Flames (A Special Agent Novel Book 3) Read online

  “You want to become my pin cushion for the evening, Thirty-Eight?”

  “That’s funny,” I said, “because I thought I already had. I have more holes in me than a cheese grater, right now, asshole.” My voice was flat, but I still managed to lace it with irony. Adie ignored the comment.

  “Who do you work for?” I swear if I head that question one more time I was going to kill myself and save Adie the job.

  “Activity Advertising. I know you don’t believe me,” I wailed, “but it’s the truth.” It wasn’t, but I was a damn good actress and while the performance might not have netted me an Oscar, it was up there with the best of them.

  “Who sent you here?” Adie’s voice was firm and unyielding. It was clear he meant business.

  “No one sent me,” I sobbed, finally breaking down. “No one bar my master, for what was supposed to be a fun event and a brief spell with someone new and exciting. How could they have sent me? You picked me, remember? What is all this about?” Before I knew what was happening, there was a sharp prick to the back of my neck, and then my world imploded.

  Adie had known I would never ask for help, so he’d taken it upon himself to deliver some pain relief. It hit me within a few seconds, and I can’t even begin to describe how grateful I was. A minute ago my body was a raw, red, bleeding mess of scrapes and scratches, and I was beginning to feel like a battleground – torn, bloody, and utterly destroyed from the inside out.

  The rush of the heroin hit me quickly, and euphoria spiralled inside my head, as thrilling and exciting as it was pleasurable. Standing in front of me, Adie continued his knife work as if nothing had happened, and he worked quickly. Maybe the man did have a heart after all. If I wasn't mistaken, he was trying to get the worst out of the way while I was under the influence, and I was absurdly grateful. Not enough to develop Stockholm syndrome, but still very thankful, none the less. Did this mean my rescue was still on or was that being overly optimistic? Probably. In any case, it was too much effort to think. I just wanted to drift away, and I was happy to let myself fly off in any daydream that would have me.

  Adie’s fingers and three further shots of heroin got me through our session. All the time he kept asking me questions, and he had to keep reminding me to concentrate on my answers. His delectable mouth was murmuring in my ear more times than I cared to count, telling me to focus for the cameras. He told me when to moan, when to scream, and when to cry out. He even told me what to say, when speaking was almost more effort than I could cope with. Somehow the man got me through a further five or six hours of knife play with my sanity intact – well, almost.

  When the session was over, I was so exhausted I could barely keep my eyes open. When Adie had finally had enough, he untied me from the post and carefully sat me back down in my chair. Although the effects of the heroin had now begun to wane, my body still wasn’t feeling the full effects of pain that had been doled out to me. It would before long, but I had another hour or so, before that would be a problem. Right now, I was just happy that my arms weren’t being stretched to twice their normal size.

  “Turns out that intense torture gives me an appetite, Thirty-Eight. I’m off to get something to eat, which means you get a little while longer to live, before I come back and get ready to do the honours. I don’t like to start anything until the clean up crew get here with their plastic sheets, else the slaves have a terrible time trying to get the blood stains off the floor, and you’ve created quite a bit of work for them already, haven’t you?” More chatter for the camera, but I read the underlying message. You need to get yourself out of this mess before I come back. It was a do or die situation, and he was making that abundantly clear.

  Coming in close, he whispered, “I don’t know another female alive that could have taken what you just did out there. If you don’t make it through today it will be a crying shame, Thirty-Eight. The last thing I want to have to do is kill you.”

  Adie then did something that completely threw me. He bent down towards my face, captured my lips in his, and kissed me as if he was a dying man being granted his last request. His lips were infinitely gentle, and his tongue a smooth, velvet spear that slowly coaxed mine into life. This was a side to Adie I had never seen before - a soft, and tender side. I immediately saw stars. Maybe it was the drugs, or maybe it was the impending doom of death, but my body decided to disobey me in nearly every sense, opening up for him and offering him all that he wanted and more. If I could have been free of my restraints, I would have fucked him on the floor then and there. Jesus Christ. When he finally released me, the hold he had over me was nearly my undoing. One big, fat tear dribbled down my cheek and I’m not sure if it was in fury or frustration.

