Flee, Spree, Three (Codename: Chandler Trilogy - Three Complete Novels) Read online

  Axe howled, pulling me off and plucking the knife from my finger as easily as picking a daisy. I smelled blood under the cloud of chocolate. Then his enormous hands encircled my neck and half my face.

  I didn’t have the leverage to pull free. I shot a hand between his legs, trying to get a grip on his balls. He increased pressure.

  I kicked, missing, my world becoming blurry. Once more I reached for my ankle sheath, but he pushed me backward, the vise tightening around my neck. Feeling concrete under my boots, I surged forward, hoping to throw him off balance, make him slip.

  He dragged me back a step, countering.

  My ears were ringing now, the blood to my brain being cut off just as I’d done to the other sentry. I tripped over something—the ring buoys—pulled hard as I could, and steered my opponent into them, hoping he’d get tangled. Axe bobbled a little, but his grip on my head didn’t let up.

  I grasped for his testicles again, at the same time throwing all my weight away from him.

  He countered, smashing my body into the fence. Chain link clanged. He slammed me against the fence again, as if trying to break through the rickety thing and throw me into the water.

  I clawed at his crotch and bucked my body, my strength fortified with adrenaline, but it was no use. He forced me into the fence a third time, and this time, it broke. I grabbed Axe’s arm, digging my fingers into his jacket like claws, holding on. He bobbled for a moment, almost catching his balance, then tipped forward with me, and we both slid down the steep concrete wall and plunged into the water below.

  Cold closed over my head. I pulled at the arm still holding me, and then all at once I was free.

  Free, but underwater and unsure which way was up.

  Though I feared water as much as I feared anything, and though I still lacked air from the stranglehold, I forced myself to relax and reorient.

  Buoyancy took over, and my body began to float. I went with it, using my arms and a strong scissors kick, breaking the surface, sputtering, the foul water in my mouth, algae dripping from my hair.

  Hands closed around my throat from behind.

  Now that I was free of him, I’d be damned if I was going to let him take control again. I went back under, forcing Axe to go with me. Grabbing his hand, I used my fingernails to dig in. My nails are pitiful, short and not particularly strong, but my grip is one of my best qualities. I can crack walnuts with my bare hands, and once upon a time managed to hold on to the landing gear of a helicopter while it was taking off.

  My nails wormed their way into his grip, and then I was holding his index fingers, big as sausages. I bent them back, straining until I saw red. He thrashed, trying to get into position to kick me, finally releasing my neck in his effort to get away.

  Not so fast.

  I tightened my hold on both fingers and then snapped them back, breaking all six knuckles. We both breached the surface, and I gasped in a breath and a dose of fetid water, then twisted under one arm and attempted to pin it behind his back. To counter, Axe rolled over, forcing me under to maintain my hold. My head hit the wall behind me. I turned to the side, trying to slip out, but he wrenched his arm free and used his mass to drive into me, pinning me to the wall and trying to force my head below surface.

  I took a gasping breath, then dove feet first, sweeping upward with my arms, heading for the bottom.

  Axe spun and grabbed my left wrist, then gripped me to him in a bear hug, his head out of the water, mine under.

  I tried to flip him, but he was too big. If we were wearing swimsuits, I could have taken a bite out of his chest, but instead all I got was a mouthful of his jacket and nasty water. I punched at his gut and crotch, I flailed at the sides of his head, but none of it made him loosen his grip.

  I’d drowned too many times in my life…hell, too many times this week. And I was not in the mood to do it again.

  I bent my knee and moved my hand to my ankle, finally able to reach it, pulling the Stratofighter tactical folder from its sheath. With a surge, I drove the four-and-a-half-inch blade into his kidney, then ripped it back toward his spine.

  Axe’s body seized, and his arms released me. Squeezing out from between his mass and the wall, I kicked to the surface and gasped in breath after breath.

