Pretty Little Lion by Suleikha Snyder
8
Command emptied out quickly after the impromptu briefing, but it felt sodding interminable to Elijah. Seconds stretching into minutes into hours until it was just him and Meghna and Jack left alone in the conference room. He watched them make uneasy introductions to each other, shake hands like they were meeting at some high-class Washington, DC, cocktail party. Maybe they had met at just such an occasion and cagily weren’t saying so. It wouldn’t be the first lie either of them had told.
“I’ve met your father several times,” Jackson said, like he could read Lije’s mind. Sense the suspicion and the prickling anger. And after all these years side by side and knee-deep in black ops, that wasn’t too far from the truth. In a lot of ways, his best friend knew him almost better than he knew himself. “Gandiva Corp., right? Defense? He’s always spoken very highly of you. Top of your class at Yale. Wharton MBA? First million before you were twenty-five?”
These were all things in the dossier they’d collected on her, but Elijah also knew Jack was telling the truth. He’d heard her accomplishments right from the source. Rajkumar “RK” Saxena, CEO of Gandiva Corp. Fallen out of favor with the current administration, overlooked in favor of more right-leaning contractors, but still a powerful force in political circles.
“What can I say? I’m a daddy’s girl.” Meghna smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her beautiful brown eyes. “I wish I was as proud of his accomplishments, but I can’t complain too much when his weapons paid for my first car, my education, my shopping habit. I’ve benefited from his blood money. Made my own.”
Elijah didn’t interrupt the awkward small talk so much as bulldoze his way in. “That’s quite a turnaround from getting arrested for protesting in front of the Gandiva warehouses in 2007,” he pointed out, recalling the shaky YouTube video of the rowdy gathering. It featured a striking eighteen-year-old Meghna with bright-pink dye in her hair and a “Here are your WMDs!” sign…enjoying her freedom of expression while American soldiers like Jack were in Iraq with him, fighting in the name of it. He was still sussing out what they were fighting for these days. All he knew was that they had to win. And they’d need her cooperation to do it. “Quite the little rebel, weren’t you?”
Meghna turned from Jack to him, the curve of her mouth now matching the coolness in her eyes. “I was still a teenager. I grew up. I learned to be a pragmatist instead of an idealist.”
Jackson responded before Elijah could, ever so helpful. “I hope you’ll be pragmatic now. If we pool our resources, we will all get what we need.”
“I don’t need your resources.” The diplomacy didn’t change her tight posture, her impassive face. She crossed her arms, another barrier between them.
Just hours ago, Elijah had her pliant beneath him, felt her orgasm, watched her whole facade melt away as she gave in to pleasure. He’d caught a glimpse of something true, something honest. But perhaps this was the real her and not the other way around. Cold, efficient, focused. He thought he was the honey trap…but she’d closed the trap around him.
He pushed down a growl at the discomfiting thought. Resisted the urge to rub the itch at the back of his neck. “Maybe we need your resources. Ever think of that?”
Meghna looked around the tech-heavy room, out to the floor beyond. Distinctly unimpressed. “If this is all you have…I can see why,” she huffed with a wrinkle of her nose that she probably wouldn’t want to know was damn adorable. “You need all the help you can get.”
Jackson, the right arsehole, proceeded to laugh like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. With good reason. “Lije…why don’t you give her the full tour while you two clean up?” he suggested with the smugness of somebody who had spare millions to spend on secret bunkers and horse ranches and the like. “Joaquin and I will get the rest of the mission specs in order in the meantime.”
Elijah wasted no time in taking the suggestion, guiding Meghna out with a firm hand on her elbow. She, shockingly, allowed herself to be guided. Her pulse was calm. Her heartbeat even. But he could smell her disquiet. Taste it. She was still furious with him. With all of this. She wouldn’t give up a single bit of why. He could almost respect that…but he couldn’t let it stand. They had to know who she was working for and to what end. Sooner rather than later.
He took her back to the lifts. Scanned in for a trip to the Locker. It was below the garage. Under the river. But there was no likelihood of it ever being flooded. Not unless the mighty Hudson could get through multiple layers of concrete and reinforced steel.