  “Are you finally going to cry for me, Thirty-Eight?” A half-smile ghosted itself upon his lips, and he ran the tip of a finger down my cheek, tracing the tear’s trajectory. Scooping it up, he then put it to his lips and sucked it deep inside his mouth.

  I had never been jealous of my tears before. This was a first.

  Chapter Six - Lois

  The last thing Adie did, before he left me alone in the room, was to turn off the series of light switches located by the left side of the door. Flicking them all at once, the room was plunged into darkness as his parting gift. I say gift, because although the room was now eerily dark, soulless and creepy, the cameras surrounding me were virtually crippled unless they had infrared or thermal imaging installed. I’d just have to hope they didn’t.

  Battling against my weary body, I pushed myself into taking action. All I wanted to do was nod off and sink into blissful oblivion. Exhaustion didn’t even begin to describe how I was feeling. The heroin had certainly taken its toll on me, but I knew if I succumbed to the lure of sleep, I would almost certainly be dead very shortly. Figuring I had somewhere in the region of thirty minutes to an hour to get out of my depressingly perilous predicament, time was of the essence. Although I had no idea what I was going to do when I got out of my restraints, I did know that I wasn’t going to do a hell of a lot if I was still in them. My number one priority was to get my arms back and I could figure the rest out while on the hop.

  The glimmer of good news on the horizon was that Adie had now fastened me in plastic cable ties, rather than handcuffs. These were much easier to work with. The best way to break out of cable ties is by having enough movement and momentum to smack them down upon something. The stress of the manoeuvre usually breaks them apart. Trying to wriggle out of the things was virtually impossible, and for those people that will tell you they can dislocate their thumb and sneak out of them that way, they’d be lying – and joint dislocation is not to be recommended - take my word for it. On another note of good fortune, my arms had been tied around the chair back, as this chair had no arms, and due to the fact it only had three legs – only one of my limbs had been fastened to the bottom. Perhaps there was a God, after all.

  With that thought uppermost in mind, I braced myself for a whole world of hurt, and then pulled my arms out behind me. Working them up as high as possible, I then smashed them into the chair back as hard as I could. The first time I got nada. The subsequent second, third and fourth times, I also got nothing – bar a very bruised set of wrists. The fifth time, I decided to give it my all, mostly because I was nearing the end of my tether. Banging my wrists against the chair back with almost inhuman effort, as if I was going to break the damn slat of wood in two, the plastic finally snapped. Stifling the sob that wanted to escape as my poor hands throbbed in earnest, I rubbed them as gently as I could to get my circulation going again.

  Problem one was dealt with, but I had several more to go. Now I needed to free my leg, which had been fastened just below the knee joint, to the chair leg. Now I could throw myself on the floor and try and break the chair, but if I wanted to pretend to be tied up when Adie came back for me, that wasn’t going to work – and my escape plan involved using my tormentor to get the hell out of this place because I wasn’t going to make it on my o
wn. What I needed was one of Adie’s knives. He hadn’t been stupid enough to leave them in the room, unfortunately. That didn’t leave me very many options. I needed to fall on the floor and slide my leg free. Then I needed to break the tie, and arrange it carefully around my leg. As long as Adie thought I was tied up, that was all that mattered.

  Sighing, I braced myself for another smack – this time with the floor. Unfortunately, it needed to be a quiet one. Tipping myself forward, I landed heavily on my knees, but any other way would have made too much noise. Swearing colourfully inside my head, I then rolled over on to my back, with my tied leg above me, and slowly, using my arms to prop me up, I slid the cable tie down over the chair leg. It required some serious contortionist moves when we got down to the bottom, but thankfully, I'm a flexible girl. As soon as my leg was free, I grabbed the cable tie and released it, making a much larger loop that I could easily get out of. Hopefully no one would be looking at my legs when they walked in because if they did, I was a goner.

