Face Off (22 page)

CHAPTER
39

AS THE LEGACY
offices emptied at the end of the day, Laura allowed herself to relax. Fewer people meant less risk of exposure. Between researching the computer systems and impersonating Fallon Moor, she was mentally tired. Beyond the standard anti-fey rhetoric, she wasn’t seeing anything she hadn’t seen in other places. The attacks on fey businesses were an obvious concern, but at best those had a tenuous connection to Legacy. Sinclair was having better luck turning up names of the direct perpetrators, if not the planners.

She distracted herself for another thirty minutes by checking InterSec and Guild bulletins. It wasn’t much of a distraction. Still no leads on Cress. She put her PDA in her purse and went to the door. She hadn’t discovered any essence-dampening wards in the building, but it was possible she might have missed them. A physical check of the hallway confirmed no one nearby. With a casual gait, she moved from empty office to empty office until she reached DeWinter’s closed door. She knocked and, as expected, no one answered. With the duplicate keycard, she swiped through the electronic lock and punched in the password. The light on the console turned green.

Inside DeWinter’s office, she quick-stepped to the desk and inserted a USB drive into the computer. The keystroke program downloaded to a reviewing pane. She scrolled through the text, skimming for isolated entries until she found entry points to the locked network drive. Finding the password access was a simple matter of backtracking through the text. With a few keystrokes, she scrubbed any trace of the tracking program and accessed the locked directory. The password worked. The screen filled with the file list.

Relieved, she sorted the data to the most recent viewed and started the file download. She checked her watch. Fifteen minutes had passed, longer than she had wanted to be there. File after file copied with frustrating slowness. Another five minutes, and she decided to get out. She paused the copy mode, checked that no trace of her presence remained, and pulled the drive.

She froze as the lock on the door clicked. She glanced around the space for a place to hide, but the stark furniture offered nothing. As the door opened, she strolled unconcerned toward the windows. She turned with a smile that she dropped when she saw a security guard. She had seen him in the building garage with Sinclair. “Oh, I thought you were Adam. Mr. DeWinter.”

The guard eyed her neutrally. “Can I ask what you’re doing here?”

She frowned as if it was a stupid question. “Waiting for Mr. DeWinter. Is there a problem?”

Without moving, the guard examined the room. “Mr. DeWinter is gone for the day. Mr. DeWinter has orders that no one should be here when he’s out. You need to come with me.”

Laura walked toward him. “Fine. I was waiting for him. He said he’d be here.”

He let her pass into the hall. As she returned to her office, he kept pace a few feet behind her. She sat at her desk. The guard waited at the door. “Is there something else?” she asked.

“You need to come down to security,” he said.

“Why?”

“We need to take a report,” he said.

She flashed him an annoyed frown. “So go make your report.”

He set his jaw. “I’m afraid I’ll have to insist.”

She released some essence into the Moor template and triggered the boggie characteristics. “And I’ll have to insist I’m not going anywhere. I’m having dinner with Adam DeWinter shortly.”

The guard stepped in. “It will only take a minute, miss . . .”

She glared as she rose to her feet. “Do you know who I am?”

He hesitated. “Yes, ma’am. Fallon Moor.”

She boosted the essence light in her eyes. “Right. A very annoyed Fallon Moor. You have three seconds to get out of my office before I throw you out. Go make your report. I’ll be sure to give Mr. DeWinter my own.”

“Ma’am . . .” the guard began.

Laura cursed to herself as DeWinter appeared behind him. “What seems to be the problem, Stuart?”

The guard backed down, his expression becoming subservient. “I found Ms. Moor in your office, sir. I was asking her to come help make a report.”

DeWinter smiled at Laura. “I’ll take care of it. There’s no need to make a formal report.”

Laura relaxed the boggart aspect as the guard left. She sat with a loud exhale. “Thank you. That was ridiculous.”

As DeWinter strolled toward her, she pretended to type an email. “I thought you had an errand?”

She didn’t look up. “It took less time than I thought, so I came back here to finish a couple of things.”

“In my office?”

She smiled. “We did leave something undone earlier.”

He chuckled. “How did you get in?”

She rolled her eyes dismissively. “I wasn’t
in
your office, Adam. I was
at
your office checking to see if you were still here. Your friend Stuart is a little overzealous.” She could afford the lie. She had what she wanted and had no intention of returning to Legacy.

