Ripped: A Blood Money Novel Read online

  “Official.” Freya stopped walking, her hand hovering over his arm but not touching. Never touching. Tobias didn’t exactly give off a warm and fuzzy vibe, even with family. “You don’t fool me, you control freak. Official or not, every detail of what you plan for her is already set in stone. There won’t be a single deviation from the moment you say ‘go.’ So why not tell me what happens once you let her leave that prison cell?”

  That prison cell being their final destination, at the end of this hallway. A large steel door had been fitted into the curved brick archway of the original subway tunnel, a handprint and retina scanner mounted on the wall to its right. Fluted-glass sconces with bronze accents flanked either side of the door, the mesh of old world and new seamless.

  Behind the electronically monitored triple-locked system sat a woman he couldn’t shake. When he closed his eyes at night, hers was the face he pictured. When he woke in the morning, she was his first thought. How to bend her. How to break her.

  How to get his vengeance against the monsters who had tortured his beloved sister. “Who says I’m going to let her out of here? Maybe I’ve decided to keep her as a pet.” He feigned a thoughtful mien. “I’ve always thought I might be a cat person, at heart.”

  For a long moment, Freya stared at him, the deep green of her eyes gleaming in the hallway’s ambient lighting. “You’re a cold one, Tobias Faraday.” The cadence of Northern Ireland that Tobias knew she had fought so hard to suppress leaked through as she spoke. “I hope we’re never on opposite sides of a battlefield.”

  “We won’t be, Freya. We’re family.” And it was the truth. Family—even the Quinns, who were cousins by marriage, not blood—was never the enemy. “But I will tell you one thing, how’s that?”

  Scowling, the redheaded analyst marched away from him, down the hall toward the door. “You’re placating me.”

  “Does that mean you don’t want me to tell you?”

  “Tell me or I’ll sic Keir on you.”

  Tobias felt his lips curve. “Your brother doesn’t scare me.” Whereas Keir Quinn usually scared just about everyone else he’d ever met, his appearance startlingly thug-like. “I need to get to Moscow. She—” he stared at the cell “—is my ticket in.”

  Freya paused, her expression considering. “Yeah, I’m going to need you to explain that one, cousin. Afraid I’m not following your logic.”

  Any pretense at humor faded as they halted before the door. “She was embedded there for the better part of a year, deep inside the Midnight Bullet. Polnoch’ Pulya,” he reminded Freya, referring to the black-market arms organization known across the world as the most lethal of such organizations on current record. “Her cover with them isn’t entirely blown. It only looks as though she’s fallen off the grid for a week or two, presumably because of Nash.” At the mention of the monster who’d nearly killed his baby sister, the animal in the abyss snapped its teeth, forcing Tobias to tighten the reins. “She’s the best chance I have of getting to the man who ordered Beth’s torture.”

  “What about Gavin?”

  Gavin Bok, the Faraday operative who had once been Beth’s partner in the field but for the past year had been working his way up the ranks of Polnoch’ Pulya in an undercover capacity, had fallen out of contact shortly after he’d left Chicago—one day prior to Beth’s capture.

  That Beth had come out the other side of her ordeal sane and in one piece was nothing short of a miracle. But until the people responsible for said ordeal had been punished, permanently, Tobias wouldn’t rest easy. Gavin might be a friend and colleague, but there was too much at stake, with too many unanswered questions, to risk trusting a man who refused to pick up his satellite phone.

  Not that trusting the woman in the cell was a possibility. Trusting, no, but using... Yes, Tobias could, and would, use her in order to keep his family safe. “Until Gavin checks in, we have to assume he’s gone dark. We can’t compromise him in the interim.”

  Arms crossed, Freya leaned casually against the wall and nodded at the cell door. “You don’t own her, Tobias. You have to remember, I’ve worked with her for two years. She won’t dance to your tune just because you use your scary look on her.”

  He wasn’t interested in learning more about his supposed scary look. His interests started and stopped with making the woman in the cell do precisely what he needed her to do, and his adrenaline spiked at the thought. “I only need to play the right tune, my dear cousin. She’ll dance.”

