Seeds of Iniquity Read online

  Maybe I should’ve denied it straightaway, because now—fuck; she knows what she’s doing.

  “Sit down,” I tell her, pointing my gun at her again.

  “Oh, Niklas,” she says with a sigh. “I can tell you’re not going to be as easy to convince.”

  I step toward her, the gun pointed at her head, but she stands her ground. I swallow down an angry knot, but three more replace it.

  “Sit. The fuck. Down.” I press the barrel of my gun against her forehead, pushing her backward toward the table. Her ass presses against the edge of the metal and she can go no farther. Consumed by anger, I close the space between us and press my body against hers, moving the barrel of the gun underneath her chin, shoving her neck back.

  “You won’t shoot me,” she says and I can feel her breath on my face. “And you will tell me what I want to hear before you leave this room.”

  I shove the gun deeper into her throat, forcing her head back farther. My blood is on fire, pumping through my veins like acid. My teeth hurt; I’ve been grinding them for the past several intense minutes.

  I cock the gun, my finger on the trigger.

  “Dina Gregory will die if you don’t cooperate.”

  “I don’t give a shit—”

  “Yes you do,” she says, cutting me off. “You give a shit because you do care about Izabel. And because you care about your brother, despite him being with the woman he loves and you’re left with nothing.”

  “Who are you, really?” I ask, glaring into her seemingly unruffled features.

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  My hands come up and brace her shoulders, shoving her away from the table and pushing her violently against the nearest wall. Her blonde hair falls down around her face. She surrenders to me, raising both arms out beside her, pressed against the painted brick. Her eyes search mine in close proximity, and mine search hers; a strange feeling of familiarity in them.

  I shake it off and think of Izabel for a moment, and then the act I’ve been putting on since she officially became a part of our organization fades away and leaves me standing in a puddle of truth.

  “So what if I care,” I say icily, my face mere centimeters from hers. “She’s grown on me; what can I say? She fuckin’ hates me because I tried to kill her, but I can’t really blame her for that, can I?” I pause, inhaling her natural scent, not because I want her, but because we’re all fucking animals inside and—OK, I want her, just to prove that she’s not the one in control here. I want to fuck her and then I want to leave her, naked, and bent over the table, just for being such a bitch.

  “What do you want to know?” I ask, and then I shove her and step away. I hear the back of her head gently hit the wall. “This is stupid. I have no secrets, just like I said. But whatever you’re wanting me to ‘confess’, just fucking say it. Can’t force me to confess something I have no idea what it is.”

  “I want you to look up at that camera,” Nora says in a gentle, intent voice, “and tell them how much Claire meant to you.” My whole body stiffens hearing Claire’s name come out of Nora’s mouth. “Tell them about the day you lost her. And I want to hear the words from your heart, not just your lips. Set the stubborn, loveless asshole aside for a moment to tell them about Claire. The real Niklas Fleischer is your confession.”

  Her throat is in my hand before I know what I’m doing; my gun disappears behind the waist of my pants. Flooded by rage, I lift Nora from her feet and carry her the short distance back to the table, slamming her back against it.

  “I’ll fucking kill you!” I roar down into her face, my hand collapsed around her throat.

  “Do it!” she challenges; struggling to find all of her voice. “Kill me! Do it, Niklas! DO IT!”

  The breath in my lungs is as heavy as cement; my eyes wide and feral as I glare down into her pink and purple-shaded face. Both of her hands struggle to pry my fingers away; her long legs are wrapped around my waist, tightening around me like a boa constrictor, but for nothing. Because I can’t be stirred in this moment. She could take my gun from the back of my pants and shove it underneath my chin and I wouldn’t give a fuck—I’d choke her to death before she got a shot off.

  Finally, just before she loses consciousness, I let go of her throat and yell something indecipherable into the room; every part of me consumed by rage and hatred.

  She gasps and chokes, scrambling to fill her lungs with air again, her legs hanging precariously over the side of the table.

