[Author’s Note: This takes place shortly after Part 1 of the Prologue.]
New York
Rin reached toward the ice chest. Suddenly she had a sinking feeling. Had she remembered to poke holes? That was the problem with these things; they were airtight and you had to poke holes. That and make sure it wasn’t plugged in. She had learned that the hard way. A muffled thumping drew her attention, and Rin exhaled in relief. Whether or not she had remembered, things were fine.
Unclamping the door, she opened the top and expected her prisoner to leap out. Shouldn’t an FBI agent be trained to do that sort of thing? She looked down at the sobbing woman. Pretty pathetic. Hoover would have been appalled. She remembered the old FBI, one-step removed from those Pinkerton thugs. Those were the days. She’d had a lot more fun with them back then. Well, not too much fun. Being overly conspicuous would have made hunting proteges difficult.
A frantic mmmphing drew her attention back to the woman. Having decided it would take too much effort to lift her out, Rin tried tilting the chest onto its side. This turned out to be much harder than expected. Either the ice chest had a very inconvenient center of mass or the woman was heavier than she seemed. Rin grabbed her by the hair and slowly guided her to her feet, then pushed her over the edge of the chest and onto the floor. After some rolling around, the woman quieted down.
Rin squatted next to her, a sinister-looking knife in hand. With a cruel grin, she caressed the woman’s face with the blade, cherishing her hysterical squirming. She moved to cut off the gag but stopped short and discarded the knife. Well, that was embarrassing. This particular trope wouldn’t work here. The gag was too tight to be removed with a blade, at least not without a lot of collateral damage.
With a sigh, Rin straddled the woman’s body and proceeded to tear the duct tape from her mouth. It definitely was a two-handed job. She intentionally had overengineered the gag. A simple piece of tape could be pushed off by the tongue, and removing that tongue would have interfered with Rin’s plans for the woman. Besides, she couldn’t scream without a tongue. If Rin changed her mind about what to do with her, there would be lots of that.
Strictly speaking, no gag was necessary. Nobody was likely to hear her in the ice chest, but Rin didn’t want to chance it. She had made several full circuits of the woman’s head with duct tape. By the time she was done, her guest looked like a badly wrapped package. This proved sufficiently secure but made removal quite a chore. From the yelps along the way, it wasn’t painless either. Well, the woman had nobody but herself to blame. FBI agents were supposed to have short hair.
As if to illustrate the point, Rin grabbed her by the hair and tilted her head back.
“Feel free to scream if you like.”
The woman did not. Apparently, she interpreted this as a warning rather than an offer. Rin dragged her to a nearby chair and dropped her onto it.
“Make yourself comfortable.”
The woman clearly was revisiting her decision not to cry out.
Rin gave her a sympathetic look. “I know, I know, you’re late for your meeting.” She straddled her on the chair and brought her face very close. “Don’t worry about it. Nobody will complain.”
“They think I’m dead?” the woman sobbed.
“Even better. They’re all dead.” Rin let out an audible sigh. “They were helpful but extraordinarily inept. In fact, I must say that your entire government is.”
“Are you a terrorist?” the woman asked.
“Do I terrify you?”
The woman nodded.
“Then I suppose so. What’s your name?”
“Melinda.”
Rin clapped her hands together. “What a coincidence, so is mine! Melinda Casey.”
Melinda gave her a confused look, and Rin rolled her eyes. “For an FBI agent, you’re remarkably slow on the uptake. Or maybe that’s because you’re an FBI agent. I’ll be honest, I’ve never been overly impressed with all those acronyms. Why would you need an acronym unless you’re too dumb to remember the agency you work for?”
She produced a wallet and drew out various cards, reading and tossing them aside one by one. “Platinum Visa, Department of Homeland Security, Gold Mastercard.” She produced one card and tapped it in distaste. “Just a plain American Express? Melinda, Melinda. You’re letting yourself slide.”
“How?” Melinda gasped.
