Diamonds Are Truly Forever: An Agent Ex Novel 2 (38 page)

He laughed. “I’d never call you a bitch, baby. I don’t suppose you’d tell me if you’re a double agent. But you don’t have any SMERSH assassins after you, do you?”

“Well…”

He loved her sense of humor. “Okay, they
might
be part of a terrorist death squad, but they’re definitely not SMERSH.”

She kissed him on the cheek and pulled away, plopping on the bed and kicking off her sandals. “Yes, but there’s Sam—”

For a minute his heart stopped. She was so close to the truth, but he knew she meant something different.

“Stace, leave Sam to me. I’ll follow him and make sure he gets on that charter boat and isn’t meeting another mistress. You just enjoy yourself with your mom. And don’t go down any dark alleys or break away from the tour. I’ve called in a few favors from some Canadian agents up here who’ve promised to look out for you. One of them may or may not be one of your tour guides.”

“Thanks for the warning. As if I’m not already jumping at shadows. I hope this agent is well versed in botany and history. I’d hate to think everything I’m going to hear about historic Victoria or the gardens is simply a well-polished lie.”

“Well-polished lies are the best kind and can be extremely useful.” He sat down next to her and squeezed her thigh through her jeans, wishing she’d been wearing a skirt so he could feel the sexy tautness of her shapely, toned legs and the smoothness of her warm skin. “Don’t worry, the agent I’m thinking of is retired and old enough he may very well have witnessed Victoria’s founding.”

“You take such good care of me.” Staci’s expression softened. She smiled at him. “Do you really have time to chase after Sam? I thought you had spying to do.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, sorry, spying waits for no man, and no anniversary, either. I have a phony brewery meeting or two thrown in. Nothing I can’t handle. I’ll be all yours at dinner. Promise.”

“What if Sam’s meeting his paramour on the fishing vessel? What if she’s a fisherwoman after his heart and his cushy document control engineer’s salary?”

“What if?” He grinned and pushed her back onto the bed.

*   *   *

Beacon Hill Park covered two hundred acres. Staci and Linda stood on the edge of a group of tourists at the park entrance as their botanical tour guide recited park facts. It was a good thing her mom had warned Staci to wear walking shoes. After a two-hour walking tour of the Victorian homes of James Bay, and only a brief stop for lunch, Staci wanted to collapse. Her mother, however, was all vivacity and sparkling, energetic happiness. Earlier, Linda had peppered the historic district tour guide with all manner of enthusiastic questions. She showed no sign of slowing down on this tour.

Cynically, Staci wondered how many of the answers were the truth. Oh, they had all sounded valid enough—informed, even. But given what Drew had said about retired CSIS agents giving tours, well … They were all professional liars, after all.

Frankly, though, she wondered at everything. Was this master gardener who was giving them their tour another CSIS agent? Where was Noe? She was half disappointed he hadn’t turned up yet. She’d thought he might be their garden tour guide, but no such luck.

The thin, elderly gentleman conducting their tour seemed completely harmless and looked incapable of protecting a fly, let alone her. Then again, Staci had underestimated the octogenarian assassin in the grocery store last week. She wouldn’t make that mistake again. But she would have felt better, safer, if Noe had turned up as their guide.

Noe, however, was probably off spying with Drew, doing the exciting, active-duty stuff rather than playing bodyguard for her. She took a deep breath, hoping whatever Drew was up to wasn’t too dangerous and knowing it probably was. She just hoped he made it to their romantic dinner. During their marriage he had a terrible habit of missing dinner, especially when she’d cooked something special, or it was their anniversary.

He’d been hinting at the importance of tonight’s dinner. The last time Drew had acted similarly suspicious, outside of his job, he’d proposed to her. The memory made her smile. Not wanting to get her hopes up, she quashed the wish that Drew was going to propose a permanent reunion over a flute of champagne and not just a happy resolution to a mission. Either way, she was intent on telling him the truth about Iguazu Falls and hope there was a chance they could patch things up.