  My final dilemma was going to be finding something I could use as a weapon. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m good with my hands, and if necessary I could get Adie in a chokehold, but it would be very awkward walking anywhere like that. A knife would have been perfect, but I already knew they’d left with my tormentor. That left the drugs. Had Adie taken those with him, too? I didn’t remember him leaving with the black briefcase, so there was a good chance that was still around here somewhere. My eyes, which had now grown quite accustomed to the darkness, scanned the floor around me for anything that might come in handy. Sure enough the briefcase was over by the wall, still lying open, and full to the brim with nastiness. All I needed to do was pick something particularly evil, fill up a syringe, and conceal it in my hand, which would be kept behind the chair.

  There was only one problem with that. It would be a good idea to know what I was putting in the syringe first. As there was no decent light in the room, I would need to creep up to the double doors and hold the vials close to the gap underneath them, so I could read the labels. While I could fill my syringe with just about anything and bluff my way out of this situation, ideally I wanted something that would knock Adie out or kill him if necessary.

  Tiptoeing up to the doors with the briefcase in tow, I listened for any signs of life as I got down low on my stomach. Thankfully, I couldn’t hear a thing. Lying down flat, I reached for a couple of vials inside the case and did my best to study the contents – which wasn’t easy as the writing was tiny and the light was terrible. Straining my eyes, I finally managed to read, ‘Sodium Amytal’ and ‘Sodium Pentothal.’ Neither of those were ideal. I picked up another two from the bottom of the case. After some careful turning of the bottle this way and that, I found myself with ‘Dexedrine’ and ‘Phenobarbital.’ Hmm, interesting.

  Before coming on this assignment, James had made me do research on all sorts of drugs. He would quiz me on what they were used to treat, the side effects, and if there was any possible antidote to them. I'd had to read through a couple of weighty tomes, one of which was a ‘Pocket Drug Guide for Nurses.' Thankfully, he didn't expect to memorise everything, but I had been told to pay particular attention to amphetamines and barbiturates. This was how I now knew that ‘Dexedrine' was an amphetamine, and ‘Phenobarbital' was a barbiturate. It was probably in Adie's kit for the ‘Twilight Zone' experience James had warned me about. I shuddered. On the plus side, this was good news. I could probably do with a shot of amphetamines, and I could use the barbiturate on Adie if nothing better presented itself. What I was really looking for was Scopolamine, though. I'd rather have something that could kill if necessary. If I put Adie to sleep and he came hunting for me again, I didn't think our reunion would be a pretty one.

  Ten more vials went against the chink of light under the door until I found the one I was looking for, and plenty more besides. Fantastic. Now I had the perfect plan. I’d had a feeling Adie would have it in the case. All I had to do now was load up my syringes and sit tight.

  Tearing a clean syringe out of a plastic packet, I loaded it up with Dexedrine and pushed the whole lot into my upper left arm. The after effects of the heroin had made me sluggish, and I needed every advantage I could get if I wanted to make it out of this joint alive. When I’d done that, I threw the used syringe in the briefcase, and picked up another. It took seconds to load this one with Scopolamine. This gave me options. If I gave Adie a little, it would just make him sleepy and chatty, but if I gave him the whole lot, I had a decent shot at killing him. At the moment I wasn’t sure which avenue I’d go down, but I’d figure it out as I went along.

  Tidying the contents of the briefcase up, I put it back in exactly the same place as I’d found it. Moving my chair back to its original position, I picked up the cable tie and placed it under my knee, tying it very loosely around my leg. If I stretched my leg out from the chair, the tension would keep it in place. When I pushed my leg back flush with the chair, the cable would drop to the floor. Thankfully, I had no shoes to worry about, so it would be easy enough to flick the thing out of my way when the time came. Clutching the syringe tightly in my fingers, I placed both hands behind the back of the chair, to give the appearance I was still tightly bound. After that there was nothing left to do bar wait and pray.

