Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
Undisclosed Location, France
Steph tossed the phone back at the Division Zero guy and walked off the plane, more than ready to get out of this confined space. At least he’d cut her hands free. Now her fingers itched to wrap around her necklace and play the only card she had left.
Her eyes widened and she about tripped off the last step, drawing the attention of these Division Zero guys.
A wide stone structure towered over a lake to the right of where she stood.
In the expanse of land between, an open strip had been graded into a runway that ran down the center.
To the left was a wall of tightly packed trees that probably left the ground between each towering spruce in near darkness.
Not a place she wanted to get lost in, even if she wanted to find a way out.
But she might not have a choice if they’d simply brought her here to get her to let her guard down so they could kill her.
The dense trees circled everything, even the far side of the lake at the base of the hill where the castle watched over everything, an impenetrable moat of foliage that would prevent anyone from stumbling on this place by accident.
“You guys have a castle.”
The one they’d left her with in the truck in Syria, who told her his name was Ice, tossed a crate onto the back of a Polaris UTV. He grabbed the rung with one hand and swung onto the seat. “Home sweet home.”
The vehicle pulled out, all four of the guys inside—including the injured one.
The team leader, Nix, came down the plane steps behind her.
She spun to him. “Wait. There was another guy before. In Syria.”
“Jay. He made his own way home from Turkey.” Nix stood at the bottom of the airplane steps, arms folded across his chest.
“He doesn’t live here?”
“Are you going to quit deflecting with questions and talk to me about what’s going on?”
“I don’t want to talk about it, and I don’t need to, either. You shouldn’t have brought me here. You should’ve dropped me off somewhere else.”
He stared at her, his face impassive behind a pair of Aviators. “I don’t do well being told what to do.”
“Is that why I’m still alive?” And here, instead of being cut loose at the first sign of trouble. Wherever here was. “You know what, who cares? I’m leaving.”
She set off toward the far end of the runway where a rundown hangar stood, looking like some relic from decades past. The rocks on the ground dug into her feet, and pretty soon she was limping in dirty tube socks. But walking always helped her think.
Nothing about any of this made sense. Not these guys, or the contact she’d had with the CIA since she ran into these guys. The one corollary? These guys.
She turned back and found Nix was far closer to her than she thought. Her foot landed on a sharp pebble that hit an abrasion on the sole of her foot, and she hissed out a breath.
He grasped her elbow. “Easy.”
She shook him off. “Why are you following me?”
“You won’t get far in those socks.”
As if that was an answer to her question. “I doubt any of the guys have shoes in my size. And since you were ordered to kill me, why would I stick around looking for help?”
“The best offer I can give you is to fake your death.”
“No deal.” She shook her head. “I can’t lose my job.”
“Seemed like it was pretty final on the phone. What did they say?”
She glanced at the trees, ignoring the sting of tears in her eyes. “I’ve been burned.”
“Meaning you can’t get your job back? I thought that kind of thing was a done deal.”
She shook her head. “I refuse to believe that.”
“Being part of the CIA means that much to you?”
“Why are you even interested? You don’t owe me, and I don’t owe you. Thanks for ruining my life. Goodbye.” But she didn’t move. A breeze brushed over the tree line, and she might’ve heard the howl of an animal. Nope. “Can your pilot take me somewhere?”
“Not until he does repairs on the plane.”
“Look, Nix…” She rounded on him.
“It’s Adam.”
She frowned. “Adam?”
“You didn’t think I had a name?”
“Other than Nix?”
He snorted. “Phoenix is a codename. Adam works fine, Steph.”
“That isn’t a code name, it’s just a name. Like every other Steph in the world. Nothing special.”
“I’m sure that’s what you need people to believe.
” He stepped back and motioned toward the remaining UTV.
“How about I give you a ride to the castle? You can see if we have any shoes in your size. Get a hot meal and a shower, some clean clothes. Maybe we could even get you a new ID and a place to start getting your life back.”
“I guess you do owe me for ruining my life.”
“And here I thought you owed me for pointing that gun at me and threatening to blow my brains all over the window.”