“Ready for a road trip?” he asked once the doors closed in front of them.
Meghna moved perpendicular to him, leaning against the lift’s far wall, giving her a clear view of both him and the entire car. Her voice was as remote and reserved as her posture. “Do I have a choice?”
Was she having him on or what? “Yeah. You made it already,” Elijah said. “We’re not forcing you to stay here. You opted to throw your lot in with us for your own reasons.”
She didn’t appreciate the reminder. “And I’m already regretting it. I’ve made too many questionable decisions lately. Like fucking you to neutralize you. That really worked out well.”
Elijah tried not to take it too personally—after all, his mission profile hadn’t been all that different. Fuck her to get a line on Aston. But the idea that she had other ways to “neutralize” marks sent a chill down his spine and prickles across his skin. “So you could’ve killed me instead?”
“I could’ve. I didn’t. Because that would’ve been even more questionable. Too many witnesses,” she said with the ease of someone all too familiar with the process. “No easy way to dispose of your body—you’re the only one who has a cleanup crew on speed dial. We don’t work that way. So you got to live. You got to come. I’d say that’s a win-win.”
We don’t work that way.Elijah heard it. The “we.” But he reacted to all the other words, so she didn’t realize she’d let something about her own people slip. “I’m not sure I like hearing about my potential disposal. How do I know you’re not going to knife me in the back at the first opportunity?”
“Because the first opportunity passed me by. So did the second, the third, the fourth…” Something flickered in Meghna’s eyes then. Not so cool. Not so remote after all. “We kill because we have to, not because we want to. Isn’t that how we justify it? How we separate ourselves from humans like Mirko and his friends? How the military frames it? ‘Us or them’? You’re not a threat to me, Elijah. Unless you make yourself one.”
He had no desire to threaten this woman. No, it wasn’t even in the Top Ten of things he’d like to do to her. And that brought up a question he really didn’t want to ask. Even thinking about it made his stomach lurch. Meghna on her knees. His come slicking her lips. “What about sex?” he wondered. “Is that something you’re forced to do as well? A ‘have to’ and not a ‘want to’? All for the sake of your mission?”
“No.” She looked oddly discomfited by his concern. And a little angry too. Her fists clenched as the lift stopped on the proper level. “Sex work is part of my work,” she said. “I accepted that when I took it on. I do what’s necessary…but only what, and who, I’m willing to do. That’s what you’re really asking, aren’t you? Whether I had to with you? Whether I faked it?”
Christ.He hadn’t considered that at all. Not until this moment. Because her coming on his cock had felt pretty fucking real to him. But how much did he really know about her? How much could he trust? Maybe he needed to be less worried about whoever she was working for forcing her into people’s beds and more worried about the people who landed beneath her? “Meghna…”
“I enjoyed every minute of it. But don’t worry; it won’t happen again.” She stepped out before him into the Locker. Like she owned the place. Elijah had the distinct feeling that, before this was all over, she would. She’d conquer the world. And him along with it.
* * *
“I enjoyed every minute of it. But don’t worry; it won’t happen again.”The words echoed in her mind, bounced off the tile walls of the shower stall, taunting her with the sound of her own false confidence. She’d stopped Elijah Richter’s tour before it began with one simple request: “Where can I get cleaned up? Does this Locker have a locker room?”
Now, water sluiced over her, urging her to linger under the hot spray. But she had no time to indulge. She just efficiently and ruthlessly scrubbed every trace of him from her skin. Every little bit of the past day and a half. The role she’d played. The hours she’d wasted neutralizing someone who didn’t need to be neutralized. And the ridiculous assertion that she wouldn’t fuck him again…which basically ensured that she would. That, too, was something she let the drain take away from her.
The clothes she’d left outside the bathroom door were probably already being whisked away for disposal. No, knowing these black-ops types, they would probably go over her things with a black light hoping to find traces of Mirko’s DNA. And then they’d code some sort of tracker to it and send a SWAT team to his next known location. Blowing it—and everything she’d been working toward—sky-high.
