Surrender to Temptation (Agent Lovers Series Book 1) (8 page)

Cautiously she and Jennifer approached the entry again, peered inside and looked down the stairs. Immediately, more men who were armed to the teeth emerged in the smoke-filled corridor before them.

This can’t be happening.
Liz swore to herself. The grenades should have taken care of most of their adversaries.

“These guys are tough. At this rate, we’ll run out of ammunition before we run out of them.” Jennifer’s teeth were clenched and her expression pinched. Liz knew that she was right.

“What do you think of
Plan S
?” She gave Jennifer an encouraging look. Jennifer rolled her eyes first and made a not very enthusiastic face, but nodded in agreement.

“Retreat already, damn it! You don’t have a chance! And what is
Plan S
anyway?” Gray demanded, although afraid to find out the answer. Slowly he felt himself being overcome with despair. By completely ignoring his and Chris’s orders, they were in all likelihood signing their own death warrants. These two were even worse than the greenhorns he and Chris had worked with the last time. He’d never lost a man before!

“I’ll explain it to you later.”

“If you don’t turn back, there won’t be a later. Get out of there now!”

When Liz and Jennifer started to move backwards slowly, he felt a glimpse of hope. Maybe they would get out of there alive after all. Again and again, Liz and Jennifer shot bursts of gunfire in the direction of the bunker—he assumed, to prevent their attackers from pursuing them.

“If we put up less of a fight, it will look suspicious,” said Jennifer.

“Maybe they’re just being cautious because they want to make sure we’re not luring them into a trap.” Liz shrugged and threw an irritated look at her partner.

Gray and Chris grew pale as they listened to the women’s banter. They watched the monitor in stunned amazement as the first men came through the bunker door.

“Hurry up! Retreat!” Gray ordered again, but his stern words were ignored.

Once ten armed adversaries were standing in front of them, Liz gave Jennifer a brief sign. Simultaneously, they threw down their weapons, dropped to their knees and laced their fingers behind their heads. They stayed in this position and with emotionless faces watched the men cautiously approach.

“Get ready for a headache!” mumbled Liz, keeping her eye on the men.

“You’re paying for the aspirin.”

“No problem. I’ll give you a whole pharmacy.”

“Deal!” Jennifer said, and then they fell silent.

The men surrounded them, pushed them violently to the ground and held them there by force. Their backpacks were ripped off them and their hands were tied behind their backs. Each of the apparently defenseless women was dragged by two men to the door of their hideout, while the remaining six kept an eye out for more intruders. When they didn’t discover anyone else, they followed their comrades inside.

With wide eyes, Gray watched Liz’s and Jennifer’s capture on the monitor.

“That’s one way of getting inside,” said Chris.

Gray looked at him in surprise.

“That was
Plan S
,” Chris observed.

“And what does ‘S’ stand for? I didn’t think you had any idea.”

“Until now, I didn’t. But now I get it: ‘S’ for surrender.”

“Oh shit!” Gray said.

Liz and Jennifer were led into a small, musty-smelling room and seated across from one another on chairs positioned just a few feet apart. A beefy guy with greasy brown hair and a scarred face came in and walked right up to Liz, who was closest to him. He bent over her in a threatening manner, drawing so close that she got a whiff of his foul-smelling breath. Nauseated by the stench, she made a face and fought back the powerful urge to gag.

“Who are you? Who sent you?”

Not only did he have an unpleasant appearance and the bothersome odor, Liz observed, but spit also sprayed from his mouth when he spoke. She answered in a bored tone of voice. “Local police. The utility company sent us. You haven’t made your last three payments.”

“Don’t jerk me around!” he roared. Then he struck her face with the flat of his hand so hard her head flew to the side.

“I would never do that,” she assured him in a genial tone, shaking the dark-smudged hair out of her face and giving him a pleasant smile. She ran the tip of her tongue over her split lower lip and tasted her own blood.

He reached out his hand, which seemed more like an enormous paw, and pulled Liz out of the chair by her collar, lifting her high enough so she could look directly into his eyes. “When I’m finished with the two of you, you’ll sing like two sweet little birds,” he threatened.

