Wicked Lies: A Dark Mission Novella Read Free Page A

only one of a handful—a seriously trusted handful—who even knew she existed.
    He shifted on the cement floor, cringing as his tailbone failed to find a comfortable spot on the unyielding surface. “How long?”
    “I’m not sure.” At least the man was honest. “A few minutes? An hour? A day? When it happens, it’ll happen fast, so you better stay with me, okay?”
    Maybe it was the pain. Maybe it was the surreal kind of intimacy in the small cell; just him and a mysterious voice from God. He couldn’t see Jonas’s face. Didn’t even know what to picture, with that smooth-as-milk-chocolate tenor and decisive optimism. He kept one dirty hand cupped over his ear, only vaguely aware he did it.
    “With a voice like that,” Danny murmured, his chin sinking to his chest, “I’ll follow you into hell itself.”

 
    Chapter Two
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    E VERYTHING FROZE . H IS mind went blank. Jonas’s fingers spasmed across his keyboard, sending a string of gibberish into the communications relay and forcing him to concentrate enough to delete the extraneous digits.
    Be cool.
    This wasn’t the first agent he’d gotten out of a tight spot. Jonas knew the amount of strain something like this put on a body and on a mind. Hadn’t he spent untold hours flirting with Naomi West during the most stressful times? Of course he did. He’d done that with most of the female missionaries, and teased the men when he thought he could get away with it. He was—no, he’d been— a technical analyst, the master of the wave. Information had flown to and through him; at the time, he was one of a handful of tech analysts who served as a touchstone for every operative who’d ever gone into the field.
    Every analyst knew the game.
    And nobody— nobody —had known his. Jonas had preferred it that way. He still did.
    So he took a deep breath, let it out in an easy chuckle that felt like glass in his throat. “No need, kid. Follow my directions and I’ll lead you right out to freedom.”
    On the screen in front of him, he watched Danny raise his head, but he didn’t look around. He’d taken Jonas at his word. Jonas didn’t mind lying. Telling him the truth might have put Danny in an uncomfortable spot. Made him think twice about everything he said or did. The kid had pride, and nobody liked to be seen at their worst.
    Jonas needed him to trust everything he said. To believe in him. And, if that meant a little harmless banter, that’s exactly where Jonas excelled. Well, that and masterminding technical sabotage.
    As if on cue, a silhouette passed under the security camera mounted in the far corner of the hall outside the cell.
    “Okay,” he said, keeping his tones even and light. His fingers danced over the keyboard, a complicated jig that didn’t take much more than a fraction of his attention. “There’s someone coming in.”
    “Do I—?”
    “No,” he said quickly. “Don’t do anything. Don’t even look up. Act normal.”
    In this case, normal meant beat to shit.
    He’d seen some brutal things over the years, but this ate at him.
    Danny didn’t move as the operative swiped his thumb across the access panel outside the door. While the security system filed through its database, Jonas’s fingers skated across the keys in a pale blur.
    Almost there. On a third monitor to his left, two columns of code compiled.
    Jonas watched the screen, disengaged his right hand from his contest of man versus machine and tapped in a command that brought three more cameras up in a split-screen survey. The largest remained focused on the cell.
    “Got it,” he murmured, a nanosecond before the mechanical tumblers released.
    The Mission had changed their security parameters. Smart move. He would have done the same.
    But not good enough.
    On the surveillance screen, the operative with the close-buzzed hair crossed the narrow cell.
    “Shit,” Danny muttered. It fractured into a grunt as the operative bent, fisting a hand in his collar and hauling the