Chastity Flame (23 page)

And now she was going to have to close
that door.

"What?" Damien reached out to stroke
her arm. "What is it, Twelve?"

"
Verde, que te quiero verde
," she said,
laying one hand against his cheek, enjoying the rough bite of his
stubble. "My father's favorite poem. It is about longing and loss
and missed opportunities. But for my father, it also embodied the
stubbornness of hope."

"What does it mean? I know 'verde' is
green."

"It's a rather slippery phrase,"
Chastity said, her thoughts wandering far away. "'Te quiero' can
mean 'I want', but it can also mean 'I love'. It all depends on the
context and García Lorca left the meaning enigmatic." She smiled at
Damien, her thoughts back in the room once more. "My father would
use it when he was feeling particularly wistful. When he had the
feeling that something was slipping away from him."

"As you must slip away from me,"
Damien said quietly.

"Yes," Chastity agreed.

"I don't think I can let that happen,"
he said, laying his hand on her arm.

"We don't have a choice."

"We do! While they didn't know about
us, they didn't try to stop us. All we have to do—"

"Is hide from the one organization
trained to root out secrets in this country?" Chastity looked at
him. God, he was beautiful. He was also so very wonderful. "Unless
you want to quit your job."

Damien looked startled. "Quit? And do
what? Teach? Oh god, no. I don't think I could do it all the time.
It's too draining. Could you quit?"

Chastity shook her head: she didn't
have another life. There was nothing else she could do—it's not as
if she were trained to do much of anything practical. The time she
spent at university was a mish mash of random classes. She could
read quickly and critically, fight, shoot, knife, manipulate
people, find things out that people didn't want her to know. "I
can't do anything else."

They were both silent for a moment.
Finally Damien said, "I suppose they might even be watching us
now."

"Quite a show," Chastity chuckled,
remembering Monitor's pink cheeks when mentioning their previous
escapades in the conference room. "But you're right. There's every
reason to think they're watching us closely and will continue to do
so for some time. So there's no other option but to say
good-bye."

Damien leaned in to kiss her, biting
her lip ardently and mashing their faces together, before he let
her go. "What if you're the one, the only one? Am I supposed to let
you go?"

Chastity sighed again. "I don't buy
the idea that in the whole world there's only one person you're
meant to be with. I never believed in that. I do think you're
something extraordinary," she leaned in to kiss him, more gently
than he had done, her eyes still gazing at him as she pulled away.
"But I also know that we both have important jobs to do, jobs that
come before our own selfish concerns."

Damien reached up to brush a lock of
her hair away from her forehead. "Why do I feel like I'm being
turned into Ingrid Bergman? Is this the hill of beans
speech?"

Chastity grinned at him. He could make
her laugh at the worst of times and right now there was an
unexpected lump in her throat the size of a grapefruit that
threatened to strangle her. "I'm not going to be Humphrey Bogart
here. Claude Raines, maybe—he had most of the best lines anyway."
Her voice softened. "But we do have to part and I don't want to do
it. I don't have to tell lies to send you off, do I? As long as we
both continue in our positions, we can't be together."

"Gaah!" Damien sighed and flopped back
on the bed. "You're making this so very difficult."

"I know."

"I reserve the right to change my
mind."

"So do I, but all I've ever known,
really, is this job. I've been training for it most of my life,
even when I didn't realize it." She laid her hand on Damien's
cheek, feeling its warmth. "If I quit my job to be with you, I'd be
champing at the bit in no time, resenting you and feeling trapped.
Doesn't mean I don't love you."

"I know."

"We're just in a bind here, at least
until some other factor changes."

Damien sighed. "You make it sound like
a negotiation."

"That's my training kicking in again."
Just then her phone began to shrill. The two of them exchanged
looks, then she stepped over to her bag to answer it.
"Yes?"

"New development. We need you now."
Monitor's tone was crisp and neutral.

"I'll be there." She thumbed the
receiver off and threw it back into her bag. "I'm going to run
through the shower, if it's alright."

"Kiss before you go?"

Chastity leaned over and kissed him
slowly and deeply. It was all she could do not to sink back down on
the bed. Tearing herself away, she stepped into the glorious
bathroom—why had she ever believed that he was an art history
professor?—and washed all scent of him from her body, which seemed
a pity.

Her clothes, however, retained a bit
of his smell and she inhaled it before she put them on. Damien had
fallen into a fitful slumber, twitching slightly in his sleep.
Chastity stared at him for a long while, memorizing every detail
and feeling an unpleasant ache in her chest. At last she kissed him
on the forehead, which made him mutter but not wake, then she
headed down the stairs to unbolt the door.

The nurse was outside, a fag in one
hand and a paperback in the other. The cover had a woman's torso
being covered in chocolate, which reminded Chastity how hungry she
was. "All done?" the nurse asked with a smile.

"Yeah, all done," Chastity said,
coughing to cover the emotion in her voice. She walked down to the
corner to hail a cab.

Chapter Eighteen

"You won't believe this!" Kevin began
excitedly as Chastity walked into the conference room.

"Won't believe what? Valerie, is there
any food on at the moment?"

"Curry or Chinese?" Valerie
asked.

Inevitably the compact receptionist
seemed to be prepared for any request, Chastity thought for the
hundredth time. "Curry, please. Thank you so much, Valerie. Now
what is this video you're talking about, Kevin?"

Kevin pointed to the screen which had
the website for Wesenlund Inudstries loaded. There was a little
video box with a play button highlighted on it. "Just watch." He
tapped the touch screen and the video began to play.