She checked her phone for a message from Drew. Sam’s fishing charter was scheduled to sail at two. Drew had promised to let her know if Sam actually boarded the boat. So far, no news.

She shrugged. Sam probably wasn’t top of Drew’s priority list right now. Not while he was off saving the world, or at least southern Canada. She’d get the intel out of him tonight, one way or another.

She thought of the backless evening gown she’d bought at lunch and had sent to the hotel. She’d been fortunate to spot it in the boutique window during the five minutes her mother had allotted for shopping. Staci felt sexy and Bond girl in it.

Staci snapped from her thoughts as the group moved forward into the park. Butchart Gardens advertised as the big draw for the area and got all the glory in the tourist brochures at home in Washington State. But Beacon Hill Park looked and felt glorious, particularly on a sunny May day when even romance was in bloom.

Horse-drawn carriages clopped along, giving the feeling of stepping back in time. Blue herons waded in the shallow ponds of the park as ducks floated by. The groomed grounds extended to the trees, some of which were pruned in intricate designs. And even though the native foliage—Douglas firs and western red Cedars—were just the same as in Seattle, the site felt elegant, as if Staci’s little group was taking a turn about the extensive grounds of an English estate.

As they meandered down a pathway, leisurely navigating a curve in the path while the tour guide pointed out a bald eagle nesting site, a movement off to her right caught Staci’s attention. She turned to look and froze. No, it wasn’t an assassin staring at her. She thought she saw—no, she clearly saw—Lucy, looking pale and flustered, taking a shortcut across the lawn out of the park. What was Lucy doing in Victoria?

Staci thought about what Drew had told her and felt her anger rise. Was Lucy here for a tryst with Sam, right beneath her mother’s nose?

*   *   *

A mission was just a mission, even a mission to save the world from the maniacal ranting of a dangerous world-class lunatic. Drew’s pulse thrummed with the adrenaline high of the chase. He had to keep his nerves in check, remain calm and unreadable in the face of excitement and possible failure. Even death. So many little things could go wrong at the last minute. Fatal errors.

But this mission was something new, a true test of his abilities. Many times, yes, he’d taken in men and women he’d befriended, fooled, beguiled. But he’d never arrested a family member, a man whom he’d tried to think of as a father, tried to please at Christmas and the holidays, bought gifts for, discussed with his wife, and known for years.

He tried to force out the amiable picture he had of Sam at Christmas carving the prime rib. Tried to replace it with the Sam on the video who coldly fired two shots into Martel’s brain without the slightest look of remorse or distaste crossing his face. Tried to remember that the amiable Sam was only one part of the man.

People were complex, multifaceted. And several of Sam’s facets needed polishing. Or more correctly, excising. Sam would sell out his country, the world, to line his pocket, for his own comfort. Drew tried to picture thousands, millions of faceless people who would be harmed by Sam’s actions. To keep in mind—Sam was just another evil, heartless target. To forget any lighter shades of gray that made him human.

As ignoble as it was, Drew hid in the bushes, dressed in a park sanitation worker’s uniform, compliments of Noe and CSIS. He wore a bag slung over his shoulder, ostensibly for stashing trash, but in reality filled with implements of the trade. He had a brush and dustpan, a pointy metal stick for stabbing garbage and shooting poisonous darts, and a sniper’s rifle for everything else.

He trained the sniper’s rifle on a fat middle-aged man dressed in coveralls, the kind worn by master-gardening park volunteers with
PARK PLANT MANAGEMENT
silk-screened on the back. The man wore a large straw hat to shade him from the sun. He knelt on a foam kneepad, tending the begonias that grew in the bed next to a pond with a magnificent spewing fountain in the heart of Beacon Hill Park. The woods where Drew hid hummed with the sound of splashing water. Very nice white-noise cover. Loud enough to cover most means of execution and any idle chitchat. The Gardener was smart.

Though it was warm, and the Gardener rotund, the man wasn’t sweating, which unnerved Drew. He’d heard too many stories about the Gardener and his unflappable cool.

