Pandora's Box Page 23

  The microchip, whether by accident or design, had blocked her memories of Tyler. She and Tyler had worked for the CIA at the same time, partnering up on occasion. He had left his job of being a Navy SEAL behind long ago after a leg injury put him on the sidelines. The CIA hadn’t minded it too much. They’d eagerly offered him a position. She and Tyler had eventually become lovers.

  They’d known each other for five years, marrying in secret after three. Their second anniversary had been approaching, a happy time for them both. Things were so perfect between them.

  And then…

  ******

  Her mind went back to another time, a scary time.

  She was unarmed, bruised and bloody. The electricity and phone wires had been cut. Madison leaned against the upstairs hallway wall, her knees barely able to hold her. She went over the facts in her mind and tried to come up with a viable plan. Even if she could reach her cell phone, she wasn’t sure who to call. The only two people she trusted, Tyler and her father, were both on secret missions somewhere, totally unreachable.

  The intruder downstairs cackled like a witch. She dumped over something heavy and breakable. It shattered. More laughter.

  “Maddie, where are you?” the witch called in a sing-song voice. “You won’t get away. Fighting is useless.” The stairs creaked as the intruder ascended them slowly. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want you to do a favor for me.”

  The footsteps drew closer.

  Madison’s hands curled into tight fists. She prepared herself for another battle. If the witch had come alone, Madison could have kicked the crap out of her. But she’d brought a small army. They moved like mindless soldiers, dressed in solid black with masks concealing their identities. They followed the witch’s every command.

  Madison couldn’t win.

  But she would die trying.

  The witch rounded the corner, a hypodermic needle in her hand. She jabbed it at Madison, aiming for her arm. Madison leaped aside. It grazed her. The tip of the needle scratched a long line from her shoulder to elbow.

  “Get her!” the witch shouted.

  Four men jumped Madison simultaneously. One of them twisted her scratched arm behind her back and slammed her into the wall. Another shoved her face hard against the wallpaper. They kept her from moving an inch.

  “Who the hell are you?” she demanded to know. “What do you want from me?”

  The witch removed her mask. Her platinum blonde hair swung free around her face. “Do you recognize me now, moron?”

  The Blonde Assassin. Madison and Tyler had worked on a case involving the assassin last year. Each clue had led to another dead end. The girl she had known as Roxie had grown up to be a deadly killer. She appeared on the scene, devastated lives and then vanished without leaving a solitary bread crumb for them to follow.

  “You’re here to kill me.” Madison’s only regret in life was not being able to say goodbye to Tyler.

  “If I killed you, how could you do me a favor?”

  “You were serious about that?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Roxie jabbed the needle into Madison’s arm. “We’re going to fit you with a brand new microchip. You’ve been a naughty girl, hooking up with the president’s son. Did you think he wouldn’t find out that you’d married his son? Law isn’t happy and when Law isn’t happy, Rico Boracci isn’t happy.”

  “Microchip? What are you talking about?”

  “Have you heard of Dr. Grainger?”

  Madison’s head floated away. She could barely keep her eyes open. Her lips felt weird, numb, and nearly useless. “Um…yeah, my father was working on something with him.”

  “Good. I’m glad you’re up on current affairs. Your father was kind enough to implant a few chips in you. We’re just going to add one more. No big deal.” Roxie laughed. “You and Tyler are going to kill the president for us.”

  Kill the president? No! Madison began to struggle harder even as the drug took effect. The word decoy echoed in her mind. What did the blonde bitch mean?

  As if reading her mind, Roxie said, “Don’t worry. You aren’t going to actually assassinate the president yourself. I wouldn’t trust you with anything that big. That job will fall to your husband.”

  Tyler?

  “If you even try to mess with Tyler, he’ll take you down.”

  “We already have him, honey. And it was no trouble at all.”

  Roxie turned and ripped the black ski mask off the man standing closest to her. It was Tyler. He had been the one to shove Madison against the wall. Now he stared straight at Madison with cold, hard eyes.

  Madison tried to hang onto reality, fight hard to stay awake, but the drug pulled her under. The pain of betrayal cut deep. If it was the last thing she did, she’d get even with Tyler for turning on her.

  Darkness took her.

  ******

  Tyler hadn’t betrayed her, not of his own volition, but the seeds of distrust had been planted in her heart. That feeling had followed her to her new life. No wonder she had disliked him on sight even while experiencing an irresistible urge to be with him. They had given her a new chip that made her want to switch jobs and start working for the Secret Service. The chip had held false memories of a love life with DeMarco.

  But it hadn’t happened. She hadn’t cheated on Tyler. After this was finished, somehow they were going to be together again.

  “I remember,” Madison said out loud to no one in particular. Her eyes focused on her lover’s familiar face. Anxious for him to remember too, she told him everything about Roxie grabbing her, drugging her, and how she’d used him to get to Madison. The words spilled from her lips in quick succession. During the story, his features remained hard and impassive. She continued to talk fast, not stopping to take a breath until she was finished. Part of her was afraid Roxie would shove a gag into her mouth, but the assassin didn’t move a finger to stop her from talking.