  The Dexedrine didn’t take long to get to work. The chronic exhaustion I’d been feeling lifted, and my brain began to regain some of its normal focus. Being a good assassin is mostly down to reflexes, accuracy, and luck. How quickly you can get to your gun, how accurately you can aim it, both when standing still and on the run, and how good that little sixth sense is which warns of impending danger. Most people in my line of business don’t get to live long and fruitful lives. Some manage to get out with chronic injuries, if they’re lucky, but most end up dead. I had a ninety-five percent chance of ending up in that bracket this evening, unless I was very lucky.

  Questions began flooding through my head as I began to run scenarios of what was going to happen when I pulled my next stunt. How many people would Adie bring back with him? Would he have a gun on him? Would I be able to get close enough to him to pull this off? If I did, could I get out of the building using Adie as leverage? Or should I forget all about escape and just try and get close enough to break the man's neck? That was my objective, after all. Only a few days ago, and I could have completed my task without a second thought. What had changed in that time? Adie was responsible for the mess my life had become. I needed to get rid of him. Still, if there was a chance I could escape from this building and then get rid of him, perhaps I owed it to myself to try and take it. Having been faced with the almost certain prospect of death, I now realised I wasn't as keen to go down that path as I'd thought I was. It was a little too late for regrets, though. I'd made my bed, and it was time to exorcise my demons.

  When the double doors began to open, my body was on red alert. Adrenaline was pumping through my veins, and every single nerve ending felt jumpy and wired – but I did my best to present an image that was exactly the opposite. At the moment, my head lolled upon my chest, my eyes were blinking sleepily, and I’d calmed my breathing rate so you could barely see my chest rise. My body language would hopefully lull the bastards into a false sense of security, until I got a chance to act. I’d just have to hope someone didn’t shoot me in the meantime.

  “Spread the plastic sheets just in front of her. Then prep the bathtub in the clean room. You can come back for her in an hour or so.” Adie’s commands were barked, and several guys in white suits rushed to follow his orders. It didn’t take them long to place the massive, clear plastic sheets out in front of me. They obviously didn’t want to spend too much energy on mopping the floor after I was dead. Large knots of fear tightened themselves inside my chest, but they would not get the best of me. Pushing past all the nastiness that was trying its best to suffocate me, I stared at the man before me and waited.

  “How are you feeling, Thirty-Eight?” Adie began walking towards me, while
screwing a silencing muzzle onto the barrel of his gun. He obviously didn’t want to upset his hotel guests by making too much noise, which was jolly thoughtful of him. The man was such a sweetheart.

  “Absolutely terrific,” I replied groggily, doing my best to keep my cover intact.

  “Should I say my prayers now?”

  Adie then looked up from what he was doing and smiled. “I didn’t take you for the religious type, Thirty-Eight, but as you’ve mentioned it – do you have any last requests that don’t take more than thirty seconds to complete? We’re on a bit of a schedule here, and you have a important appointment with several litres of very hot lye.”

  I couldn’t help the shudder of horror that accompanied that sentence, but I didn’t let it deter me from my goal now that he’d given me the perfect opening.

  “Well, now that you mention it, I do have one,” I said breezily. Anxiety now clawed through me, battling for supremacy with fear, and a bead of sweat trickled down my back, stinging everything it touched. It was all I could do to keep my breathing smooth and even. Just a few seconds, I told myself. Stay strong.

  “Oh, do tell.” Adie aimed his gun over my head and fired a test shot. It ripped into the wall behind me, sending shards of brick and plaster flying. Even though I couldn’t see them, I heard them scattering around as they fell. Fuck. The odds were already stacked in his favour. Still, I’d faced worse.

  Looking at him through lowered lashes, I blinked once, staring into his soulless, almost black eyes as I whispered, “I want another kiss - one that will send me to my grave in style, Mr Dumortier. Think you can manage that?” My smile might have been lopsided, but the challenge was there.

  Adie’s lips twitched, as he considered my proposal. Would he be stupid enough to fall for this? I held my breath as I waited to find out. A few slow seconds ticked by as I watched him tilt his head, and I could have sworn the man was almost certain I was up to something. Positive he would say ‘no’ to my request, I felt myself begin to deflate, but then I watched on in electrified silence as he then holstered his gun in the back of his trousers.