Blacklisted: Blacklist Operations Book #1 Read online

  “What do you mean?”

  “The red sweater. The gun. That seamstress was scared straight down to her toes and had a hell of a time camouflaging it well enough.”

  “You gave it to her?” He was surprised, though it seemed logical enough. “When?”

  “The night with the heavy rain. The night before Oliver.”

  Later that night, he’d slept next to her, sated from their lovemaking. He thought of it like that with Sophie. “Okay.” He could accept that.

  She rolled her eyes. “She had to stay alive. If you’re that interested in helping her, you might consider that.”

  “We weren’t going to kill her.”

  “Tell that to Veronica?” She shook her head at him. “I’ll be down in five. Find out where she is before then.”

  Once she was gone, he wondered what she did for Lyle. Maybe murder. She seemed like that type—eyes as flat as his own. Not soft and hot and funny like the girl he had to save. Not the kind to melt under a man and curl her fingers into his muscles when she came. Or maybe he was prejudiced.

  Being in love did that to a man.

  His phone beeped. Opening it, he read a text from Caleb that had been sent that morning, then swore loud enough to make his mama blush.

  It said: O is awake. Sent E after package. Relocate if you don’t want it shipped.

  Aidan replied, asked for more information. Where she was. How Caleb knew. His friend didn’t respond for a very tense hour that he spent avoiding pointed questions from Adele while she surfed the internet and made phone calls in a variety of languages. When Caleb wrote back, it said: Bad. Get to London ASAP. Meet at safe house near Vauxhall 2moro, 9am.

  Adele, in his periphery, was staring out the window. She chewed on a hank of her hair, lost in thought. Scared like him. And maybe it was crazy but damn if he hadn’t done crazier things before. So he told his enemy about the plan, let her pack a bag and then repacked his own, slipping Sophie’s information on Synthesis into the false bottom and locking it with a voiceprint code.

  They were out of Paris within the hour.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Her hands were on fire.

  The room assembled itself before her. Another stone room, all damp cinder blocks, and Sophie wondered if it was in the villain’s manual that all questioning had to be done in dark, wet rooms.

  Interrogation.

  Torture.

  Veronica.

  When Sophie tried to pull her left hand into her body, to ease the burn somehow, it wouldn’t come and she screamed as a whole new pain tore through her. Her head lolled heavy on her neck. Couldn’t focus. Couldn’t quite focus on her hands.

  Then she did. Had to force herself not to scream, bit her lip until blood ran down her chin and stained her shirt. Not that it mattered. Veronica’s clothes had been covered in her blood, in other matter that Sophie tried not to think about. She’d just burned them along with the body.

  Maybe Aidan would feed her to the flames, after. If they even told him. Did he let them know where she was? Then it was just too much: the thought of him with Daisy, and wasn’t she supposed to meet Adele in the market, and Oliver had nailed her hands to the table. Right between the metacarpals, slender metal spikes dug in and ground the bones apart. Nice not to go straight through, she guessed.

  It would have made her wonder what else Oliver had planned, if she could have pulled her attention away from the injury. Blood still rose slowly from her flesh and dripped down to the floor below the table.

  That bastard.

  Biting her torn lip again, Sophie forced her hand up, rocked forward with her torso when the large, square end nudged her bones just a little farther apart. When the first hand was free, she used it to grip the other. It took several false starts to pull that one up, to free it, slippery as her palms were with her own blood and sweat.

  He’d done the same thing to her sister. Like crucifixion. The feet would come later.

  The door was steel, no visible way to open it. Lyle’s training compound had the same kind of locking mechanisms and she knew no way to break through. Even if she couldn’t get out, she could surprise the people who came in.

  It was almost impossible to remove a spike from the table with her hands so abused. She tried to flex them and the effort brought tears to her eyes. She wouldn’t cry. Wouldn’t. Had to escape.

  Aidan. She wanted him. It was fierce, like the blood that pumped through her exhausted body, clearing away any traces of the drug they’d forced her to sleep with. Trusted him, maybe. Yes. Trusted him. He wouldn’t have let them hurt her like this. Kill her, perhaps, but never leave her alone in a room with spikes through her hands.

