breasts, the nipples pink and erect in the cooling air. Her long and shapely legs gave way to firm, rounded buttocks, swelling a little at the hips before dipping in to a narrow waist.

Then something else caught his eye. A faint patchwork of scars criss-crossed the otherwise unmarred skin of her back. It was like a spider’s web, countless strands all going in different directions.

They were old scars, long since healed and faded, yet they had obviously been inflicted with great pain. In fact, they looked almost like whip lashes …

She turned to look at him, and he glanced away uncomfortably, angry at himself for gawking at her. What was he – a fifteen-year-old trying to peer into the girls’ locker room?

‘You can look at me, Drake,’ she said, amused by his reaction. ‘I won’t have you arrested.’

By the time he turned back, she had pulled on her jeans again and was buttoning up her shirt.

‘Do I make you uncomfortable?’ she asked, curious.

‘Are you trying to?’

Her eyes flashed. ‘You didn’t answer my question.’

‘And you didn’t answer mine.’ He held out the takeaway box. ‘Here. Your feast awaits.’

Dinner consisted of sirloin steak, barbecue ribs, fries, corn cobs, salad and more pots of coleslaw, mayonnaise, garlic butter and ketchup than he could keep track of. Just one of them looked as if it could feed a whole platoon. Drake was full before he even got halfway through his, though Anya showed no signs of slowing down. He couldn’t blame her.

‘Mind if I ask you something?’

‘Of course.’

‘Those scars on your back. Did you get them in Khatyrgan?’

For a moment she stiffened, and her eyes darkened as an old memory resurfaced.

‘No,’ she said, distracted. ‘They are from a long time ago.’

‘What happened?’

‘When I was in Afghanistan the first time …’ She glanced away, and he saw the muscles in her throat moving up and down as she swallowed. She shook her head, banishing the memory. ‘It doesn’t matter now. It’s in the past.’

She wasn’t going to say anything more. Deciding not to press the issue in case she clammed up altogether, he fished out one of the bottles of Corona and held it out to her.

‘I don’t drink,’ she said. When he popped the lid and downed a mouthful, she added, ‘You shouldn’t either.’

‘Duly noted.’

She eyed him critically. ‘I could smell drink on you in that holding cell in Alaska. Your hands were trembling. Do you often drink like that?’

He shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. ‘Depends how bad my day’s been. Today, I think I’ve earned one.’

She leaned forward a little. ‘In my experience, men drink to forget things. Failures, regrets, mistakes … Tell me, what are you trying to forget, Drake?’

He laid his half-finished box aside, no longer hungry. ‘I’m not here to swap life stories. Right now, I want to know about your source in the Iraqi government. Who was he?’

Again he saw that faint, enigmatic smile. She had scored a point, exposed a chink in his armour. That was enough for now.

‘He would not tell me his name.’

He eyed her dubiously. ‘All right. What division did he work in?’

‘I don’t know.’

He was starting to feel uneasy. ‘So what
do
you know about him?’

‘You don’t understand, Drake,’ she said. ‘Men like him don’t just give you their name and address. I made contact with him through a broker, and after that we communicated through anonymous email accounts.’

‘Who was the broker?’

‘An Israeli Mossad agent named Russo. I had worked with him before, and he had contacts all throughout the Iraqi government.’ She shook her head. ‘But I will not approach him again. He has close ties with the Agency. He may even be the reason I was captured four years ago.’

It was hard to fault her logic there. Frowning, he turned the situation over in his mind. ‘Any chance your source is still checking his emails?’

A blonde eyebrow rose a little. ‘There is only one way to find out.’

Reaching into his pocket, Drake handed her Munro’s cellphone. It was the latest generation BlackBerry with full
Internet
and email access. She eyed the device curiously, then looked up at him as if expecting an explanation.

It took a moment or two for Drake to understand her confusion. The world of technology had moved on since her imprisonment. ‘You can access your email account from here,’ he explained, taking it back and enabling the Internet connection.

She said nothing, though she didn’t look happy. He suspected she wasn’t pleased at having her ignorance exposed.

It took twenty seconds or so to bring up Hotmail. Using the tiny keyboard with some difficulty, Anya searched for her old email account. It didn’t take long to discover that it had long since been deleted due to inactivity. With no other choice, she set up a new account under the name Jane Lynch and composed her first message in four years.

Greetings from an old friend. It has been a long time since we last spoke, but I am prepared to honour our previous agreement if you will meet with me. Please respond as soon as possible
.

Her brief missive complete, she addressed it to
[email protected]
, prayed she had memorised the address correctly, and clicked send.

And just like that, it was done. She had played her last hand.

She tossed the phone back to Drake. ‘There is nothing more we can do. Now we must wait.’

Chapter 41

‘I DON’T KNOW
what the fuck happened,’ Marshall Davis groaned, his normally deep voice rendered thin and nasal by the splints in his broken nose. ‘One minute I was at the gas station minding my own business, the next … I was getting the shit knocked out of me.’

That didn’t look like an easy task. Davis was a big man, tall and broad shouldered, with big square hands calloused from hard labour. According to his file he was a construction worker, twenty-eight years old, with a previous history of violent encounters, mostly bar-room brawls. A strong man in his prime, used to handling himself in a fight, now laid up in a hospital bed.