  She stared up at Tyler’s handsome face. There wasn’t a glimmer of recognition in his eyes. She added, “Once your chip is deactivated, your memory will return too.”

  Roxie’s lips compressed into a tight line. She glared at Madison before returning her irritated gaze to Tyler.

  “I need this,” he said, slipping the gun under the waistband of his pants. “I have to kill someone.”

  Roxie’s lips stretched in to a slow, wide smile of understanding. “Is it that time already?” She glanced down at the thin gold watch on her wrist. “It is, isn’t it? Very well. I guess you should go then.”

  Tyler didn’t say another word. Gun in hand, he left the apartment. He didn’t spare Madison a glance. His tight expression told her he was a man on a mission. The chip’s original programming had kicked in. He was on his way to kill the president.

  Roxie’s face fell when she spotted the broken remote on the table. Cursing viciously, she swiped it off the table and into her bag. She waved at the two tied up people.

  “You kids have fun now,” she said.

  “Wait!” Madison decided to follow Boracci’s plan. She’d tried everything else. Now it was time for the truth. “You can put a stop to this before it’s too late. Rico told me the truth about you after you had Tyler shoot him. Malcom Law is not your father. Rico set the DNA test up because he wanted you to kill his enemy. He used you. You may think you’re doing this on your own, but you aren’t. You’re still Boracci’s puppet.”

  “Liar. I’ll give you points for creativity.” Roxie couldn’t keep from grandstanding, thinking she’d outsmarted everyone. “After Tyler kills my father, maybe I’ll send him back here to take care of the two of you.”

  “It’s true,” Madison insisted. “Boracci is your real father. He kept the truth from you because your mother was a maid and he didn’t want his wife to find out. Visit Boracci in the hospital. Ask him. Make him tell you the truth. You were adopted, yes, but you and I are not sisters. Sharon Grey was not your mother. It isn’t too late for you to find your real family.”

 
Poor them.

  Roxie smiled. “Nice try, but Rico is dead. I watched the news. Either you’re lying to me now or he lied to you.” She shrugged. “Whatever. Enjoy your last hours of life.”

  Her annoying laughter followed her out. She slammed the apartment door behind her. The laughter slowly faded as she slithered down the hallway.

  Madison began to struggle against the cord.

  “Stop!” Brett shouted. She froze and he added, “I have a knife in my back pocket. Can you reach it?”

  Madison tried. She forced her fingers to stretch as far as they possibly could. The tips brushed the top of the pocket. She hoped it was the right one. Relaxing the rest of her body as much as possible, she tipped herself back in the chair. Her fingers made their way into the opening. Cold metal met her flesh. She struggled to pull it out.

  “You’ve got it,” Brett said. He leaned forward in his chair, pushing his bottom at her. “Reach! Come on!”

  She caught the knife between two fingers and slowly worked it out of the pocket. It seemed to take forever. She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed she wouldn’t drop it. If it hit the floor, she’d never get it. Her fingers were sweaty. The knife slipped halfway through her grasping fingers. She closed them tight.

  Oh please don’t fall.

  One minute it was sliding free and the next it was safe between her palms. She took her time opening it. The blade felt too dull to cut through the cord. Placing it on part of the cord, she sawed back and forth hard. As she was cutting she was also pulling her body forward, placing as much strain on the cord as she could.

  While she worked on the cord, she told Brett everything Roxie had said. The only thing she left out was the paper in her shoe. That had belonged to her father. Whatever it was, it wasn’t any of his business.

  Brett admitted, “Tyler introduced us before you got married.”

  “I know,” she said with a sigh. “I remember you Brett.”

  “Well, when I heard about all this chip business and realized you two didn’t remember each other, I took some time off from the Navy and flew straight here. I had a hell of a time catching up with you.”

  “Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you tell us? You called a million times, and I talked to you that one time when the plane was about to explode. Why the hell didn’t you tell me Tyler was my husband?”

  “I couldn’t,” he said. “If I’d told you that you and Tyler had been together before, in love, working for the CIA as a team, you would have both thought I was out of my mind.”

  “True. But I wish you had tried.”

  Finally the cord snapped. Madison jumped to her feet. She grabbed her pack of tools and fiddled with the cuffs on Brett’s wrists. Picking the lock in seconds, she freed him. She said, “We have to find out where the president is giving his speech.”

  “I’m way ahead of you.” Brett had his cell phone out. He quickly dialed a number and stepped into the other room while he talked to the person who’d answered the phone. He identified himself, gave a code number, and then said, “I need the president’s itinerary. Now.”

  The door shut softly behind him.

  Madison bent over and removed the folded paper from her shoe. Her eyes briefly touched on the bedroom door to make sure Brett wasn’t coming out. She opened the paper with trembling hands. It was another DNA test. According to this, her father had paid a private institution to run DNA on a hair they’d found on his wife’s body. How he got the hair from the police department it didn’t say. But one thing was clear. Scientists had done wonders with DNA testing since those days. Back when her mother had died, the killer couldn’t be tracked through his hair.

  But that was then.

