Rachel’s eyes snapped open as light from the slitted shutters streamed in to touch her face. She threw herself off the bunk onto the floor, landing in a crouch, looking around wildly for the source of the danger. Then, as she perceived the green painted bars that surrounded her, the neatly made bunks, wash basin, screened commode, her memory spooled up like a jet engine, speeding through everything she had experienced in the past twelve hours.
At once, she went to her bunk and knelt down, reaching up under the mattress —
“It’s not there. What you’re looking for.”
She looked up to see Delaware standing behind the bars, shaved, showered, his hair groomed, dressed in the friendly officer khakis she had seen Hudson wear the day they had all met. He stood with his hands in his pockets, and at his elbow, a young female Marine Rachel hadn’t seen before.
“Lieutenant Gossett, would you mind giving us the room?” Delaware said calmly.
“Yes sir.”
When she was gone, Delaware put his hand on one of the bars. The golden pixels lit up his hand, and the door slid open, closing smoothly behind him as he stepped into the cell. The dusty shafts of light that streamed through the covered window seemed to act as a barrier between them, and he elected not to cross, instead turning, folding up the top bunk behind him, and sitting down on the lower.
He was a little stiff, Rachel noticed, but far improved from the day before.
“How’s your leg?” she asked, keeping her tone neutral.
“Better,” he said, equally neutral, though she thought he’d taken the point. “Thank you for asking.”
They eyed each other for a moment. She was aware of how she must look and smell, given she was still in her filthy bloodied clothes, but he gave no sign of having noticed. Then, she wondered if that was on purpose. She’d fallen asleep before bothering to ask about hygiene, but they hadn’t offered, either.
“What do you want?” she demanded, suddenly tired of his forced mildness.
“The truth,” he said simply. “We profiled DNA belonging to three different men from your sweatshirt. Mine, my brother’s, and Sergei Mikhailovich Vetrov. I was surprised to find him in the juvenile records, but our naval intelligence spent considerable resources tracking Vory operations, and it makes sense that they’d like the look of him.”
Rachel said nothing, merely felt for the small hole in her sweatshirt where they’d cut the sample. Delaware’s eyes moved over her, and he tilted his head in a way that was almost predatory.
“We found it in your hair, too.”
Now she moved away from him, sliding just slightly over to the left, wanting to have the wall at her back if she needed to fight. He had the grace to at least look down.
“You could have asked,” she said, surprised at how hurt she felt. “I wouldn’t have said no.”
He met her eyes, then reached into his pocket and drew out the notebook. It had been cleaned up, but she could tell the blood stains had soaked into it. He set it next to him on the bunk and looked at her.
He touched one finger to the cover. “You were supposed to give this to me.”
“Oh,” she said, now rising to her feet. “Was I? I’m so sorry, I was a little busy being dragged away and locked up. Oh, that’s right, those were your orders.”
Her sneer didn’t faze him. He actually smiled, and it was a genuine smile. Not of triumph or superiority, something was just genuinely funny to him.
“You’re right,” he said. “You made a much better field officer out there than I did. But we’re here now, and you are my prisoner, and will remain in my custody until I have the answers I want.”
“Your brother is dead,” she snapped, hoping to mask how crushing it was to even speak the words.
His face fell at that and he didn’t try to hide it. Now he leaned forward, looking keenly at her. He took a deep breath.
“I know,” he said heavily. “I’ve seen the evidence. The damage to his internal organs…”
Then he stared at her. Stared at the dried blood that still covered her, now cracking and flaking away. All, in all likelihood, that remained of the man they had both cared for. And then she envied him for all his years with Hudson, all the experiences they’d had. She thought about Vikram, and then she had to sit down again as a wave of dizziness hit her.
He rose, took the book in hand, and went to sit next to her. She didn’t protest, just put her face in her hands, grinding the balls of her thumbs into her temples.
“Sergei,” he said, making it one single, explanatory statement.
“Yes.”
“And this,” he indicated his own face, tracing a line up his jaw, over his mouth and just under his eye. “That was you.”
He removed another bagged sample from his pocket. It was the scalpel, now clean. Had it been tested? Had Edward cleaned the two blood types from it? Rachel knew better than to ask, but apparently she couldn’t suppress the anxiety on her face, because Delaware looked strangely at her.
“Why didn’t you kill him?” he asked, frowning. “You cut his face when you could’ve cut his throat.”
She had been asking herself that since her escape and she still wasn’t sure of the answer, except that in her rage and anguish, hurting him, causing him pain seemed more natural than killing him. The same rage that had driven her to get back into the water, to claw her way through the surf to him came from the same impulse. She wanted to kill him, but she wanted to kill him the way he deserved, and he had an entire encyclopedia of flesh and bone she wanted to tear apart before drowning him in his own guts.
That was what she told herself to avoid the truth. She had defaced him because some part of her required a separation of his identity from the man who had, at one time, provided her with a kind of solace, even if it was a toxic remedy. She hadn’t been ready.
“I should have. I wasn’t thinking.”
Delaware regarded her. “You stood up in front of me in that boat. He could’ve shot you easily, but he didn’t. I don’t know that I’d take a slash like that to the face and keep carrying that torch.”
“Yeah, well, that’s fucking foreplay to him,” she sneered. “I broke his third and fourth ribs when we were young and he’s had a cockstand over it for the past decade.”
“He didn’t like Hudson being close to you.”
“No.”
“And do you think he’s behind the situation with the reservoir?”
She blinked, surprised at his insight. “I don’t know. He’s involved, but…”
“Not his preferred way of doing things,” Delaware affirmed, reminding her that he’d been there to witness just how closely Sergei liked to conduct his affairs.
