Jad Bell: Bravo Part 28

Jordan Webber-Hayden drops the tissue, takes another. She blows her nose. "My lover."

"You mean General Brock?" Bell asks.

"He was going to shoot me. He was going to kill me and himself, I think."

"Why would he do that?"

"Because he loved me."

"Strange way to treat someone you love."

She shakes her head. "You do not know."

Nessuno tilts her head, studies the woman for several silent seconds. Bell, sitting beside her, understands that she's heard something that he's missed.

"How long?" Nessuno asks.

"What?"

"How long have you been under, Jordan? Do you even know?"

The woman won't look up from the table.

"Do you remember your name?"

"Jordan Webber-Hayden."

"Your real name, I mean."

She doesn't respond.

"I'm only starting to remember mine," Nessuno says. "Sometimes I wake up and I have to actually think about it. It's getting easier, but I still have to think about it."

"You don't know."

"It'll come back to you. It just takes time."

"You don't know."

"I'll tell you the worst part, though," Nessuno says. "The worst part is that sometimes I don't want to be me, I want to be her again. Not the fear, not that. Not waiting to be discovered, not like that. But she was so much...more exciting than me. She was wealthy, she ate in fine restaurants. She wore expensive clothes, not like this, not jeans and a T-s.h.i.+rt and sneakers. She was special. She was loved. Maybe not the way she wanted to be, maybe not really at all, maybe only truly desired. But she could believe that was love. And now I've lost her, she's gone, and I'm trying to be just me again."

Jordan Webber-Hayden takes a new tissue, begins tearing at it with her fingernail.

"Have some water," Nessuno says.

The woman hesitates. Then, still holding the tissue, she takes one of the cups in both hands. She empties it, sets it down, takes the second one.

"I can't help you," she says.

"Sure you can, Jordan," Bell says. "I know you can."

She shakes her head. "I won't help you."

"Is he worth it?" Nessuno asks. "Your lover?"

Jordan Webber-Hayden looks into the water in her cup.

"He is everything," she says.

They leave her alone for an hour, fall back to the observation room. Ruiz has left, but Heath has arrived, and Wallford has remained.

"What was that?" Wallford asks Nessuno.

"That's called empathy," Nessuno says. "You should try it sometime."

"Her lover is Brock. Was Brock."

Nessuno shakes her head. "No way in h.e.l.l would she do what she's done for Brock. Kill Steelriver's family? She's talking about Echo. She knows him. Tohir didn't even know him, but that woman in there, she's been in his bed. She's in love with him."

She points to the gla.s.s, where Jordan Webber-Hayden is now sitting upright in her chair, her hands together in front of her. She's tearing another tissue into tiny fragments, a snowfall of them beginning to pile on the table.

Heath leans against the far wall, arms folded. "She didn't limit herself to working General Brock, from what we've gathered at her residence. There's a half dozen lovers at least, and her bedroom is wired for sight and sound, too, feeds into a hard-drive system in the walls. We got a laptop out of her car, and tech has been bas.h.i.+ng its head against it for the last few hours, too. We can break the encryption, maybe, but it's going to take more time than we've got. We're going through everything, but there's no telling what, if anything, will lead us to Echo."

"Echo is secondary," Bell says. "We need something actionable."

Nessuno shakes her head. "She's not going to know."

"We have to ask."

"Feel free, but I'm telling you she's not going to know. That woman in there, she's me. She's purpose-built, she was trained for this. She ignored me initially and responded to you. That's not because you're nicer. It's because she's trying to bond with you, she's trying to work you."

"She killed three people."

"That we know of, yes, and maybe more. But that's not her primary mission. Her place was wired, Jad, and she had a list of lovers. She's a.s.set acquisition for Echo-that's her primary, to gather intel and feed it back to him. If it weren't, if she were an a.s.sa.s.sin, she'd have killed me with her bare hands. She had the drop on me, she had me cold when I came around that corner. Someone taught her how to shoot and how to fight, but that's not her MOS, it's not her job. I know what I'm talking about here. I'm f.u.c.king looking in a mirror."

