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“Your convenience isn’t my priority, O’Donnell,” he said in a cold monotone.
“You called me Indy earlier,” she said, hating that his coldness made her heart sink. “I prefer you call me that.”
“Nobody gives a shit about your preferences.” Ice put his shades back on even though the sun was long gone.
Indy took a breath, shook her head. “I see why you’re called Ice. You can just switch it on and off, can’t you? Mostly off, from my limited experience.”
Ice grunted like he didn’t give a shit about her limited experience. He looked around the side street, which of course was about as crowded as Times Square on New Year’s Eve. His shaded gaze fell on a black-and-yellow hatchback taxicab with a grinning driver who was perhaps hoping the foreigner would give him a big tip because he didn’t understand the exchange rate.
“Get in,” Ice commanded, grabbing her upper arm and pulling her towards the cab. He yanked open the back door for her, shoved her inside head-first, then climbed in after her. “Raj Palace Hotel,” he told the driver.
Indy blinked twice as the thrilled driver slammed the car into gear, honked at a cow ambling down the middle of the road, and screeched the little hatchback into traffic.
“The Raj Palace is Mumbai’s fanciest hotel,” Indy whispered as they hit the main road again. “Who’s paying for this?”
Ice unzipped his duffel and held up a transparent plastic baggie with a passport, driver’s license, and an American Express Black card. “John Benson.”
Indy blinked twice more, her mind racing as she thought back to the silver-haired, wolf-eyed man who’d brought her into the CIA almost eight years ago.
“Benson isn’t CIA anymore, last I heard,” she said softly, looking into his shaded eyes. “Which makes you what? A hired gun? Freelance killer? Black ops?”
“All of the above, as far as you’re concerned.” Ice took off his glasses now, cleaning off the lenses with the bottom of his long-sleeved black tee.
He was about to put them back on, but Indy placed her hand on his arm.
“Don’t,” she said, her breath catching as the contact made her tingle. “Please. Earlier you saidwe’llfigure this out. You called me Indy. I know you’re a good man, Ice. I feel it, and I want us to—”
“Nobody gives a shit about what you want or don’t want,” Ice snapped, shrugging her hand off his arm viciously, slamming his shades back onto his nose with far more force than seemed necessary. “And you don’t know shit about me, O’Donnell. Don’t think you can play me with thatyou’re a good manbullshit. You’re not going to manipulate me with that condescending crap.”
Indy glared at his hidden eyes, then looked down at her hands, rubbed her sore wrists. She glanced back at him, then shrugged.
“Don’t be so sure,” she said softly. “Benson’s already proved that you can be manipulated. He didn’t tell you that he recruited me, that we go way back, did he?”
Ice flinched behind his shades, looked out his side window, said nothing.
“Yeah, we gowayback,” Indy whispered even though her interaction with John Benson had been only for those months when he’d slowly and methodically recruited her all those years ago.
Indy just wanted to push Ice’s buttons, see if she could crack that cold exterior, get him to flip that internal switch from freezing to fire.
Even though she was somewhat afraid of what a burning-hot Ice would do to her.
“Then maybe Benson’s the one who wants you dead,” Ice said without turning his head in her direction. “After all, it’s not a good look for him if someone he personally recruited turns out to be a traitor to the United States.”
Indy’s heart lurched. “Traitor? Are youinsane? Iseveryoneinsane? Ohmygod, this is a such a big mistake I don’t even know how to fucking process it!” She gulped back what tasted like bile poisoned by fear. Took a heaving breath to calm herself enough to speak coherently. “What does Benson think I’ve done?”
“You know what you’ve done and so do we.” Ice’s face was still turned into the warm breeze blowing through the open window. “All we want from you is the name of the higher-up who got you access to classified data that’s way above your clearance level.”
Indy shook her head like a dog at the beach, smiling like a crazy person as she did it, wishing wildly that she’d hit her head at the gym and this was all a bad dream, a horrible hallucination, a nasty nightmare.
“Benson’s wrong, and so are you,” she managed to say with more firmness than she felt. Her certainty calmed her down just enough to think it through. She looked up, cocked her head, widened her eyes. “But if there’s real evidence against me, then I’m being set up. Used as a cover for someone else. A patsy to take the fall for whatever’s happening.”
Now it all came to her in a rush, hitting her so hard she almost threw up from the dreadful excitement.
“Ohmygod, youknowhow the CIA works, Ice,” she pleaded. “They’ve got schemes hidden inside plans wrapped around conspiracies packaged with lies. You need to show me the evidence so I can help figure out who’s behind this. Look at me, Ice. Fuckinglookat me!”
Now Indy lost her cool at Ice’s aloof coldness. With a quickness fueled by rage she snatched the shades off his face, broke the plastic frame in two, then tossed the bits out the taxi window with a satisfied little shriek that made it clear she was coming undone, losing her damn mind, going certifiably mad, definitely deranged.
When she clawed her consciousness back to the real world Ice was staring at her with those green eyes.