Games Girls Play (4 page)

Rose watched her front door from a fourth-floor apartment
across the street. She sat on the bare floor with her zoom lens, a cold pizza
beside her.

Four days she’d been sitting.

Four days, Star hadn’t come or gone, and she knew her house sitter
had her cat in a car heading south to Savannah, but the same delivery man had
come and gone, box in hand, waiting for someone to answer. What the fuck were
they thinking, letting strangers bring things to her place? And if they’d
killed her patio hibiscus, she was going to lose her shit.

There was precious little Rose hated more than people not
following the rules. That was the only way things worked in her type of
employment—you set firm rules and you followed them. She didn’t kill children.
She didn’t kill along party lines. She didn’t torture.

She didn’t let people cook meth in her house or whatever.

Her cellphone rang, Shell’s name coming up. For the first
time since she’d been recruited she wasn’t sure whether to answer. She didn’t
want anyone triangulating her, damn it. She knew they could ping her since the damn
thing was powered on, though, so she flipped it on.

“What’s up, Shelly?”

“Why aren’t you home? I need you to take this job.”

“This isn’t protocol.” She only followed protocol.

“Damn it, Rose, why are you suddenly falling out?” Shelly’s
oh-so-cultivated British accent slipped.

“Why are you suddenly acting like this is a fucking Bourne
movie?” This wasn’t how this shit worked. This was a goddamn job.

“Look, you’re the best I have, and I need you to do this
assignment.”

“Why? What the fuck is going on? This isn’t how I function
and you know it.”

“This is beyond us, dear.”

“I want a face-to-face. New Orleans.” She wanted to look
into Shelly’s eyes, figure this out.

Shelly sighed. “I’ll see if I can arrange it. Time and
place?”

“Cafe du Monde. Tomorrow. Noon. Be there. I am not happy.”
She hung up her phone, then turned it off and grabbed one of the burn phones to
access the internet. She needed a few flights. New Orleans. La Guardia. O’Hare.
Toronto.

Something was askew.

Really, really askew. As in one of the burn phones was gonna
be used to call Jane, make sure someone knew where she was.

This was a job, just a job, and she’d be damned if she lost
control of it. Not now. Not yet. No matter who was trying to burn her, she wasn’t
going to let them. She just had to start somewhere, and it might as well be
Shelly.

Rose propped one of the phones up to her ear with her
shoulder, listening to it ring as her fingers kept looking for flights.

“What?”

“Something’s fucked.”

“Where do you need me?” Jane sounded about as practical as
ever.

“I’m heading to meet S. I need you to…” Her voice trailed
off and she stopped. What did she need? Jane to come and shoot Shelly? Hell,
no. This was her job.

“I got your back. When should we start check in protocols?”
Jane’s clipped words were an immediate comfort.

“Tomorrow at noon.” Things were fucked up, bad.

“Deal. I got you, understand? No matter what. Permanent.”

Jane checked her phone. Again. Rose should have called by
now. She was supposed to check in every forty-five minutes while she was in
NOLA, and it had been an hour and a half.

This whole fucking thing was a setup. Jane knew it. She just
didn’t know why.

Rose was worried. Worried enough that money was transferred,
that emergency protocols were in place. That meant Jane was on edge, ready to
do an extraction. She wasn’t going to let her girl get burned.

She’d met Rose in a nightclub in Marrakesh, her little Irish
bloom dressed like a trashy belly dancer, her job to distract the boys in the
VIP lounge while Jane, Marty and Ben worked the rest of the scene. It had been
the last time Jane had agreed to a team assignment. She was a solo. Always had
been, ever since she’d left the service.

Even as much as they played, she and Rose had never really
stepped on each other’s toes.

There wasn’t a reason to. Rose was way more up close and
personal.

God damn it! She glared at the phone, willing it to ring.
She knew she couldn’t call. Rose was using a series of burn phones, carefully
procured from ten different retail locations in different states.

Her phone rang and she looked at it, groaning when she saw
Aaron’s name show up. No. Not now. She was busy.