  She knew it because she’d never let Lyle torture him either.

  It took another twenty minutes for someone to enter the room. Praying it was her adversary, she struck. A man dressed in army fatigues stumbled back, knocking into Oliver who waited behind him. He had the spike, still coated with her blood, embedded in his eye. He was dead before he realized it.

  Oliver motioned for another man to come forward with one hand, reached out to take her hand with the other. She was too slow, just a second off and god what she’d done to that man was for nothing at all. The man she’d shot in the chest twisted her hand, wormed a finger into the hole his spikes had left and used his leg to drive her to her knees.

  “You’re resourceful. I didn’t think you’d get out that fast.” Oliver laughed at her writhing on the ground and applied more pressure to her hand, determined to get a scream.

  She gave it to him, yelled long and low. Better to feed his disgusting appetites than to have him ache for it. To drive her to it.

  Life was more important.

  She didn’t resist, couldn’t really, when two of his men picked her up and threw her back into the chair. This time they used plastic ties on her wrists, tightening them until the circulation was close to being cut off. They did the same with her ankles and left her to writhe in her bindings. Frustrated. Furious and beaten.

  “How are you awake?”

  “Better living through chemistry,” he said with a smile. “It’s like you never shot me at all.”

  A quick command from Oliver made one of the men withdraw. The other waited by the door, rifle in hand. Stone faced.

  “Where would you like to start today?” He sounded casual, as if he were showing her dresses and didn’t know if her occasion was formal or simple.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “No, Sophie. Yes, I know who you are now. Your mistake was shooting me. This might have been easier.”

  “Veronica never shot you.”

  “You know, I thought you were her ghost, rising up to take vengeance. What I did to her…well, I don’t have to tell you.” He smiled and cocked his head to the side, enjoying her fury. It jumped from her eyes like live sparks, hot and bright.

  “I didn’t—.”

  “You’d have done the same to Aidan, I bet. Given him to Lyle or slit his throat when he came underneath you. Yes, I know you fucked him. You’re a dirty whore, just like your sister.”

  “Don’t you call her a whore.” It hurt to hear Veronica maligned, almost worse than the physical pain. She didn’t deserve it.

  Neither had Isabella deserved to die, deserved to be infected. A test of loyalty for her father, and one whose success he’d blamed on Veronica. Yet he’d blamed her twin when Izzy had run from him and approached The Hellenic Agency for help.

  “Your sister was a whore, but if it bothers you I’ll refrain from repeating myself. You know what she did with Lyle, I assume.”

  Saved my life, Sophie thought, but didn’t speak. It was useless to defend her sister to her murderer.

  “What do you require from me?”

  “What do I require form you?” He laughed and the sound chilled her blood. “You’d never have shot me if you hadn’t dressed like her, grown your hair long like hers when I killed her.” He reached out and grabbed a hank of h
er hair, forcing her chin down to the table. Then he cupped her skull in the palm of his hand and stoked her face. “I remember her every day. Soft skin. It cut like butter.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Is it smart to talk to me like that, young lady? Your sister knew better at first. Offered me anything if I’d just let her live.”

  “You’re going to kill me anyway.”

  “You’re smarter than she was. But not fast.” His hand slid from her hair to her breast, squeezed her hard. She could feel the bruises forming before he let go. “We’re going to do this slow.”

  When her eyes widened, he laughed again. Seemed like the man was always laughing, loud and discordant in the dim room. “I’m not going to rape you, Sophie. I saved that honor for your sister and, honestly, it’d be that much harder to get Aidan to forgive me if I fucked you like her.”

  “Aidan?”

  “He’s going to be furious,” he mimicked Aidan’s voice on the last word. “When he finds out I’m the one who took you—and without even asking him. Such a failure. Really.” His gaze scraped her body and Oliver sneered. “You’re nothing special but he still went to you before I woke up.”

  “How do you know that? He said no one knew where he was.”