Liz began to laugh loudly and stole a glance over her shoulder at Jennifer, who was trying to look indifferent. “I have to warn you, buddy. I can’t carry a frigging tune. I’m absolutely tone-deaf. That’s why they threw me out of the church choir years ago.”

“Don’t talk shit!” Jennifer sounded offended. “As if you were ever in a church choir! I don’t like your constant exaggerating at all.”

As a powerful blow suddenly hit her stomach, Liz folded forwards. As she fell to her knees, her attacker kicked her hard in the ribs. With a groan she fell to her side and lay on the cold, hard concrete floor. Trying not to aggravate the pain in her upper body, Liz consciously worked to keep her breathing even. From where she lay on the ground she watched as the man asked Jennifer the same questions he’d given Liz and got the exact same answers, as if from a recording. Jennifer got the exact same treatment that Liz had gotten, too.

***

Chris looked at Gray. “Oh shit! Now what do we do?”

“Wait!” he growled, barely coherent. Although his expression didn’t betray any emotion, Gray felt stretched to the breaking point.

“We have to do something or he’ll kill them!”

“He won’t do that. Not until he gets some answers from them. And given their behavior, I doubt they’ll give him any. They didn’t get their high security clearance for nothing. Anyway, it doesn’t seem like we’re dealing with professionals. They haven’t found the cameras yet; they haven’t even looked for them.”

“From your lips to God’s ear,” Chris whispered. He stared, transfixed, at the monitor. The two watched in silence as the men tried to beat information out of the women, hitting them and kicking them until they lay bloody and unconscious on the concrete floor.

***

The door to the interrogation room opened with a soft creak and two men hauled a large round container into the room. They were panting from carrying the heavy tub. With each step they took, water sloshed over the rim and splattered on the concrete floor.

Liz slowly came to consciousness and was immediately hoisted from the floor and dragged to the container. Someone pushed her head under the water. She floundered ineffectively, trying to break free. Eventually they pulled her up again. Liz snorted water from her nose and mouth.

“Hey! Don’t you have any warm water here? That stuff’s freezing cold!” She shook like a wet dog. Again her head was plunged under the surface of the water and held there. Her captors repeated the process several times, but not a single word about her employer passed through her lips.

When they realized that they wouldn’t learn anything from her, the men knocked Liz to the ground and turned to Jennifer, who was just now slowly coming around. But the man who appeared to be the leader held the others back with a hand movement.

“If it didn’t work on that one, it won’t make the other one talk either.” He bent over the soaking wet Liz lying on the ground and grinned maliciously. “I have other ways of making you talk.” He grabbed her collar, pulled her up and flung her toward the chair she’d been seated on earlier. It was only with difficulty that Liz managed to keep her balance so that she and the chair didn’t fall over backward.

Her tormenter pulled a knife out of his pocket, unfolded it leisurely and caressed the finely sharpened blade with one finger before he pressed the cold metal against her neck.

“No one is so fearless that they will accept death. It’s time for you to tell what I want to know, you bitch!”

“You’re really not going to like what I have to tell you,” Liz mumbled, feigning regret. Her slightly dazed glance betrayed the fact that she was in pain.

“Out with it!”

“In my pants pocket there’s a pack of
TicTac
s. Take one. Your breath stinks like you gargled with manure.”

Furiously, he struck her in the face again. Then he pulled back her sleeve, raised the knife and sliced her upper arm with a ferocious movement.

The breath hissed from Liz’s mouth. “Son of a bitch!” she muttered through clenched teeth. “Now I can’t wear short sleeves anymore.”

Again he raised the knife menacingly in front of her face, the blade now smeared with her own blood. “Do you want me to let you slowly bleed to death?”

“You do that and you won’t get what you want,” she said, unmoved.

He turned around and kicked her savagely in the back and then left the room. A short time later, he came back holding a small package. As he stood in front of her, he let the white substance trickle into his open palm while he grinned maliciously. Then he bent over, pressed the salt into the cut and rubbed it in roughly. Liz winced and moaned, then closed her eyes and ground her teeth together so as not to cry out in pain.

