The Paris Betrayal, James Hannibal [book club recommendations .TXT] 📗

body, he’d sent out an encrypted data burst requesting med support, adding a special request for Ambrosia, Tess’s code name. As expected, he received a set of coordinates in the self-deleting response. He hoped he’d got them right.

Ben came to a garage door covered in graffiti—the delivery entrance for a bodega—and chuckled beneath the scarf still covering his mouth. “This looks about right.” He bent and gave the handle a tug. The door rolled up with ease, and the wash of the streetlamps spilled in around him, giving definition to shapes in the dark.

“Hello?”

Wireframe shelving. A box of molded fruit. A rusted freezer. Ben used his smartphone light to illuminate the rest. A rat scurried away from the beam.

“Anyone home?”

A metal door opened at the back, and a woman stood in the frame, shorter than Giselle despite her spiked heels. “You planning to come inside or stand out there caterwauling all night?”

Nothing said come hither like a Georgia accent, especially when combined with a crooked smile like hers. “Hey, Tess.”

“Hey yourself, honey.” She backed up, pulling the door wide. “Get in here. I don’t have all night.”

She waited for him to pass and then flipped on the halogens overhead. Stainless steel, glistening clean, dominated the room—counters, two sinks, and an exam table. Tess tied on a surgical mask and pointed at the latter. “Sit and strip.”

“Giselle warned me you’d say that. I’m supposed to remind you I’m spoken for.”

“Hilarious. Why is your shirt still on?”

As the halogens warmed up, Ben got a better view of the outfit beneath Tess’s lab coat. Her sleek, emerald-green dress said Studio 54 more than Mayo Clinic. The lack of a bio suit gave him hope. He’d added a high-level hazard code to his request for support. If Tess had bypassed her protection protocols, she knew something Ben didn’t. He removed his jacket and pulled his shirt over his head. “Hot date later?”

“I have a friend in the city.” She pushed her hand into a latex glove. “And yes, we’re meeting up tonight, so don’t get any blood on my dress.”

“I’m not bleeding.”

Tess wiggled a syringe with a needle as thick as a ten-penny nail. “Not yet.”

A monitor with two handles hung from the ceiling by a combination of joints and telescoping arms. Tess set the syringe beside her patient and pulled the screen in front of his chest, lining up a set of laser crosshairs.

Ben harbored a closet aversion to crosshairs. “What is that?”

“Microwave imager.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Yes. Don’t move.”

The machine hummed, building energy. Tess left it in place and pulled up a stool. “Tell me about the victim. Describe the symptoms.”

He did, emphasizing the speed of the black tendrils creeping through Massir’s veins.

Tess checked his skin, nose, and eyes, and interrupted with the occasional question. “And he went from healthy to dead in how many minutes?”

“Five. Seven max, based on the chase between the Pantheon and the alley where I cornered him.” Ben started to relax.

She threatened him with the syringe. “I said don’t move. So, you’re assuming the female operative your victim met is the one who dosed him?”

“Should I suspect otherwise?”

“No. I think that’s valid. And the lack of any other cases cropping up in Rome is encouraging.” The machine’s hum reached a crescendo. Tess grabbed both handles. “Here goes nothing.”

Ben tried to look down at the crosshairs with just his eyeballs, keeping his head still. “Wait. I think I moved.”

“Yeah, you did, honey. But it’s probably fine.”

“Probably?”

She pulled the trigger, and the hum ended with a snap.

He could swear he felt a burst of heat pass through his torso.

Tess studied her screen for a few heartbeats, then nodded. “We’re good. Turn around.”

Ben raised his legs and spun them to the table’s other side. The humming rose to another crescendo. The machine gave another snap. A second burst of heat passed through his body. He started to ask about it, but the coolness of an alcohol swab at the small of his back refocused his attention.

“Bend over,” she said, gently pressing him forward until his elbows rested on his knees. “This is going to hurt.” Without further warning, she stabbed him.

Tess had never had much of a bedside manner—probably the reason she’d wound up in intelligence, pulling a government paycheck, instead of the private medical sector.

After several moments of excruciating sliding and tugging, she yanked the needle out again.

Ben felt the sting of a clotting agent pressed against the wound, followed by a bandage and a slap to make sure it stuck. “Ouch, Tess. Not so rough. I swear, you’re worse now than you were four years ago in Grozny.”

She slapped the patch again. “Don’t be a baby.” When he reached for his shirt, she slapped his hand too. “Leave it off, I’m not done. And for your information, I must be improving. The Director’s bringing me home to DC.”

He spun around again, watching her return to the counter with a test tube of pinkish fluid. “Back to the ranch. Really? To treat the big brass?”

“Mm-hmm.” Tess seemed to be only half listening. Using an eyedropper, she placed a few drops of the fluid into the four clear sections of a centrifuge card. “It’s all champagne and caviar from here out.” She closed the centrifuge door and started the rotation, bobbling her head. “And maybe the occasional Shake Shack burger.”

Ben couldn’t picture Tess with the brass. She didn’t fit the corporate image. “Think it’ll change you? Make you jaded?”

“Why would I get jaded?”

“You know. Seeing how the DC crowd does business. The politics. The compromises.”

This captured her full attention. She glanced over her shoulder, a touch of anger in her eyes above the surgical mask. “I’ll be working with the Director. He’s not like that. And if he is, all this—everything we do—is a waste of time.”

“Right. Of course. But what about the hoarding of intel, keeping teams in the dark. You walked in here with total confidence, even after I sent you a hazard warning. Did the top brass know about