James Grippando - Afraid of the Dark

Andie gasped for breath.

She was bent at the waist, essentially upside down in the back of the limo. Her head was hanging off the forward edge of the leather seat, and her hair splayed across the carpeted floor. Her knees were pointed at the ceiling, flexed over the headrest so that her feet dangled through the open partition and into the cockpit. Bahena held her legs still. Her arms were outstretched, each wrist tied to a door handle.

“I’ll ask you one more time,” said Littleton. “Who are you?”

Her lungs burned, and she could barely force out the words. “I told you,” she said. “My name is Lisa Horne.”

Again, Littleton covered her face with the wet cloth. Andie couldn’t see, but she heard the jangle of the crystal carafe as he pulled it from the slot in the liquor cabinet. The fact that it wasn’t liquor was of little consolation. A steady stream of water began to flow again, soaking the cloth. Andie tried to hold her breath, knowing how painful it would feel. The cloth became thicker and heavier on her face, absorbing more and more water. She needed air and finally drew a breath, but it was like trying to breathe through a wet sponge. The burning sensation was in her nose first, and then it shot down her throat and tore at her lungs. Her body lurched and twisted until she coughed up the water into the wet cloth. She wanted to scream-Stop!-but the flow of water from the carafe was seemingly without end, choking off all ability to speak. Again she struggled to hold her breath, but the lack of oxygen was making her dizzy and borderline delirious. She knew if she blacked out they would revive her, and then she would face the tough questions about her true identity. Her head seemed on the verge of explosion, but she tried to focus on who she was, who she was supposed to be. Her name was Willow, and she was part of a cult in the Cascade Mountains. No, she was Andrea, and her best friend Mallory was married to a high roller on Wall Street. Her past undercover rolls were bleeding into the present, and it was impossible to think straight.

Air! I need air!

She breathed in, but she only sucked water into her lungs. The pain this time was like a knife to her chest, a rope around her neck, and a hammer to her head-all at the same time. It was impossible to focus, and her thoughts ran wild-until everything stopped.

She was suddenly coughing and gasping for air again. She was sure she had blacked out, but she had no idea how long she’d been unconscious. The wet cloth was gone-Thank God!-but her pulse rate was off the charts, and she was breathing with the desperation of someone plucked from the ocean moments before drowning.

“This is the last chance,” she heard a man say. “Who are you?”

The question barely made sense to her. No answer came to mind, but she wasn’t physically capable of speaking yet anyway. Desperate for air, she drew in a series of short, noisy breaths.

“Who are you?” he said, shouting at her now.

Andie had no idea where she was. No clue who she was. But the man shouting from somewhere above was demanding an answer, and in a brief instant of lucidity, she heard another voice in her head. She heard her supervisor, Harley Abrams, telling her that he had a team on alert in case things went badly, and she knew that to stay alive, she would have to buy time.

“We know you are not Lisa Horne,” the man said.

Buy time, buy time.

“Tell me who you are!” he shouted.

The name “Andie Henning” came to mind, but she flushed it.

Littleton draped the wet cloth back on her face, and the mere sensation sent her into a panic. She was sure that her supervisory agent was on the way, and her only chance of survival was to stall until help arrived. She had to tell this interrogator something-anything but “Andie Henning, FBI.” She searched her mind for an alias, but none of the FBI covers rang true enough for her to beat another round of waterboarding.

The carafe rattled, and she knew that in seconds the water would again begin to flow.

“Tell me!” Littleton shouted.

For reasons she couldn’t comprehend, her mind was suddenly in another time period, decades before she was even born, and she could see herself walking in the shoes of a woman she’d never met. A woman she’d heard about only a day or two ago, but whose horrible story made her seem so much more real than any FBI cover.

“My name is Katrina Petrak,” she said.

He pulled away the cloth. “Petrak? You work for the Czech government?”

“No,” she said, barely aware of her own voice, her mind awhirl as she fought to remain conscious. “The resistance.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The assassination,” she said. “Not everyone was to blame.”

“What assass-”

The explosion of a single gunshot cut his question short, and pellets of glass from the shattered window rained down on Andie. It came with another blast of wetness, but it was unlike the waterboarding, this time hot and thick as blood. She had nowhere near enough time to fear if the blood was her own. Almost instantly the dead weight was upon her, telling her it was Littleton’s.

From then on, the amount of time that passed was impossible for her to gauge. Perhaps she’d even blacked out again. The next thing Andie knew, the rear door of the black limo was open, and she was sitting up in a normal position on the door sill. Blue lights from surrounding squad cars swirled in the snowy night sky. A few yards away, a pair of FBI agents in full tactical gear led Danilo Bahena to a SWAT van. Andie was looking into the warm eyes of her supervisory agent.

“Are you okay?” asked Harley.

Andie glanced over her shoulder. Littleton’s body was behind her, slumped over in the back of the limo. A shot to the side of the head had taken him out.

“Better than he is, I guess.”

“I just heard from London,” said Harley. “Jack’s fine. You can call him now.”

He handed her a phone, and the sense of relief almost made her smile.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’d like that.”

February

The Czech Republic

Snow was falling as Jack drove out of Prague. Andie was in the passenger seat. It was their first trip abroad together. It wasn’t exactly a vacation.

“Funny,” said Jack, “an entire branch of my family tree is from this area. And every road I turn down, I see Jamal Wakefield in the trunk of a car heading off to a black site.”

Andie glanced out the window. “That location will never be public information.” She was right, Jack realized. The only living person who knew the exact location was Danilo Bahena, and he was sitting in jail for the murder of Neil Goderich. The likelihood of his talking was almost nil.

“To be honest,” said Jack, “it doesn’t really seem that important anymore.”

Andie reached across the console and held his hand. Her touch had a way of reaffirming something that he was now more sure of than ever: Andie was on his side. She’d taken a huge risk by calling him in London to explain how his case and her investigation overlapped, and to warn him about what he was up against. It was not yet clear how that would play out for her professionally, but she wasn’t fired, and she had the support of her supervisor. But Jack had a feeling there was more to come.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Jack nodded, and they rode on in silence, his thoughts drifting back to the mission at hand.

Grandpa Swyteck had died in his sleep. As best Jack could piece events together, it was right around the time doctors at the Royal Hospital of London were assuring Vince that his stab wound wasn’t fatal. Jack flew home from London for the funeral. Ten days later, he was back in Europe with Andie-and with a handful of his grandfather’s ashes.