SLEEPER (Crossfire Series) (6 page)

The door slid open and T walked in, urgency in her stride.

“We’ve got her location,” she said, moving to the panel that controlled the video screens. “She showed up at the bank just as we hoped she would.”

Anticipation arose. Action time. He was growing tired of research and reading. He put down his file and swiveled his chair to face the wall. Amber and Nikki joined him at the main table, their attention on the screen.

The video showed that it was nighttime. A woman walked toward the camera, hands shoved deeply into her heavy fur coat. Her head was covered with a dark scarf, but Reed could see the dark hair curling at the shoulders. She looked up. It was Llallana Noretski.

“We knew there weren’t enough passports in Amber’s safe, so we’ve frozen most of the accounts she and Amber were using,” Nikki explained, “hoping that she’ll still be trying to help the rest of the girls escape.”

“She’s let her hair grow long,” Amber murmured. “Lily’s never had her hair that long in the years I’ve known her. Said long hair tickled her neck.”

“Then perhaps she’s reverting to her former self,” Nikki said. “You mentioned she avoided talking about her sister all that time.”

“Well, we know why, don’t we?”

“Or maybe she’s just trying to hide,” Reed suggested. “I mean, don’t women just change their hairstyles when something drastic happens in their lives?”

T clicked the video on pause, freezing Llallana in the middle of withdrawing money from the machine, and all three women turned and looked at him. He stared back. Maybe he should have kept that observation to himself.

Then T laughed and leaned a hip against the table. “You know, darling, you do say the most interesting things with the straightest face. Is this hair phenomenon just a standard male assumption or from past experience?”

Darling
. When T called him that, Reed was beginning to suspect it meant her mind was targeting him for one of those weird probing conversations. “Darling” was just the distraction. It was the rest of her sentence he had to be careful of. He was still wondering what she knew about his background.

“You were joking, right?” Amber didn’t even try to hide her amusement.

She would be telling Hawk about this later. Reed knew what his commander’s reply would be, since he was known for it. “I don’t joke,” he answered, then he looked at T. “Observation.”

“That many girlfriends then, Reed?” T teased, patting her hair. “Are you the drastic thing in their lives?”

“No, my mo—” Reed stopped, closing his mouth firmly. Damn, she’d done it again. He didn’t want to bring up anything to do with his family. He went back to the subject that had started this. “I was just thinking that since I’m letting my hair grow longer than I like, just like the target is, that maybe she’s trying to hide her true identity. Maybe she just doesn’t like herself at the moment, or her situation, and so she changes her hairstyle.”

The length of his hair was way longer than he was used to. It reminded him of his surfrat days when he used to have the wavy blond mane his friends favored. They had been shocked out of their minds when they’d seen him return one day with all his locks shorn off, after he’d joined the Navy. Now they were back—no longer sun-streaked, and a lot darker, but still the same thick wave.

Nikki and T exchanged a brief glance. They seemed to agree on something.

“We’ll know when you meet her,” Nikki said, turning back to the screen.

T reactivated the video. Llallana made her withdrawal, shoving the cash into her purse. She looked up, straight into the camera. Reed frowned. There was something in her expression….

“This is good,” Nikki said. “This might mean she’s still somewhat in control of her thoughts, that her trigger hasn’t been reactivated, or she wouldn’t care so much about taking care of the rest of the girls.”

“The girls’ well-being was her life,” Amber said quietly. “She even went back to take them with her when she wasn’t herself.”

“Yes. The posthypnotic suggestion reversal worked, but who knows how confused and terrified she must have been at all the memories flooding her head. I wonder why her handler never called her back to retrigger the switch.”

Reed listened as he watched the woman on screen make one final quick sweep of the area with those dark eyes. Maybe it was just the play of shadows, but the lone light from the bank machine seemed to emphasize the ones under her dark eyes. He felt sorry for her. If she understood what had happened to her, as they were telling him she did, then she mustn’t be sleeping very well. He wouldn’t want to fall asleep thinking something could talk to his brain and trigger some kind of damn switch.

“We don’t know what she’s doing with the money,” T pointed out. “We have nothing on the girls except for the first group, who we’ve tracked with those passports.”

“She used those passports, T. That tells us something,” Amber said.

“I know she’s your friend, Amber. I have to play devil’s advocate, since we’re sending Reed in after her. We don’t know what her state of mind is, and he has to keep remember that in all his dealings with her.”

“I know.” Amber turned to Reed. “She has a very sarcastic and dark sense of humor. I don’t care if they said her behavior could have been modified. That sarcasm and wicked attitude is innately Lily. And if she asks you to call her Lily, you’ll know that she trusts you at some level.”

“All right,” Reed said, his eyes still trained on the screen. “There’s someone in that corner. I don’t think he’s out on a late evening stroll.”

The three women returned their attention to the video. “He didn’t move from that spot,” T said. “There wasn’t any vehicle following her.”

“But you can see the license plate from his angle,” Reed said. “Can you trace a foreign car from here?”

T glanced back, her eyes thoughtful. “I’ll call in and have that possibility checked right away. So let’s say someone else is also tracking Lily. Why?”

“Too much information for your operation, darling. Rewatch the video. I’m off to start preparations for your trip back to Eastern Europe.” She stood up. “Nikki, you have to brief him about the state of mind of a sexual slave and how that could be used as a basis for emotional triggers.”

“Yes.”

Looking at Nikki, Reed couldn’t imagine the slight woman having lived through such horrors, but she had all but suggested to him that she had been subjected to similar experiences when she’d been captured during an operation. But that was ten years ago. Perhaps there was hope for Llallana.

