Seeds of Iniquity (In the Company of Killers, #4)(21)

“You didn’t hear anything?” she asks with faint disbelief.

I shake my head. “No,” I say and fit both of my hands about her elbows. “I ordered the audio turned off the moment I saw that she had you where she wanted you. You were smart when you went in there, Izabel; you did well at turning the tables on her. It may not have produced the results you hoped for, but you did well.”

Izabel looks behind me at the wall for a moment, and then says, “I’m surprised you didn’t rush in there when she attacked me,” but I get the feeling it had been something else entirely she had wanted to say.

I smile lightly and run my hands up and down the backs of her arms.

“No, you were right before,” I say, “about taking care of yourself”—I laugh under my breath—“Dorian and Niklas, however, were ready to go in there and rescue you.”

She looks up at me, her eyebrows crumpling in her forehead.

“Niklas was going to rescue me?” She scoffs. “I’m sure that was just for show.”

“I don’t think so,” I tell her, but drop that subject because it’s not the important one.

Stepping up and pulling her closer, I press my lips to her forehead. “Whatever you told her in there,” I say, going back, “you don’t have to tell me, or anyone else until you’re ready. And if you’re never ready, I can accept that, too. The past can remain in the past.”

Her gaze strays toward the floor.

“Sometimes it can’t,” she says more to herself than to me.

Her eyes meet mine again and the moment shifts.

“But I did get something out of her,” she says. “No idea if she was telling the truth about it, but if I go by my instincts, I’d say she was.”

James Woodard appears at the end of the hall suddenly, walking toward us with a sheet of paper clasped in his hand. I hope it is promising news.

“What did she tell you?” I ask, turning back to Izabel.

The surveillance room door opens then and Niklas appears in the doorway.

“She’s talkin’ shit in there now,” he announces, jerking his head to one side to indicate Nora on the screens. “More demands. I say we just go in there and put a bullet in that pretty head of hers. Or better yet, take out her kneecaps first.”

Niklas glances at Izabel, making note of her state of being, but he refrains from being himself toward her, further proving to me that he cares for her more than he’s letting on.

I look to Woodard.

He shakes his head. “Nothin’,” he says, holding up the printout and I take it into my hand peering down into the text. “There are no records. No fingerprint match—the blood results we won’t know until tomorrow. I ran her first name and description through my databases and the only thing that came up even remotely resembling her was a woman out of Tallahassee. Twenty-six. Nora Anders. And a few others, but none of them were her. I mean we didn’t really expect her to give us her real name.”

“So we’re pretty much still on level one,” Dorian says, “while she’s on level ten and knows more about us than we know about each other. I hate to say it, but that’s a little disturbing considering our profession. How can this one woman know so much about us, when Vonnegut, who runs the largest and most sophisticated assassination and spy organization in the world, can’t even find us hiding in plain sight in Boston?”

“There are one of two answers to that question,” I say. “Either she’s not just ‘one woman’ and is part of an organization herself, or she’s just really good and is playing us like chess pieces.”

I am usually good at figuring a person out. It has been my job since I was first initiated into The Order as a boy to know my enemy inside and out before they know I even exist. My gut tells me that this woman is not part of any organizations—at least not anymore. Her skill indicates that she may have been at one time, but this game she is playing is personal rather than professional.

If Izabel were not involved, things would be going much differently for this ‘Nora’ than they are. I’m only going along with it for Izabel. I don’t like it, but it is what it is. I’ll play her game for now, but not forever.

Izabel walks past me and Niklas and goes into the room. Woodard and I follow.

“Well, we may not know who she is or anything about her,” Izabel says, crossing her arms and looking into the large screen, “but she did tell me that her father was the one who cut off the tip of her pinky finger.”

Nora is sitting in the same spot, now with her feet propped on the table, crossed at the ankles, her black heels swaying side to side, her long legs like landing strips stretched out before her dressed in black leather.

“It’s not much, but it’s something,” Izabel adds.

“So she has daddy issues,” Dorian chimes in, sitting in front of the screens with a boot on the table. A paper cup of coffee sits to his left; steam rises from the opening.

“Maybe she’s one of your daughters, Woodard,” Niklas says with laughter in his voice. Then he taps Woodard on the arm with the back of his hand, a smile slipping across his unshaven face. “Damn, I didn’t know you were such a ladies’ man.”

Woodard starts to smile, always seeking acceptance from the rest of us, but it turns to a look of shame instead. He shakes his head and sits down in a chair in front of the screens.