She answered, though, knowing she had to play the game. “This
is Jennifer Clay,” she said, telling Aaron she was only available for
emergencies today.

“Shelly Green was found shot and killed in the French
Quarter an hour ago.”

“What?” If Aaron wasn’t bothering to code in, the shit had
really hit the proverbial fan.

“You heard me. We know you’ve been in contact with her,
where is Irish?”

“I don’t know.” No. Rose and her, their professional lives
only crossed as part of the games. They never mentioned one another to their
handlers. Never.

“When you hear from her, you call me. We have questions for
her.” When, not if.

Questions. Great.

If they called her, they’d contact Marty, Ben and Wednesday.
Geoff, if he was reachable.

Damn it.

She hung up without another word. What the hell had Rosie
gotten into?

“Come on, baby girl. Call me.”

She logged onto her laptop, sliding into a secure server and
poking at an email account not even Rosie knew about, from back when Marty and
Ben and she were still in uniform. Sure enough, there was an email there from
Martin, just saying, “Clock, love. Friday. Midnight.”

The Tick-Tock Coffee Shop was in Baltimore and she could be
there at noon, but three days? Three days was too long to wait.

She didn’t want to push it with Marty, though. He was… He
was the best of them and the most broken. If he said Friday, there was a reason
for it.

Jane sent an affirmative and logged off, not wanting to ring
any federal bells. She would do her own snooping between now and then, and keep
Aaron on a short leash.

She paced, then went to disassemble her weapons, starting
with her Glock. Clean and ready, that was the way to go. The motion of her
hands became automatic, allowing her mind to race, allowing the plan to come
together.

Jesus, Rose, what the fuck is going on? Why can’t you call
me?

She oiled and wiped, deliberately unclenching her jaw.
Grinding her teeth would just give her cracked molars.

This whole thing was going to make her lose her fucking
mind. She didn’t have a lot of it left, really. Hell, she knew better than to
get emotionally involved with anyone.

Especially someone else in the business.

Somehow, though, Rose had become as important as the job.
Maybe more so because she could imagine retiring, but she couldn’t imagine
doing it without her Rose.

Stupid, but true.

She stared at the phone again.

Come on. Ring.

Wake up.

Wake up.

Come on, girl. Wake up.

Part of Rose’s brain knew she didn’t want to find anything
remotely resembling consciousness. Part of Rose’s mind was actually reduced to
gibbering hysterical monkey noises, to be honest.

The rest of her, though, the important part, was pissed off
and looking for a place to escape.

And to escape she had to wake the fuck up, damn it.

Her hands were cuffed behind her, ankles bound too, and
there was something thick and foul spreading her lips. Fuck. That whole
gibbering monkey noise got a little louder, and she kicked that little mental
bastard to death.

She’d trained for this. She just needed to think. She was
naked and on…metal. Her cheek and side were resting on something not ground.
Something solid, cold, metal. Rough. It was dark where she was, only the barest
slivers of light coming in way above her and down low, by her face. Okay. Okay.
First, are you alone?

She closed her eyes and listened. There was a constant
creaking, an unfamiliar motion under her, all around her.

A boat.

New Orleans.

She’d been in New Orleans watching the Cafe du Monde from
the Rivery, pretending to eat while she watched for Shelly, earpiece in her ear
as she listened to police radio, listened for phone calls. She’d implemented
her safety plan with Jane, she was dressed in a simple sundress, her weapon
taped under her heavy breasts. Red hair temporarily dyed black, self tanner,
sunglasses. Just another tourist.

She found a table in the back, eyes peeled behind her
glasses, looking for someone looking for her. Shelly came in, and then headed
directly for her, not even trying to deflect attention.

That was either fabulous or utterly shitty.

Shelly sat, gray eyes staring through her, like she wasn’t
even there. “You’ve been burned. The Columbian slave trader, Marquez? His
family called in favors. You’re dead in the water. I tried to warn you.”

“How? How did anything you did try to warn me?”

“Don’t be stupid, child. Get off the continent, go to
ground. His father is fully intending to make an example of you for the rest of
the cartels. It won’t be good.”

