Treason Play. Don Pendleton

cut her off.

      “You’re hiding something,” he said. “If your big secret is that you two were lovers, then please spare me the modesty. I’m not a priest.”

      She pressed her lips together, forming a bloodless line.

      “I feel violated,” she said.

      “I don’t care,” Bolan said.

      “You’re a son of a bitch.”

      Bolan said nothing. Grimaldi kept his mouth shut, but turned his gaze from one to the other, as though he was watching a tennis match.

      Finally she heaved a sigh and her shoulders sagged.

      “We were sleeping together.”

      “And?”

      She looked up a him. “And what?”

      “What else? I mean, that’s the big confession? What else is going on?”

      Her face flushed and she crossed her arms over her chest.

      “Look, he was married. Sleeping with him isn’t something I’m proud of. We worked together, collaborated on a few things. It just happened.”

      “Maybe you weren’t looking for it,” Bolan said. “But Terry apparently was looking for it all over. Now some people are trying to kill you. Maybe it was because he was your bunk mate. Maybe not. Regardless, Terry’s dead and someone apparently wants to kill you, too.”

      “Or at least capture you,” Grimaldi added. “That wouldn’t be pleasant, either.”

      “Did he tell you anything?” Bolan asked. “Say he was worried for his life?”

      She hesitated. “The man, the one you shot on the stairs. We saw him a couple of days ago at a hotel. It really bothered Terry, unnerved him like I’d never seen before.”

      “He say why?” Bolan asked.

      She shook her head. “No. I just noticed the change in him once he saw the guy. He got nervous, edgy. In retrospect, I can see why. The guy back there was a killer. He would have killed me.”

      Bolan nodded his agreement.

      She raised her coffee mug to her lips, took a deep swallow and returned it to the table. Bolan noticed a small shudder pass through her and she hugged herself again.

      “That’s not the first close call,” she said. “I was in Iraq, working for the wire services. The unit I was embedded with got ambushed. The soldiers I was with were killed, shot by a sniper. I was pinned down and scared out of my mind. Fortunately, another unit rolled in at the last minute and killed the snipers. I almost died that day.”

      “You were fortunate,” Bolan said.

      Nodding, she reached into the pocket of her jeans, fished around a couple of seconds and pulled her hand back out. She set a silver key on the table.

      “What’s it for?” Grimaldi asked.

      “Not sure,” she said with a shrug. “After we saw the Russians back at the hotel, Terry gave it to me. He told me to hang on to it, but that was all he said. He could be like that.”

      “And you didn’t press him?” Grimaldi asked.

      “No. Terry and I have known each other for a while. When he wasn’t going to explain something, he made it obvious. You didn’t force him to talk about something until he was ready.”

      Bolan nodded his understanding, though his gut told him the woman was still holding something back. He decided to take another stab in the dark.

      “What are you working on right now?”

      “Excuse me?” Gillen said.

      “Stories. What stories are you working on.”

      Her eyes narrowed. “None of your business.”

      “Right now, it is. Were you collaborating on anything with Lang?” Bolan pressed.

      She shook her head no.

      “Working on any crime stories?”

      “Nothing out of the ordinary,” she replied. “Since I’m in a bureau, it has to be a big deal for me to cover a crime. If some guy gets mad and kills his brother-in-law, readers in London or Washington, D.C., don’t want to know about it. Occasionally, some money guy or someone with a charity may get busted for shipping money to al Qaeda. When that happens, my editors want it. Over here, though, most of what I write about is commercial real estate and growth. The financial stuff, that’s what people in London and Washington want to know about.”

      “Sure. How about Terry? What was he working on?”

      Again, she shook her head. “Not sure,” she replied. “We never talked about work.”

      “Bullshit.”

      She blinked. “Excuse me?”

      “You heard what I said. You can’t tell me that you two never talked shop, ever. You can’t put two reporters in a room together for thirty seconds without them talking about work.”

      She’d been hugging herself, fingers encircling biceps. Bolan noticed her hands tighten and she leaned farther back in her chair.

      “We didn’t do that.”

      The soldier exhaled loudly. With his forefinger and thumb, he pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. Pulling his hand away, he opened his eyes and looked at the reporter.

      “You must think you’re extremely clever or I’m extremely stupid,” he said. “Whatever. Either way, you’re lying to me.”

      She licked her lips and stared at Bolan, her eyes not bulging, but wide enough to tell Bolan something was wrong. “I’m telling the truth.”

      The soldier nodded. Standing, he walked over to the coffee machine and poured himself a cup of coffee. He brought the cup to his lips, blew on it and stared ahead, studying the swirls in the wood grain of the cabinet doors.

      “They peeled his skin off,” Bolan said.

      “What?”

      “The people who took Terry, they peeled his skin off, while he was alive. They stabbed him more times than I can count. Not fatal wounds, mind you. Just enough and in the right spots to put him through agony. I’d guess he was miserable his last hours on Earth.”

      She turned in her seat and gave Bolan a look of shock and horror. “Why are you telling me this? What’s wrong with you?”

      Bolan set the coffee on the counter and turned slowly to face the woman.

      “I’m not sure what your game is,” he said. “But I know you’re not being straight with me. Why, is anybody’s guess. You haven’t told me anything useful. Apparently you don’t care that Lang’s dead. So I figured why not share a few more details? You don’t give a shit anyway.”

      “You’re a bastard!”

      “Sure I am,” the soldier said. “Here’s the thing, though. I’m trying to figure out what happened to Terry, find out who killed him and why. It bothers me that he died the way he did. You, on the other hand, seem at peace with the whole thing. So I thought I’d unburden myself. It worked. I feel better already.”

      With his hands, Bolan pushed off the counter and started across the room.

      “Wait!” she called after him. “You can’t keep me here. Am I under arrest? If not, then you can’t keep me here.”

      His hand on the doorknob, Bolan paused, then shrugged. “So leave.”

      He opened the door, stepped out into the hallway and kept on walking. Grimaldi followed behind him a couple of heartbeats later.

      “Wow,” the pilot said, “which nugget of information should we follow