  Blood was already spreading in the water, turning it from greenish to brownish. Judging from the Axe’s movements, the wound hadn’t finished him off, but the water soon would.

  I kicked over to him and tried to pull the knife free, tugging hard. It was caught on something, and wouldn’t budge. I changed my grip, pulling again, and the Stratofighter came free and abruptly slipped from my fingers, sinking into the murk. Abandoning it, I swam to the corner, a distance away from the dying man. I’d had enough of this particular swimming hole. I wanted out. And now. Reaching my hands upward, I gave a powerful kick, boosting myself a few feet up the inclined concrete.

  I slid back down.

  Backing up a few yards, I took another shot, swimming as hard as I could, then giving a hard surge up the wall. I hit a few inches higher, clawing with my fingers, pushing with my knees. I stuck on the wall for a few seconds, then descended once again.

  The odor of algae mixed with blood clogging my throat and making me gag, I trod water, searching the reservoir for some way out. I might have sent my opponent to a fairly quick death, but if I didn’t find a way out of this putrid vat, I was going to join him.

  Fleming

  “There is no greater pain,” said the Instructor, “than being at the mercy of someone who wishes to inflict pain.”

  Fleming could hear the metallic rattle of a gurney moving up the hallway outside in the direction of her cell. When the guard ducked out to retrieve it, Malcolm had moved back to the door to await his return, as if he believed that despite her burned, injured, crippled shell of a body, as soon as the opportunity presented itself, she’d rise up on her nonfunctioning legs and strangle the life out of him with her bare hands.

  Which, more than anything, Fleming wished she was able to do.

  “Chicken shit,” she called. “You’re really that scared of me? What do you think I’m going to do? Trip you?”

  “You’re not going to be able to do anything when I’m done with you.”

  Fleming knew he was right. She was going to be tortured. The thought was so frightening to her that it was almost unbelievable. Surreal. An honest-to-God, pinch-me-I’m-dreaming scenario.

  She was going to hurt. Hurt terribly.

  So she might as well get in a few shots first.

  “One hundred and seventeen times,” Fleming said, her voice strong as she proudly announced that number.

  Malcolm was sucked into it, and made the mistake of asking, “What are you talking about?”

  “That’s how many times I got laid this year.”

  It was true, too. Devoted as she’d been to her job, Fleming had a very active social life, and she enjoyed men to the fullest. She had three steady guys who visited her regularly, loyal as puppies and hearty as stallions, and two spare dudes that she could call up if she was feeling especially kinky. Her legs aside, she still had her looks, still had her appetite, and she found that the thing men liked most in women was enthusiasm.

  Fleming was very enthusiastic.

  “How many times have you gotten some this year, Malcolm? Not counting yourself in the shower, or paying for it.”

  Malcolm’s whole face turned almost as red as his port-wine stain.

  “And now that you’ve got a disfigured hand, no woman in the world would want you. You can’t hide that with makeup, you ugly fuck. I bet the whores will charge you double now.”

  For a moment, it looked like Malcolm was about to burst into tears. Fleming was pleased with herself. Scared as she was, at least she went down swinging.

  “I hope that wasn’t your jerk-off hand,” she said, pushing further. “Although there’s nothing wrong with learning to be ambidextrous.”

  The door opened, and the guard pushed a
steel gurney inside, stopping it next to Fleming and locking the brake. On the gurney was a tray filled with horrible things. Things that would be used to hurt her. Her momentary victory deflated, and the fear took over once again.

  “That’s right, bitch,” Malcolm said. “That’s all for you. You’re going to set a Guinness World Record for suffering.” He stepped behind her and ordered, “Pick this cripple up”

  Fleming tried to ready herself for something she couldn’t possibly ready herself for. Unable to stop, she thought back to all the pain of rehab, all the postsurgery misery, and how she’d rather die than go through that again. This would be worse. And there would be no painkillers. No relief. No end to it.

  How could anyone possibly prepare for that?