  “One of Lyle’s girls was in the hospital when I woke up. I tasked Joey—that’s the one by the door—to convince her to speak. It took hours. She screamed like a pig.”

  “Did you kill her?”

  “Yes.” He finally let go of her head and picked a toolbox up from the floor. Opening it, he selected a scalpel and laid it on the table. It was small, silver. Not something she’d ever choose to kill a man. “Well, no. Joey did. He likes that kind of thing. It took hours before she told the truth. Then more before he let her go to whatever God she believed in.”

  “As if you don’t.” Her heart felt like it had been ripped out of her chest. A good woman, one of her little sisters, had died for her. Protecting her. She didn’t even know who it was. “Like it, I mean.”

  “Joey ends them too fast. I like it slow.” To emphasize, he pressed the scalpel into the flesh of her arm. It opened the skin easily, like a flower blooming in the rain. “Consider today an orientation. Don’t get too excited, but you get a special treat. It’s something that I’ve never been able to give anyone else.” Oliver snapped his fingers and Joey left the room. While he was gone, Oliver cut two more long, shallow lines into her skin. His dark eyes focused on the way the blood rose from the wound as if transfixed.

  She had to focus on the hate. To separate herself, the way Lyle had taught her. And damn, she hated him for this life. For Veronica. For Aidan who thought she’d lied, or who was still in Paris with her dog—she couldn’t tell how many days had passed.

  “Here we go, Sophie.” His man rolled in a television on a cart. It was large, but older. Reminded her of her Grandfather’s house in Napa. The recreation room in the basement. Joey, who looked a little like a lizard, loaded a disc into the player and stood back at attention.

  “I’m going to leave you with this video. Oh, and I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve got a special hat for you.” He attached a crown to her head then used his fingers to pry her eyes open. Once they were wide, sore from the free flow of air into her pupils, he used metal attachments to press against them, leaving her unable to blink. Once he’d blown directly into her eyes several times and was sure they couldn’t close, he took a syringe from his box and injected her with a clear solution.

  “To make sure you stay awake,” he explained. Then he leaned down, pressed a paternal kiss to her forehead and followed Joey out of the room, stopping to hit play on the machine.

  Her sister’s face swam into view, still unmarred, clear skin and wide eyes that looked at the camera, panicked. The adrenaline Oliver had shot into her system made her feel as if her heartbeat pounded in time with Veronica’s when the younger Oliver smiled and backhanded her, then looked at the camera.

  “This is day one,” he said and wiped his lips.

  She knew from experience that there were 12 hours of footage. Not every atrocity they’d visited on her had been taped. Not every scar, burn, bruise was captured forever. The video she’d recovered from the van had been longer, but blurry. Surveillance footage in black and white. This was full color, sound clear enough that when he cut Veronica’s forearms as he had Sophie’s, she imaged that she could hear the skin parting.

  She wouldn’t have closed her eyes, even if he’d left her the option. Instead she used every moment to feed her hatred for the man who’d destroyed her sister. She watched and remembered.

  Veronica was sprawled out like a broken doll on the gurney and, for one awful moment, Sophie thought she was already dead.

  In the seconds it took her to cross and take her sister in her arms, she convinced herself she’d have felt it. Would have known if Veronica was already dead.

  Then her sister’s eyes fluttered, closed. When Sophie took her hand, smashed beyond repair, in her own, Veronica fixed her stare on her sister.

  “I love you, Soph.” She coughed, bloody flecks staining her already red skin. “Look what that bastard did to me.”

  “Oliver.”

  “Yeah.” She laughed a little, then coughed again. Winced, when Sophie pressed her hand into Veronica’s abdomen.

  “We need to get you to my vehicle. There’s internal bleeding. Your stomach’s all hard.” All the field training she’d once memorized came back to her and she used the supplies in the vehicle to help Veronica.

  Veronica was silent while Sophie bound her wounds, reached up with one of her mangled hands to brush her sister’s hair away from her eyes where it had escaped the bun. “I love you, little sister.”

