Susan lurched from a deep sleep to nearly being awake. She heard Cindy calling and, for a moment, thought her sister was in trouble. Then Cindy entered the room.
"Did I wake you?" groaned Cindy. "I’m sorry. I thought you’d be awake by now."
"What time is it?" slurred Susan. She looked around, but couldn’t focus.
"It’s almost ten. There’s someone on the phone for you. Do you want me to tell her you’ll call her back?"
"Uhhh," Susan said, her head flopping back on the pillow. "No, I’ll take it. Besides, I should be used to you waking me up. You did it all the time when we were kids."
"Well you were always sleeping too long," Cindy retorted.
"No, you were always up too early," Susan argued playfully.
"No, you were always up too late," Cindy volleyed back.
"God, I wish Mom were here, just so I could see her spank you."
Cindy stuck her tongue out at her sister as Susan trudged into the living room of the apartment. It took her a moment to find the phone.
"Hello?" Susan said.
"Susan, it’s Janet," said the voice on the other end. It was Janet Vanowen, the Nursing Staff Coordinator at Mercy Hospital. "Are you all right?"
"I’m a little sleepy," shrugged Susan. "Oh, you’re talking about last night. How did you find out about last night?"
"Susan, it was on the news this morning. When they said your name, I just about had a heart attack!"
"What’d they say?" Susan asked, curious and suspicious.
"They gave the whole story, about how somebody broke into your house, robbed you, tied you up and set your house on fire. Susan, how did you ever get out of that alive?"
No mention of the disk, just a generalized robbery, and no mention of Marie specifically, just a generic somebody. Had Shondra Lockwood’s mystery agency gotten to the police and asked them to withhold certain details? What did that mean for her?
"Susan?"
"Oh, uh, I got lucky," Susan replied, shaking herself from her reverie. "I was able to get hold of some sewing scissors and cut myself loose."
"You must have been terrified."
"Well, it made ER seem like a picnic."
"And I saw your poor house. They said it was a total loss."
Susan’s feelings sank. "Yeah, it was."
"Do you need some time off? I can juggle the schedules if you want to take some sick time to pull your life back together, but I need to know now."
"Yeah," Susan nodded. "I think that would be a good idea. If I could take my next four day shift off, it’d be a big help."
"Then you take it and don’t think anything of it. Honestly, Susan, I just don’t think anyone’s safe from these criminals anymore. Did you hear about poor Betty Freeman down in the morgue?"
"What happened to her?"
"Two thieves came in and tied the poor girl up, then ransacked the corpse effects storage closet."
"Were they looking for something?" Susan asked, her senses on alert.
"I don’t know. They probably were just looking for stuff to sell. Poor Betty was so shaken."
"Was one of them a woman?"
"Hmm," Janet said. "Come to think of it, I think Betty did mention that one of them was a woman—some sort of foreign woman."
"Um, Janet, I’ve got to go," Susan said quickly. "Thanks for the time off."
"Think nothing of it. And Susan, if there’s anything I can do for you, just call."
Within seconds of hanging up, Susan was in the bedroom fishing through Cindy’s closet for something to wear. She sighed in exasperation. Cindy dressed way too flashy for Susan’s tastes and, with their differences in sizes, most of her clothes would fit very tightly on Susan. She finally picked a fleece sweatshirt and gray cotton bike shorts. It wasn’t her, but her other clothes were too smoky to wear. Cindy came in just then, wearing a bouncy red and black polka dot flared miniskirt and a red blouse that bared her midriff.
"Going out already?" Cindy asked.
"I’ve got to drop something important off," Susan explained. "Then I thought I’d hit the mall and pick up a few things to wear. I’ll try to be back about one."
Shondra Lockwood normally slept very lightly, a necessity in her business. However, the previous night had been very long and very stressful and it served to send her into a deeper slumber than usual. She lay on the hotel bed, her long, buffed dark brown frame clad only in her usual sleeping attire of white bra and panties. The room was still, even though she was not the only one occupying it.
Suddenly a hand clamped over her mouth, jerking her from her slumber. Her nerve endings crackling with a sudden surge of adrenaline, Shondra looked up above the strong male hand to see a Chinese man in a long-sleeve blue shirt and beige slacks standing over her. In his right hand was a gun. Shondra stifled the urge to resist immediately and waited for him to make the first move.