“Well, you just pay them a few dollars more and they give you a gold one. Or you pay them a lot more and you get a platinum one. Who doesn’t want a platinum-colored piece of plastic. Much more prestigious than a green one.”
“Who are you?” Melinda blurted out. She looked like she still was in a daze. Well, that was understandable. She had been in a freezer for a whole day. Out of curiosity, Rin glanced over. Nope, no holes. Apparently, the woman had been pretty close to death too. Rin shook her head. Why did she always forget stuff like that?
Did an ice chest even hold a whole day’s worth of air? She wondered how Melinda had survived. Maybe she needed very little oxygen. No, the box probably had a leak. Bad for its efficiency rating but decidedly convenient for Rin. Thank goodness for shoddy craftsmanship. Her attention returned to Melinda.
“As I said, I’m you. But you’re not me, though whether that’s for better or worse is a matter of some debate.” Rin glanced at the ceiling. “I’m guessing worse.”
“What do you want?”
“‘Who are you?’ ‘What do you want?’ Is that all you can ask? Are you actually an FBI agent?” She leaned in with an earnest look. “You’re not really an extra from a TV show, are you?”
Rin stood and mussed Melinda’s hair. “Don’t they train you people at all? In the old days, they’d make sure you only stated your name and rank. You’re supposed to withstand interrogations.” Rin produced her knife and gave a knavish grin. The woman looked like she was about to faint. This was no fun at all.
“Can’t say I’m impressed,” Rin noted, pocketing the knife so Melinda could regain her voice.
“That’s for soldiers,” the woman objected.
“We’re all soldiers. But it doesn’t matter.” Rin produced the knife again but did not open it. Instead, she tapped it gently against Melinda’s forehead. “Everyone talks in the end. Of course, the end usually is about five seconds after the beginning.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
There was less panic in her voice than Rin had expected. She wanted to be impressed, but suspected Melinda had decided she was all talk. That wouldn’t do at all. Rin was tempted to decisively cure her of this misconception, but the woman was too delicate for that sort of tactic. God, she missed Daryl.
“I don’t want you to say anything,” Rin explained. “If I did, you would be saying it.”
“Then why?”
Were these short stupid questions the result of some training? Maybe precise and sophisticated questions would give too much away. Melinda didn’t seem capable of anything that intrepid.
“Seriously, I’m beginning to wonder if you’re even capable of forming complex sentences.”
“Please, I’m just a computer analyst,” Melinda protested.
Rin put her hands on her hips. “Well, I don’t have any computers that need analyzing at the moment. But six words is a definite improvement. I’ll reward you by answering your question. And not killing you.” She smiled. “Your credentials were of some small use to me.”
“There’s probably a whole task force looking for me right now,” Melinda declared.
Ah, the famous ‘you won’t get away with this’ line. Rin smiled. Now they were getting somewhere.
“If you’re going to put on a brave face, it helps if your body isn’t trembling.”
Rin once again pressed the blade against Melinda’s face and once again tossed it aside. There was no fun in repetition.
“I’m not going to harm you, so relax. And no, there’s no task force looking … well, there probably is a pretty big task force assembling, but I’d guess you’re a rather low priority at the moment. And it will be a while before they deploy, especially given what happened to the previous one.”
She couldn’t help laughing at the image of an unending sequence of task forces, each sent to investigate the previous one’s demise. Why did they call them “task forces” anyway? It sounded like the sort of action-packed name some corporate drone would bestow on the printer maintenance team.
Melinda looked puzzled, so Rin smiled and pressed her own cheek against the woman’s.
“Don’t take it personally. Let’s just say they have bigger concerns. Besides, pretty much everyone on your task force is dead. Well, a lot of other people too. I feel bad about that. They died without getting to be on a task force.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, that would be even more pathetic than dying while you’re on one.” Rin realized that this wasn’t what the woman was asking. “Oh, that. You heard a boom? Yes, I’m sure you did. Even in that box.”
Melinda nodded.
“Well, what goes with a boom?” Rin clapped her hands together. “An explosion! But not just any explosion. An explosion that leveled the entire Federal Building.”