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Ice had used his interrogation techniques on hundreds of poor saps who’d coughed up their secrets within hours of being alone in a room with him.
But this was the first time Ice had been asked to break a woman.
And that could be a problem.
A big fucking problem.
Ice watched the safe-house from a distance for another few minutes, then started the Jeep’s engine and slowly maneuvered down the potholed road. On either side were unpainted two-story buildings of raw concrete. Retail on street level with tiny apartments above for the proprietors and their families, all of whom worked at the little shops that sold everything from tins of cow-milkgheeto swaths ofsareefabric to cheap plastic toys that came in by the truckload from China, which shared a large border with India towards the north.
And China was part of the reason Ice was here.
India and China had already fought three wars, and for the last several decades had been squabbling over land in the borderland state of Kashmir—a savagely beautiful expanse of mountains and valleys perched at the northernmost tip of India.
Beautiful land, but also disputed land, with India, Pakistan, and China each occupying about a third of Kashmir—though preciselywhichthird was a matter of contention.
India, Pakistan, and China were all nuclear powers, which made Kashmir one of the world’s powder kegs, a real hotspot that both the CIA and the Department of Defense kept close tabs on—which in CIA and DOD talk meant they had people on the ground watching for any dangerous developments.
And the woman in that safe-house might be one hell of a dangerous development.
Except CIA Director Martin Kaiser didn’t want CIA or DOD people handling this particular matter, handling this particular woman.
So he’d kicked it down to his former brother-in-arms, ex-CIA legend John Benson.
Who just happened to be Ice’s boss at Darkwater.
And so Ice was back out in the field, in the middle of Mumbai, on a mission that was so secret even he didn’t know exactly what the fuck was going on yet.
He sighed, took off his shades again, rubbed his green eyes, then glanced at the sleek black Darkwater phone sitting silently on the empty seat beside him.
As if on cue it lit up and buzzed.
An oversized selfie of a tattooed and shirtless Jack Wagner flashing a cocky grin popped up on the screen. Ice sighed and shook his head, tapped the phone and put the call on speaker.
“Can you please change that damn profile picture?” Ice snapped. “It gets plastered all over my phone when you call. Someone sees that and they’re going to wonder about the company I keep.”
“It’ll elevate your status in life, big brother,” came Jack’s crackling voice through the loudspeaker. “Though it’ll probably kill your chances if you’re trying to get laid and the woman sees it. She’ll never be satisfied with a clean-cut choirboy like you after seeing what she could have had if she’d picked the right brother. Maybe if you got some ink on those overdeveloped muscles you might have better luck with the nerdy librarian-type women you like to fuck. What do you say, bro? Should I hook up an appointment with my tattoo guy in Brooklyn?”
“What do you want, Jack?” Ice stayed calm, not taking the bait. Jack treated his body like a canvas for tattoo artists, but Ice didn’t have a splash of ink on his own skin.
Wasn’t his style, never would be.
He was all business, all the damn time.
The mirror opposite of his kid brother Jack.
Especially when it came to their taste in women.
Jack liked the party-girls who could dance all night—preferably on his cock. Ice would much rather stay in with his woman, draw the blinds to shut out the world, bring her into his own world with just whispered words and carefully chosen commands.
And yeah, Ice liked a woman with a sharp head on her shoulders, not just nice boobs beneath them. So fucking what? Jack made it sound like there was something undesirable about a woman who could hold her own in an argument, stand her ground in a debate.
Hell, to Ice that was the best part of the game.
Because nothing felt as good as winning that sort of game.
Dominating that sort of woman.
A girl who could stand her ground.