Blacklisted: Blacklist Operations Book #1 (20 page)

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. Lucky, 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 t
hat. 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.

“I love you, Veronica. I’m going to make you better. I promise.”

“Don’t. You don’t know everything.” It seemed an effort, but she reached her ravaged hands down to lift her shirt, just a little.

“I saw.”

“No, you didn’t. Turn me over.”

It took five minutes to help her onto her stomach. The wounds that were burned into her skin were pastry like at the edge and Veronica winced when Sophie’s knuckles brushed her skin. Wrapping her fingers around her sister’s side, she felt a wound open on the skin of Veronica’s back. Then she rolled her over and saw it for the first time.

“He said he wanted to play music on my ribs,” Veronica explained. “How bad is it?”

Sophie covered her mouth with her hands to block a sob. She shook her head, denying what her eyes told her and, for the first time in years, felt close to vomiting.

The bones of her sister’s back were visible. Stripped almost clean of skin, Sophie couldn’t believe that she was able to speak. Able to stand the pain that she must be in. The dilated pupils. Drugs? Medicine? She’d be dead. If not for the enhancements, she’d be dead.

“We can fix it.”

“No, Sophie. Damn it. Sometimes you can’t fix everything.” She took a deep breath, cringed. “I’m done.”

“No.”

“You think I can’t feel what he did? You’re close to right. And I’m going to die. I feel it, like cold around the edges. It’s creeping in.”

“Stop it.”

Veronica pushed herself up, winced and Sophie could see the struggle not to scream. Reaching for her sister’s arm, the whole, pale skin like hers had been before Oliver, Veronica pulled the tube from Sophie’s vein.

“Done, Sophie-bear. I’m done. You have to finish it.”

“No.” Tears came now, ran unchecked down her cheeks. Her sister was her. A piece of her. The reason she was free.

“I can’t heal from this.”

“There has to be a way.”

“Even if Lyle was here right now, I couldn’t heal. He sent you, so he knows I’m done. No offense, sis,” she said, mustering a smile. “My own fault for getting caught, I guess.” She coughed again. Sophie noticed the bruising on her thighs, the welts down the back of her legs.

“I’ll kill him.”

“He’s not worth it.”

“You can’t die.”

“Not without you.” Veronica looked Sophie in the eyes and, god, her sister was already gone. Already slipping away. One foot in the grave and the light had dimmed in her eyes. Her skin was almost grey.

“I can’t do it.”

“Please,” Veronica choked again. On her own blood. It coated her lips now. “I can’t stand this pain. I’ll live for hours, damn fucking Lyle.”

“Veronica, I don’t have anything for you. I don’t have any medicine or anything to give you. I can’t do this. I can’t, please I can’t.”
             

“Are you going to make me beg?” She was on her back again. Her chest shook with the effort it took to speak. Ripped to pieces. Her once picture perfect double was scraps now.

“No,” Sophie took a deep breath. “I’m so sorry. I love you so much.”

“I want this. I need you to do this for me, Sophie-bear. Thank you. For everything. I’m sorry—sorry, I let him catch me.” Her voice was quiet now, a whisper that still rang bold in the forest.

“How?” Sophie couldn’t see through her tears. They blinded her to everything but the red blur that was her sister’s face. To her seeking hands.

“Head. Poetic, or something.” Veronica laughed again, blinked her one good eye. “I miss Mom and Dad. So much. Will you just hold me for a minute, first?”

Sophie moved closer to her sister, curling her body around the slight cold one, much as she imagined they’d once comforted each other in the womb. “I love you. You saved me. Again and again, you saved me.”

“Don’t cry,
bear.” Veronica wanted to stroke her sister’s hair, to kiss her warm cheek but her strength was gone. All she could do was murmur soft words of love while her sister tried to stifle her sobs. “I love you. For this. For everything.”

“I love you, too.”

They lay like that until Veronica’s vision was blurring. Until she couldn’t see her sister anymore. “I’m ready to go now.”

She felt Sophie shake as one arm groped for the
gun that was in her waistband. Heard the sharp intake of breath and the soft press of lips in her hair. Then a hot, bright pressure across her skull and all the pain was gone.

Sophie saw that as if it were happening again: her sister’s body laying limp in her arms, a spray of blood across the tan blankets. Veronica’s blood.

She’d wrapped her sister in
plastic, paid to smuggle the body out of Tokyo and buried her back at home in California. Three weeks later she’d appeared to Lyle, who’d sent people out after her. All returned, frustrated with the search.

Sophie had told him that Veronica was dead. That she was determined to kill Oliver. And that she’d work for him until she had.

That was more clear to her, those images, until she saw Oliver on top of her sister. Grunting and thrusting while Veronica turned her head away. Bites her lip like me, thought Sophie. Right through it. And when Oliver noticed she wasn’t paying attention, he rained blows onto her face with his bare fists.

She watched for hours, each moment of footage, each new pain her sister suffered, they added to the debt that Oliver would be forced to pay. If it meant her life, she would kill him. And this time she’d stand over his body until the heat left him completely, until his eyes were as blank as Veronica’s.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“She’s probably dead already,” Caleb said before shoving another handful of peanuts into his mouth. “Not to be insensitive or anything.”