His face was a bruised and swollen mess, cut in places, with massive discolouration spreading out from his shattered nose. His right arm was in a plaster cast, the wrist snapped like a twig, while his ribs were heavily bandaged up.

‘Can you describe the man who did this to you?’ Dietrich asked. It was late, and they’d had to fight with the doctors to be allowed in, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He’d spent a long and uncomfortable hour in an Air Force chopper just to get here tonight.

‘Man? It wasn’t no man who did this,’ Davis corrected him. ‘It was that crazy bitch he had with him.’

Dietrich could feel Frost’s eyes on him. She’d had her
own
encounter with Anya, and harboured no love for the woman. ‘Tell us what happened,’ she prompted.

Davis clenched his jaw for a moment, clearly uncomfortable. ‘We’d just stopped to fill up and we saw her standing at the pump next to us.’

‘What did she look like?’

‘Tall, blonde hair. Good-looking, I guess. She spoke with a foreign accent, maybe Russian or something. I don’t know.’ He shook his head, as if such things were a mystery to him.

Dietrich wondered if the stupid bastard had ever been outside Virginia.

‘Anyway, we tried to talk to her, real friendly like, and she just ignored us. Made me think maybe she had something to hide, so I tried to approach her, then she just snapped. Went crazy, broke my wrist and my nose. My buddy Hooper tried to help me out, and she did the same to him. Crazy bitch could have killed us both.’

That certainly sounded like the Anya he knew. The more he learned about her, the more he relished the thought of taking her down.

‘And you didn’t do anything to provoke her?’ Keegan asked, dubious.

Davis glared at the older man. ‘If making conversation is provoking someone, arrest me now.’

Dietrich was keen to keep the conversation on track. ‘What happened after that? Do you remember?’

He shook his head. ‘I couldn’t see real good, but I remember shouting. The other guy came out and told her to get in the car. He had an accent too – English, I think. She must have listened to him though, ’cause a few seconds later they tore ass out of there. That was the last I saw of ’em.’

Dietrich nodded. He didn’t think Davis had anything
else
useful to say, and there was already more than enough to keep him occupied.

‘We’re done,’ he said, standing up.

‘Hey,’ Davis called after him. ‘You find that bitch, you let me know. I’ll feel real good knowing she’s behind bars.’

Dietrich said nothing as he left the room.

An officer from the Greensville County Sheriff’s Office was waiting for them in the corridor outside. He was a tall man in his fifties, skinny as a rake, with thinning grey hair and a bushy moustache. The tag on his uniform said his name was Merritt.

‘Y’all get what you needed from him?’

Dietrich nodded absently, still mulling over everything he’d heard.

‘He was lying about one thing,’ Keegan chimed in. ‘He wasn’t just trying to make conversation when she attacked him.’

Merritt gave a wry smile. ‘Young Mr Davis in there likes to throw his weight around. We’ve had him in the county lock-up a few times for fighting – nothin’ serious, just bar fights and suchlike. According to the gas station attendants, he was givin’ the female suspect a hard time.’

‘Asshole,’ Frost grunted. She had no love for Anya, but men who preyed on women were beneath contempt as far as she was concerned.

Dietrich didn’t care about the man’s history. ‘Did you manage to pull any surveillance footage?’

The old sheriff nodded. ‘Got the whole thing on tape. Makes for some interesting viewing, let me tell you. I could use someone like her as a deputy. Anyway, they took off in a silver Ford Taurus, heading south.’

‘What about the licence plate?’ he pressed. ‘Did you get it?’

‘Of course. We put out an APB to all highway patrols.’

As far as Merritt was concerned, this was little more than a petty brawl. An All Points Bulletin was a standard response in cases like this, but all it really did was advise other cops to be on the lookout for a suspect or vehicle.

It was far from a guarantee of an arrest.

He turned to Keegan. ‘Call this in with Franklin. Get that licence plate out to all agencies as soon as you can.’

‘The fight happened hours ago,’ Frost reminded him. ‘They could be in Alabama by now.’

Dietrich glanced at his watch. It was just past midnight. ‘They would have found a place to hole up for the night,’ he decided. ‘Somewhere that doesn’t ask for ID. Can you bring up a list of motels in the area?’

‘How big of an area?’

He did some quick calculations in his head. ‘Say … two hundred miles. Concentrate your search to the south.’

‘How do you know he carried on south?’ Frost asked. ‘Wouldn’t it make more sense to change direction and throw us off?’

‘Yeah, it would.’ Keegan was starting to catch on. ‘That’s what we’d expect him to do. He’d know that.’

Dietrich turned his attention back to the sheriff. ‘We need to start calling round those motels.’

Merritt gave him a hard look. ‘Y’all gonna tell me what this is about?’

‘It’s a matter of national security,’ Dietrich evaded, too weary for a more detailed response.

‘So I heard. That shit doesn’t wash too well with me, son. I’m too old, too tired and too ugly for that cloak-and-dagger bullshit.’

Dietrich swallowed down his irritation with some difficulty. ‘We were promised full cooperation from your
Sheriff
’s Office,’ he reminded the older man. ‘Are we going to have a problem?’

Merritt glared back at him from beneath bushy grey brows. Despite his slender frame, there was a wiry toughness about the man that many would have found intimidating.

Dietrich was not one of those people and therefore met the man’s hostile stare without hesitation.

‘No,’ he said, making little effort to hide his scorn. ‘No problem at all.’