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

  Almost dying did that to a person. Psychologists babbled bullshit about it somehow reaffirming life. Physicians preached science about the effects of adrenaline and dopamine and serotonin. Hammett didn’t care about the reason for it. When a mission ended, she wanted to grab the nearest human being, man or woman, friend or foe, and fuck their brains out.

  But this mission hadn’t ended. Their target had gotten away. Hammett was sure Fleming’s tracking chip had been removed, and was now on its way to Boise, or Lima, or Moscow, and the only way to find her was through other means.

  Hammett crossed her legs, ignoring the persistent throb in her crotch, and twirled the knob that fast-forwarded the digital surveillance video of Fleming’s captivity. Mostly there was nothing happening. But the interrogation scenes were revealing.

  Hammett knew, firsthand, how tough Fleming was, and it had initially pissed her off. But watching her sister trash-talk her captors was…

  Well, truth be told, it made Hammett feel kind of proud of her. In her career, Hammett had endured more than her share of what could generously be called duress. She knew how hard it was to resist torture. Her broken, crippled twin sister had done an admirable job keeping it together, and when she killed that guard and set that creep Malcolm on fire, Hammett confessed to giggling.

  But the most interesting thing Fleming had done during her black-site stay was get Malcolm to punch in a code on the transceiver, which made it explode.

  That was very, very interesting.

  Fleming skipped ahead to the parts where that steroid midget showed up, and let it play out. She learned his name was Tequila, but she doubted that was real. He didn’t look like a merc, exactly, but he was paid talent for sure. Maybe he’d be traceable. Maybe not.

  Santiago knocked on the open door, and Hammett inwardly cringed. If it had been Javier or Isaiah, she might have jumped him. But she’d rather dry-hump a tarantula than that South American nutjob.

  “The warden has unfortunately expired.”

  “What did he give up?”

  “Everything. Swiss bank account numbers. The names and addresses of every member of his family. He wet the bed until he was twelve, lost his virginity at nineteen to a fat trailer-park whore, and offered to suck me off if I stopped.”

  Hammett sniffed the air, smelling BBQ.

  “Did you order food?” she asked.

  Santiago picked something out of his teeth and smiled.

  “Christ, you were eating him?”

  “He said he wouldn’t expect reinforcements until tomorrow,” Santiago said, ignoring the question but pausing to slowly lick grease off his lips. “And then, just a small insertion team. Only very few people know about this site. Even the president is out of the loop.”

  “Go into town. Pick up some pizzas, or burgers. Something the rest of us can eat.” She mentally added, You creepy goddamn psycho.

  “I’ll add it to my expenses.”

  “Do that.”

  Santiago crept away, and Hammett went back to the video. Earlier, she had skipped past the pathetic scenes of Fleming dragging herself up and down the hallway like a trained seal, but this time Hammett stopped when it looked like Fleming was talking to someone. Someone in another cell. Hammett cranked up the audio.

  The Instructor.

  Hammett got on her radio. “Santiago, scratch that last order. You and Isaiah, meet me in the security office. Javier, maintain a watch on the front door.”

  The Instructor was there, and Fleming knew he was there. That changed everything.

  Hammett stood up, cracking her knuckles. It was time to have a much longer, harder talk with the man who had trained her.

  Chandler

  “When you start to consider forming personal attachments,” the Instructor said, “it’s time to get out of the game.”

  When I awoke the next morning, snuggling next to Lund in one of the upstairs beds, I smelled like a garden and was sore in all the right places. The only thing I hadn’t counted on was the uneasy jitter under my ribs.

  I’d been ready for sex. I hadn’t been ready for whatever it was that had happened along with it, and I wasn’t sure how to deal with it.

  The mission hadn’t changed. The Instructor still needed to be rescued. But I was no longer convinced we had to be the ones to do it.

  “You OK?” Lund asked, sitting up, the blanket falling away and exposing his chest.

