When Christine walked into Mandrick’s office he immediately noticed something about her that he had been unable to see on the monitor. She had groomed herself, only a little, but more than she had in the past. There was also a hint of eyeliner. That was a significant effort for her.
Christine saw the lecherous glint in his eye as she entered the room. Mandrick was standing there with a superior demeanour as if he was all-knowing. Once again she suddenly wondered if he knew who she really was, or at least that she wasn’t what she claimed to be. It was not just with Mandrick either. She never completely trusted her cover, always feeling most unlike prison-inspector material. Every time someone looked her directly in the eye she would stare back at them searching for traces of suspicion. There were so many reasons to get the job finished and be out of the damned place.
She forced a smile.‘Have I caught you at a bad time?’
‘No. I was about to do my rounds of the prison but I’m happy to put it off.’
‘I can come back later if you’d prefer,’ Christine said, stepping closer to him while at the same time wondering if her discomfort at being so close to him was obvious.
Despite being certain of her duplicity Mandrick was struck once again by her attractive qualities. As well as her beauty and intelligence she had an aura about her, an undeniable strength beyond her physical athleticism. She was a superior creature. There were times when he felt strangely inadequate beside her. The feeling was bizarre and on certain levels it irritated him.Which was why he became far more of a predator in her company than he would normally be with women.
He moved towards her. Inwardly she braced herself, expecting him to take hold of her. But he brushed past like a matador.
‘Can I get you a drink?’ Mandrick asked, going to an antique bureau and a collection of fine crystal decanters and tumblers.
‘I shouldn’t really.’
‘Is that for medical or professional reasons?’ Christine grinned. ‘How does it affect you at this depth?’
‘You do get more of a buzz for your dollar . . . But don’t let me pressure you.’
‘Very funny.’
‘Bourbon do?’
‘Sure.’
Mandrick poured two glasses, opened a small fridge beside the bureau, took out a bowl of ice, plopped a couple of cubes in each glass and brought them over to her.
Christine took the drink and held it to her mouth as she watched him take a sip of his. She let the glass touch her lips and poured a little of the burnt-gold fluid between them. It tasted bitter to her. She didn’t like hard liquor but on this occasion it reminded her of younger days in college after a game of touch football or baseball, joining the guys for a drink. They’d been purely bonding moments for her but fun nonetheless. Now those days seemed like ancient history. From college girl to secret undercover agent standing in the warden’s office of a damp, humid prison far beneath the Gulf of Mexico.
As she watched Mandrick eyeing her with the confidence of a great cat, she was less sure of her strategy than ever. Her scheme was nothing more complex than to separate him from his minicomputer, remove the memory-storage cards without him knowing and then head for his personal escape pod. There were some glaring flaws in the plan. The first was the difficulty of getting the keypad entry code to gain access to the pod. She didn’t know it. The only way around that was to somehow get Mandrick to show her the inside of the pod and then make her move to get inside it and eject. The other flaw was that as she arrived on the surface he could have her picked up by his own people. She would be stuck inside the pod for hours anyway, waiting to decompress. He would also have plenty of time to cancel some of the information on the storage cards; PIN codes and passwords, for instance.
It was not the best of plans by a long stretch but Christine was out of other ideas. She almost scratched the whole notion several times but the only reason she continued to pursue it was that she was not entirely desperate to pull it off. Taking the storage cards was surplus to the mission objective, anyway. It was all about personal ambition. If the ideal opportunity failed to materialise she would cancel it and surface just with her report.
At that moment the scheme was certainly looking doubtful. Mandrick was being more forward with her than he’d been at any other time. He had a hunger in his eyes. She reckoned she had been too overtly sexual in setting him up and he was clearly expecting more than she was prepared to give. ‘Why don’t you take me on a tour?’ she suggested. ‘I can come on your rounds with you.’
He put his glass down, moved closer and stopped in front of her, his eyes boring into hers. ‘What are you doing here, Christine?’ he asked in a cold voice.
‘You mean in this room, now?’ she replied, holding on to her composure.
‘That, yes. But first the prison. What are you doing here?’
‘You know what I’m doing here.’
‘I know what you
Christine could never tell Mandrick the truth. Her career would be over. Perhaps even her life. He’d been prepared to kill an FBI agent. Why not an Oval Office agent? There was no real difference at the end of the day. He had no proof that she was not a prison inspector. He couldn’t have. He was guessing. She had no choice but to maintain her claim. ‘Where has this come from? I don’t understand you,’ she said.
‘OK. So if you won’t answer that question, why are you in this room putting on this pathetic display, attempting to seduce me when it’s the furthest thing from your thoughts?’
Christine tried to laugh it off. She put her drink down. ‘Well. This is interesting. I thought we . . . I’m sorry. I obviously have it all wrong. Perhaps I should go.’
As she moved past Mandrick he grabbed her hand and pulled her close to him.
‘Let go of me,’ she demanded.
He wrapped his other arm around her before she could pull away. ‘How ’bout we make a deal?’ he said, holding her tightly, his nose almost touching hers. ‘You give me what I want and we’ll talk about your side of the deal. I might surprise you.’ He moved a hand down her back and over her bottom, sliding it between the cheeks.
A combination of rage and utter disgust engulfed Christine and she slammed her forehead into his nose, breaking it and immediately following through by crashing a heel down onto the top of one of his feet. To his credit he managed to keep hold of her but she punished him further by bringing a knee up into his groin. It was this blow that finally forced him to release her.
She went to the control panel and hit a button. As the door hissed open she made her way past him towards it. But before she could reach it another hiss signalled a reverse of the pneumatic valves and the door remained closed.
Christine turned to face Mandrick. He was straightening himself up, trying to ignore the pain in his groin while dabbing at his bloody nose with the sleeve of his jacket.
‘That smart,’ he said, blinking away the water in his eyes. ‘Never experienced that combination before . . . You make that up or did they teach you that in prison-inspection school?’
‘Let me out of here,’ she said coldly.
Mandrick exhaled loudly and relaxed his shoulders to help ease the tension. ‘Funny how quickly you can go off someone.’
‘Open the door,’ she said in a deliberate tone.
He held up the remote. ‘Why don’t you try and take it?’
Christine was experiencing a whole load of feelings, a growing concern predominant among them. But she no longer felt unsure. The job had come down to a physical conflict between the pair of them. She didn’t have to pretend to seduce him for a second longer.That was some relief in itself. If she could take him down she might even achieve the result she wanted. But she would have to flatten him, knock him out, tie him up, restrain him for several hours. She knew nothing about Mandrick’s past: his dossier was surprisingly slender for a file that was the result of a White House background check.There was a toughness about him which she put down to character rather than physique.
However, he seemed to have dealt with the blows she’d given him quite quickly. He could take pain. If he did possess some level of fighting skill, which she doubted, she was confident she could take him. She had quite a few