Get ahold of yourself, Meghna.And she did. Literally. Washing the last of the generic but serviceable shampoo out of her hair, scraping her scalp with her fingertips. She still had a job to do. It was just a different job. She would make the necessary adjustments. Go along and find this doctor. Ultimately, she would still end up where she needed to be—at the cross-section of whatever all these disparate and degenerate people were up to. Something so dangerous that it could shake what was left of the known world. A place where agents before her had gone…and had yet to return from.
Ayesha, a Bangladeshi jinn from Sylhet, had been incommunicado for more than a year. She’d been a Vidrohi operative for centuries—no amateur. And if she wasn’t dead, then it was likely her talisman had been taken from her and she’d been forced to do someone’s bidding. Meghna barely knew the woman, had a mental snapshot of a stunning beauty with dark-brown skin and curly hair who’d been at the training grounds in the mountains once or twice. Her last known whereabouts? A party plane with Mirko and his associates. Meghna had managed to meet some, not all, of those associates. Like Sasha. And Tavi Estrada, who seldom spoke to her but always did so with courtesy the human men lacked. But she hadn’t uncovered who else was on that fateful flight…or where it had gone. Now, thanks to Third Shift’s interference, that information might be lost to her forever. Or closer to her fingertips than before. It all depended on what she did with this so-called partnership. On what she did with Elijah Richter now.
Meghna finished up in the shower, toweling herself dry quickly and dressing in the dark jeans and shirt she’d picked out from Third Shift’s collection. These operatives were the opposite of apsaras, who always dressed to impress and to seduce. No sequins and stilettos or saris to be found. Most of their “costumes” were practical. Their facility was minimalistic, all dark fixtures, darker walls, black tile, and reinforced doors. Built for function, to hide bloodstains and secrets. It wasn’t teeming with people. She’d passed no one in her journey from the main gear room, where weapons of all kinds were secured in glass cabinets with bio scanner locks, to the showers. She would likely pass no one on the return trip.
And the top bosses of Third Shift didn’t seem to care about her being left to her own devices. Presumably because they had surveillance on every inch of the space. If she so much as left an ass print on the bathroom counter, they would know. Luckily, Meghna hadn’t been that indecorous, that carefree, in a very long time. Turning sixteen had changed everything for her. No more fun. No more friends—at least no real ones outside the network. Everyone was a tool to be used. Everything around her a weapon. Even her marital “foible” in her midtwenties had been mostly a ruse, engineered to get her close to one of Chase’s producers in order to take the slimy serial rapist out of circulation. She’d lived in lies for so long, sometimes she forgot what the truth was.
That wasn’t so different, really, from growing up wealthy in a white-adjacent upper-class Indian household. Daddy and their circle had raised her to believe she was better than 99 percent of the world. Then she’d been trained by apsaras, by her mother, to embody it. Because lives depended on her excellence, on her perfection, on her privilege.
Lives still did. She couldn’t forget that. So she couldn’t play cat-and-mouse games with Elijah. Whatever they’d started in that closet had to stay there. And even if she did give him access to her body again, she could never, ever give him access to her heart. The tiny, shriveled thing that sat in her chest. Meghna wasn’t even certain it still existed, save for the fact that she was walking around, alive. She’d cared for her husband as much as she was able—still cared for him. Chase was a sweet, uncomplicated, accommodating man. As down-to-earth as his popularity was sky-high. His top priorities were good roles, good drugs, and good times. He’d never suspected her of wearing two faces, of having ulterior motives, and they’d remained in contact after the divorce. But love? No, she’d never loved him.
“You have mommy issues.” Her assistant makes this announcement with clinical detachment. As if her years of experience in PR has given her the ability to diagnose such things on the spot.
“How would you know? You’ve never even met my mommy.” She glares at Em over the rim of her martini glass.
“I send flowers to your father every Father’s Day and pick out his Christmas presents. In all the years I’ve worked for you, you’ve never asked me to send anything to your mother.”