  “Fine.”

  “Worrying about your other sister?”

  “Yeah.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. I was thinking about Hammett, where she was now, what she was doing, how we could be ready for whatever she had planned next. Admitting to that seemed much easier than explaining something I couldn’t understand myself.

  Lund gave me one last steal-my-breath kiss, pulled on his clothes, and ventured downstairs.

  I wrapped clean bandages around my belly, dressed my various cuts and scrapes, and gave myself just enough Demerol to take the edge off, then dug through yet another plastic bag of things Lund had purchased for me. Cargo pants, a long-sleeved tee, and he’d included underwear and a couple of sports bras. I put on the clothes, covering up the bruises over my ribs and the whisker burn on my thighs, girding myself for whatever was ahead.

  I returned to the kitchen to find Lund dishing up more food. Tequila and Fleming sat at the table with two empty chicken containers, a few apple cores, and an empty container that appeared to have once held coleslaw. Fleming gave me a knowing smile, then gestured to the old wheelchair she had commandeered. “Lund said I can do with it what I want, but I’ll need some supplies.”

  I’d seen what my sister could do. The custom rides she’d designed for herself back in Chicago had more in common with tanks than the chair she was sitting in now.

  “Just give me a list,” Lund said. Hair tousled, he looked as if he’d popped straight out of some beefcake calendar, A Year of Hot Firefighters. Looking at him, I expected to have the overwhelming urge to relieve him of some of those clothes. But instead I felt something else entirely.

  I felt fear.

  Not of him. For him.

  I kept my voice even, betraying nothing. “We also need rounds, rifles, whatever we can get. I have a feeling it isn’t going to take long for Hammett to make her next move. We need to be ready.”

  “Rounds shouldn’t be a problem,” Lund said. “Weapons might be tougher to get on such short notice. But I have an idea.”

  Fleming raised her eyebrows. “Idea?”

  “Someone local. No waiting period. No registration. But we’ll need cash.”

  I looked at Tequila.

  He stared back, not saying a word, even though I was pretty sure he’d picked up what I meant to imply. Seconds ticked by.

  I finally gave in and said the words. “I need to ask you for a loan.”

  “It’s day two.”

  “A loan, Tequila. Not a gift.”

  “Tomorrow you owe me another payment.”

  “I lost the money in the reservoir. I’ll pay you back and for additional days as soon as I have a chance to get to one of my stashes.”

  “That wasn’t our deal.”

  “With interest.”

  “I’m not a bank.”

  Fleming ran a finger along Tequila’s arm. “It would be nice to have something more than a pack of razor blades to defend myself.”

  His eyes shifted in her direction, then returned to me. “Going rate.”

  “OK,” I said before he changed his mind. I held out my hand.

  He dug into his pockets and slapped the ten grand I’d given him into my palm, then he glanced at Lund. “Some interesting things in that old barn out there. Iron railings, old motorcycle parts.”

  “Yours for the taking,” Lund said. “There should be some welding equipment around here, too.”

  While they discussed ideas for tricking out Fleming’s chair, I stuffed the money Tequila gave me into the pockets of my new cargo pants and focused on my sister. “Can we talk?”


  “Sure.”

  I gestured for her to follow me into the living room. Once there, I perched on the edge of the sofa and searched for the right words. “The Instructor. I know you feel you owe him.”

  “And you’re wondering why?”

  I nodded. The man had trained all of us, me, Fleming, Hammett, and our other four sisters, now dead. But even though I felt some connection to him because of that, I wasn’t itching to charge back into that prison. I needed to know why Fleming was. “You said he helped you in Milan?”

  “I was in the hospital after my fall, no passport, no identification, in a haze of morphine, and with Italian police doing their best to tie me to the assassination.”

  I nodded. In such circumstances, we were on our own, and in the eyes of the United States government, we didn’t exist. “And he pulled strings?”