Suspicion rolled off him as she gathered her things. “Are you ready to go?”

Feigning surprise, she slipped her pocketbook over her shoulder. “Now? I thought we didn’t have reservations for an hour?”

He shrugged. “It won’t be a problem.”

The thumb drive was hidden in her bra, usually a secure place, but with the way she had been teasing DeWinter, that wasn’t a given. Hiding it in the office or somewhere else in the building wasn’t an option. She didn’t want to return to the building after tonight. She decided to play out the situation on the fly. “Great. I’ll get my car and meet you around front.”

He slipped his hand through her arm. “That won’t be necessary. I’ll get us a driver.”

She smiled through gritted teeth as he flipped open his phone. “That’s fine.”

“This is Adam DeWinter. Is Burrell on duty?” he said into the phone. He glanced at her and wrinkled his nose affectionately. “Good. Tell him to bring the limo around.”

Laura forced a smile. However the evening was going to play out, at least she had Sinclair as undercover backup. “Sounds like we’re off,” she said.

CHAPTER
40

THE MOMENT SHE
walked into the restaurant, Laura knew that Fallon Moor had been there before. The host greeted her by name, and several other staffers offered professional smiles as they passed. Being alert around DeWinter was a given, but now she had to contend with a roomful of people, too.

As they settled in at their table, a waiter poured water. No one spoke during the brief seating ritual as both Laura and DeWinter surveyed the room with vague smiles. She chuckled.

“What?” he asked.

She flipped open the wine menu. “Nothing, really. I was noticing how we both checked out the room with a fake look of enjoyment on our faces in case someone was looking at us looking.”

“You’re not enjoying yourself?” he asked.

She didn’t look up. “That’s not what I said, Adam.” She put a dismissive, unconcerned tone in her voice. On cue, he chuckled, too. She allowed herself a smile. If there was one thing she had figured out—without Fallon Moor’s help—it was that Adam DeWinter liked to play verbal games and did not like a woman who rushed to explain herself. “What about a bottle of the Bogle cabernet with dinner?”

“I didn’t know you liked wine,” he said.

She laid the wine list down and picked up the dinner menu as another waiter arrived. “We can do shots before dinner if you like.”

“The usual, ma’am?” he said.

She grinned up at him. “Of course.”

She leaned on her elbows and peered over DeWinter’s menu. “What are you having?”

He handed her the menu. “I can’t decide. You pick.”

She took his menu and scanned the list again. She suspected he was testing her. “What did you have for lunch?”

“Something chicken.”

She gave herself a moment to recall the personality profile InterSec had on DeWinter. “The osso bucco. The wine will go nicely with it. They can swap out the salad dressing for something without nuts.”

He blinked, still smiling. “When did I mention I didn’t eat nuts?”

He had an allergy to nuts according to the profile. She feigned mild irritation. “I’ve never seen you eat them. I assumed you were allergic.”

The waiter returned and served two glasses of whiskey. Laura put in the dinner order for both of them, and the waiter left a bottle of Bushmills on the table.

DeWinter held his glass out. “To the endgame.”

Laura hesitated, then toasted. “To success.”

“You don’t like my toast?” he asked.

She flipped her hair back on one side. “It’s not the endgame, is it? It’s a step.”

DeWinter played with his glass, rolling the bottom edge in a circle on the tablecloth. “You’ve been acting strange.”

She hid her apprehension at the remark by sipping the whiskey. “More than usual?”

He pursed his lips. “How much of that is you and how much is an act?”

“I am exactly what you see,” she said.

DeWinter snorted. “Now, that I don’t believe.”

She lowered her brow to appear concerned. “Something’s gnawing at you, Adam. I’m not sure I want to keep dancing like this.”

She also wasn’t sure if she was pushing something in a direction she didn’t want to go. For whatever reason, DeWinter was acting suspicious of her. Her impersonation of Moor on such short notice wasn’t the best persona she had ever devised. It had worked so far, but that was because she avoided conversation as much as possible.

DeWinter shrugged. “You haven’t been around much lately. It makes me wonder about your commitment.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Really? After everything I’ve done, you wonder about my commitment?”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Tell me about Dublin . . . Allison.”