  “I bow to your judgment.”

  Nodding absently, he worked to get his racing pulse under control. It was completely unlike him to be so affected by anything or anyone, and though his reaction concerned him, no hint of inner turmoil revealed itself on his placid surface. No turmoil ever did.

  Chest inexplicably tight, he placed his palm on the panel next to the door and leaned toward the retina scanner, fighting not to blink when the green light flared. As the locking mechanism unlatched, he flexed his hands at his sides and reminded himself that as much as he detested the actions of the woman inside the cell, he was above petty retaliation.

  The door opened, and there she was.

  Chandler McCallister stood from the welded-metal cot, bare toes peeking out from the hem of her loose sweats as they made contact with what was, no doubt, a freezing-cold concrete floor. Brown eyes blinked owlishly at him, then gleamed as she raked him with her gaze. “Hullo, keeper. Miss me again?”

  “Hardly.” Missing her was an impossibility when she remained constantly on his mind. What to do with her. What to think of her. “We need to talk.”

  Flipping her messy, honey-blond hair over her shoulder, she sauntered forward, but only one step. “I so adore our little chats, Toby, you know that,” she murmured throatily, the rolling cadence of her British accent abrading his senses in an unnerving way.

  Also unnerving? Precisely how much he hated being called Toby. He wasn’t the sort of man people gave a nickname; even his siblings had never shortened his name to something as ridiculous as Toby. Toby was the moniker one gave a drooly dog, or a really fat cat. Not a thirty-two-year-old man who’d graduated Harvard Law School at the tender age of twenty-one and regularly dined with the president of the United States and his cabinet. “Don’t call me Toby,” he said, voice cool.

  Her gaze narrowed. “I feel as though by holding me against my will for weeks on end, you’ve essentially given me permission to call you whatever the bloody hell I want. You soulless prig.” The last was practically spat.

  Raising a mild eyebrow as she breathed deep to regain her composure, he studied her clean but rumpled appearance. She wore the standard-issue black sweat pants and white T-shirt in soft cotton always kept on hand in this facility for the Faraday employees who found a waystation in the Underground, as the place was affectionately called. The body beneath the clothes was compact and athletic, and petite—five-foot-three, perhaps, in her bare feet. He’d seen her move, knew she was quick and decisive, and the muscle that shaped her frame put him in mind of a soccer player. She was feminine strength, personified.

  And, he supposed, attractive. Her features were sharp yet soft, her face heart-shaped, her mouth wide and full-lipped. Her brows especially intrigued him; their color appeared to be a rich chestnut, at odds with the seemingly natural blond of her wavy, shoulder-length hair. Below the slashing brows were those intelligent eyes of hers. Under the light, he knew the irises to be a clear, almost bright, brown, reminiscent of his favorite Macallan scotch.

  Yes, Chandler was attractive, but she wasn’t the first attractive woman he’d met, nor the first with whom he’d clashed. Working with the movers, shakers and policymakers on Capitol Hill, beautiful women were constantly in his orbit...but never in his detention facility. Which made her different.

  She exhaled audibly. “What did you want to talk about this time? No, wait, let me guess—your
sister,” she sneered, derision in every syllable.

  It was nearly comical, Chandler’s obvious disdain for Beth. Perhaps professional jealousy was to blame, perhaps personal—he wouldn’t put it past her to have carried a torch for his sister’s boyfriend, former MI6 agent Raleigh Vick—but every time Beth came up in conversation, Chandler could be counted on to flinch and scowl.

  As she was now. “Strange, but I know when you’re fantasizing about killing someone. Particularly my sister.” He slipped his hands into his pockets. “We have decided on the conditions pertaining to your freedom,” he lied. There would be no freedom, not for her.

  “We?”

  Hearing the wary hope in her voice, he knew she thought he referred to her former employer, Colleen Yang, the chief of Section T-16, the global-terror prevention subsect of MI6. “I,” he amended his statement. “I have decided on the conditions pertaining to your freedom.”