Silence for a moment. Then he turned his head just slightly, looking up into her face. “Was there something between you?”
Rachel’s eyes automatically moved to the book, and decided to say nothing. If Hudson had confided his speculations there, then Delaware already knew. If not, there was no reason to enlighten him.
“Tell me how it happened,” he pressed, and she could feel the frisson of irritation run through him. “How Hudson…”
“I don’t want to.”
“Rachel.”
“No.” she said firmly, now closing her eyes, hoping that he’d go away and leave her alone, let her endure the experience again without the added pressure of turning it into words. Especially the words that she could not say. If she opened her mouth to speak, she would not be able to lie. And then she’d never leave this cell.
“Fine,” he said, rising and reaching over and grabbing the book, slipping it back into his pocket. “Lieutenant Gossett will see about getting you cleaned up, something to eat. But you’re not going home again any time soon.”
She stared at him as he rose, and then paused just as the bars slid back to admit him. “Oh, and I’ll be speaking to your brother Vikram in a couple of hours. Now is the time to tell me if you think he’ll say anything to change my mind.”
Involuntarily, Rachel rose, and she knew dismay was written all over her. She wanted nothing more than to see her brother, to let him handle matters and help shield her from the harsh light of day the way he always had.
Delaware, his dark skin now clean of the residue of their adventure, his hair neat, and his uniform crisp, appeared to be a perfect arbiter of parochial disappointment. But she could see the redness at the corners of his eyes, and the glossiness of them, as though he had forgotten how to blink. She felt the urge to go to him, reach through the bars and take his hand. To show her grief to him and accept his. But she remained where she was, and watched as he made his way back down the corridor.
The Marine, Lieutenant Gossett, returned a few minutes later. She was Rachel’s age, extremely proper and fit, and Rachel could also tell she took her charge seriously. Rachel followed her down the hall to where another female Marine waited, standing sentry over a communal shower. Each stall was open from the front. Together, the women helped her undress, promising her that her clothes would be laundered for her, and that they had some ready for her in the meantime.
“Can I have a little privacy?” she asked, as Gossett took up a post right by the shower stall.
“Ma’am, I have orders.”
“What, am I on suicide watch? After everything I did to get here?”
It took some doing, but Gossett agreed to move back to the shower entrance. Rachel wasted no time applying soap to her body, working shampoo into her hair, her mind already moving ahead, searching for the next way forward. She was here, had delivered the message, and now she felt a suffocating pressure. The way Sergei had smiled at her, kissed the air, the entire charade nothing more than a lark to him. She had to fight to keep her rage from mastering her.
The smart thing, she thought, would be to surrender. To return chastened and willing to his bed, then kill him in it, and do it properly this time. Of course her chances of making it of the barracks alive weren’t good. It wasn’t that Sergei inspired deep abiding loyalty; it would be a natural reaction to an internal attack. She’d go down fast. It would be a better death than Hudson had, and a better one than she could hope for.
She thought of Vikram and her father. She could not face the notion of doing this thing to them. But she knew, as every second passed, that she would have to end him. She wanted to. She wanted to see his eyes, to take a little of his blood thirst into herself and make him watch her enjoy the exit of his meaningless consciousness from behind his eyes. Except she’d never really be able to stop him from enjoying it too. That was who he wanted her to become.
Quick, she thought. If not clean.
The last of the coppery residue rattled down the drain, and she finally felt purified of the carnage. Lieutenant Gossett had a towel waiting for her, and simple clothes — a pair of linen pants and a grey t-shirt with no insignia or logo on it. Rachel was grateful. She didn’t want to walk around wearing a brand she wasn’t affiliated with.
Instead of leading her back to the cells, she was surprised when they walked her to the elevator, and down a corridor of what appeared to be officers’ cabins. Most of them weren’t being used, and the one at the end of the corridor waited for her, the bed turned down, and the lights on.
There was a desk with a console hookup, along with some storage space, a closet and a very small en suite bathroom. Lieutenant Gossett showed her where she’d hung up her ratty, but now clean, Oxford hoodie and her other clothes, then informed her that lunch had already concluded, but that something was being sent up for her.
“You’re leaving me alone?” Rachel asked, unsure of the new rules.
“I can stay if you’d like,” Gossett offered with a smile. “Someone’s always on sentry down the hall, just ask them if you need anything.”
Then she turned and walked away, leaving Rachel standing in the middle of the small room, slightly astonished. Her astonishment did not abate when a young sailor arrived with a covered plate on a tray. He left it on the desk, asked her if she needed anything else, and then he too went on his way, leaving her to feel as though she had been upgraded to first class due to some error. As power plays went, Delaware’s were inconsistent, leaving her more confused than intimidated.
She shut the door, and sat down, taking a suspicious sniff of the meal underneath the cover. Then she removed the cover, looked down at the contents of the plate, and felt her mouth fall open. The penne noodles heaped with basil pesto had been artlessly piled, but it looked like a Monet to her. She drew a fingertip along the green oil that had collected under the pasta and tasted it, letting out a tiny moan. She hadn’t tasted real pesto in what felt like lifetimes.
One of the little fishhooks of grief that she often forgot were lodged inside her tugged painfully as she thought of Alec Vigna. She picked up one of the bright red cherry tomatoes and bit into it, closing her eyes as the salty tanginess of it burst on her tongue. Then, with the ardor of a starving woman, she seized the fork and began to eat in earnest. And as she did, as the luxury and decadence began to sink into her, she realized that she had been wrong.
Her captor knew exactly what he was doing.