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She held the bracelet wide. He hiked up the leg of his cargo pants and proffered his ankle. She snapped it into place right above the top of his boot.
“A ring of det cord is embedded in the bracelet.” She rose, stood within reach of him. “If you move beyond the borders of this suite, your foot will be cleanly severed by pentaerythritol tetranitrate.”
“A shock wasn’t enough?”
“It has that capability, too.” Flicking up a folding knife from her pocket, Naomi leaned over him. She slipped the metal tip beneath the zip tie ringing his left wrist and tugged, the plastic cuff falling free. Her face was close, a wisp of hair arcing past her temple, catching in the side of her mouth. Dried sweat sparkled on her cheek at the soft spot in front of her ear. She severed the right cuff with another confident twist of her blade. “But we figured you’d require a more robust deterrent.” With a jerk of her wrist, she snapped the knife shut, and it disappeared into her pocket once more. “You know, as we continue to hone our working relationship.”
A young man with narrow features and a shock of black hair entered the front door. He wore overalls and a tool belt and carried the proverbial black bag—a technical security investigator straight out of central casting.
“Agent Templeton, my team—erhm—my team has the units in place.” He kept his face lowered, no eye contact, but oriented toward Chip and Paddy. “Surveillance center’s set up next door for you. Per your agreement with the—erhm—high-value target, the video won’t leave the room, and he can personally oversee the wipe after the team brief tomorrow.” His head and narrow shoulders swiveled back in the direction of Naomi. “Boss said to sleep you separate downstairs so you don’t have to—erhm—be embarrassed.”
“I’m embarrassed?” Naomi asked.
“I’m just saying, bunking in with the—erhm—men, you’re probably uncomfortable.”
“Uncomfortable,” she said. “How else do I feel?”
“C’mon, Templeton,” Paddy said. “Give the guy a break. No need to get touchy.”
“‘Touchy’?” she said. “If we could just work in ‘strident,’ I’d hit the quadfecta.” She glanced over at Evan, lips pursed, and shot him a wink beneath the sway of locks across her eyes. Then back at the men, who looked ill at ease. “Jesus, team, I’m just kidding,” she said, and the room seemed to exhale. “I’m happy to have my own suite. You boys should really smile more.”
Chip shook his head, bit down on a grin. “Templeton.”
Naomi moved toward the door, the bulk of the men following in her wake. Pausing, she turned back to Evan. “Try ‘n’ behave yourself. For once.”
He gave a two-fingered salute.
“And you guys?” A side-eye to Paddy and Chip. “Don’t fuck it up.”
A turn of her broad shoulders, a fan of straw-blond hair, and she was gone. The others shuffled out after her, heavier on their feet.
Now it was down to Paddy, Chip, and an open adjoining door to their surveillance suite. A spray of white roses on the accent table by the window gave off a waft of perfume and the aroma of fresh-cut stems. Naomi’s footsteps and the sounds of her men faded up the hall.
When Evan refocused, Paddy was considering a slender control device that had suddenly appeared in his hands. He was wearing a sideways grin that Evan didn’t like one bit.
Chip said, “I’m not sure we should—”
Paddy’s wide fist pulsed around the device. An electric shock hit Evan’s ankle, locking up his leg and flinging him off the bed. As he writhed on the floor, he could just make out the ding of the elevator out in the hallway closing behind Naomi, carrying her away.
It wasn’t just the electroshock, at least fifty thousand volts coursing through Evan’s nervous system. It wasn’t just the sharp, stabbing pain or the intense muscle spasms, locking up his legs, hiships, the lower abdominal muscles, sheeting his neck with veins, making his eyeballs bulge. It wasn’t even the total immobilization, the knowledge that his flesh and fiber no longer obeyed him, that they’d been put at the mercy of a current passing from electrodes on the inside rim of the security bracelet bolted around his ankle. It was the mental haze, the real-time knowledge that his cognitive functioning was being fragmented, turned into snowy static, that he was drooling onto the carpet, shuddering like a stunned fish, and could grasp little beyond—
palm against his cheek
windshield spiderwebbing
not a shot he ever missed
—and then he heard a voice, gauzy and distorted. “Sayaaah.”
When Evan came back into himself, Paddy was leaning over his face, one kneecap pressed square over his heart, compressing his ribs. Straightening up, Paddy inserted a cotton swab in a transport test tube, a satisfied expression on his face. Evan felt rawness in the side of his mouth and realized that while he’d been rendered useless, Paddy had scraped a DNA sample from his cheek.
Evan still couldn’t breathe.
Now an iPhone hovered above his nose, the camera flash spiking through his dilated pupils as his photo was snapped. The pressure lifted from his chest, and Paddy rose and stared down at him.
“For a guy with a big reputation,” Paddy said, “you don’t look like much.”
“Fuck, Paddy.” Chip was leaning against the wall, his arms crossed as if to prevent a shiver. “It’s not too late to forget it.”
