Redemption (31 page)

Then, in the blink of an eye, her gaze softened. She
laid
the weapon down on the TV stand, picked up a cup of coffee that was steaming beside it and approached him, holding it out like a peace offering. Her hair was hanging loose, a little tousled and dishevelled from sleep, but otherwise she looked rested and refreshed.

Lucky her.

He looked at her with a hint of suspicion, then finally took it and gulped down a mouthful. If she intended to kill him, he doubted poison would be her modus operandi.

‘You don’t sleep well, do you?’ She picked up her own cup and took a drink. ‘Bad dreams?’

‘Bad memories,’ Drake replied, avoiding her gaze.

She was perceptive enough not to press him on the matter. ‘I checked the emails on your phone earlier. There was no reply from Typhoon.’

Drake raised an eyebrow. ‘Becoming a real technophile, I see.’

She ignored his jibe. ‘If he hasn’t heard from me in four years, it is safe to say he won’t check his mail every day. In any case, we should leave soon,’ she decided. ‘If Cain and the others haven’t found out about what happened at the gas station, they will soon enough.’

He was in agreement. The question was, where should they go?

His priority yesterday had been mere survival, escaping the immediate search area. They might have accomplished this by the skin of their teeth, but from here their way forward was uncertain. Getting out of the country was going to be problematic to say the least.

‘Well, we can forget about the airports,’ he decided straight away. ‘We have no passports and almost no money.’

Even if he’d had access to his passport, it would have
been
red-flagged straight away by the Agency. Any attempt to use it would have resulted in immediate detainment and a one-way trip back to Langley. Not to mention the fact that Anya didn’t even have one to begin with …

There was only one realistic solution that he could think of. ‘We might have to try and slip over the border to Mexico. After that –’ he threw up his hands – ‘we either start busking for money, or we’d better polish up our bank-robbing skills.’

Anya however remained unfazed by the numerous problems standing in their path. ‘I know a man who can help us.’

He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Who, exactly?’

Again she gave him that knowing, enigmatic smile. ‘Come on, get out of bed,’ she said, avoiding the question. ‘We don’t have much time.’

After a hasty breakfast of pre-made bagels and instant coffee, they abandoned their room without bothering to check out. They had paid in advance anyway, so their departure was unlikely to draw undue attention.

And now here they were, with nothing but the rumble of their tyres on the road and the muted roar of the wind whipping by to break the silence.

Beside him, Anya looked as if she was having the time of her life. With her window down, seat wound back, feet up on the dashboard and eyes hidden behind her new sunglasses, she was a picture of laid-back calm.

‘Enjoying yourself?’ he couldn’t help asking.

‘It is more enjoyable than my average day.’

It was tough to argue with that.

‘Tell me something about yourself, Drake,’ she prompted.

‘Why?’

‘If we are going to be working together, it’s only fair that we know something about each other. You seem to know a lot about me already, but I know very little about you.’

‘That’s the way I like it.’

‘I don’t.’ She looked at him for a long moment. ‘Of course, I could make a few guesses …’

‘This should be good,’ he remarked.

‘You were in the military, probably Special Air Service judging by the parachute insertion and the tactics you used at Khatyrgan,’ she began. ‘Also, the knife on your webbing that night was standard SAS issue. The notch on the hand guard is designed to snag an opponent’s blade in a knife fight.’

Drake was impressed, both by her knowledge of weaponry and the details she had noticed in the heat of the moment.

‘You are divorced,’ she went on. ‘I see the mark where the ring was. It has faded, so it must have happened a few years ago. You are not in a relationship now.’

‘And how would you know that?’ he asked, irritated by the accuracy of her ‘guesses’.

‘There were no pictures in your wallet. I checked while you were asleep.’ She smiled at his discomfort. ‘And I saw the way you looked at me last night. You haven’t slept with a woman for a while.’

He couldn’t stop the colour rising to his face. He understood now why she’d undressed in front of him. She wanted to see how he would react.

‘You been reading my Facebook page or something?’ he shot back.

This at least put her off balance, if only for a moment. ‘What is a Facebook?’

‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Anyway, if you’ve got all the answers, what do you need me for?’

‘Because there are some things I can’t work out. How did a man like you end up working for a man like Cain?’

He said nothing for a while, and neither did she, but he could feel her gaze boring into him.

‘I don’t work for Cain,’ he said at last. ‘I work for Dan Franklin.’

‘The man with the bad back?’

Drake nodded. ‘He and I served together in Afghanistan. We were part of a special task force sent in to capture Taliban bad guys. We became good friends, and when I left the regiment, he found a job for me with the Agency.’

‘Why did you leave?’

‘I’d rather not talk about it,’ he answered tersely. There were a lot of things about his time with 14th Special Operations Group that he wasn’t proud of, particularly the manner of his departure. He certainly wasn’t going to share such things with a woman he barely knew.

To his surprise, she didn’t push him. ‘Well, it seems we both have things we’d rather not talk about.’

Feeling uncomfortable, Drake switched on the radio. It took a few moments to seek out whatever tinpot station was playing locally, but when it did, the strains of Bob Marley’s ‘Three Little Birds’ filled the car.

‘No, thanks,’ Drake decided, reaching for the tuner.

‘Wait,’ Anya said.

He glanced over at her. She was sitting with her head resting against the seat, her hair whipped up by the breeze from the open window, her eyes closed. There was a look of such peace and serenity on her face that he couldn’t bring himself to change the station over.

‘Never had you pegged as a Bob Marley fan.’

‘It was the first song I heard when I came to America,’ she explained. ‘I was being driven to Langley for the first time, and it was playing on the radio. The driver asked if I minded him listening to it.’ She smiled a faint, wistful smile. ‘I was shocked. Nobody had ever asked for my permission to do anything. Nobody had ever cared what I thought or what I wanted. It was the first time I really felt like I was … free. And it felt good.’

Drake said nothing. There was nothing he
could
say to that. The best thing he could do was shut up and let her enjoy the song.

Not for the first time, he found himself wondering about his strange, enigmatic passenger; who she really was, where she came from, and where she was going.

They made good progress throughout the day, stopping only once at a gas station in South Carolina to refuel and use the restrooms. Thankfully there were no idiot locals on hand this time, and they left without incident, Drake nursing a large cappuccino and his companion a bottle of Coke.

They ended up driving straight through Georgia without stopping, crossing the state line into Florida by mid-afternoon. As they continued southward, the terrain around them changed, with trees and fields giving way to palm trees and swampland. They were in a subtropical climate now, with high humidity, soaring temperatures and unpredictable weather.

At one point about an hour after crossing over from Georgia, the heavens opened with such ferocity that Drake could barely make out the road ahead. Even the wipers working overtime couldn’t clear the monsoon-like deluge from the windscreen. Traffic on the highway slowed to a crawl as the onslaught continued.

Then, fifteen minutes later, the sun was beating down from an almost cloudless sky, leaving only the steaming tarmac as evidence of the intense downpour.

‘Mind if I ask you something?’ Drake began.

He was coming to understand that there was a right way and a wrong way to question his companion. She didn’t like to talk about herself for long periods, didn’t like answering too many questions all at once. If he pushed too hard, she would clam up and say nothing, simply choosing to ignore him.

Information had to be teased out of her, yielded up in small pieces. She had to be given time to accept it.

‘No.’

‘What’s the deal with you and Cain?’

She stiffened up. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Come on. You know what I’m talking about. You’re not just another operative to him, are you?’

She was silent for a long moment, and he wondered if perhaps she was going to give him the silent treatment again. ‘He recruited me into the Agency, when I first came to America. He gave me a chance when no one else would, and over time we came to respect each other. For a while, I believed there was nothing we couldn’t do together. I think even he believed it too … for a while.’

‘You were friends?’

She glanced away, but he’d seen the look in her eyes. ‘We were close,’ she answered, refusing to elaborate.

‘So what happened?’

‘He was willing to compromise. I wasn’t.’

She would say no more, and he knew better than to ask.

