The silver SUV whipped through an empty parking space and slammed up over the curb onto the sidewalk. People scattered, ducking out of the way. Their pursuers dove back into traffic on the main avenue, wheeling in front of several vehicles, but got hung up behind two buses.
Castle made a hard right, hung a left, and hooked another right to lose them. His POI shrieked nonstop—one long, high-pitched scream that grated on his eardrums.
“Oh my God. You’re crazy! You’ll get me killed. Let me out!” She slapped the window, tugging on the door handle, her hysteria ratcheting higher with each passing second.
“Settle down.” His tone was pure business, but he tried to soften the natural abrasion to calm her. “Those guys were following us. Tracking you. I had to lose them. You’re safe now.”
“I won’t be safe until I’m on a plane out of the country. I was fine for the last two days. On my own. Stop the car!”
“Tell me what you know about Z-1984, who those guys are, and why they want you dead.”
“Go to hell.” She grabbed the wheel and yanked it, causing the car to swerve.
Was she insane?
Castle wrestled the wheel, regaining control, and swatted her hands off.
Wow. She was strong.
“Tell me why you need me, and don’t give me any national security crap. How’d you know I’d be at the park?”
“We intercepted IRC messages between you and Gary about Z-1984. The last one spelled out the details—”
“For the meeting.” Shaking her head, she sighed. “How did you know which park? I was deliberately vague.”
“Didn’t. We had operatives at every park near Massachusetts Avenue.” Drained their manpower to do it too. “Try to relax. I’ll answer all your questions.” Most of them, anyway. Okay, probably less than fifty percent. He needed to gather intel, not share it with someone linked to stolen bioweapons. “I’ll clear things up at headquarters.”
After she signed a nondisclosure agreement and they determined her role in this, the chief would decide what to clue her in on.
“Headquarters of what? Where? Langley? Are you CIA? What right do you have to take me anywhere?” she asked in a scorching flash without pausing for air.
The answer to every question except the last was classified, right down to their agency. “Why don’t you answer a few of my questions, starting with your full name?”
An indignant chin lifted as she folded her arms, pinching her lips, and faced the window. It was surprising how good petulance looked on her.
“No need to do this the hard way.” He lightened his tone. “This can be easy.”
“I get the feeling nothing about you is easy and everything is hard.”
Well, she was right on that account, but he quirked a brow at the double entendre.
“If you don’t know who I am, then you don’t know squat.” She glared at him. “And you certainly don’t have a warrant to pluck me off the street and shove me into a locked vehicle. I’m warning you. Let me out, or things are going to get ugly.”
“If you don’t calm down, I’ll be forced to calm you down.”
Those crazy-beautiful eyes glinted like serrated steel. “If you don’t stop this car, you’ll regret it. I’m at a five right now, mister, poised to go to a ballistic ten.”
Hot damn, who was this woman? “Remember, I offered you the easy way.”
Easier for her. Any of his other choices were better for him—quieter, safer, and would prevent her from hurting herself or causing an accident. Or making his head explode from her high-volume demands.
“Let me show you my ID.” He raised a hand and slowly reached over to the glove compartment. Sometimes his size intimidated women, and he was mindful not to heighten any potential fear. Except she didn’t cringe, stilling him with surprise for a second.
Then again, she seemed the type who defied most expectations.
As he let a measured grin surface in a gesture of peace, she launched a fist at his windpipe. He deflected the sucker punch, thanks to lightning reflexes.
If it had landed, that blow would’ve hurt. A lot.
“Stop. Hitting. Me,” he said with the glacial hardness that would make men larger than him back down.
This sprite of a woman rolled her eyes and jerked up from her seat toward him.
“Let. Me. Go.” She clenched her jaw, drawing her face dangerously close to his, her nose damn near touching his cheek.
He white-knuckled the wheel and stared straight ahead. To take him on considering her disadvantage, she must be batshit crazy. Oddly enough, he kind of liked it.
Castle stretched his arm out in front of her, nudging her back into her seat. He reached cautiously for the glove box, as if she were a cornered wild thing capable of ripping into him the split second he dared to blink. He grabbed the Department of Homeland Security badge they used as their cover story in a pinch and tossed it in her lap.
While she looked it over, he popped open the detainment kit. Inside was an autoinjector loaded with drugs strong enough to tranquilize an elephant. Beside that was a transdermal sedation patch the size of a thumbnail. The mild sedative was less potent than benzodiazepines, such as Xanax and Ativan, meant solely to relax an agitated detainee, but with the spitfire’s heart condition, the first option would kill her. Even the second was a calculated risk.
Not willing to take the chance, he shut the kit. If she didn’t settle down after seeing the DHS badge, he’d have to go with the next best alternative, but she wasn’t going to like it.
“I don’t care if you’re a secret agent.” She tossed his badge on the dash. “It doesn’t prove you’re a good guy. Stop the car, or so help me, you’ll wish like hell that you had.”
Guess it was going to be option C. He took Independence Avenue to the West Potomac Park and pulled over in an isolated, unpaved spot for turnarounds. Castle popped the locks, caught his detainee before she bolted—not that she’d have gotten far—and wrangled her into the back seat next to Achilles.
“What are you doing?” She tried to pry his hand loose, scratching and clawing him, but when that failed, she thrust a bony elbow into his jaw.
Son of a bitch. That stung.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” He restrained her wrists with flex-cuffs and secured them to the grab handle above the window with a second nylon zip tie.
“And I’m just supposed to believe the mountain of muscle binding my hands?”
“Why don’t you tell me your name?”
“Bite me!” She kicked his thigh, getting way too close to his groin with her boot heel.