  She went over the test results three times in total disbelief. Her mind just couldn’t wrap around the truth. How could it be? The test results, ninety-nine point nine percent affirmative, had concluded the hair belonged to none other than Malcom Law, Tyler’s father. The president had killed her mother.

  It hadn’t been Boracci.

  Madison’s legs turned to melted butter and she felt like she’d been kicked hard in the abdomen, the breath knocked out of her. She reached for the chair. Her fingers closed on air. She stumbled sideways. Her bottom landed hard on the edge of the wooden chair. The test results slipped through her fingers. It drifted to the floor.

  Brett strode into the room. “I’ve got the address, but I didn’t call anyone to warn them. I don’t want the Secret Service to shoot Tyler.” He went to the door and opened it. “Let’s go save the president’s life.”

  Save the president?

  Save her mother’s killer?

  She shook her head vehemently. “No. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “What? Are you high? Tyler is going to get himself killed trying to take the president down. We need to stop him. What’s the problem? I thought you cared about Tyler.”

  She loved Tyler.

  Did she love him more than she hated the president?

  The room seemed to tilt sideways and logic became an alien concept. She could save the president’s life and save Tyler in the process. Or she could do nothing. The president would pay for his crime, but Tyler would die. She thought about him, the way he’d always been on her side. He’d saved her life twice. Once from the microchip and once from the bomb.

  “I need to stop at my apartment first,” she said.

  Brett scratched his head, clearly exasperated. “For what?”

  “I have a remote like the broken one Roxie just ran out of here with. We can use it to snap Tyler out of it. Without it, he can’t be stopped.”

  “We don’t have time for both of us to go after it. Why don’t you go alone? I’ll try to find Tyler and stop him.”

  That didn’t sound like a good idea to her. Mistrust reared its ugly head again. What if Brett was working against them? Even if he was a good guy, he could get Tyler killed. He’d been a Navy SEAL, but she had been CIA, not to mention Secret Service. She’d been trained to handle situations like this and she had a few years on the younger man.

  “Better idea,” she said. “You go to my apartment. Here are the keys. Get the remote from the kitchen table and I’ll stop Tyler.”

  He shrugged. “Whatever.”

  Brett handed her a piece of paper with a too familiar address on it. The president was giving a speech in the same ballroom where her father had tried to assassinate him three weeks earlier. She felt the blood drain from her face. The evil blonde bitch had planned this perfectly, designing Tyler’s assassination of the president to follow her father’s attempt. She’d lost her father. There was no way in hell she was going to lose Tyler.

  “Give me your gun,” she said.

  “What? Why?”

  “You won’t need it at my apartment.” He handed it to her, reluctantly. She carried it to the bedroom, still dressed in Tyler’s shirt. As she stalked away, she said, “I don’t know where mine is. Either Roxie took it or she hid it.”

  The feel of cold metal pressing against her palm filled her with purpose. She’d save Tyler. The only reason he was involved in this mess was because of her, because Roxie had a burning hatred for her. In her black mood, Madison vowed to rid the world of two evil maniacs.

  She’d kill Roxie.

  And the president.

  If she went to prison, it would be worth it.

  ******

  Chapter Nineteen

  Déjà vu struck her hard as she entered the ballroom for the second time in a month. The decorations had changed, gold and white this time, replacing the true blue of the night her father died. She walked beneath a stunning chandelier, one of eight. Madison purposely steered clear of the spot where her father had been gunned down. In her dark trousers and blouse, she stood out among the elegant people wearing their finest designer originals, and she received more than one haughty look.

  She ignored them. They didn’t matter. Their money didn’t impress or intimidate her in the slightest. She was there for one r
eason: to save Tyler. She’d failed to save her father’s life before, but she would not let history repeat itself with the man she loved.

  And she did love him.

  Her fear of being in love had ebbed out like the tide, replaced with glowing memories. She and Tyler had met five years ago. They’d fallen in love on sight, eloped after three years during an especially cool mission. They had just bought a new house when Roxie and Boracci’s men had swooped in to steal their future.

  Madison remembered her father being at the chapel with them, tears in his eyes when he gave her hand to Tyler and told him to take care of his baby. Unbelievable! Her father had known she and Tyler were married, that they were kidnapped and programmed to not only forget each other, but also to kill the president of the United States, and he hadn’t done a thing about it. He hadn’t tried to help her.

  Why had he allowed it to happen? He could have told her, could have saved her an enormous amount of trouble. Not to mention, he might still be alive.

  He had been quite an actor.

  Hail to the Chief began to play. The double doors at the top of the stairs parted to reveal President Law and his wife, tailed by three service men. For a moment Madison lost herself in the past. She almost expected her father to race by her, gun raised. The sound of thunderous applause rocked her back to the present.

  She turned her head in time to see platinum blonde hair moving through the crowd. Roxie. Madison was torn between chasing after her and searching for Tyler on the opposite side of the room. Surely Roxie wouldn’t glue herself to his side. She’d want to be as far away from him as possible when he pulled the trigger.

  Law made it to the microphone. He held his hands up as if in victory and the applause exploded louder than ever.