Steph found a laugh she hadn’t expected. “Maybe we’re even.”
“One way or another we will be.”
An hour later Steph emerged from a suite of rooms on the second floor, which Adam had brought her to. She had left her wet hair down and loose with no other options for something to do with it.
“Hey.” He stood, setting aside a worn paperback book. The hallway was all gray stone except for the wooden chair and a small table next to it where he had laid the novel.
“Uh, hey.” Steph hadn’t expected him to be waiting for her, but they probably didn’t want the CIA snooping around. Former CIA anyway. Apparently, a seven-minute soak wasn’t enough time to process that and get used to it.
“This whole place is like a fairytale.” She shook her head. “I just took a bath in a clawfoot tub.”
“The CIA doesn’t swing for the fancy hotel rooms?”
Steph laughed. “Not even for the senior sales associate.”
“Mi casa es su casa, and all that.”
As if she was going to believe that offer was for real “Thanks for the clothes. I’m surprised you had anything close to my size.”
“Only ’cause my sister was here a few weeks ago and she left a load of laundry in the dryer.” He set off down the hall, and she went with him.
“How did you guys come by this place?”
“It was built in the seventeen hundreds, owned by a prominent French family, passed down in the early twentieth century to a son with a Jewish wife. In 1934 the local magistrate took it from him by legal but unethical means and gave it to a family who sympathized with the new German leadership. In 1941, the German military seized control, using it as a secret base and a prison for foreign spies.” He glanced over. “So your fairytale has a dark history.”
“The original ones are like that. Before they were turned into popular culture.” But that wasn’t what she wanted to talk about. “How did your team come by it?”
“Illegal but ethical means.”
At the end of the hall, he ducked through a stone archway, stopping at the top of a narrow spiral staircase. “Watch your step.”
She followed him down the steps, her socks sliding on the worn stone.
“We hunted down the heirs of the rightful owners and found they were all deceased, except for a small child who was given to a family who escaped to America before the war. He had no idea who he was. We visited the retirement home in Queens where he lives and told him about the castle, but he wanted nothing to do with it, so we bought it from him. At least—we paid him for it.”
“Why would that be illegal?”
He stopped at the bottom of the steps, where she could hear rock music coming from down the hall. “This place doesn’t exist. We don’t have paperwork that says it’s ours, and neither did he. But that just means no one can find us here.”
“And you brought me inside? Seems like that might’ve been a bad idea. Also, how does this place go unnoticed when anyone can fly over and see there’s a great honking castle down here.”
He snorted. “The only access is by air. The satellite blackout we have going on for one, and other measures you don’t have the clearance to know. But suffice it to say, this is a no-fly zone.”
“Why tell me even this much?” If he was being so free with this information, then what was he hiding?
Adam eyed her. “Maybe I’m just curious enough to want to know what you’ll do next.”
“You mean, what I’m going to do is fix this burned thing and get my life back?” She stared at him, wondering why it seemed like he was as much of a fairytale as this place. The problem with those stories, though? It was usually a trap. Good thing there was nothing innocent or na?ve about her.
Adam shrugged. “I figure that means you need my help.”
“Then you figure wrong. Because I don’t need it.” She waited a beat. “But I’ll take it.”
She caught the edge of his smile as he turned away and walked to a wide hall. The kind that would have been lined with family portraits and old medieval armor—or Nazi flags. This one had been decorated with the flags from several states and every US military branch except one.
“No Space Force flag?” She glanced around at all the guys, who were sitting at desks that wouldn’t have been out of place in a police station.
Kai snorted. “No space force.”
The guy who’d been injured wandered in, barely limping. “He doesn’t believe in aliens.”
Adam waved her to the far end of the room, where they had an LED screen that was at least ten feet tall by eight feet wide. “Ice, bring up everything we have since the server farm.”
Steph watched the screen come to life, filling with images, snatches of video that played, transcripts and documents.
She spotted two photos, one of a man beside a document from Earthnet, and another by images of a chopper crash. A woman.
“I know her.”