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t with you.”

  “I’m not. This isn’t what I wanted for you.” Once she’d done everything she could, Sophie hoisted Veronica onto her shoulder. She felt lighter than usual.

  God, she didn’t even feel like a person in her arms. More like a lawn bag full of leaves and sticks, all wet and mashing together inside the plastic. Didn’t utter a sound though, not even when Sophie jumped down from the cargo area and Veronica’s body rattled against her flesh like a child’s toy. A lesser woman would have been wailing.

  A woman without Lyle’s upgrades, as he called them around his cigarettes, would have been dead already.

  Sophie moved fast through the woods, dodging trees and rocks. She reached the truck quickly, opened the back and laid Veronica on the bed she’s already prepared for her with thick warm blankets. When she pulled away to return to the wrecked van, Veronica stopped her.

  “It’s so cold, Sophie. I’d think I was dying if I wasn’t me.”

  “You’re not. I have to clean up my mess.”

  “My mess.”

  “I’ll be back in five.” She pressed a kiss to her sister’s cheek, pulled back with the taste of blood in her mouth and ran. Faster than before, pushing everything that had happened out of her mind, until she reached the van.

  The body of the man she’d killed was still slumped against the hill, paler than before in the weak moonlight that filtered through the trees. His blood had drained around him, pooling thick in the leaves and dirt. She hauled him, gasping with the exertion, and left him in the driver’s seat. Buckled his seatbelt.

  She took off her shirt, breathed in once at the press of cool mountain air on her skin, then twisted it into a slim line that she fished down into the gas tank. Over and over she soaked it, wringing it out on the bodies. When she was done, she put it back into the tank and used her lighter to catch the still dry end on fire.

  She was a quarter of a mile away before it exploded.

  Back at the truck, Veronica had somehow pulled herself to a sitting position and had her head turned to stare out at the woods. It hurt Sophie to look at the waste of her sister, at the many shallow cuts that peppered her arms, torso, legs, face. She’d lost a lot of blood.

  They were the same blood type. Lu
cky, that. Sophie could easily run a line between them and replenish what her sister had lost. Easy. Simple as pie. Sophie worked the calculation for pi in her head while she looked for a place in her sister’s arm that wasn’t collapsed or bruised. Impossible. Couldn’t she transfer blood in through the carotid artery? Couldn’t remember. Fog rolled through her brain and her sister was finally crying, tears slipping silently down her face.

  Sophie hurried to puncture her own arm, ran a length of thin tube directly into her vein and waited for gravity to work. Her blood was dark, rich and oozed slowly toward her sister’s shoulder, where she’d attached the other end of the tubing. Turning the clamp with one hand, opening her veins to Veronica, she waited. Closed her eyes against the sucking draw on her blood.

  “Just a bit now, then I’ll get you out of here. Back to Europe. Skiing accident,” she said, wondering if that would pass as an alibi. Even Veronica, her face all but destroyed, looked skeptical.

  “I’m not going to make it to Munchen, sis.” Veronica hacked again, her thin frame shaking with each exhalation. Sophie suddenly realized how skinny Veronica had become, like she hadn’t been eating enough for weeks. She had questions, so many questions and they hadn’t spoken in two months and her color was still fading, dropping from her cheeks like leaves in the fall.

  “You’re going to make it. I can’t lose you.”

  “No choice sometimes. It’s my fault Izzy died, Sophie. She took that bullet for me.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. She would have died soon, and she knew that. She wanted to protect you and keep the virus out of Oliver’s hands.”

  “I loved her. There’s always another way.”

  “Not that time, there wasn’t. Please, please don’t do this to yourself. You have to rest and heal. It’s Oliver, not you. Fuck him.”

  “He tore me up.” Veronica took a shuddering breath and scanned her torso with her one good eye. The other was there, Sophie assured herself, just hidden behind folds of swollen purple skin. “He put his hands inside me. He did things,” her voice broke then, and she stopped. Sophie put her hand against the unbroken skin on her sister’s neck and stroked her.