She hadn’t even done that job. Jane had picked up the
paycheck.

“I’ll head out now.” This would have been way easier on
the phone, via email.

“They’re watching everything I do. Everything, because I
refused to deliver you.”

Oh. Oh damn.

She reached under the table, took Shelly’s wrinkled hand
and squeezed it. “Thank you.”

“Don’t. Just go. Be safe. I can’t stay. Don’t contact me,
hmm?”

Rose stood, leaving a twenty on the table, and walked
away without a single goodbye. She crossed over toward the Rivery, moving up
toward the cathedral when the screaming started.

She spun, the sight of Shelly’s silver coiffure
half-disappeared, the red-and-cream mass that was exposed brains like an odd
hallucination.

Well, fuck.

She headed away from the chaos, through the park with its
crowds and buskers and psychics, making it almost to the church before the buzz
of a taser sounded, the crackle sharp under her ear. The look of a cassock was
the last thing she’d seen.

At least until now.

Damn it.

She timed her breathing with the creak of the boat, which
would let her hear any other noises that stood out.

If they were going to let her starve, why not untie her?
Fuckers. She shifted, trying to figure out where she was hurt. Whatever they’d
done to her, once she left the square and into the darkness of the alleyway,
her memory was blank, just a big lovely black spot.

When her ears started to ring she realized she was holding
her breath, and she went back to in and out, inhale and exhale through her
nose.

There was a sore spot on the back of her head and it hurt to
swallow, but her arms worked, her legs moved, and she started working on
arching, on getting her cuffed arms to her ankles. Jane called her a
contortionist sometimes, but this was why she did yoga. Her instructors would
never believe it had such a practical application.

It took forever to untie her feet, then another forever to
finagle her cuffed hands under her butt and around her legs to they were in
front.

Perfect. Now all she had to do was find a light source. If
she had company, they would have stopped her by now.

She got to her feet, the motion of the boat stronger now,
and mixed with her aching head and the darkness, it made her dizzy. She fought
nausea, her head going bang bang bang.

No. No, that wasn’t her head. That wasn’t coming from inside
her skull. It was coming from the outside of her box.

Fuck, what was that? Was it industrial, or was someone
trying to get in? She had to find a weapon.

She stumbled forward until her cuffed hands hit a metal
wall. Cargo.

She was in a cargo container.

Fuck.

So, was she out in open water or still on a river barge? She
pressed her ear to the wall and listened, but she couldn’t tell. Was she
moving? Was the water just rough?

Rose let her forehead rest against the metal, and she gave
herself fifteen seconds to panic. That was it. Fifteen seconds of pure,
unadulterated terror and no more.

They wanted her scared, they wanted her alive, because
someone wanted to make sure she hurt, to make sure she paid. So, she had to
make sure she got away before they got to her, right? She drew in a deep
breath, then another.

All she needed to do was figure out where her limitations
where, what she had to work with, and survive so she could call Jane, check in.

If she got to murder a few motherfuckers on the way, all the
better.

The banging stopped, but the motion of the container didn’t.
She thought maybe they were stationary, moored and floating, but not traveling.
She moved faster, feeling for something she could work with—a screw, a crowbar,
cargo. Anything.

She found papers, some kind of plastic packing material.
There. A scrap of pallet wood. She’d killed with less.

Rose got it in her hands, testing it. Sharp, decently
balanced. Okay. She felt better, just being armed. Now she had to conserve
energy.

Conserve energy and wait.

All she needed was one opening.

Just one.

And then the fucking tide would turn.

The coffee shop seemed really fucking crowded, but that was
okay with Jane. More witnesses, just in case the meeting went down wrong. She
saw Ben first, the skeletal man impossible to miss. She always thought that was
a shitty quality in a professional killer, but whatever. Marty was harder to
spot, always had been.

She scanned the crowd for him, knowing he had to be there.
He never arrived last. Never.

She caught Marty’s eyes from across the room, the man
dressed in a hoodie and baggie jeans. Seriously? The man was aging backward.