She didn’t panic that he had exposed Fallon Moor’s past. Given his former life in the CIA, DeWinter’s digging into the background of one of his key players didn’t surprise her. What she didn’t know was if Moor had discussed it with him. She decided to be flip instead of annoyed. “It’s the capital of Ireland.”

He maintained a pleasant expression, but she noticed a tightening of his jaw. “That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. I understand why you didn’t tell me your real name. What I don’t understand is why you’ve become cryptic around me.”

She sighed and leaned forward. “Adam, you know how this works. Whatever you know about Dublin is what you know. I’ve shared what I want to share. If you expect me to confirm or deny things you suspect about me, then someone’s going to be asking about twelve million dollars. Do you want to go there with me? I have nothing to hide.”

He waited while the waiter placed salads in front each of them. “I needed the money because I saw an opportunity to increase the chances of success with our acquisition,” he said.

All that told her was what she had already assumed. DeWinter had bribed someone to do something. He still wasn’t tipping what it was for. “The airport bombing was an accident,” she said. “The bombs were supposed to end up on planes, but one went off prematurely. I got out in the confusion.”

Quid pro quo. Except for the bit about the accident, everything else she said was known to security-industry insiders, and DeWinter had more than a few of them as contacts.

“This isn’t what I wanted to talk about,” he said.

Laura picked at her salad. “How about lost rocket launchers?”

“Fallon . . .”

“Yes?” She made a show of continuing to eat.

DeWinter lowered his gaze and toyed with his fork. “We haven’t been together in over a week.”

The comment surprised her. Despite finding out her real identity, DeWinter’s real issue was personal. Laura reached forward and caressed his hand. “I’m sorry, Adam. I completely misread what you meant.”

He shrugged and smiled. “I was having fun. I thought you were, too.”

She grasped his hand. “I was. Am. It’s just . . . things have been busy. When things get like this, I prefer to”—she tickled his palm—“heighten the anticipation.”

“It’s heightened,” he said.

She finished her whiskey with a slow slide of her tongue across her lips. “Well, I’ve accomplished one goal at least.”

“Seriously, though, where have you been?” he asked.

She refilled their glasses. Moor liked her whiskey, though Laura didn’t care much for it. “Without going into details, I’ve been putting some plans into place for after . . . ours.”

His smile was patient. “We have the same goals, Fallon. I would hope by now you trusted me.”

She pursed her lips. Moor continued to refuse to give any more details about her relationship with DeWinter. Laura couldn’t be sure if he was baiting her or not. His voice held tones of subterfuge, but that was as much a factor of his cryptic manner of speaking as it was truthfulness. She couldn’t risk assuming Moor had told him more about herself and her plans than he was letting on. “Not all our goals are the same, though, are they?”

“I would think taking down the monarchy was a big enough goal for anyone,” he said.

This conversation she knew how to have. She had been among antigovernment people in one form or another for most of her career. “What happens to the fey after the monarchy is gone? Not everyone agrees with us, Adam. Even if—when—we succeed, democracy isn’t going to break out. There will still be a lot of work to do.”

“I might be able to help with that,” he said.

She shrugged in a thoughtful manner. “I guess what I’m saying is that even now our goals aren’t precisely the same. You want to prevent the monarchy from expanding and infiltrating your government. I’m already living your fear. Eliminating the monarchy solves both our problems, but they’re not the same problems.”

“Maybe that’s when we leave things to someone else,” he said.

He surprised her. She felt a sense of honesty in what he said. Moor’s silence about him and hearing him talk about her like this made her wonder if they had true feelings for each other and not a relationship of opportunity and convenience. The idea gave her pause, as much for the unexpectedness of it as her cynicism that hadn’t even considered it. “And then what? We retire to a nice cottage with a picket fence? We’re not the type, Adam.”

Still pleasant, he looked resigned. “Why don’t we talk about this when the operation is over?”

She slipped a gentle smile over her face and held up her glass. “Let’s make a date.”

He raised his glass. “Next Tuesday. No excuses. That will give everything a chance to cool down, and we can talk about other things.”

She tapped his glass. “Tuesday it is, then.”

She leaned back as the waiter arrived with their dinners. At least she had managed to get a time frame out of him. Whatever Legacy was planning would be executed in the next few days. Maybe Terryn was right, and it was about Draigen, who would be gone in the same time frame. Even so, she wanted harder confirmation than intuition. The data drive waited in her bra. With any luck, she would piece together what the plan was and end it before it began.