The Gardener was a RIOT legend. A man who would nurture a sick fuchsia back from the brink of death and withering dehydration, and then shoot a man who begged for his life without even blinking. A gardener’s backpack sat next to his feet. Probably contained the payoff Sam was expecting for his treason.

Drew, Noe, and their fellow agents had been tailing Sam all morning, intercepting his messages. If their intel was correct, Sam was headed to the park to make the drop.

Noe spoke to Drew through his nearly invisible Bluetooth phone earbud. “The target is on the path to the pond. He’ll be there in three, two, one…”

Sam came into view on the path directly across from Drew.

“I’ve got a visual,” Drew whispered.

“We’re in position,” Noe said. “We ’ave the area cordoned off and the park surrounded. Let’s take the bastard down.”

Drew murmured his agreement and positioned his rifle, hoping he didn’t have to take a shot. As Sam strolled along the path that wound around the pond, Drew switched his earbud to listening ear mode. He turned it to record and adjusted the tiny video camera he wore on the button of his uniform. They were going to nail Sam and the Gardener.

Sam began whistling. Off key. He’d never been able to carry a tune. The whistling must have been a signal. The Gardener looked up. Drew watched his body posture become tense, ready to spring. Drew couldn’t see his face beneath the straw hat, but Sam smiled at him. “Beautiful begonias.”

“It’s been a good year for them. They like light, but not direct sun,” the Gardener said. His tone was high-pitched, grating.

Drew hoped he didn’t have to listen to it long. The United States had a deal with the Canadians. They got the Gardener, the US got Sam. All intel would be shared.

“Picky plants,” Sam said, his tone light and easy.

Drew couldn’t detect the slightest edge of fear or nerves in it.

The Gardener laughed. “Do you know much about begonias?”

“Only that they grow from tubers.”

“Very good,” the Gardener said. “Few people know that. You have something for me?”

The Gardener pushed up onto his knees from his bent position. Drew thought he was taking an awful chance. Until he spotted the steel-handled hoe/cultivator the Gardener held. Its blade glistened through the dirt caked on it and looked as sharp and lethal as the finest knife blade. No doubt it was tipped with poison.

Drew held his breath.

Sam dropped a small packet at the Gardener’s feet. The Gardener picked it up, looked at it, and shrugged. “If this isn’t what I ordered, you’ll be dead before you can leave the park.” He nodded toward his backpack. “Take it. It’s all there.”

Facing the Gardener, Sam reached down, scooped up the backpack, and slung it over one shoulder.

Drew opened his mouth to issue the order to swoop in and arrest them just as Sam pulled a small handgun from his pocket. He raised it and shot the Gardener twice between the eyes. The Gardener fell back on his heels, arms limp behind him. His hat fell off, caught a breeze, and blew across the flower bed.

Drew jumped to his feet. “Move in! Move in!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Before Drew hit the edge of the woods and broke into the clearing, Sam pulled a spherical bomb from his pocket. He removed a pin and tossed it onto the ground. An instant later he was enveloped in dense black smoke that even the bright sunlight couldn’t penetrate.

Drew rushed in, rifle at the ready, and began coughing. His eyes stung. “Damn, it’s laced with tear gas. Back off.” He issued orders to seal the park. Cursing that he didn’t have a gas mask on him, he lowered his weapon, backed away, and waited for the smoke to clear, certain Sam would be gone when it did.

Fortunately, there was enough of a breeze to dissipate the smoke within minutes.

Noe appeared beside him. “Our agents are everywhere. We’ll get ’im.” Noe nodded toward the body. “Does your stepfather-in-law have a death wish?”

Drew took a deep breath. “Apparently so.”

Sam was more cunning and clever than Drew or NCS had given him credit for. Never underestimate your enemy. It often proves fatal. Drew looked around for the parcel Sam had dropped at the Gardener’s feet. It was gone.
Naturally.
Emmett was going to have Drew’s head and Drew was going to have Sam’s. When he caught him.

Drew clenched his fist. He and Noe walked over to examine the body. Noe picked up the Gardener’s hat and clutched it to his chest.