"You will speak only in whispers," Huan said quietly and curtly, "and you will only speak to answer my questions." The hand withdrew from Shondra’s mouth. "Where is the disk?"
Shondra snickered in spite of the dangerous situation.
"Man, are you a day late," she sneered.
Huan responded by jamming the gun closer to her face.
"Where is the disk," he demanded.
"I don’t have it," Shondra snapped. "Some French bitch by the name of Marie LeClair took it. She’s probably half way to Paris by now."
"The disk the Frenchwoman had was blank," Huan announced. "Surprise? You did not know this," he said further, reading Shondra’s expression before she could surpress it. "Then the American nurse must still have it. You have been very informative. However, it is unnecessary to allow you to continue competing with us for the disk."
Huan reached for a pillow to muffle the noise of the gun. In the instant he glanced to it, Shondra made her move, kicking hard against the side of his knee. Huan folded hard and Shondra lashed out with her other leg, kicking the gun away. Instantly her hand dived under her pillow, drawing her gun out into the open. However, Huan recovered fast and swatted the pistol away with a lightning chop. Avoiding his punch, Shondra rolled off the bed and to her feet.
The agents confronted one another in self-defense stances in the center of the bedroom. They stood still for a moment, sizing the other up and looking for weaknesses. In an instant, Huan lashed out with his hand. Shondra deflected it and the battle was on. Fists and kicks flew between the two combatants at a machine gun pace. Attacks were quick as lightning, defensive blocks were faster. The two initiated and defended a hailstorm of blows, scoring minor hits and glancing blows. It was almost a ballet of violence. Neither one could gain any advantage over the other.
Huan began pressing the attack, taking risks in order to gain advantage. Shondra could tell he was growing desperate to fulfill his primary mission, to communicate the information he had gained to whoever was running this show. It had become clear to Shondra that this man was an agent for the Mainland Chinese government. He was too controlled to be a mercenary or independent operative. With the Chinese involved now too, this mission took on an entire new urgency and Shondra was just as determined to prevent this agent from communicating with whoever he worked with.
One of Huan’s gambles worked. A jabbing punch slipped through Shondra’s defenses and staggered her. Huan moved to press his advantage, but he moved too recklessly. Shondra pivoted and caught her opponent with a spinning kick that staggered him, then stopped her leg’s arc and kicked back with it, catching him in the chest. Huan spun in the air and to the floor.
Continuing the spin, Huan rolled to his feet and scrambled for the door. The fight was secondary to the mission and he had been prevented with a means of escape. Shondra scrambled for her gun as the intruder barreled out the door. Huan flew down the hallway to the emergency stairs, Shondra in hot pursuit of him wearing to the surprise of other guests in the hall only her bra and panties and waving a gun. Shondra was unconcerned; her only goal was stopping the man she was chasing.
The chase continued down the stairwell. Shondra brought her gun up on three separate occasions to shoot the fleeing agent, but each time refrained from firing, either because civilians were in the path or she didn’t have a clear shot and didn’t want to waste ammo she might need later. Five flights of stairs were covered in scant seconds. Shondra found herself deposited in the basement maintenance room just behind her quarry. She pushed through the doors and looked around. Huan, though, had disappeared into the shadows.
Her face a mask of grim determination, the cold killing mask she had been forced to don so many times in her line of work, Shondra edged into the darkness. She slipped to her right, into the shadows by some large sewage pipes, because it was what she’d do if their situations were reversed. Her ears focused on the room, trying to filter out the sounds of the water pumps and the faint hiss of furnace flames, listening for a sound that would betray her quarry’s position. Her bare feet padded silently on the cool cement floor, stepping carefully in the darkness. The cool air made the perspiration on her body chill, but she ignored it. There was no noise. Where was he? Had he taken a different route or was he in hiding just up ahead, waiting to attack. The gun stayed ready in her hand, primed to fire at the first sign of…
MOVEMENT! It was barely a disturbance of the low light, but Shondra’s gun swung and locked onto the target before she recognized it and stopped. It was a rat skittering along the edge of the wall. She stopped herself from firing in time. The shot would have alerted the Chinese agent to her position and left her at a disadvantage. Shondra moved to resume the search.