"Hellu, mine venner!" It was a very
cheerful Wesenlund, grinning as if he didn't have a care in the
world. "I'm sure you've all heard about our fabulous new program
for investors. If we can keep the regulators from jeopardizing our
set-up, we should have an amazing profit this quarter. But I want
to let you know about a special new project, inspired by some
recent conversations with my esteemed competitors."

"He means us," Kevin
interjected.

"I guessed as much," Chastity
murmured, never taking her eyes off the video.

"Competition keeps us on our toes,"
Wesenlund continued, the camera tracking back to show him walking
through an office featuring good Norwegian spruce and spare
Scandinavian styling. "And I plan to keep my competitors on their
toes. I will be debuting a new project that I know they will find…"
He paused as if searching for the right word, "incendiary. I hope
it will make a splash. Adjø, ha det bra."

The video ended and Chastity stared at
the screen. "Play it again," she said quietly, but she was already
considering his implications. Incendiary! Did he really intend to
bomb someone—something? Somewhere? Behind the smile she saw the
anger. He was not pleased about their finding and liberating
Damien. Wesenlund wanted to make them pay. How would he do so?
Surely it wouldn't be something personal—if he knew or cared where
their headquarters were, he did not indicate it. Somehow she
doubted that was the target.

Chastity stared at him as he continued
to talk and knew that he would do something hurtful and spiteful.
It would be something that would harm innocent people, too. She
could almost taste it in the smirk he wore while chatting amiably
in his oversized office.

"Well?" While she had stared,
mesmerized at the screen, Monitor had come in. She looked even more
frazzled than usual, her hair sticking up in ten different
directions with two pencils joining the effusion. "What's your take
on it?"

"Bad," Chastity said. "He plans to do
something awful. A bomb, I suppose, most likely."

"Here, do you think?" Monitor looked
particularly annoyed by the thought.

"I don't think so," Chastity said,
shaking her head slowly as she tapped the touchpad to play the
video once more. "I think it's going to be somewhere public,
somewhere that a lot of people are going to get hurt. Somewhere
there's bound to be children, because that will make it even worse.
Something that will make us look bad, but that's only tangential."
Chastity looked up at her boss. "Wesenlund wants to get even. He
wants to make us suffer for frustrating his plans."

"Bastard," Monitor said, still
matter-of-factly, but now she was taking it more personally. She
hated it when the organization looked bad. No one enjoyed being
called on the carpet, least of all this woman who quietly and
efficiently ran one of the most important intelligence operations
in the world. "We need to figure out what it is."

"Of course," Chastity agreed. "But
there's not much to go on."

"When is there?" Within minutes,
Monitor had the team assignments sorted and everyone was busy
delving into data. Chastity worked her way through some chicken
tikka while scrutinizing Wesenlund's website for information.
Because he had been so arrogant about using the front page for this
assault, she hoped that there might be further clues lurking in the
links.

Monitor stopped beside her and sat
down. "Anything?" Chastity shook her head, her mouth still full of
food. Monitor sighed. "Not quite the glamorous life of
international espionage we all envisioned, eh?"

Chastity looked at her in surprise.
She hadn't quite realized it, but it had never occurred to her that
Monitor had once been a young woman just starting out in the
organization. Had she been an op once? "Did you work in the field
ever, Monitor?"

The older woman laughed. "Can you see
it? Me bowling along in a shambles of an outfit, trailing hairpins
behind me, muttering under my breath as I shuffle through papers.
No, never. I was always in admin. I've got the mind, but not the
quickness. I can think fast, but my body isn't always there with
me. You've no idea how lucky you are," she added, looking
uncharacteristically open.

"I'm not sure I'm feeling too lucky at
present," Chastity finally said, stuck for anything else to
say.

Monitor sighed. "I know it was a blow
to give him up, but our lives are not our own. We have a job to do,
and people depend upon us to do it—without thanks or notice of
course, except when things go all pear-shaped."

"I knew it wasn't going to be
champagne and baccarat," Chastity said quietly. "I just didn't know
it would mean turning down love."

The older woman was silent. "Was it
then? I am sorry, Chastity. Truly I am. But you know all too well
the risks involved and we have those policies for very good
reasons. Believe me when I tell you that I couldn't be sorrier."
She laid a hand on Chastity's arm, patting it lightly before she
rose and headed out the door. Chastity sat staring at the screen,
her eyes unfocused. Then she shook herself and began to page
through the site once more.

Three hours later, with bleary eyes
and countless files and pages examined, they were no closer to a
clue. Wesenlund would be traveling, as he always did. Yes, the
travel seemed to include stops in the UK, including London,
Northampton, Bangor, York and Stirling. He had holdings of some
kind in each of them, or was looking to buy something. Chastity and
Kevin tended to agree that London was the most likely place for him
to strike, but she also has some worries about York. It would
appeal to his morbid sense of humor to do something awful at the
Jorvik Viking Centre, but she had to admit it seemed like an
outside chance.

If the target were London that helped
some, but there was still a week's worth of time to account for and
the entire city to protect. They were still sorting through a very
large haystack for one Norwegian needle. It seemed hopeless. There
were unlimited possibilities up and down the Thames, as well as
north and south of the river. They could go on endlessly sorting
through documents, maps and whatnot and still never come up with a
good candidate for the target. "If we had a longer span of time,"
Kevin said, sighing with frustration.

Chastity laughed, although there was
little humor in it. "If we had more time, we'd have even more
possibilities. It would be worse."

"When things go wrong," Kevin hummed.
"And they rarely go right in our line of business, eh?"

Chastity rubbed her eyes. She was
beginning to get a headache. If she weren't careful—