  I pace the floor, back and forth in an enraged march, my eyes looking downward at the scuffmarks on the tile, up at the bare walls—anything but Nora, or the hidden cameras in the room with eyes on the other side of them looking back at me with their judgments and assumptions.

  But the only face I see, the only person I can think about is Claire. I’ve tried for six years to put her out of my mind; six fucking years, only to have this girl dangle Claire’s face, and her death, in front of me, torturing me.

  “Niklas,” I hear Nora say softly from behind, but the rest of what she might have been about to say fades into the quiet of the room.

  I spin around on my heels and march back over to her. She flinches, but just slightly, not enough to make her look afraid. I grab the back of the chair I had been sitting in and slide it out roughly before dropping all of my weight into it.

  Nora just looks at me for a moment, still laying partially on the table, but finally her body slides off and she stands upright, adjusting her silk blouse.

  I point at her chair.

  “Sit.”

  She does without argument, and it’s a good thing because at this point I could go either way at the drop of a hat—tell her about Claire, or blow her brains against the wall.

  I pull a pack of cigarettes from my back pocket and toss them on the table.

  I don’t look directly into any cameras—fuck that—I’m gonna tell her what she wants to know, but I’m doing it my way. If she doesn’t like it, she can go fuck herself. And so can Dina Gregory. And Dorian’s ex-bitch. And Woodard’s daughters. And Izabel. And my brother.

  “I was thirty when I met Claire. I was thirty when I fell in love with her. And I was thirty when she was killed…”

  Six years ago…

  “Claire was an assignment. Not a hit, just an assignment. It wasn’t like I had never done these kinds of jobs before: get close to a woman, date her for a while, pretend that I was normal, that I was just like any other man looking to find some nice girl to settle down with. Most of them were hits. Murderous bitches, women who liked to dip their tongues in too much green sugar, who did what they had to do to get their husbands inheritances. Whatever. Back then I never worked in the field like Victor did—I wasn’t as skilled as my brother—and I wasn’t anyone’s liaison, either. I worked on the inside, charming women to get information, and then sometimes, if the job called for it, taking them out afterwards.” I pause, letting the truth gut me. And then I say, “But Claire wasn’t a target. She was a decoy. My mission was to get to know her, get her to trust me so I could find out about a man named Solis. He had been the target for a year, and the only lead we had on him was Claire. We didn’t even know what kind of relationship Solis and Claire had—lovers, partners in crime, brother and sister—anything was possible at that point.”

  I point sternly at Nora. “But one thing I knew for sure once I got to know her was that Claire was a good woman, and whatever her involvement with Solis, she didn’t know shit about his double-life. She wasn’t part of it and didn’t deserve to be—Claire was bait.”

  I stop abruptly.

  “Go on,” Nora tells me. “I want all of the details. I want to know everything.”

  I sneer and grit my teeth, but I give in.

  “I met her at a department store,” I say. “She was a cashier. At first I thought it was me charming her, but within a couple weeks I realized it was the other way around—though it wasn’t intentional or malicious on her part. Like it was supposed to be
on mine. I was crazy about her. It scared the shit out of me, but for the first time in my life I let it. We dated. Like a real couple. Went to the movies and ate popcorn. We had dinner in nice restaurants and went random places together. I did shit with Claire I never could see myself doing. Weird, normal shit. But I liked spending time with her even if I felt like I was turning into goddamned Mr. Smith.

  “I moved in with her three months after we met, and although my mission was always looming in the back of my mind and I knew that whatever was happening between us couldn’t last, I was falling in love with her. And she was falling in love with me.

  “Claire came out of the shower wrapped in a towel, her hair was wet, pinned up at the back of her head. She blushed as I watched her walk half-naked across the room, a crooked smile on my lips as I lay on the bed with my hands fitted behind my head and my feet crossed below.

  “ ‘You’re too much,’ she said with a smile in her voice, glancing over her bare shoulder, shy about letting the towel drop the rest of the way.

  “ ‘How so?’ I asked with a grin. ‘Because I like to look at you naked?’