  “He came to the hospital himself, dressed as a doctor, and wheeled me out of there.”

  I let that sink in, not sure what to say.

  “He risked everything for me, Chandler, but it’s not just that. After the accident, there were times…” She looked away for a moment, and I waited for her to continue. “There were times I was pretty low, and he saw me through, encouraged me, forced me to go on. He gave me a life when I thought I no longer had one. I just…after all that, I can’t just leave him.”

  I felt myself nodding. I wouldn’t go back into that prison for the Instructor’s sake, but I couldn’t refuse my sister. “OK. We’ll get him out.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  I was about to return to the kitchens when she stopped me.

  “I have to show you something.” She brandished a laptop. “I’m rigging it to track Hammett.”

  “Where did you get that?”

  “Lund. Didn’t he tell you?”

  “No.”

  “Too busy showing you his other goodies?”

  I thought about the food, the clothes, the bath products, but I knew Fleming was referring to the man himself. Any direct answer wouldn’t do those particular treats justice, so I simply nodded. “You and Tequila seemed busy last night.”

  Fleming grinned. “The guy is like a piece of gym equipment. I swear, it was the most satisfying workout I’ve had in my life. You should try him.”

  I gave an uncommitted tilt of the head.

  Her grin widened. “You really like him.”

  “Tequila?”

  “Lund.”

  I opened my mouth to give a flip answer, something funny, preferably steeped in saucy innuendo, but no words came.

  “You like him so much, you’re speechless.”

  I couldn’t deny it, and I had to admit that bothered me. A lot. “I must be tired. I think the past few days have caught up with me.”

  “Chandler. This isn’t good.”

  Sometimes I forgot how much Fleming knew about me, even though we’d first met face-to-face only a few days ago. But after all the missions she’d worked as my handler, she knew most of my secrets. In fact, there were times I was convinced she knew everything about everything.

  “I’m fine,” I said, crossing my arms.

  “No, you’re not. He’s a hunk. He’s smart, funny. I’ll bet he’s hung like that horse of his.”

  “His horse is a gelding. And I can testify to the fact that Lund is not.”

  “Don’t obfuscate the point, Chandler. You’re falling for him.”

  “I don’t know. He makes me feel…”

  “Makes you feel what?”

  “Different. Not like myself.”

  “And I’ll bet that’s one of the things you like about him.”

  Was it? Maybe it was. I wasn’t convinced. Feeling this emotional, about Fleming, about what had happened with Lund, it was exhausting and exhilarating, but most of all it made me uneasy. “He’s a regular guy, Fleming. How can I be with a regular guy?”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call him regular.”

  “OK, he’s amazing. But he doesn’t live in our world.”

  “Chandler, after all this is done, we might not live in our world…or any world. Seriously, even if we get out of this alive—and it’s a big if—our covers have been blown, Hydra is gone, we are not only out of a job, we don’t exist. Seems like it might be the perfect opportunity to reinvent ourselves. Be whatever we want. Have what we’ve never been able to have.”

  Maybe I’d been disappointed too many times to trust my feelings for a man, but I just couldn’t embrace this as wildly as Fleming seemed to think I should. “I’m exhausted. I’m beaten up. I feel as emotionally raw as a teenager. And he’s a calm port in a storm.”

  “Maybe. But maybe there could be more.”

  I shook my head, not able to think about this one more second. “Can we talk about something else? A shopping list? Something?”

  Fleming gave me a sympathetic press of the lips. “Something easier, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “There is something else we have to discuss. But it’s not easy.”

  “What?”

  “The transceiver. There’s something you need to know.”

  I gave her a frown. “You mean my old cell phone? That transceiver? The one at the bottom of Lake Michigan?” Our dip in the lake seemed like it had taken place forever ago, when in reality only days had passed.

  She nodded. “That’s the one. Except it’s not in the lake.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Now? Destroyed.” She filled me in on Malcolm’s questions, how he’d produced the phone, how he’d demanded she give him the code to unlock the device, and how she’d provided the self-destruct code instead.