  Her hands fisted at her sides. “Are you planning on sharing, or just standing there like a knob all day?”

  First a prig, now a knob. At least she remained creative with her insults. “You’re a failed double agent, Ms. McCallister. You’ve been disavowed by your government, and left to rot by your Russian friends. So, tell me—what use do you believe you might have to Faraday Industries?”

  “Are you offering me a job, Toby? Because I have to say, not sure I’m private-sector material.”

  There was that nickname again. He stepped deeper into her cell, little more than three feet between them now. “Not a job. Redemption.”

  Eyes widening, she parroted, “Redemption?” Less than a heartbeat later, her fists relaxed. “Yes.”

  Cold amusement tempted him toward smiling, but he tamped down the reaction. “Just ‘yes’? No questions asked?”

  “Just yes. No questions asked.”

  The sobriety of her response, the strange gleam in her eye... “You know where we’re going, then.” Removing his hands from his pockets, he fastened the single button of his suit jacket and rolled his shoulders back, straightening his spine and finding he felt...tall. Taller than he typically felt at six feet. Odd.

  Her voice was a husky rasp when she spoke. “We’re going to Russia.” She crossed her arms over her chest, and in the dim light from the recessed bulbs set into the stone ceiling, he saw goose bumps appear on her bared forearms. “By the by, is ‘redemption’ a new word for ‘death wish’?”

  Again, he nearly smiled, but what he needed to accomplish in Moscow wasn’t a laughing matter. “Don’t tell me you doubt that a Faraday can get in and out of Polnoch’ Pulya alive.”

  She shrugged, shoulders lifting beneath the fabric of her tee and revealing the shallow dip of a delicate collarbone. “A girl can dream.”

  “How did you know it would be Russia?”

  Her toes wiggled against the floor. They were small toes, he noted, and frowned. He was still frowning when she rocked back on her heels, and he realized her feet were cold. Because they couldn’t permit her a rug, or any extra textiles and fibers, in her cell; Raleigh Vick had warned them that Chandler was rather famous in the spy world for being able to construct makeshift weapons seemingly out of thin air.

  Tobias wasn’t interested in testing the veracity of the rumor. Tugging lightly at his cuffs, he lifted his gaze from her feet to her face to find her watching him with confusion in her expression. “Ms. McCallister?” he prompted.

  She shook her head. “I don’t have anything else to offer you. Getting you in position to exact your revenge—” she paused, as if waiting for him to refute her statement; he didn’t “—for your precious Beth is the obvious conclusion.”

  Obvious, perhaps, but not enough for her to refuse him. “I’m glad you understand.”

  “Oh, I understand, Toby,” she murmured, her demeanor changing abruptly. Instead of the self-contained, self-controlled spy with whom he had been speaking up until this point, he found himself facing a sly female whose smile told him he ought to brace for a battle of wits and wills.

  The promise in that smile didn’t disappoint. Her lips curved, almost sweetly, but Tobias knew better. “Just as you understand my agreement to...help...doesn’t come without a string attached.”

  “Only one string?” he asked dryly, completely unsurprised.

  “Only the one.” Her smile scorched. “What day is it?”

  “Today? The twenty-ninth of March.” He waited a beat, unable to keep from poking her, verbally. “Was there someplace you needed to be, Ms. McCallister?”

  “Pip’s wedding. It’s April fifth.”

  This coming Saturday. “And you want to go.”

  “I need to go. There’s a difference.” She swallowed audibly, her voice quiet but utterly clear. “One thing you ought to remember when it comes to me, Faraday: I’m a self-serving bitch.” Her hands came to rest on her hips as she eyed him consideringly. “But, bitch or not, I keep my word when I give it. So I give you my word that I’ll take you to bloody Moscow, and I’ll get you inside the Polnoch’ Pulya. Hell, I’ll even make a good-faith effort to get your skinny arse out in one piece. All you have to do is let me spend next week with my sister at her fiancé’s estate.”

