“I would never go easy on you.” Nora smiles.
“I know.”
Then I say, “But fighting isn’t the only thing I want to learn—I want to learn everything you can possibly teach me: manipulation techniques, controlling pain, everything…”
Nora raises a brow.
“You’ll never be able to learn all those things,” she says, “unless you want to lose your ability to love anyone and be able to kill them instead, but I will teach you whatever I can.”
“One more question.”
“Hmmm?”
“Just out of curiosity,” I begin, “when I confessed to you, you seemed…sympathetic. Even to Niklas’ feelings. If you’re so…emotionless…why did you seem to care at all? Why did taunting you about your father and your finger trigger so much anger if your emotions are so controlled? And absent.”
“I am still human,” she says simply.
I think about it long and hard. About everything.
And then I hand her my gun.
Nora looks up at it briefly and then takes it into her blood-stained fingers.
“Then welcome aboard,” I say.
And the fact that she doesn’t shoot me in the back, or run away into the streets of Boston when I leave her sitting there and go back inside, further proves she’s telling the truth that I already knew.
22
Izabel
Four days later…
I wish I could say that things are getting back to normal around here, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Niklas is still gone and none us have seen him or heard from him—he could be in another country, or living in the back of a bar somewhere nearby, and either would be believable. His cell phones don’t even ring anymore—they either go straight to voicemail, or tell me the user doesn’t have a mailbox set up to leave a message. I stopped calling him two days ago. When he wants to be found, he’ll let us know. And I’ll worry about the outcome of that day until it happens.
Dorian, after Fredrik interrogated him for many long hours, I’m happy to say is still alive. He’s still imprisoned in cell C and will probably be there for a while until Victor figures out what to do with him. But according to Fredrik, everything Dorian told Victor seems to be true, and he hasn’t hidden anything else that we know of. But the thing with Victor keeping Dorian alive, I believe, is mostly to do with U.S. Intelligence and if they will retaliate in reaction to Dorian’s death. But Victor says it appears that the kind of private contractor Dorian is, if he were ever killed or compromised, the United States wouldn’t claim they knew anything about him.
It’s what U.S. Intelligence knows about us that keeps Victor from making a decision either way. Dorian admitted to profiling each of us and giving that information to his superiors, employers, whatever they’re called—I’m in the dark when it comes to this stuff and Victor doesn’t talk about it much…or maybe he does and I’ve just been too involved in my training with Nora Kessler to notice.
I started the following day after the night I let her in. And already I feel like I have to watch my back every moment of every day—not because she can’t be trusted, but because as part of her training, she attacks me out of nowhere. There is no such thing as a break. At any moment Nora could be testing me, mentally or physically, or in any way she sees fit. It’s the same kind of training I started out with Victor over a year ago, but much more intense. She fucks with my head so often that I can’t tell the difference when she’s lying to my face or telling me the truth—I’m supposed to be able to figure it out. Learn to fully trust my instincts and be able to react to any given situation accordingly without ever thinking about it. “If you have to stop and think about it, you’ve already fucked up,” she said during one of the rare times she’s given me actual advice. And then, “It’s not the same thing as ‘think before you react’, it’s about changing the way you think and react naturally.”
I never expected any training to be like this. And it’s just beginning.
Today Nora joins us at the table for her first meeting.
Victor didn’t approve of my decision to let her join us when I told him what I’d done. Not at first anyway. I had to remind him that he said he trusted me, and although I think deep down he didn’t need reminding, I know he least expected me to let her live and it all came as shock to him. It did me as well. I had every intention in eliminating Nora that night—eliminating; maybe I’m starting to become more like Victor—but at the last minute, I went with my gut instead of my hatred for her.
I walk into the meeting room to the faces of Victor, James and Fredrik. Nora will be late if she isn’t here in five minutes. I make my way to my usual chair close to Victor where I sit down and try to look confident—I know that if Nora doesn’t live up to everyone’s expectations of her that it’ll be on my head because I’m the one that let her join us. Being late to her first meeting isn’t a good way to start.
The room is rife with silence. Hardly any movements stir the mild air seeping from the vents in the ceiling. James stares at his laptop screen. Fredrik sits solidly, like a brooding, gorgeous giant with both hands resting on the table. Victor sits with his back pressed against his chair and his hands in his lap—always the power in the room, and anyone would know it just by looking at him even if they’ve never met him before. I feel their eyes on me—though not Fredrik’s—but I can’t bring myself to look at either of them.
Finally, the sound of heels tapping against the floor on the other side of the door echoes down the hall. The door opens and Nora, on her long legs and with beautiful blonde sweeping hair, enters the meeting room, closing the door behind her. She’s dressed in, of all things, a black women’s suit and tall black heels. A white collared shirt with an elegant ruffle pokes from beneath the suit jacket and lays perfectly about her chest, pulled up around her neck in a delicate fashion. Delicate—a word I never would’ve thought to associate with the likes of Nora Kessler.