Because she doesn’t need anything from me. Meghna almost says it aloud. She just barely bites it back, drowning the words in crisp top-shelf gin. “Maybe she’s dead. Ever considered that? Thank you for opening that deep and devastating wound, Em. You’re fired.”
Em doesn’t even blink. It’s the fourth time this week she’s been fired in conversation. “She’s not dead. As you well know. So yes, mommy issues.”
“Why is this relevant?” The tablet Meghna set aside on the kitchen island has pitches from a fashion magazine. She graced their cover three years ago, and now she’s been bumped down to single-page features that have questions like “Favorite travel must-have?”
“The Himalayan campaign forVogue India. You’ve turned it down twice. They’re going to stop calling.”
Technically not the Himalayas. Too risky, even for a Vogue location shoot. It’s a multipage travel romp through parts of northern Bengal. Siliguri. Kurseong. Darjeeling. Still too close to home—so to speak. “I told you: I spent enough time up there when I was younger. I don’t have any desire to go back.”
Em’s shrewd gaze is penetrating even through the thick lenses of her black-rimmed glasses. “She still lives in some fancy resort there, doesn’t she? Some yoga retreat?”
“Shut up, Em.” Meghna scowls, sloshing the last of the gin out of the cocktail shaker. “Did I mention you’re fired?”
Because her assistant is a shark who knows not to take no for an answer, she keeps pushing. “They’re going to ask Priyanka Chopra.”
“Let them.” Meghna shrugs. No matter the feelings, both professional and personal, she has about Priyanka Chopra, she’s not going to begrudge a gal a job. “I’m sure she’ll be happy to do it.”
Em’s sigh is the kind of sound that speaks volumes. “Do you care about your career at all?”
If Meghna were the kind of nightmare boss that people write exposés about, this is where she would yell. But she saves the nightmares for those who deserve it. For the men who die in her bed. “I payyou to care about my career. But let this one go, Em,” she asks quietly. “Please.”
Finally, finally, the older woman relents. She shakes her head, jabbing sharply at her own tablet. “It won’t kill you to let your walls down a little, you know,” she murmurs as she likely sendsVogue India an email they’re going to hate.
The rest of Meghna’s martini almost goes down the wrong tube. She chokes. Sputters. “That’s where you’re wrong,” she wheezes out. “It absolutely will.”
Feelings were a weakness, a vulnerability too easily exploited. Meghna had learned early that there was little value in sentiment. Fathers ignored you. Mothers abandoned you. Then, when you were old enough to be useful, they miraculously remembered you existed. The General. Ha. Otherwise known as Purva Saxena, thousand-year-old apsara, ex-wife of a defense contractor, and absentee mother of a daughter who’d only become useful fifteen years after conception. She’d married RK to procreate, to propagate her species, and left for the “yoga retreat” when Meghna was all of three months old. Meghna had grown a hard shell even before her training…and during those grueling years, she’d reinforced it with steel and platinum. The General. Not Mom. Never Mom. She checked the integrity of that shell in the mirror as she applied eyeliner and lip gloss. As she dug into the bottom of her purse for one of her burner phones.
She had this week’s Vidrohi check-in number memorized. Next week’s too. Just a fraction of the information filed away in the brain few people realized she had. What was it with her ability to survive without vital organs? Perhaps her next check-in needed to be with a supernatural doctor.
Unlike the smartphone Joaquin had given back to her in the conference room, the simple pay-as-you-go burner didn’t have foreign languages programmed into its keyboard. It pained her to use English letters instead of Urdu or Devanagari script—it was hardly discreet—but beggars couldn’t be choosers. She couldn’t trust that Joaquin hadn’t bugged her primary device or cloned the secure messaging apps. Part of her job was to adapt, to do whatever needed to be done with whatever resources she had at her disposal. Or for disposal. So she thumbed out a quick, vague message in “Hinglish” indicating her plan had changed but she was still on course.
And then she repeated a variation of that message to herself. You’re still on course, Meghna. Don’t get distracted. Don’t let anyone get in your way.