Chapter 43

AN HOUR LATER
, Drake pulled into the parking lot of a vast shopping mall and killed the engine. They were on the outskirts of Daytona, a popular tourist trap on the shores of the Atlantic, and a mecca for NASCAR fans the world over. But Drake wasn’t here for racing.

They needed supplies. They had exhausted their food and drink some time ago; a fact that both of them were growing increasingly aware of. But more than that, they needed a change of clothes. Anya had a plan to secure money and passports for them both, but for it to work, she needed something a little more stylish than jeans and a ripped leather jacket.

In that regard, he couldn’t think of a better place than the shopping mall before them. It was the size of a small town itself, filled with dozens of clothing outlets. If Anya couldn’t find what she needed here, they were in trouble.

But as he got out, his stiff legs protesting, Anya remained in the car. She was staring at the huge building like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

He ducked his head back in. ‘You coming or what?’

‘Shouldn’t we try somewhere smaller?’ she suggested, looking uncomfortable and agitated. ‘We passed shops on the way.’

‘Not unless you want an “I love Spring Break” T-shirt and a beer hat,’ he said with a wry grin. ‘This place is
big
, it’s busy and it’s anonymous. In short, it’s exactly what we need. So come on.’

Resigning herself to the inevitable, she stepped out of the car and followed him towards one of the building’s many entrances, looking like a sullen teenager being dragged along by her father.

Passing through the automatic doors, Drake found himself in an air-conditioned world of organised chaos. The place was built on three levels, with escalators and lifts running between them, packed with people of all ages. Security guards zoomed around on Segways, flitting between groups of shoppers like sharks circling schools of fish.

Salesmen at temporary stalls enthusiastically touted everything from cellphones to novelty balloons to chocolates and beauty treatments. A big plastic flight simulator was shuddering and pitching back and forth, accompanied by delighted screams from within. Music was playing from a dozen different sources, all blending together with excited chatter, cellphone chimes and PA announcements into an indistinguishable white noise.

Checking the multi-level store directory, he found that the mall was laid out like a giant crucifix, and that they were standing at the end of the eastern wing. The nearest general purpose clothes outlet was about halfway down their wing, on the floor above.

‘Right, off we go. Looks like J.C. Penney’s about to relieve us of some cash,’ he said, heading for the nearest escalator.

Anya followed behind, but she wasn’t walking with her usual quiet confidence. The gap between them widened as her pace slowed, though Drake didn’t notice amidst the chaos. Finally the woman stopped altogether and just stared around, eyes wide.

She was overwhelmed. As grim and tortuous as her imprisonment in Khatyrgan had been, she’d found a certain security in the monotony. A single 6-by-8-foot prison cell had grown to encompass her entire world. The lack of stimulus had sharpened her awareness of even minor changes, made her acutely aware of her surroundings.

But here there was so much going on that her brain couldn’t cope. She had never liked crowded places at the best of times and had always detested shopping malls, and that feeling had grown stronger in recent years.

She felt panicked, breathless, trapped by the thronging press of humanity all around. Despite their vastly different ages, sizes, shapes and genders, all of them somehow blended together into an indistinguishable mass of people. But not her. She was different.

A teenage girl walked past. 5 foot 5, 130 pounds, dark hair, no obvious weapons. She eyed Anya with a mixture of curiosity and derision. She could sense something was wrong. She sensed someone who was different and she didn’t like it.

A young man in a business suit and open collar passed by on her other side, chatting into a cellphone and almost bumping into her. She jumped back instinctively, having to fight hard not to put her arms up to protect herself. She did an automatic threat assessment.

Male, late twenties, blond hair, lean build, 5 foot 11, 160 pounds. He didn’t move like a fighter. Was he armed? He could have a weapon in a pancake holster at his back.

The man gave her an irritable look and sidestepped her, but there were others behind. There were others everywhere.

She didn’t belong here. She knew it. Did they know it too? Were they casting surreptitious glances her way, wondering who she was and what she was doing here? She had no idea. Normally she could read people easily, could sense if she was being watched, but here it was impossible.