“Cutting it close on time,” I speak up.
Nora sits down next to James, her back straight and refined.
“Yes,” she says with an apologetic smile and then reaches into her jacket pocket and withdraws a cell phone. “But I found Niklas.”
Victor and I glance at one another as Nora slides the cell phone across the table and into Victor’s reach. He picks it up and looks into the screen, tapping it once with his fingertip as it begins to fade to black. I lean over closer to Victor to get a better view.
“Barlow’s,” Nora announces. “He seems to be spending a lot of his time there, drinking”—I look into the screen to see several photos of Niklas sitting in a darkly lit bar with a shot of whiskey on the bar in front of him—“a different girl every night the past few nights. He’s staying in the hotel next to the bar.”
“That’s just thirty minutes from here,” I say, looking at Victor anxiously.
“Drinking and women,” James speaks up across the table from me. “Sounds like he hasn’t changed, really. I think it’s safe to say he’s all right.”
I frown at James.
“He’s not all right,” I say.
“But he will be,” Victor says.
He slides the phone back to Nora. She leaves it on the table in front of her.
Fredrik says nothing.
I slide back into my chair more comfortably and turn to Victor.
“Do you want me to go talk to him?” I ask. “Try to bring him back here so you can talk to him?”
Victor shakes his head.
“We’ll discuss Niklas later,” he says. “First, I have something else that needs to be addressed.”
Victor and Nora exchange a glance, giving off the impression that they’re the only two at the table who have already talked about it, whatever it is. I feel incredibly uncomfortable all of a sudden, but curious and eager, as well.
“What is it?” I ask.
Victor takes a deep breath and looks out at all of us. “There will be an important mission in the near future,”
he says cryptically and his eyes fall on me, “not within the next year, but because it will take you at least that long to prepare for it—or rather to prepare Nora for it.” He glances at her briefly.
“OK,” I say, leery, “what kind of mission?”
He sits quietly for a moment and then says, “I need you to go back to Mexico.”
Confused, I reply, “Why Mexico?” But what’s so confusing is how obscure he’s being. “I have no problem going there, Victor. You give me a mission and I’ll carry it out. Mexico doesn’t scare me.” We’ve already gone back there once. We took out two of Javier’s brothers and freed some of the girls left in the compound. The mission didn’t turn out like I’d hoped and many of the girls I had once lived with when I was a prisoner there, had either already been sold, or killed by the time we arrived.
He looks away from my eyes momentarily.
“Victor, what is it? Just say it.”
Once again, I feel everyone’s eyes on me, even Fredrik’s this time, but I look at no one other than Victor.
“This mission will require something more than killing someone and coming back,” he begins. “For the next several months you’ll be training Nora for it.”
My eyebrows crease rigidly.
“Me training her?” It starts to dawn on me, what this whole mission will be about, but I let Victor fill in the gaps.
“You were on the inside,” he says to me, “and you know how things work. Everything. From the buying and selling of drugs, weapons and girls, to the way the girls were treated, to how they were killed. Nora can certainly handle any kind of mission given to her, but even she needs to be trained so she knows exactly what she’s dealing with.”
I look right at Nora, who sits quietly, but with confidence. “Wait a second,” I cut in, “so you’re saying you want me to train her to be a sex slave?” Somehow I can’t fit that image in my head no matter how I try.
James’ face lights up with creepy delight.
“Not necessarily,” Victor says. “I’ve talked to her at length about this and we both agree that the best way to approach that particular aspect of it is for her to become one of the girls, not just play the part.
“It’s best to become one of them,” Nora says, “if I fall into it like everyone else; not taught how to be one of them.”
Growing more confused, I look between Victor and Nora, searching for answers.
“I’m capable of taking on any role, even a sex slave, but you’ll need to give me pointers, tell me about the behind-the-scenes, what to be most aware of, how not to get myself killed.”
I shake my head, already not liking this idea.
“Victor, I imagine things aren’t the same there anymore. Javier is dead. Izel is dead. His brothers are dead.”
“They may be,” he says, “but that doesn’t mean things have changed much. Javier had six brothers that we know of. Two of them are still running his operations. The compound is still in the same place. Girls and drugs and weapons are still bought and sold as if nothing ever happened. Within two months of our last mission there, they were up and running again.”
I knew most of this information already, but I see why now he had to repeat it.
Shaking my head with a whitewashed look, I lean forward with my arms on the table.
“OK, but why? Why go back? Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem killing those bastards and freeing more of the girls, but—”
“That’s not the mission, Izabel,” Victor says.
I blink, a little stunned.
Nora and Victor exchange another knowing glance.
Then Victor says, “Nora told me something, the last night she was detained in that room, before she joined us. Something about you that I wanted to be more certain of before I said anything.”
I just look at him, feeling the sting of betrayal, even though I know he didn’t betray me at all.