  “She blushed again and turned to face the closet, pulling down a blue dress from a hanger.

  “ ‘You shouldn’t be afraid to show off what you’ve got, love,’ I told her. ‘Especially not in front of me. Go on, drop the towel.’ My smile deepened as her blush reddened.

  “Claire didn’t drop the towel. And I knew she wouldn’t. She was self-conscious though she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and I liked to let her know it every second of every day I spent with her.

  “The little blue dress fell just above her knees. It drove me crazy. Everything about her drove me crazy.

  “As I lay in bed, she walked toward me with a familiar dazed look on her face—and then she hit the floor and seized for several minutes.

  “I had gotten used to it after eight months. Claire had seizures at least every other day, sometimes every day. It interfered with her life. She couldn’t drive. She couldn’t do a lot of things, or rather she was afraid to. When she met me, she started to come out of her shell. I drove us everywhere. And if she had a seizure in public I took care of it.”

  “How long had she had seizures?” Nora asks.

  “Why do you care?”

  “It’s just a question.”

  I shrug, making a face as if I don’t know, but then answer, “Said she’d had them since she was a little girl.”

  Nora nods. And I continue.

  “But after eight months of being in love and taking care of Claire, it didn’t go unnoticed that I wasn’t taking care of my mission. Ten months later, I still hadn’t found a shred of information on Solis. Claire never spoke his name, not even when I tried to get her to talk about her family, her past lovers, about anyone in her life—she told me a lot, but never mentioned anyone named Solis. I started to think she didn’t really know him at all, and that maybe this was all a mistake.

  “None of that mattered though.

  “All that mattered to The Order was that I was spending too much time with the decoy and not producing any results. Bastards.

  “I started to worry that they’d take me out of the mission and send in someone else to get the information. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I knew that I needed to keep Claire safe. And I knew that for both of our sakes, I couldn’t give The Order the suspicion that I was in love with her. If Vonnegut ever thought that to be true, he would’ve had us both killed.”

  I pause, signing heavily.

  “Eleven months after I met Claire, things came to a brutal fucking end.

  “It turned out that The Order wasn’t the only organization looking for Solis. And I wasn’t the only operative who had Claire as an assignment. Somebody else was looking for her too, but to them Claire was more than a decoy. She was a hit.”

  I stare off at the wall, letting the white brick blur out of focus. I’m reliving it all now for myself, not for Nora. I barely even see Nora in front of me anymore.

  “My cell phone chimed next to me on the passenger’s seat of my car. I glanced over and saw that it was Claire and answered immediately.

  “ ‘Hey love,’ I said into the phone, a smile etched on my face. ‘I’m almost there to pick you up.’

  “A gunshot sounded in my ear; the voices of men, the shuffling of shoes, a scuffle—things breaking and Claire screaming.

  “I shouted her name into the phone as my boot pressed the gas pedal all the way to the floor.

  “The phone went dead.

  “I dropped it on the seat and the tires on my car tore their way recklessly down the highway, weaving through back streets and blazing through stop signs in the late evening.

  “She was dead when I got there, her body lying on the floor between the sofa and the coffee table. Two other men had also been shot. Victor met me at the door.

  “ ‘I couldn’t get here in time,’ he said, but I hardly heard a word. I couldn’t take my eyes or my mind off Claire.

  I rounded my chin defiantly and tried so fucking hard to contain my anger and pain, hoping not to let my brother on to my feelings for Claire.

  “ ‘Niklas,’ he said almost apologetically, but then he stopped and he led me outside because he knew the house was bugged. ‘Did you have…feelings for her?’

  “I laughed. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ I said, but I couldn’t look him in the eyes. ‘Just call a fuckin’ cleaner and get rid of her. Are those men from the other organization?’

  “It stung me to say the words ‘get rid of her’, and made it that much harder to hold it together.

  “Victor nodded. ‘Yes. Claire received a phone call after you left the house. From a man. We did not catch his name and they weren’t on the line long enough to get a trace.’