  “So it’s no longer a factor.” I said, more than a little relieved to be rid of the thing. When I’d carried it, I’d had no clue about its many capabilities. But since Fleming had designed the device, she knew all of them.

  She just stared at me.

  “It’s no longer a factor,” I repeated. “Right?”

  “It’s not the only one out there.”

  I groaned. “And?”

  “And it’s part of my job to keep tabs on the other. To make sure it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands, and take care of things if it does.”

  I thought for a moment. “And why are you telling me this?”

  “Because I think that’s part of what Hammett is after.”

  “Hammett is psycho. How are you sure she doesn’t just want to kill us just for the hell of it?”

  “Because she could have had her men mow down all of us when we were escaping on the horses, but she didn’t. She risked moving in close when she didn’t have to. She tried to shoot Tequila and later tried to kill you.”

  “But she avoided targeting you.”

  Fleming nodded. “I think she knows I have the codes for the other transceiver. I think that’s what she wants.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Stop her.” She eyed me as if there was more, but she was working her way up to telling me.

  “And?”

  “And I share the codes with you, so no matter what happens to me, one of us will be able to control that other transceiver.”

  I wanted to reassure Fleming that sharing the codes wasn’t necessary, that nothing bad would happen, that she could carry out that duty herself, but in light of all that had happened in the past days, such reassurances would be empty…not to mention utterly stupid.

  I reached for Fleming’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “OK, I’m ready. Lay the codes on me.”

  With all Fleming and I had talked about hanging in the back of my mind, I collected Lund, and we drove out in his truck, leaving my sister and Tequila working on programming the computer and customizing the chair.

  “What did you and your sister talk about?”

  The tires hummed on the highway for several seconds before I could formulate an answer. “The computer. It was very nice of you to let her use it.”

  “Just the computer?”

  “We discussed how much we
appreciate all you’ve done for us. The place, the horses, all the food and supplies.”

  “That’s all?”

  “We touched on what weapons are on our wish lists.”

  “No girl talk?”

  “Weapons are our girl talk.”

  Lund pulled over onto the side of the road, gravel under crunching under his tires. When he looked at me, his face was creased with disappointment. Uh-oh.

  I frowned. “Jesus, Lund, you want to talk about it, don’t you?”

  “Apparently you don’t.”

  “I thought I was the chick.”

  His face pinched even further. Part of me wanted to hold him. Another part of me wanted to slap him, to get some much-needed distance.

  “Look, Chandler, maybe what we had last night was just a typical weekend for you—”

  “Let’s not go there.”

  “—but it wasn’t that for me. I was with a wonderful woman last night, and this morning she’s gone.”

  I folded my arms. “Maybe I just used you for sex, Lund. Isn’t that every man’s fantasy? Now you can write that letter to Penthouse Forum like you wanted to.”

  “I know you, Chandler.”

  That got a derisive laugh from me. “You don’t even know my real name, Lund.”

  Lund put his hands on my shoulders, turning me to face him. “I know what it’s like to be alone. To work hard at a job, giving it your all. I know about the sacrifices. How hard it is to get close to someone when you think you have nothing left to give. I know what it’s like to risk your life, to not know if you’ll still be breathing by the end of the day.”

  I’d made a big mistake. The biggest of them all. I’d slept with a good man. The best thing I could do, for both of us, was push him away. So I went with the surefire relationship killer.

  “I’m a government assassin, Lund. Not a spy. Not a patriot. I kill people because I’m told to. Where do you think this is going to all end up? In a wedding chapel? Me barefoot and pregnant in your in-laws’ house, waiting for you to come home with some flowery fucking soap to wash my back?”

  My words hung there. I kept my face hard, but I felt myself breaking down inside. Because right when I asked that question, I’d realized how I wanted him to answer.