  The guard lowered the gurney, then, holding his arms out to the side in a modified Hulk stance, he prepared for the grab and lift.

  But before the big man moved, Malcolm brought the prod to her again, this time connecting with her hip, shocking her good and long, until she thought her skeleton would rip out of her skin. When he finally pulled the device away, her muscles were clenched so tight she couldn’t move. The smell of burned flesh coated her tongue, and her diaphragm spasmed, making it impossible to catch her breath. The guard scooped her up and dropped her on the table, her desperate flailing pathetically inept. A few stunned seconds later thick leather straps were buckled on, pinning down her wrists, torso, and ankles. It was old, stiff leather, and Fleming could imagine all the pain of those who’d been strapped to this gurney before her.

  She pulled her good hand. There was a little bit of play in the cuff—these were made to restrain men, not women—but she couldn’t get her wrist out.

  Malcolm hovered over her, his face close. He rested his hand on her naked thigh.

  She wanted to spit, but couldn’t summon a drop of saliva.

  He nodded to the cattle prod. “You’re thinking about all the places I could stick this, aren’t you?”

  She hadn’t been, but now she was. Nausea lodged up under her ribs, and Fleming realized she was going to be sick.

  “A hundred and seventeen? Is that what you said? I think we’ll go for one eighteen. How does that sound to you?” The tray near her head rattled, and he held up an instrument that looked like small branch nippers, the type used for pruning roses. “But first I have a few other things in mind.”

  Fleming tore her eyes away from the nippers, glancing at the other implements on the tray.

  The nausea built like a bomb ready to blow.

  Malcolm set the cattle prod on the tray, gripping the garden tool in his functioning hand. “Spread her fingers,” he ordered.

  Fleming balled her hand into a fist, rolling her fingertips into her palms and hard as she could, but the guard was too strong. He pried her pinky free and jammed her hand tight to the table.

  A sickening smile lit Malcolm’s pointy, port-wine-stained face. “You took my fingers, now I’m going to take yours.”

  The fingers on her other hand had just been reset after a different bastard had gotten his jollies breaking them, and the pain was fresh and hot in her memory. She flinched, and she could see in Malcolm’s eyes that he recognized her fear.

  “Your fingers. Every one of them.” He spoke slowly, as if savoring the texture of each word, rolling the sounds over his tongue the way aficionados taste wine. “And then when your hands are nothing but stumps, we’ll finish what we started yesterday with your legs.”

  Her stomach roiled. “Tell me what else you’re going to do to me,” she said.

  “You see that butane torch? I’m going to use that on your—”

  That was enough for Fleming. She vomited, hard as she could, her stomach clenching with a mighty contraction. She threw up on Malcolm, on the guard—

  —and on her wrist strap.

  They stepped away in disgust, but disgusting as it was, it was also very slippery.

  Twisting her wrist, she lubricated her leather strap with mucus and bile, and then tugged with all she had, popping her arm free. She stretched out and yanked the cattle prod from the tray, feeling its heft, and cracked the guard across the temple with enough force to shatter bone.

  He went down, and Malcolm was too busy gagging from the puke to recognize what was happening.

  Big mistake.

  Fleming twirled the prod like a baton—thanks Fremd High School for the majorette lessons—and gave him half a million volts right in the eye.

  Malcolm folded like an ironing board, screaming and clutching his face, flopping onto the floor. Fleming dropped the prod, quickly undid the straps on her chest and hand, and sat up on the gurney, reaching for the other instruments of torture on the tray.

  The first was a bottle of isopropyl alcohol. She bit off the plastic cap and sprinkled it all over Malcolm as he howled.

  Then she picked up the butane torch. A model with convenient electric ignition for the interrogator on the go.

  “I’m doing every call girl in the world a huge favor,” Fleming said, switching on the pointy blue flame.

  Fleming wasn’t a sadist. Far from it. If anything, she was far too empathetic for this line of work.