Getting partially out of the game was good for him. She
grinned, then sauntered up to the counter to order an Americano.

Ben was sitting with Marty, back to the corner, when she wandered
by. “Hello, you hooligans.”

“Hey, you.” Marty tilted his head, grinning.

She sat. “So? Spill. What the fuck is going on?”

Ben arched a snow-white eyebrow. “Classy.”

She flipped him off. Jane wasn’t one to mince words and her
girl was out there.

Marty sighed. “Very unhappy father. The cartels are getting
involved, and I think they’re tossing our thorny girl under the bus.”

“Marquez?”

“However did you guess?” Ben stared her down and she wanted
to scream. Rosie hadn’t taken that mark. That had been her. Her.

“That wasn’t her job. How did they finger her?”

“That’s everywhere. She into bragging?” Marty asked.

“My girl. Bah.” And everyone knew she didn’t talk. Aaron. It
had to be Aaron. Either that or Rose’s handler, but that woman was dead. God
damn it. Her lips twisted, sort of like the knife in her gut. “Where is she? Do
we know?”

“In a cargo container in Mobile. They moved her out of NOLA
on a barge.”

“In…she’s been gone for four days.” Four days. It took every
ounce of Jane’s well-developed control not to shatter her coffee cup. She’d
only gotten Rose back.

Ben nodded. “They’ve gone in twice. The last time they took
a man out with a strip of wood through his throat.

“Christ. So they’re keeping her alive for him. Good. I have
a shot at her.” And they wanted Rose to scream. You only kept someone like Rose
alive to torture. Every cell in her body wanted to kill something. Now.

“She was alive last night, from what I could tell from the
surveillance.” Marty shrugged. “Scuttlebutt is they want you to take a shot at
her. Literally. Clean up the loose end.”

“What?” Her? No. No fucking way. She couldn’t. Rose was her
girl.

“It was either you or me, Janie.” Ben looked fucking tired. “I
told them I’d tried for it, but couldn’t get a bead and had to get to Amsterdam
for another job.”

“Okay. Okay, when they contact me to do the job, I’ll agree.
That will buy me some time.” Unless Aaron was in on it. If he was… Fuck. She
nodded at Ben before staring at Marty. “How many of them will be on my tail
reporting my movements?”

“Me. I’ve got the job of reporting on you, in case your
handler-murdering mark doesn’t die.” Marty winked, the move familiar and
somehow right. “Then Ben’s supposed to take you out, so if you could wear a
target, he’d appreciate it.”

Goodie. She blew out a breath. “This could burn you, guys.”

“Nah. I’ll be fine. I live for this shit. You, less so. You’ll
have to make sure it looks good, if you don’t want to be on the run.” Ben
looked so goddamn exhausted.

“I’ll figure it. I may just have to retire after all.” She
winked at him.

“You? Right. I believe that.”

“Hey, I could do the south of Spain.” Not that she and Rosie
would ever go back to Malaga now. Maybe Seville. Or Tuscany. Her girl loved
Italy. That was something she could do, for sure, look for a villa.

“Jane.” Marty put a hand on her arm. “They want it done in
forty-eight hours.”

Forty-eight hours was two more days of those assholes
hurting Rose. “Then I need to get to Mobile.”

Ben pushed over a thumb drive. “Intel.”

“Thanks. Any other words of warning?”

“Don’t get real dead,” Marty said.

“Just fake dead.” Ben’s wink was trying for playful.

Jane snorted. “Not part of the plan. Y’all lay low.”

“Always.” Marty grinned at her, but Ben didn’t. Ben just
stared.

“Benny, you got something else to say?”

“Nope. You watch your back.”

“I will.” She put a hand on his arm. God, he was burning up.
She wondered if he was always that hot, or if he was sick or something. “All
right, boys. If this goes down bad, I’m counting on you to get the mess cleaned
up. Take us both out. Got it?”

Marty nodded once. “We won’t leave you hanging.”

“I know I can count on you.” She grabbed her cup and stood,
her mind already racing with logistics.

Her girl needed her.

Now.