Seeds of Iniquity

  “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.

  “Well, I was thinking the same thing by the time I left that room,” Woodard says. “So, I sent my blood sample along with hers down with Carter. If she’s related to me, we’ll know in twenty-four hours.”

  “That’s cutting it close,” Dorian says. “She gave us forty-eight hours to figure this out.” His blond head snaps around and looks up at me from the chair. “Tessa will not die.”

  I nod, but say nothing in response.

  “I think we should all compare blood samples with hers,” Woodard says.

  “Fine by me,” Niklas says with a shrug. “I know for a fact I don’t have any damn kids. Besides, even if I could have kids, she can’t be older than twenty-four, twenty-five? Can’t be mine. I would’ve had to been banging her mother at, what—thirteen?”

  “You weren’t having sex at thirteen?” Woodard asks.

  Niklas’ eyebrows draw together. “Actually no,” he says matter-of-factly. “I was too busy being beat to near death by my father and The Order while I was being trained.”

  Silence falls over the room for a brief moment.

  Then Niklas laughs and says to Woodard, “So you were getting laid at thirteen? What the hell happened to you?” He laughs and looks Woodard’s large size and balding head over with amusement.

  “Age happened to me.”

  Their lack of focus on the current situation is vexing.

  “Look,” I speak out, “if she’s not Woodard’s daughter, she could be someone’s sister. Let’s just see what the blood says. No sense in speculating.”

  Dorian nods at me privately, thanking me for furthering it along, and he turns back to the screens.

  “There was something else,” Izabel speaks up. “When I told her what she wanted to know, she seemed…” she pauses, searching for the right word, “I don’t know it just seemed like she felt bad. But I know it’s bullshit.”

  “Yeah, it’s bullshit all right,” Niklas says, “just like I said. We may not know anything about her except that she’s gorgeous and fuckable, has a dangerous right-hook and a mouth worse than Izzy’s, but don’t let the bitch get under your skin.” He glances at Woodard and then Izabel with accusation. “Both of you gave up your secrets too easily, if you want to know my opinion.”

  “No one asked for it,” Izabel says sourly.

  “Hey, she knew about my affairs,” Woodard says defensively.

  “Actually, she didn’t know anything until you told her,” Niklas says. “You were spilling your guts within five minutes of being alone with her.”

  “H-Hey, I-I was just doing what she wanted. My daughters’ lives are at stake. Didn’t see any r-reason t-to drag it out.”


  “You still caved too fast,” Niklas says and looks at the screens. “A thousand dollars she doesn’t know anything. She’s a con artist.”

  “Actually, Niklas,” Izabel says, turning her head at an angle and looking up at him, “she knows a lot.”

  I listen quietly, watching the pain creep back up into Izabel’s features as she recalls her moment with Nora. I want to know what she told her, what this secret is about the woman I love that’s so terrible she has to keep it from me.

  “I went in that room with the same suspicions as you, Niklas,” she goes on. “I wasn’t about to tell her anything until she could prove she had anything on me at all. If she couldn’t, I was just going to make something up. Play her at her own game. I’m a good enough actress, I could’ve pulled it off. Turned on the waterworks and made her believe that the ‘deep dark’ secret I was confessing was real.” She pauses and looks back at Nora in the screen. Her shoulders rise and fall with a troubled breath. “But she knew. She knew…”

  The room falls silent again.

  Finally, Niklas puts up his hands, surrendering, and says, “I’m going in next then. Because I still call bullshit. And if not, if she really is the real deal, then we better make damn sure she doesn’t get out of this building alive.”

  Quietly, I agree.

  He pops a cigarette between his lips and walks toward the exit. “But she won’t get anything out of me because there’s nothing to get. So this should be interesting.”

  Yes. This should be interesting.

  The door opens, flooding the dimly-lit surveillance room with bright light from the hallway.

  “And leave the audio on,” Niklas says with the unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. “I got nothing to hide. Like some of us.” The bright light blinks out and bathes us in the glow from the screens again when the door closes behind him.

  Izabel’s eyes skirt mine, stung by the meaning behind my brother’s words, and then she nervously turns back to the screen.

  8

  Niklas

  My cigarette is lit by the time I go into the room with Nora, whoever the fuck she is—right now she’s just a pretty piece of ass with a death wish.

  The sound of my boots tapping across the tile is the only sound as I make my way toward her, but that self-possessed smile she wears is louder. Silky blonde hair rests about her shoulders, tumbling down the little crevices between her arms and her breasts, which are nice to look at, I admit. She wears a see-through black silk blouse, long-sleeved, with a black bra on display underneath, busting with…I don’t know, large C’s surely. I don’t give a shit what Izabel said about men and what they like about a woman and what it says about them—I don’t have a preference; I like everything, so I can only imagine what that must say about me.

  Smoke streams from my lips as I sit down in the empty chair across from her. I hunch over forward with my legs apart, propping my elbows on the tops of my thighs just above my knees. Cigarette ashes tumble onto the floor as I realize there’s no ashtray in the room.

  Nora smiles, and although her deep red lipstick has been wiped away, her plump lips are still red and I can picture them wrapped around my cock quite nicely.

  I smile back with that thought and raise the filter to my lips once more.

  “I thought for sure Dorian Flynn would be next,” she says as she quietly looks me over. “Since I have his ex-wife and all.”

  “I insisted.”

  “That surprises me,” she says.

  I take another drag and then lean back in the chair, slouching against it. I cross my arms over my chest, the cigarette still burning between my fingers situated over my left bicep.