Then she felt the cool metal barrel of a small pistol press to her head. He must have been just to her right. When she turned to target the rat, it allowed him to slip behind her. He got the drop on her with a second gun, probably a .20 caliber in an ankle holster. No good agent ever went out with only one available weapon.
"Your gun," Huan whispered.
With no alternative open to her, Shondra slowly raised her hands up, relaxing her grip on her pistol when Huan reached for it. He took it and shoved it into his pants pocket, then reached for something behind him. Shondra glanced back as far as she could, but didn’t dare move her head. With the gun barrel against her skull, he could blow her head off just by flinching.
"You will get on the floor," Huan told her softly, "face down."
There was no other option. The gun was too close and the darkness too concealing. If she lashed out, she couldn’t depend on hitting him in a vital spot. He, however, could hit a very vital spot with a single squeeze of a trigger. With the gun following her down pressed against her skull, Shondra eased herself to the floor and stretched out face down. She felt her captor straddle her, which was a very small relief: it meant that he wasn’t going to execute her that very moment.
"Bring your hands behind your back," instructed Huan.
Shondra complied, silently cursing. To be tied up twice within a twelve hour period; her luck was running terribly at the moment. She felt a loop slip over her hands and tighten around her wrists before the gun was pulled from between her fine African braids. The rope began to loop around her wrists, horizontally and then vertically until they were crossed in a tight "x". It was a coarse rope, stiff and heavy. He’d probably found it down here and was putting it to use. More of the cord was brought around her elbows to draw them together. The stiffness of the rope kept it from forcing her elbows to meet, but they were close enough to make Shondra’s shoulders ache.
"What’s the plan?" Shondra asked in a low voice, but high enough to possibly be heard by anyone working in the room.
Huan responded by snaking a hand in the band of her panties and pulling them down her legs and off.
"Hey, what the fuuuuummmmpphhh!" gasped Shondra, her angry words cut off as Huan shoved the balled up panties into her mouth.
He held them in her mouth with one hand while the other ripped the straps of her bra loose. The torn garment was pulled free and thrust between Shondra’s lips, holding the panties in place. Huan wound the shredded bra once around Shondra’s head, then knotted the ends behind her. Shondra shook her head violently, gurgling obscenities that the stifling gag smothered, but she couldn’t dislodge it.
Sliding off of her, Huan pulled his victim up to a sitting position and began binding her ankles together crossed. All the while Shondra squirmed and struggled impotently. Once her ankles were roped, Huan bound her legs together above the knee, pulling the rope so tight it furrowed into the skin and muscle of her lower thighs. With his victim secured, Huan knelt next to her and surveyed the room.
Even as her hands worked to try to slip the cord knotted around her wrists, Shondra watched her captor with undivided concentration. She felt as vulnerable as she’d felt in the fire the previous night, and with good reason. Not only was she naked and defenseless in the presence of an enemy agent, bound into helplessness, but she knew he planned to kill her to eliminate her from pursuit of the disk. The only thing that kept him from putting a bullet in her head must have been fear of discovery.
Seeing the agent had locked onto something, Shondra turned and followed his line of sight. He was looking at a huge water tank in the basement. It was a tank of water used to supply the sprinkler system. There was a hatch on the top and a long ladder leading up to it. Shondra tumbled to what he planned even as Huan scooped her up off the floor and over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
He struggled up the ladder. Shondra was not light and her incessant squirming and struggling threatened to topple them from the ladder at any time. But Huan bore the weight and continued up the ladder until they reached the top. He worked Shondra off his shoulder and onto the top of the tank, then clamored up himself.
As Huan opened the hatch to the top of the tank, Shondra peered over the edge. It was a twenty-five foot drop to a very hard cement floor. Bound as she was, she couldn’t control her fall or landing, which meant a drop from here would probably severely injure her, possibly kill her. But the alternative was being thrown into a twenty-five foot high tank of water, bound and gagged, to drown. Shondra looked around desperately, but there was no third option. She struggled with the ropes binding her wrists, trying to will herself free.
And in the wink of an eye, Huan seized her and began dragging her to the hatch. Shondra kicked and fought, but they reached the yawning hatch and she was shoved in. Shondra hit the water, just a foot below the top of the tank, and instantly began to sink.
"What do I do?" she thought as the water began to press against her chest and lungs. "What can I do?"