Page 6
Story: Mr. Nice Spy
The ground rumbled slightly underneath my cheek, but my head was on something soft. The rest of my body was on hard, unyielding metal. If I had to guess, I was in some kind of moving vehicle.
My body was so stiff it felt like it was encased in cement, but terror shot through my veins at the speed of lightning.
Cracking open my eyes took an almost Herculean effort since each eyelid weighed twenty pounds. Somehow I managed to blink them open to slits and then fully see my surroundings a minute later.
Chan’s concerned face swam into view.
He bent down and I felt his lips near my ear, his hair falling forward and tickling my cheeks.
“Don’t say anything,” he said, voice so low I struggled to hear it over the sound of the rumbling engine. We must be in a car. No, it couldn’t be a car. I was stretched out horizontally, and there was too much space surrounding us for it to be any kind of passenger vehicle. And I was too uncomfortable.
“There’s a GSM voice-activated recording device,” he whispered. “It can’t record video, but it’s a few feet away and will pick up audio of anything louder than a few decibels. You understand?”
Maybe it was the tranquilizer drugs still in my system, but my brain struggled to keep up. So…in regular person terms, there was a bug, but it was an audio one, not video. Got it.
He waited for me to acknowledge I’d heard him with a small nod before he withdrew his mouth from my ear. It was only then I realized my head was on his lap. That was why it was cushioned while the rest of me felt like it was stretched out on an uncomfortable metal grate.
Well, that was a thoughtful gesture. There was probably a practical reason for it. Like, he wanted to be able to quiet me before I said something in front of the bug that might record us and put us in further danger. But my hormones reacted to the courtesy anyway, heating up my cheeks like I was a teenager going to a school dance for the first time.
Cool it, sparks. Now was not the time. Lives were literally at stake. Specifically, mine.
I eased myself up into a sitting position, head spinning from the effort. Chan’s hands hovered at my back, ready to catch me if I couldn’t handle it. The movement of the vehicle rocked my center of gravity, and I fell into his chest instead. My cheeks flared. If I kept this up, my face would be able to substitute as a space heater. I placed a hand on his chest and pushed, stumbling back on hands and knees.
Chan was silent.
Of course he was. There was a bug in the vehicle, which I could see now was some sort of armored truck, like the ones used to transport bank money. Well, that explained all the metal at least. Now that it had been a few minutes since I’d woken up, my brain was starting to function normally, and I found I could analyze my surroundings.
Dim light ran along the baseboard, illuminating the small box we were trapped in. Besides the bulkhead door that separated the front cab from the vault area we sat in, the space was devoid of anything that might help us in any way. I wasn’t about to go knock on that door either. I already knew the people on the other side weren’t my friends. I was assuming Xander had gotten backup to help him get Chan and me out of my apartment.
Chan pointed to the corner where a small, inconspicuous black box blended in with its surroundings. That must be the bug, and I’d have to take Chan’s word for it that it recorded only audio. But how was I supposed to tell him that our captors thought he was my boyfriend? What if they opened the door and he tried to smooth things over with them by claiming to be CIA, or he threatened repercussions if they didn’t release us immediately?
The situation was bad enough, but thinking of all the ways it could get worse made my pulse jackhammer in my rib cage. Chan scratched his ear, and the top of his hearing aid poked through his hair. He shook his head to settle his hair back into place, but I was reminded of one very important fact: Chan was hard of hearing.
I sat down across from him, tapped him on the knee, and then signed, Do you know sign language?
If I were being technical about it, ASL grammar didn’t translate word for word into standard English. ASL sentence structure had its own rules and organization that made strict translation impossible. So, as a native English speaker, I found I naturally translated things in my mind to how I was used to hearing it structurally.
Chan’s eyebrows shot up.
Yes, you? he signed back.
If relief were a physical thing, I could have filled this empty armored truck with mine. It was a little odd that he’d asked me, when I was the one to sign in the first place. Maybe he thought I only knew the one phrase, so I answered him with a nod, letting him know he could say anything and I’d be able to follow the conversation.
His grin was comically out of place. We were still prisoners after all. So, I asked, Why are you smiling? before I could really think about the fact that there were more urgent things we needed to discuss.
Because, he signed, I thought the perfect woman didn’t exist.
It was a good thing the interior of this truck was so dim, because it was completely inappropriate to be blushing this much. I could probably start a fire with the heat from my skin alone.
Keith Huxley-Beck, I finger spelled, had to learn it for a movie role . I shrugged.
Chan’s body shook with silent laughter, understanding my unspoken admission. When he recovered, he signed that he was hard of hearing himself.
I was caught in an explosion about six years ago .
Explosions. I’d heard of coworkers going deaf from them. We wore protective gear when we were in front of the glass, but things still went wrong more often than we could count.
So you didn’t know sign language as a child? I asked, amazed he could sign so well. You didn’t grow up as part of the Deaf community?
He shook his head. I’m good with languages, so it wasn’t hard to pick up the structure. But my hearing loss is fairly significant, with my right ear being a little better than my left. It’s been…quite the adjustment. He paused, searching for the right words. Since I didn’t grow up hard of hearing, I’ve never really felt like I fit into that community, despite my hearing loss being so severe.
I understood what he meant. Being hard of hearing and Deaf were two very different things, and there was a whole culture surrounding people with hearing loss. Honestly, it made me respect Chan that much more that he’d taken the time to learn sign language when he had hearing aids that could do the work for him, especially if he hadn’t felt like he was part of the community.