“You’d never do that,”
Adele said, her lips curled back in a sneer. Aidan had to restrain himself from rolling his eyes at the pair. It was already damned hot, though the sun had been up for only minutes. Aside from his own doubts about Caleb’s loyalty and Adele’s pissy mood, each hour that passed was one more that they weren’t with Sophie. One more that they weren’t saving her. He pinned his hope on the fact that Oliver had sent Eric to collect her.

He usually kept them alive for
awhile when he sent Eric.

Aidan had been blacklisted
now and Caleb was sure he’d be off the payroll as soon as they were spotted together. Access to the building where Sophie was being held could only be gained by someone with level eight clearance. Both men had it, though Aidan figured his was revoked. Caleb had not been invited to participate in her debriefing but had known about the grab. After that, he’d explained, it just made sense to hack into Oliver’s computer.

“Can you stop with those damn peanuts?”
Adele sounded angrier every time she opened her mouth, Aidan thought. Despite the attitude she’d been giving him for the past sixteen hours, she hadn’t been really unpleasant until they’d met Caleb. Maybe it was London. Or maybe she had a strong aversion to crunching.

Caleb just grinned at her, popped more shelled nuts in his mouth, and offered her the bag. She knocked it away with the back of her hand and went back to studying the maps.

Twelve stories beyond where Oliver’s office was, someone had built a stone room. It was on all the electrical grids, even if it didn’t show up on any official plans. Aidan had only been there once before. He hoped he’d never have to go back.

He respected his boss but there was a strange light in his eyes when they had a prisoner restrained down there.

“Lyle called me again,” Adele had moved to stand behind him. She showed him her missed calls, then flipped her phone closed. “I can’t answer. He won’t want me to get Sophie.”

“Of course he will.” It didn’t make sense for Lyle to give up a woman he depended on as much as he did Sophie.

“No, he really won’t. You don’t know him.” Adele sighed and lowered her voice, shot a glance at Caleb who was fiddling with the computer again. “Every time he looks at Sophie, he sees Veronica.”

“How exactly did
Veronica die?” It wasn’t paramount that he find out the answer to the question that kept surfacing every time he thought of the rage on Sophie’s face. It wouldn’t get her away from Oliver. Yet Aidan felt compelled to know.

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why?”

“It’s complicated, Aidan.” She led him to the kitchen and poured them both new cups of coffee. He felt like he was running off pure caffeine and adrenaline. Still, he took the warm mug between his hands and sipped. “More or less, Oliver killed her.”

“More or less?”

“Ask Sophie.”

“I have.”

“Then I guess she doesn’t want you to know. Did you really think I’d tell you if she didn’t want me to?”
Adele smiled. She really was beautiful, he thought. Funny that he’d never noticed her before—surely their paths had crossed at some point. He considered asking her, then rejected the idea.

“Worth a try.”

“Speaking of try,” Caleb said as he joined them. Adele poured another cup, added a spoon of sugar, and handed it to him. “How’d you know I took sugar?”

“You
act like a child so I assume you drink coffee like a high school student,” she said.

“I think we need to
figure out where we’ll go if she’s injured. No time to bind her there—and we can’t take her to a local hospital.”

“None of our safe houses either,” Aidan interjected.

“Right. So we need to establish a base as soon as possible. In the next hour.”

“Not necessary.”
Adele was rinsing out her cup in the sink. “Sophie and I have a place here. It’s fully equipped.”

“How secure?”

“More secure than your secret underground facility,” she said mockingly. “Sorry. Just considering how easy it was for Sophie to break in.”

“When we go in,” Caleb began, using his outdoor voice. “We have to do it fast and brutal. What are you prepared to do to get her back?”

Aidan thought about his devotion to the organization. How long he’d fought for them, always believing that they were doing the right thing. He remembered the content of the papers locked in his bag and wondered how he could have gone so wrong. Thought of standing high up above the ocean in Dubai. Thought of Sophie, soft and pale, moving under him. Touching his cheek. Defying him even when he had the upper hand. Promising she’d come back from the market. We’ll have to work on trust, she’d said.

“Anything.”

“Suit up, then.” Caleb stood. “No camouflage needed. They’re going to know we’re there as soon as we hit the building.”

“What do we do then?”
Adele was using a rubber band she’d unearthed from a drawer to pull her hair back.

“Run like hell and hope we don’t have to shoot anyone we care about.
Tranqs?”

“Got ‘
em.” Aidan pointed at the closet in the hallway.

“That makes me feel a little better about this.”

“Why are you doing this, Caleb? I love Sophie. Aidan feels responsible for her. What about you?”

“I like a challenge.” He met Aidan’s eyes and grinned. “Besides, he’s my partner. We don’t end up on opposite sides of a mission.”

“Even if the mission is going to get us all fired and killed. And not necessarily in that order?”

“Especially then. Couldn’t take that last smoke without you.”

The three of them split into separate areas of the house to get ready. In twenty minutes, they’d meet to secure Adele’s London residence, then they’d be on their way to Sophie. They couldn’t be too late, he told himself. She’d hold up.