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Obviously she was sharp enough to parse his words carefully, note that Ice only mentioned her parents because he knew about her mother dying in childbirth, her father taking his own life.
But what hit Ice like a hammer was the revelation that nobody in the CIA knew about her birth-parents except for the man who recruited her.
A lying, scheming, two-faced coyote of a man.
Ice didn’t even need to ask for a name.
He just said the words, watched Indy’s face go pale, saw the shock go through her like a wave.
“John Benson,” Ice whispered, shaking his head and slapping the cargo flap containing his Darkwater phone. “Sonofabitch.”
He pushed himself backwards off the chair, reached for the phone, then stopped when he heard a sound.
The sound of knocking.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
From outside, on the metal door.
Ice frowned, then acted.
He strode over to Indy, his finger on his lips for her to stay silent. Then he grabbed her arm and yanked her up from the floor, dragged her to the small lavatory, shoved her inside.
“Stay,” he commanded in an urgent whisper, making sure the look in his eyes told her this was not the time to protest or push back, to argue or negotiate.
She got the message loud and clear, nodding once, her eyes wide with a potent mix of confusion and fear.
Ice closed the lavatory door, waited to hear Indy lock it. Then he stepped lightly towards the front door, drawing the weapon he’d taken off Indy as he approached.
The knocks came again, this time harder, impatient.
Ice pressed himself against the side wall. This was a safe-house in name only. There was no high-tech security, no cameras watching the perimeter, no booby traps ready for deployment, no armory with grenade launchers, not even a damn second exit which was standard operating procedure. It was nothing more than an incognito location.
And it was getting a lot of traffic for an incognito location, that was for damn sure.
Another set of knocks. Ice knew he had to answer. The knocks were loud and heavy, which meant the visitors assumed they were expected.
Ice whipped through the possibilities.
Narrowed them down to two likely options.
Selected one of those two options.
Went with it and yanked open the door.
“Was in the bathroom,” he grumbled, gesturing with his head towards the closed lavatory door. “I wouldn’t go in there for at least an hour if I were you.”
There were two men standing outside in the dusty twilight. Both were Indian, short but powerfully built, dressed in khaki combat pants and white bush-shirts hanging untucked and mostly unbuttoned.
Without moving his eyes Ice could tell they were packing heat in their cargo flaps. That alone told Ice everything he needed to know. Moses had confirmed how hard it was to source weapons in this country. And the penalties for carrying without a permit were draconian, like ten years in an Indian prison, where you’d be dead in eight weeks just from the dysentery. So if these two studmuffins were carrying guns, it meant they were here to use them.
This was a wet team.
CIA used a lot of subcontractors nowadays, and these fit the profile of local thugs-for-hire. They were probably subcontracted by some American private security company with a standing contract to one of CIA’s shell companies. Ice had seen it all, and he knew damn well what this was.
The only question was who called it in.
As suspicious as Benson’s motives might be, Ice didn’t think the guy would ship a Darkwater man all the way down here and then send in a local wet team. If Benson wanted Indy O’Donnell dead, she’d already be dead and Ice would never have known her name, would still be in the U.S. looking for Diego Vargas with Jack and the rest of the Darkwater guys.