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“I’ll need the information about the rental.”
“Fine, but I need to get back to her. See if she remembers anything.”
“I want a detailed list of everywhere you went, anyone you spoke to, anything else you can think of that seemed off at any point from the time your CO sent you to her for counseling until that night at Lawrence’s.”
“What about Jack Spear? Could he be behind this?”
“At this point, I’m not ruling out anyone. I doubt that’s his real name, so I’ve got Rory digging.”
Frustration roared through him. He punched the wall, leaving a hole in it.
“I should take that out of your next paycheck,” she said with a teasing note in her voice, “but I won’t. I understand your anger, and I feel the same. What we have to focus on is getting her to snap out of whatever this is. Then we’ll learn who did this to her and make sure they pay.”
They were going to pay all right. He gritted his teeth. “They put her through hell. Me, as well. When we get them, I’ll handle it.”
She planted her feet, a blockade. “I’m all for justice, but we are not vigilantes, and if you go against C&C, you are likely to disappear and end up six feet under in the desert. That won’t help her. You’re part of my team, part of Shadow Force, and we have ways of dealing with entities like this without getting the whole group in trouble. We will avenge what happened to Vivi, but we do it smart. We find the evidence and make sure it’s handed over to the right people. I’ve done this kind of operation before. We don’t go off half-cocked.”
In the back of his mind, he knew she was right. Justice had always been an important pillar of his life. Revenge was not.
Problem was, he’d never had somebody close to him targeted. This was personal. “I won’t make promises I can’t keep. I’ll do things your way when and if I can, but if the situation presents itself, I will kill whoever did this without hesitation.”
Her displeasure was obvious, yet she stepped sideways, allowing him entrance to his room. “I’ll hold you to that. Just so you know, if you defy my orders, I will make your life miserable, and you’ll be promptly dismissed from SFI.”
He nodded, reaching for the doorknob. “Understood.”
Inside, he shed his gear, stripping down to his T-shirt and replacing his cargo pants with plain jeans. The T-shirt Vivi had worn last night was casually tossed on the nearby chair. He picked it up, holding it to his nose and breathing in her scent.
Someone had taken his wife, with her big heart and even bigger brain, and turned her into a weapon.
Oh yes, he would make them pay.
Eighteen
Vivi woke feeling like she’d been drugged. Her head swam, her vision blurred, and her mouth felt stuffed with cotton.
Shehadbeen drugged, as evidenced by the tubes running from a vein in her arm up to an IV pole. Lifting her hand, she went to rub her eyes…
Metal clanged against metal. Her arm stopped in mid-air and she jerked it again.Clang.
What the hell?
Blinking, her vision cleared enough for her to see the cuff on her wrist. Even though it was pointless, she jerked it a few more times, frustration building.
Ditto for her other hand. She was handcuffed to a hospital bed, with no memory of how she’d gotten here or why. “Hello?” she called. “Someone get me out of these cuffs!”
As if she’d conjured him, Ian burst through the door and rushed to the bedside. “You’re awake. How do you feel?”
She sat up, causing the room to spin, and promptly fell back onto the pillow. “What happened? Why am I chained to the bed?”
He gripped her hand. “We think you’ve been hypnotized, possibly had Trident turned on you. Do you remember being in your office with the birds?”
Her temples throbbed. “My birds?” She shook her head, then stopped when pain shot down the back of her neck. “I haven’t seen them since the day I flew to Berlin.” None of this made sense. “What do you mean I’ve had Trident used on me?”
As she lay there feeling helpless, he told her what Beatrice suspected. What he suspected. Her stomach cramped, her mind seeming to slam every door in her mind palace as she tried to make sense of what he was saying.
“It’s not possible,” she argued. “I couldn’t have been hypnotized, with or without my permission. I would know.”
That was an error in her thinking and they both knew it. Obviously, if she had been, the person doing the manipulation would fabricate it so she didn’t remember.