  “ ‘What did they say?’ I was getting nervous; I was afraid that Victor would tell me something I didn’t want to hear: maybe Claire had something going on with this man, maybe she wasn’t who I believed her to be—it would’ve killed me that much more to know something like that about the woman I loved more than anything.

  “ ‘They barely spoke,’ Victor said. ‘Claire answered. There was a pause and the man simply asked who he was speaking to. Claire replied by asking him who he was trying to reach. And then the call ended.’

  “ ‘Sounds like it was just a wrong number,’ I said.

  “ ‘It is possible,’ Victor said with a nod, ‘but it was also suspicious. We were not taking any chances and I was ordered to come here right away.’

  “ ‘Why didn’t you call me?’

  “ ‘You were still over an hour away,’ Victor said. ‘I was just fifteen minutes out.’

  “That may have been true, but he was keeping something from me and it didn’t take long for me to figure it out.

  “ ‘Victor, tell me the fucking truth,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you call me?’ I already knew the answer.

  “He sighed. ‘You were being removed from the mission, Niklas. Joran Carver received his orders last evening to take over.’

  “ ‘Take over?’ I said with anger and disbelief. ‘And how the hell was he gonna do that?’ My voice began to rise. ‘I had a relationship with Claire. She…loved me, Victor’—I had started to say that I also loved her, but my wall of denial was still up and had to stay that way—‘How could Joran possibly just take over?’ I was enraged—the thought of another man, operative or not, taking over for me, did things to me that I couldn’t control—I almost punched my brother.

  “Blue and red lights bounced against the surrounding trees in the darkness as a police car and an unmarked came up the long gravel driveway. The house I lived in with Claire was on six acres of tree-engulfed land; the closest neighbor was half a mile away.

  “Joran Carver stepped out of the unmarked vehicle dressed in a suit.

  “I beat the shit out of him because he was there, why he was there. And I didn’t talk to my brother for a month after that. Because he kept the truth
from me until the last minute when The Order’s plan to replace me with Joran, died with Claire that night.”

  “Why was Joran Carver there?” Nora asks.

  Letting the memory fade, I look back at Nora sitting on the other side of the table.

  “I thought you knew everything?” I say sarcastically.

  “This I don’t know,” she says. “And I want you to tell me.”

  I shake my head with a sneer. “That wasn’t part of the deal.”

  “It is now,” she says. “I’m curious to know.”

  I want to be my pissed off, defiant self with Nora right now, but at this point I don’t even care anymore. I feel so goddamned defeated, not by Nora, but by myself.

  “Joran’s role was to play the kind and caring homicide investigator who was going to show up at Claire’s house to question her about the last time she saw me. To rule her out as having anything to do with my murder.”

  “They were going to kill you?”

  “No.” I shake my head. “They were just going to take me out of the mission. Tell her I had been found murdered. She would’ve been devastated. And Joran, handsome, slick fucker that he was, was going to be the one to console her, and her only hope of getting the charges dropped against her for being the one who killed me.”

  Nora’s eyes narrow. “So they were going to make it look like she was a murderer, play on her vulnerable state just so Joran could replace you.”

  “Fucked up, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, that’s extreme,” she says.

  “You wouldn’t believe how often things like that happen,” I say, and even now, long after I’ve left The Order, I feel like I’m committing treason against it by freely telling this woman this information. Again, I don’t give a fuck; a part of this feels strangely freeing. “Vonnegut’s operatives were, and still are, everywhere. Working as police officers, EMT’s, IRS officials, lawyers, actors, street sweepers—sometimes I think Claire is better off dead because they would’ve put her through nine kinds of hell to find out what they wanted to know, and ruined whatever life she tried to make for herself. I like to think that the last eleven months of her life with me was my way of getting back at them. Because I was good to her. And what I felt for her was real. I wasn’t just another Joran Carver sent in to lie to her. Claire would’ve died either way, whether by the other organization after Solis, or eventually by The Order itself. I’m glad I was the last person in her life. Because I fucking loved her.”