"It's a distorted reflection," Bell says.

Wallford clears his throat. "How long you want to let her cook? Because there is a time constraint, you may be aware."

"She needs to stew," Heath says. "The chief's right about this. We give her a bathroom break, we ask her if she needs anything, we give her something to eat. We need to make friends with her."

"Not us," Nessuno says. She points to Bell. "Him."

"Because she's trying to work me?"

Heath puts a fingertip to her nose.

Bell waits and finds it difficult. Nessuno and Heath go in and unchain her and take her to the s.h.i.+tter, bring her back, lock her up again. They bring her a cup of tea, and a sandwich, then leave, and the door to the observation room opens and Nessuno comes in. Wallford has left for the moment, and they're alone.

"That's not you," Bell says.

"I don't need a pep talk."

"There's a difference between her and you."

"You think so? Why? Because I did what I did for G.o.d and country and she's doing it for Echo?"

"That's not it."

"Look, you can dress it up however you want to, Master Sergeant. You can make me your battered damsel or you can make me a victim, but the fact is she and I are the same, just with a different coat of paint."

"That's the difference," Bell says. "You're not a victim."

"No?"

"No, and you know it. You're battered and you're maybe even broken, but so am I, because n.o.body gets out of combat unharmed. But in spite of everything you've been fighting since coming up for air, you still own yourself, and she's owned by him. I believe everything you're saying about her, Chief, right down to the rivets. But you do yourself dishonor if you think what she is and what you are match."

Nessuno fingers the small medallion on its chain, stares through the gla.s.s at Jordan Webber-Hayden. "I think I'm falling for you," she says.

"Thank G.o.d."

"Did you mean what you said? Outside the Hilton?"

"Every word. I was never any good at talking dirty."

"Maybe I can help you with that."

"Maybe you don't need to."

"You should get back in there."

"She gets her claws into me," Bell says.

"I'll rip 'em right out," Nessuno says.

"A lot of people are going to die," Bell says.

"I'm sorry," Jordan Webber-Hayden says. "I don't know anything about it."

"But your lover does?"

She nods slightly, leans forward so she can bring her hands up and brush hair away from her face. The dress draws tight against her chest when she moves, and Bell makes a point of not looking.

"So tell me about him."

"You're nothing like him."

"Does he have a name?"

She smiles. "I don't know it. Do you believe that?"

"No."

"But it's true. He never told me his name, and I understood that I was never to ask. So I gave him one."

"Dorogoy."

Her smile brightens. "Yes, exactly."

"What's your name?"

"Jordan." Her eyes s.h.i.+ft past him, to look at the window, the one-way gla.s.s that only shows their reflections. "Zoya."

"Russian?"

"Yes."

"Is he Russian?"

"I don't know." She shrugs, smiles again. "It doesn't matter."

Bell s.h.i.+fts, leaning forward. She copies him, coming closer.

"Jordan, you need to listen to me, because I'm trying to help you now. But you're not helping yourself. I don't care about your lover, you understand? This isn't about him. But people are going to die, and if you can help me keep that from happening, anything you can say, anything you can do or offer, that'll go a long way."

"You want to be my friend?"

"I'm the only friend you have."

"You'd probably be a good friend to have," she says. "I could make something up, I suppose. Try to tell you what you want to hear. But I don't know anything about that; I told you the truth. That wasn't what I did. That's never been what I do."

"You understand what's going to happen to you?"

"I imagine I'll go to prison," she says. "Prison doesn't frighten me."

"It could be worse than prison."

"You don't understand," she says. "You've already done the worst you can to me. You've taken me from him. I'm already dead."

Bell doesn't know what to say, is spared the silence by a tapping on the gla.s.s over his shoulder. He slides his chair back.

"Anything you can give us," Bell says. "Maybe you can see him again."

"Don't you think if I could make that arrangement with you I already would have tried?" she asks.

Bell leaves, enters the observation room. Nessuno and Heath are there, and he can feel that something's wrong the moment he steps inside. Nessuno holds out his phone.

"Just came," she says.