Victor goes on:
“Also, after speaking with Dorian when he was first detained, Nora’s story seemed to hold more truth.” After a pause he says, “The mission to Mexico will be to figure out who Vonnegut is. You may be the only person among us who has ever seen the real Vonnegut.”
“What?” I can’t believe what I just heard.
He nods, and then starts to speak, but I interrupt.
“You’ve seen him,” I point out. “What are you talking about, Victor?”
“The man who I met with on rare occasion when I was part of The Order,” he begins, “who I was valued by as an operative, I have reason to believe was not the real Vonnegut. He was a decoy. The truth is that no one really knows who the real man is behind the oldest and largest assassination organization still running today. Not even the CIA or the FBI—no one. Just when they think they have an identity, they find that they’re just running in circles.”
Victor fills me in on everything Dorian told him, about Vonnegut’s suspected dealings with selling weapons to terrorists and that his business deals in so much more than contract killing. He goes on to tell me about the things Nora told him in secret, and about the tracking device that Victor cut out of me when I was on the run with him.
“Niklas and I knew,” Victor says, “the night I took that device out of you, that something that high-tech had to come from an outside source, that there was no way someone like Javier Ruiz would be able to produce it himself.”
“While I was spying on all of you,” Nora cuts in, “and delving into The Order’s information, I found out that Vonnegut was dealing in girls, too, and was selling high-tech tracking devices like the one they found in you.”
Victor adds, “I believe the device that was placed in you came from Vonnegut. I think Vonnegut was selling to Javier, and you were right there on the inside, closer to Vonnegut than just about anyone has ever been.”
“But what makes you think I know what he looks like?” I shoot back, growing overwhelmed by this surprising information.
“The wealthy men that you saw when Javier was using you as an arm trophy,” Victor says, “one of them I believe is the real Vonnegut.”
Immediately, I start to think back on all of their faces, each one moving fast through my mind like a blur.
“He can’t stay hidden forever,” Victor goes on. “Someone has seen him. He may be a ghost, but he’s still human and humans by nature need to associate with other humans, be in the presence of other people—I think he was one of those wealthy men, Izabel. And I think Nora going on this mission will be how we ultimately find him, dethrone him, and kill him.”
He pauses and adds with depth, “And then I will take over The Order once he’s dead.”
I don’t respond to his last comment, but for the first time since I came into the room, Fredrik’s eyes lock on mine.
This is the first time I’ve ever heard Victor say something like that. Take over The Order, The Order…it’s a conversation for another day. Right now my brain is overloaded with…everything.
I’m silent for a long time, letting everything else he’s told me sink in. There still seems to be a lot that has been left unanswered, but it takes me several minutes to figure out what those things are.
“But why send Nora?” I say, looking at her for only a second. “I mean…well, I guess I can’t be the one to go back in because too many already know what I look like—”
“I wouldn’t let you go back in anyway,” Victor cuts me off. “You’ll go to Mexico and be stationed in a tourist city, but Nora will be doing the inside work.”
I frown. “Why? What do you mean you won’t let me go back in?” There is acid in my voice.
Victor sighs and drops his hands back in his lap.
“You don’t think I’m capable of going back in,” I accuse. “You think I’m just like everybody else; that because I went through a traumatic experience I’d never be able to put myself through it again, that I’d never be able to handle it. Well, you’re wrong”—I slash a hand in the air—“I’m the opposite of everybody else. I’m not af
raid of it. Of any of them. I’m stronger now than I ever was, and if anyone can do this job to perfection, it’s me. Not Nora, but me.”
“This isn’t about proving yourself, Izabel,” Nora says calmly and kindly.
I glare across at her. “No one asked for your opinion—”
“No, but I’m not the type to not give it,” she snaps back—Ah, there’s the real Nora Kessler: bold and mouthy and infuriating.
James scoots over on his chair a little to put some distance between him and Nora, probably expecting me to hurl myself across the table at her any second now.
I let it go, inhale a long, deep breath and look back at Victor.
“Like you said yourself,” Victor says, “you can’t be the one to go in because you can’t risk being seen.”
“Maybe there’s a way around that,” I say. “We could—”
“Izabel,” Victor interrupts with a somber and firm tone, “you’re not going back in there—you can’t fight off every man at that compound who’d try have his way with you.”
“Oh, so that’s what this is about,” I say icily. “You think I can’t keep myself from being raped”—I look him straight in the eyes, unblinking—“trust me, I could.”
“Nora will be going on the mission,” he says as if that’s the end of it.
Gritting my teeth, I take a deep breath and get up from the chair. “She can’t go in there wired,” I point out. “She can’t take a camera. She won’t have access to a phone. I don’t doubt her skills, but if she’s going to be one of the girls and make it believable, she can’t be sneaking off to contact us—they’ll know within minutes that she’s missing.” I look at her once and say, “How are you going to be the one to figure out who Vonnegut is if I’m the one who’s supposedly seen him?” I cross my arms and stare intently, my eyes darting to and from Nora and Victor.