Special Agent in Charge Rowan Anderson normally maintained a state of complete control, but she was rapidly losing it.
She tried to focus on her current situation while piecing together the incomprehensible events of the attack at Harrison’s house an hour or so earlier, but the hangover effect from the tranquilizer was debilitating. As she struggled to keep the overlapping waves of nausea and panic in check, she realized that her mouth was gagged.
Anderson desperately wanted to rub the throbbing pain from her temples, but the plastic shackles around her wrists and ankles denied her that relief. She was still in her field uniform, her limbs flex-cuffed to the arms and legs of a chair inside someone’s home—clearly one of the island’s elegant mansions.
She was supposed to be on a yacht with the Russians. Butsomehow all that had changed.What happened? Why did they turn on her? Why was she even still alive?
Breathe slowly,she reminded herself. As she started to take exaggerated inhales and exhales despite the gag, she felt a gun barrel press sharply against the back of her neck.
“Surprised?” Elise Courville sang out as she stepped in front of her captive.
Rowan Anderson’s eyes widened with a mixture of distress and disbelief at the sight of Coleman Harrison’s smiling wife standing two feet in front of her, pointing a Glock at her face.
“Shhh,” Courville whispered gently, like a mother to her child, then pressed the gun barrel against the agent’s forehead. “That’s a good girl. Nod your head if you promise not to make a sound.”
Anderson moved her chin up and down without breaking eye contact.
Elise Courville gently lowered the gag as Anderson gasped for breath.
“I am so, so sorry,” Courville told her. “What was your name? Agent Anderson?” She enunciated each syllable in a singsong, childlike voice. “I hope that wasn’t too uncomfortable.”
Without waiting for an answer, Courville then raised her left hand and struck Anderson hard across the face.
“Make a sound and I will kill you right now. After what you’ve done, you should beg me to kill you.”
Anderson opened her mouth to speak but Courville raised her hand again in warning.
“Agent Anderson, your secret is safe with me—for now. I can see that your mind is racing to understand how you got here. No matter what you think, you will be wrong,” Courville said with a Cheshire-cat grin. “You see, everything you did thisevening was captured on video. We have footage of you watching your teammates die. We have video of you executing my husband’s mistress. Thank you for that, by the way. We even have video of you ordering them to cut off the senator’s hand.”
Bullshit. It must be doctored,thought Anderson.I didn’t order that.
“I’m sure you can appreciate just how serious this is, can’t you, darling? Oh, and we also have recorded phone calls of you explaining how the murder and kidnapping were going to happen. Isn’t life, well, how do you say,a bitch?”
Anderson started to reply but then stopped. She waited until Courville nodded her permission, all the while leveling the gun at Anderson’s chest.
“I did everything the man in Paris asked me to,” Anderson whispered. “That you all asked me to do.”
Selling out for a large amount of cash was one thing. Getting set up to take the fall for it all was completely different.
“Well, things have changed. When the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Secret Service, and everyone else gets their hands on the turncoat, terrorist-sympathizing whore who planned the kidnapping and torture of my husband, a sitting United States senator, you’ll wish you were dead. What do you imagine they’ll do to you, Agent Anderson?”
Rowan Anderson, like most thieves, lived by two truths:
Living is better than dying.
Take whatever actions are necessary to avoid death.
Anderson bitterly acknowledged to herself that while she might still be alive, she was totally and utterly screwed. The first deposit had already hit her bank account in Switzerland, but the second payment was now clearly in question. She needed the rest of it to make her escape.
“Please—please tell me what you want me to do.”
“It’s very simple. First, we paid you an awful lot of money for your loyalty, but we need to know that we can still trust you. So tell me, why it is that you decided to sleep with the American operative?”
Anderson blinked her eyes repeatedly and tried to slow it all down.What did Elise Courville mean by “operative”?
“What operative? Who? I didn’t sleep with anyone. I swear.”
All good lies are 80 percent truth. She would have slept with Nat Phillips, had they not been interrupted.