  Logically, he knew it wasn’t an unreasonable request. She wouldn’t leave Russia alive if she helped him, regardless of the protection protocols Tobias and a fully equipped Faraday team would have in place. If he possessed an ounce of compassion, he would allow her to go to Philippa Landry’s wedding, say her goodbyes.

  A pity, then, that compassion wasn’t part of his chemical makeup. “I can’t permit you out of my sight.” Off my leash. “You’ll forgive me for not trusting you, given your track record with deception.”

  She sighed in exasperation. “Now, Toby, didn’t we just discuss the value of my word? As a general rule, I don’t promise to protect pompous Americans, but look at the exception I made for you.” Her fingers tightened on her hips, as though she were only barely preventing herself from making fists and throwing a killer punch—and Tobias had no doubts about the deadliness of her right hook. “I know who you’re searching for.”

  Every inch of him tensed. “Do you?”

  Instead of answering, she glanced around her cell, taking in the stark walls and spartan furniture as if seeing it for the very first time. “If I somehow miraculously survive Moscow, you’re going to keep me locked up in here for the rest of my life, aren’t you?”

  Lying was unnecessary, now that he knew the price she would demand for her assistance. “Yes.” Lifelong imprisonment was no less than she deserved for the role she’d played in Beth’s kidnapping and torture.

  Nodding, she wandered over to the cot, sank onto its edge. “What’s life like for a Faraday prisoner, then? How often would I see sunlight?” She glanced at him, expression entirely sober, for once. “Any visitor privileges?”

  A strange unease curled in his gut. “You’re the first, Ms. McCallister.”

  “The first what—prisoner?” She laughed unpleasantly. “I’m shocked, Toby. I would’ve figured you for collecting pets left and right, to study under lights and through glass.”

  He decided he did not like her conclusion about him, not that he was required to. Her opinion meant nothing, less than nothing, in fact. “We may not have held any prisoners long-term before now, but there are a series of commonly accepted and entirely ethical best practices we will utilize, should you remain in our custody. Your human rights will not be violated.”

  Again, that grating laugh. “Fuck my human rights. I signed those away the minute I joined the Service.”

  He wished he had something in his hands—an odd desire, as he wasn’t a fidgeter by nature. But his hands felt remarkably empty at this moment, standing in front of a woman who genuinely didn’t seem to expect him to treat her any better than a lab rat. He slipped his hands into his pockets, t
he fingers of one hand closing around the slim solid-state drive he’d carried constantly since leaving the family compound earlier in the week. Copied onto the micro SSD were the contents of the video feed his little brother Adam had retrieved shortly after they had rescued Beth.

  The video feed that showed every single, terrible minute of her four-day torture at the hands of rogue—and now dead—MI6 agent John Nash. Chandler McCallister’s longtime field partner.

  The slight weight of the encrypted drive against his fingertips reasserted the familiar ice over his emotions, solidifying his initial resolve. “I can only assume your questions indicate you foresee yourself spending significant time as our...guest.” She wasn’t wrong. If she came out of Moscow alive—a highly unlikely possibility—there would be no place for her in MI6. She had been privy to too much sensitive intelligence to be allowed to wander free, given her double-agent tendencies; the Secret Intelligence Service would eliminate her within days of their return from Russia. The safest place for her remained, as it had for almost an entire month, in Faraday custody.

  He moved to stand opposite her cot, maintaining a respectful distance. “I can’t let you go to Wolverhampton.”

  “What if you came with me?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  White teeth flashed in a cheeky grin, real amusement flashing quick as lightning across her heart-shaped face. “No begging necessary, Toby. I’m offering you this fun for free.” Expression suddenly earnest, she leaned forward, elbows on knees and hands clasped loosely between them, but he didn’t make the mistake of relaxing his guard. “If the real issue is that you won’t let me out of your sight, then...don’t let me out of your sight.”

  For the first time in memory, his mind blanked. For the life of him, he couldn’t comprehend what she meant: Not let her out of his sight? If she intended to go to the wedding, that would mean—”I would attend the wedding with you.” He hadn’t meant for it to come out as a statement, but a statement it was.