* * *

Somebody was following her. Lily tightened the scarf around her neck as she continued walking to the bus stop.

She could feel a presence behind her. Or she was just being paranoid again.

Ever since she’d snuck into the library a month ago and done some research with the public computers, she hadn’t been able to shake off the growing sense that nothing was real. Too much information about things that had nothing to do with her world.

She could write the story of her life in a few sentences. A kidnapped girl. Rescued from a brothel. Grown up through shady means to become self-supporting. Now a rescuer of young girls kidnapped by mercenaries.

Not exactly a normal life by any means, but now she could add CIA sleeper cell somewhere in that paragraph. Rescued by the CIA, and, she’d thought, freed after a short stay to recuperate. How could she have known they’d messed with her mind? She wouldn’t have believed it possible at all if she didn’t have these memories now of what she’d done, what she’d believed to be the right thing while she’d been doing it.

When Brad had made her repeat some lines from some poem…Lily closed her eyes briefly at the thought of Brad. Oh God. What she’d done to Bradford Sun was totally unforgivable. But the man had tried to save her, had somehow known the code that would release her from whatever it was that was controlling her mind. If only she could remember what she’d said. That was the key—some poem. But she had no idea what that was, only that she’d said it at his prompting and then…everything had turned into a horrifying realization of what was in her possession and what she was planning to do.

She’d learned new terms from that website she’d found about sleeper cells. Whatever it was she had repeated was called a subconscious trigger. She bit down hard on her lower lip. They’d somehow hypnotized her and inserted it inside her head. How was that possible? She couldn’t remember any such sessions with the CIA.

Lily reached the bus stop and walked into the shelter. There were two other people sitting there—an older lady and a man, both reading as they waited for the bus. She sat down at the far end. If she was being followed, then she would either see a car or someone would join her on the bus.

No matter how paranoid she was, one thing was real. Many people were after her and what she had in her possession. She wasn’t sure whether they just wanted what she had or they wanted her too, but, either way, she would be damned if she was giving it to them.

Why would they want you?
a voice in her head mocked.
Because you belong to them.”

“I belong to no one!” Lily muttered fiercely, then looked up at the other two people in th station. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud. They looked at her curiously, and she gave a shrug in answer, as if nothing was wrong. They went back to their reading.

She looked up sharply at the sound of footsteps. A man stepped into the shelter. He was tall and broad, with a thick mustache. He nodded at them as he brushed off the drifts of snow on his thick jacket. Then he sat down in the middle of the bench.

Lily watched him put his hand in his right pocket. If he pulled out a weapon…

The headlights from the approaching bus shone into the booth. Everyone stood up. The man pulled out his hand. It was empty.

Lily lined up behind everyone and got on the bus, heading straight to the back. She could watch the other passengers in front and also look through the back window to make sure no vehicle was following.

She should have taken a taxi, like she had when she’d gone to the bank, but funds were low enough as it was. She wanted to kick herself for not having anticipated that her bank accounts would be gone. After all, she was dealing with the CIA; they had those kinds of powers. She blamed it on her lack of sleep. She really, really needed a good night’s rest.

But at least there was this one account. And the one overseas. She’d been so relieved when the library computer had confirmed they were still active. God knew what she would have done if she’d been totally penniless.

If it was just herself, she would have gotten by, but she had a big responsibility. She could relax a bit now that she had the money in her hands. She had secretly been worried her card wouldn’t work and that there would be nothing in there. As it was, she would have just enough to purchase the passports and pay some bills. She frowned. She needed to think of a way to make money to pay the usual under-the-table fees to the relevant officials.

The big man with the mustache turned and looked around. Lily kept her eyes on his hands, unconsciously holding her breath as he pulled out something from his coat pocket. It looked bulky.

It was a cell phone, one of the bigger types that had gone out of style a few years ago. “Ya, hallo?”

Lily exhaled slowly. She hadn’t been this jumpy since she was on her own with nothing but the clothes on her back. She must pull herself together or this wasn’t going to work. Right now she needed to be very logical about what she was going to do. She had a lot on her plate. A group of girls was waiting patiently for her to get back. Illegal passports to purchase. She glanced up at the man still on the cell phone. And trying to find a way to get around the phone problem. It was so damn stupid not being able to use one. How on earth was she going to explain that while she made her deals?

Oh sorry, can’t call me, I’ll call you.

Yeah, that was going to make the illegal traders less suspicious of a woman asking for so many passports. Before, Amber had been able to do it through her information channels. Now that she had to do it face-to-face, the traders would probably want a good reason for the sudden change.

Lily became aware of the man on the cell standing up abruptly, still on the phone. He headed for the exit as the bus came to a stop. See? He wasn’t following her after all. There were a few more passengers in the bus, but they weren’t paying attention to her. Everyone appeared normal.

Except her, of course. She was the odd person here. Show of hands, people—anyone here a sleeper cell? She grinned at the thought of standing up and actually asking that. And oh, anyone here own some special kind of bomb? She had one.

She felt herself grinning. She was probably the only woman in Pristina who fit the description she just gave. If she looked at the positive side of things, it couldn’t be easy for those looking for her to go around describing her. Let’s hope so.

Lily got off at her destination, then walked around for a few minutes to make sure the bus wasn’t followed. The roads were eerily silent as she trudged across the median. She caught sight of the restaurants with their bright lights on and suddenly remembered she hadn’t eaten dinner yet.