“What’s the matter? Is something bothering you?” He grabbed her hair, pulled her head backward and got so close to her face that she again had to draw in his foul breath. Not even the intense pain seemed to dull her sense of smell.

“Yeah. The way you smell,” she whispered before losing consciousness. Apparently disappointed by his failure, the man let her go, causing her head to drop to her chest. He left the room again and came back with a small brown leather bag. He set it on the table and started pulling out the contents. “Wake her up!” he ordered the two men who were helping him. “And bandage her arm. I don’t want her to die just yet.”

A bucket of water was thrown in Liz’s face. Coming back to consciousness, she shook her head and, dazed, watched as they put Jennifer in the second chair. Rough hands patched up her arm to stop the bleeding and her huge interrogator approached again holding a syringe filled with a pale white liquid.

“This stuff works quickly. In a couple of minutes you’ll tell me everything, starting with your birth.”

“I hope you’ll be recording this, because I’ve got a lot I can tell you.” She gave a soft laugh that hurt her ribs. Without warning, the man stabbed the needle into her arm so violently she thought it would hit bone and break. A moment later it was Jennifer’s turn.

Their tormentor stood in the middle of the room and folded his arms across his chest expectantly. His gaze flickered back and forth between his prisoners as he watched for the first sign that the drug was taking effect. It didn’t take long.

The women began to giggle, looked at one another from under half-closed eyelids and swayed in their chairs.

“The first thing I want to know is who you really are,” he demanded.

Liz gave him a giddy look and knit her brow as if she were thinking intently. Then she sat up as well as she could, and began to speak in an exaggerated, stilted tone. “My name is Elizabeth. I am the Queen of England. So kneel down subjects and kiss my feet!” She began to roar with laughter, as if she were out of her mind, and then toppled sideways out of her chair and landed on the ground. Jennifer joined in the laughter and, also unable to stay upright, slid onto the concrete floor too.

Furious that the drug apparently hadn’t had the desired effect, he bellowed, “I’ll make you sing yet. You can count on it!”

“Queen Elizabeth?” trilled Jennifer.

“Yes, subject?”

“He wants to hear us sing.”

“Then we should oblige him.”

In a tone that was completely off-key, Liz struck up the refrain of a drinking song she’d heard at a beer garden while visiting Germany and had not been able to forget. Jennifer laughed as she sang along: “There is no beer on Hawaii, there is no beer. That’s why we’re not going to Hawaii and staying here….”

At first the men looked at them incredulously, completely dumbfounded, and then they stormed out of the room in the face of this taunt, leaving the prisoners lying where they were. They closed the metal door behind them with a loud clatter, and gray plaster fell from the ceiling to the floor.

The women stopped singing and chuckled softly to themselves.

“Liz?”

“Hm?”

“I don’t need aspirin anymore. Right now I feel like I’m on speed. Even my ribs don’t hurt anymore.”

“Same here. I say we enjoy this a little bit longer before we free ourselves.”

“You won’t get an argument from me.”

Quietly, they stretched out.

***

Chris looked in shock at Gray, who was still staring at the monitors and the women lying motionless on the ground.

“Am I the only one who thinks they’re completely insane?”

“The same thought had occurred to me. Several times.” Gray said into the microphone. “Liz? Jennifer? Can you hear me?” He repeated these words until he and Chris heard a sound that almost sounded like a soft growl.

“Leave me alone! I don’t want to get up. Just five more minutes,” Liz said groggily.

“Nothing doing! Get your butts in gear and get out of there.”

“All right already, slave driver!” Slowly she sat up made her way over to her friend. She nudged Jennifer with the tip of her shoe. “Wake up! Our guys are calling.”

“Hm?” With difficulty Jennifer sat up too, shook her head, and blinked several times. She looked at Liz. “Oh man, you look like shit!”

“Thanks. You too! Did they take the small knife?” Liz whispered.

“No. It’s where it always is. These guys aren’t professionals.”

Liz made her way over to Jennifer’s outstretched legs and, with her arms still restrained behind her back, groped for Jennifer’s ankle. She pushed Jennifer’s pant leg up a little and released the small blade from its sheath. Awkwardly she cut through the rope that bound her hands behind her back, then removed Jennifer’s.