The explosion is what took me off fieldwork and put me behind a desk , he signed. The CIA won’t let me in the field with my disability. The work I do now is primarily logistics . Things that are supposed to be minimal risk.
I looked around the inside of the armored truck.
Welp.
Thought you should know, he signed. Given the circumstances.
It was just my luck that my hope of survival was pinned on a rusty CIA agent who hadn’t been on active field duty for six years. I was screwed. Sure, he was attractive, but I really needed him to be good at more than getting my pulse racing. Or some other things I couldn’t help but fantasize about but figured he could handle. I rubbed the goose bumps from my arms and focused my attention back on Chan.
He ran a hand through his hair, and his shoulders hunched like he was trying to retreat into himself. I sighed and placed a hand on his knee.
Sorry to get you involved in this , I signed.
It was, after all, my fault he was here. If I hadn’t told Xander to bring him along, Chan would probably still be back in my kitchen, rounding up a crew to follow my tracks.
Holt’s men, I’m guessing? he signed back.
I nodded. The man from the bar. His name is Xander and he thinks you’re my boyfriend.
Chan’s eyes bored into mine.
Anything else you can tell me? he asked. Any detail might be important.
So I spent the next several minutes recounting everything that had happened after Chan got knocked out. There wasn’t much there, but it gave me something to do besides freak out about the fact that I was trapped in an armored truck, heading to who knew where, about to meet an international arms dealer who was supposedly my father. I said supposedly , because I was too terrified to admit the truth even to myself.
When I was finished, Chan nodded.
Way to think on your feet , he signed. You made the best of a bad situation. Good job.
His compliment was like a warm bath on a rainy day. Everything else was scary—all unfamiliar shadows and hard edges—but Chan had a way of helping me remember to breathe.
And he hadn’t berated me for roping him into this mess as well, which he easily could have. Really, the guy was too nice by half, and I didn’t deserve him. I tried to make sense of the tangle of emotions raging through me and came up with only one I could easily identify—guilt. The first decent guy to pop up in my life in the past year and I’d repaid him by…getting him kidnapped?
Chan leaned back against the wall of the truck. That explains why they left my extra hearing aids in my pocket. Ever since an operation went sideways in Prague, the CIA makes me wear these top-of-the-line ones they’ve been developing and carry an extra pair rather than only an extra set of batteries. He smiled. I might not be a field agent, but I wasn’t then either, and it still almost cost Mendez his life when I couldn’t get mine repaired in time. And good job guessing that I might know sign language.
There was that glowing sensation again.
Do you know where we are? I asked, pushing aside the knot of guilt so I wouldn’t have to deal with it now. Didn’t my subconscious realize I had other things on my plate? I’m guessing tranquilizer darts only last for so long, so we’re still in Virginia? I signed.
Chan chewed on his lower lip like he was debating how to answer without freaking me out. Too late for that. A sour taste formed in my mouth.
There’s no way of knowing how many times they doped us to keep us asleep, he signed. They could have flown us on a plane before putting us in this truck for all I know. Judging from how hungry I am, we’ve been out at least twelve hours.
Oh. So much for me being smart. Now that he mentioned it, my stomach felt rather hollow, and I would have killed for a sandwich. I looked down, baffled at the pinprick of tears that threatened to come out of nowhere. In a matter of a single day, my entire life had been completely turned upside down, and now I didn’t even know where I was.
Chan touched my knee.
Hey, don’t forget about Mendez, he signed. The CIA is going over every traffic camera and Ring doorbell between your apartment and wherever we are. They’ll find us. He smiled reassuringly. And I’m here with you.
His statement only reminded me of one important fact. He wasn’t a field agent anymore. He was a strategist. As much as I wanted to believe Chan could help me, the truth of the matter was, he wasn’t a match for a criminal mastermind like Holt.
What hope did I have that the CIA would be any different?
Holt had managed to kidnap me before the CIA even knew he was involved. They didn’t know his henchmen were in the area let alone that Holt knew my name. Call me cynical, but that didn’t give me much confidence in the CIA’s abilities.
I was on my own.
I was ready to throw myself a pity party when my resolve kicked in instead. Forget that. I couldn’t fix all my problems, but there was one thing I could do.
I’d gotten Chan into this. Now I was going to get him out of it.
As Holt’s daughter, I had to have some bargaining power, right? It was me Holt really wanted. Chan didn’t deserve to get sucked into my problems. He was too nice for that. It was up to me to get him home in one piece. I would do whatever it took. Besides, even if the CIA was useless, if I got Chan out of here, he could go back to them and lead them right to me. If nothing else, it gave them—and therefore me—a better chance than we had before.
That same headstrong willpower that usually got me into trouble was now going to get Chan out of it. I could handle Holt myself. I was resourceful. There had to be a way. My new purpose practically burned inside me, giving me something to focus on besides my fear, and for the first time that day, I found I could think a little clearer.
Chan’s eyes shot to mine and I knew I wasn’t the only one to feel it when the truck started to slow down. All along we’d been taking turns and adjusting our speed, but now we came to a crawl, either entering a more populated area or passing some kind of checkpoint.
Bile rose up my throat and threatened to choke me. I was so light-headed I wouldn’t have minded if I suddenly passed out again. Maybe the nausea was from lack of food, but I wasn’t even hungry anymore. My mouth was dry and my stomach roiled.
Chan reached out and took my hand. My fingers shook in his, but he was rock solid. I nodded, and reminded myself of my new goal. Get Chan home.
The truck came to a stop.
The back door opened.
We were here.