  “And why’s that?” I ask, but really I don’t care.

  Nora gets up on tall, leather-covered legs and black-heeled shoes and begins to walk back and forth slowly behind her chair. Her ass is round and perfect in those tight pants, and it takes me a second to shake off the distraction and realize that her ankles are no longer bound.

  “The better question would be what’d you use to get the cuffs unlocked? Got a key hidden away inside of you somewhere?”—I take another quick puff—“I could do a cavity search. Right here right now with everybody watching.”

  She smiles faintly and looks off at the wall for a moment.

  “And you’d probably enjoy it,” she says, “wouldn’t you?” Her eyes fall on mine, laced with implication.

  “Yeah, I’m not gonna lie, I’d like the hell out of it.” I take one last pull and hold the smoke deep in my lungs, and add with a strained voice, “but don’t mistake that for some dewy-eyed fucker easily falling for your shit. I could fuck you all day long and still chain you back up in this room and let you rot.” I put the cigarette out on the sole of my boot and toss the butt on the floor. “Now sit your little ass down before I put you down.” My gun, pulled from the back of my pants, is trained on her.

  The smile in her eyes fades just a little bit, enough for me to know that I pissed her off. But she sits down anyway, crossing one long leg over the other, stretching the black leather even tighter over her thighs. She crosses her arms and rests her back against the chair, tilting her head gently to one side. The skin underneath her left eye is puffy and discolored. There’s a small cut across her neck just above her shoulder-blade. She has a couple of scars I didn’t notice before—one on her chin, one across her throat—but the missing tip of her pinky finger is what I can’t help but look at. It’s probably always the one thing about her that anybody looks at when they’re not looking at her ass or her legs or her tits.

  “Don’t start in on the finger,” she says, noticing. “Izabel beat you to the punch on that one and it’s an old subject.”

  I grin and say, “Or, it’s a touchy subject.”

  Nora folds her hands together on top of the table and leans forward. “Time is running out, Niklas,” she says, dropping the suggestive smiles and the playful attitude and getting down to business. “So how about we get to your confession?”

  I smile lightly, shaking my head. “Well sure, that’s what I came here for,” I answer, my voice tinged with sarcasm. “But mostly I’m eager to see how you plan to make me confess something that doesn’t exist. You see, I’m not like Woodard, who blows his load the second the panties drop. Or Izabel, who still has a lot to learn—”

  “Is that what you think of her?” Nora says with a hint of accusation. “That she’s just a little girl, trying to make a name for herself in this deadly underground world that she just”—her eyes harden with emphasis—“Doesn’t. Quite. Belong in.”

  She smiles and holds up a slender finger.

  “Or, is there something more going on?”

  I laugh. “Let me stop you right there,” I say, pointing at her. “If you’re getting around to accusing me of being in love with my brother’s woman or some dumb shit like that, then you’re gonna be very disappointed.” I shake my head at the absurdness of it.

  Nora just sits there, smiling at me, and it makes me uncomfortable as much as it irritates the shit out of me.

  “No, of course not,” she finally says, also with sarcasm. “I’m not implying that at all. You shot her once. You despise her, right?” There’s challenge in her question. “And for what?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, growing more irritated the more she talks. “You’re supposed to be the one who knows everything; why don’t you fucking tell me?”

  “Jealousy,” she says, “or perhaps the more suitable word would be heartbreak.”

  I feel my eyebrows crumpling in my forehead. I reach up absently and scratch the stubble of my face.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Truly, I have no fucking idea.

  Nora’s eyes soften on me for a moment, causing further confusion.

  “You’re jealous of your brother because he has something that you don’t”—I grit my teeth behind closed lips—“because he has something you once had. And it still kills you to think about her to this day.”

/>   I round my chin, my breathing getting thicker. “You’re pushing the wrong buttons, bitch.”

  “Oh, I know,” she says matter-of-factly and unafraid, “but then that’s the whole point, isn’t it?”

  Both of my hands come down on the table, a loud bang resonating within the room.

  “Why don’t you just get to the point,” I rip out the words, grinding my jaw. “In fact, let me spell this out for you—I’m not going to willingly start talking about shit in my past; I don’t care about your threats. And I still have no secrets. Shit I don’t like to talk about—yeah, we all have that—but secrets, something I’m supposed to be ashamed of or embarrassed by; there’s nothing.”

  “This isn’t all about shame or embarrassment or guilt, Niklas, this is also about pain.”

  Suddenly, Nora is no longer the conniving blonde bitch sitting across the table from me; something shifts in her eyes and I can’t help but feel like she’s trying to be…consoling.

  But I don’t fall for it.

  I get up, pushing the chair back a little across the floor, and I begin to pace. My anger turns to soft laughter.

  “You’re a good manipulator,” I say, smiling, “I’ll give you that, but I’m the wrong man to be trying that skill out on.”

  “You loved her so much,” she says, ignoring me. “A man who—as astonishing as it is—had a harder time falling in love than even Fredrik Gustavsson. Fredrik, no he sought love all his life. He wanted it because he was alone in his own dark and brutal world, and had always been—that man needs love to survive.” She stands up and begins to walk toward me slowly. “But you, Niklas, you never wanted any part of it. You stayed away from it at all costs, didn’t you?”

  “Are you asking?” I say, my angry eyes following her every move. “Is this where you fish for information to use against me, pretending to know, but really not knowing for sure?”

  “Say what you want,” she goes on, “but it’s the truth and you’re not denying it.”