  But that whump sound when she dropped the torch on Malcolm felt pretty damn good. He scrambled to his feet and ran, arms pinwheeling, out of the room and straight into a cinder block wall, knocking himself out.

  Unbuckling her feet was difficult, but Fleming was properly motivated. More guards would be coming.

  She reached down to check the guard she’d brained, but he didn’t have any weapons on him. Her eyes flitted back to the cart, and she palmed the scalpel—

  —and brought it to her own throat.

  Escape was impossible. She had no guns. She couldn’t walk. Even if she had a wheelchair, she doubted a secret NIC black site adhered to the laws requiring handicapped access. Soon reinforcements would arrive, and Fleming would be tortured to death.

  The smart thing to do was to end her life. Spare herself the agony. Prevent the lives lost and destruction that would ensue once she was forced to reveal her secrets.

  It had to be this way.

  It had to end like this.

  Right now.

  Fleming closed her eyes. She reflected back on her life. All in all, a good one. She’d seen things. Done things. Even after the accident—the only other time before this that she’d considered suicide—she’d still found things worth living for.

  There had been adventure, of course. Globe-trotting espionage. Fighting the good fight for the good guys. Making the world a slightly better place. Narrowly escaping death, only to face it another day.

  Family. Her loving adoptive parents. Dad taking her to ball games. Baking cookies with Mom. So wholesome and loving it was a glorious, beautiful parody of itself. She missed them terribly.

  Men. Her trio of steady lovers would mourn her. So would her two kinky backup dudes. Fleming wished she had a chance to see them once more, to say good-bye. To thank them for all the good times. To taste a final kiss.

  She pictured their faces, one by one, and waved to each.

  There were regrets, too. She supposed there were in every life. Things she’d still hoped to do. Experiences she still wanted to have. Love she wanted to share.

  She’d always hoped someday to be a mother, to feel a baby kick in her belly, to nurse at her breast. To hear the laughter of a child who shared her eyes.

  There were places she hadn’t seen. For all her travels, she’d never been to Las Vegas. How ridiculous was that? A spy who hadn’t ever played baccarat at the Bellagio. A shame, because she had a damn good system for counting cards.

  And Chandler…

  The sister she’d always wanted and had only just begun to know.

  Chandler might even be here now, in this prison. Fleming ached to search for her.

  But the safety of the many had to outweigh the safety of the few.

  Fleming wasn’t the woman she once was. She was beaten down, her body bro
ken, only a shadow of what she’d been. She’d been lucky to be able to take out Malcolm and the guard. But that luck couldn’t hold. She couldn’t get away. She couldn’t fight. She couldn’t win.

  She knew too much, and the best thing she could hope for was to take that knowledge with her.

  She had to do the right thing.

  Sometimes doing the right thing was all a girl had left.

  Fleming let out a slow, peaceful breath, said good-bye to her sister, and pierced her neck with the blade.

  Tequila

  Tequila heard gunshots coming from the reservoir. Two different handguns. But that had been over five minutes ago. Chandler should have arrived by now.

  Equally disconcerting were the gunshots coming from the Badger Ammo entrance. Rifle fire. And a shotgun.

  The guards Tequila and the dogs had dispatched hadn’t been carrying anything larger than a 9mm. Which meant a third party had entered the game.

  Tequila had sensed Chandler was holding something back. He didn’t get the feeling she’d lied to him—he was good at spotting deception—but she’d obviously omitted something important.

  He considered calling it quits, getting out of there. For all he knew, Chandler could be dead, and the enemy could be closing in on him.

  But he recalled what he’d told Chandler when they first met. He did whatever it took to get the job done.

  Running away wouldn’t get the job done. So Tequila stayed.

  He reached for his phone to text Chandler again.

  Simultaneous thoughts and sensations bombarded him.

  —the right side of his head became hot and pressurized, as if under a hair dryer—the energy from the bullet’s wake generated by air compressed around it, the shock wave.

  —his ear became immediately clogged, like it was filled with water.