On The Rocks (30 page)

Cursing at the lemon trees, Kizzie rocked
her head back and stared up at the sky. The stars and her Dom were
both a million miles away. Light-years of the dark unknown
separated them and she had no way to reach either one.

But Lennox wasn’t out there. He was
here.

And maybe he
had
changed…

Kizzie headed back the way she’d come,
moving a little quicker to get back inside.

Bang!

She dropped into a crouch behind a bush. Her
hand went to where her gun should be and came up empty. Her heart
slammed against the wall of her chest, overpowering that digging
sensation she’d yet to deal with. Right now, survival trumped
emotion.

She peeked through the thin foliage for the
cause of the disturbance. A couple of yards away, one of the trash
cans at the back of the house was on its side, rocking back and
forth gently. Rook foraged through the remnants as though he didn’t
eat like a prince right from his temporary owner’s hand.

The breath she’d been holding came out on a
whoosh.

“Damn cat almost got itself skinned,” she
muttered, heading over to the mess. Rook meowed and ran off,
disappearing into the trees on the hillside.

Kizzie dragged the can upright, and as she
reached for the lid, she spotted the plastic bag the cat had been
working to get into. She snatched it up and paused. A white strip
of paper dangled from the outside and she squinted to make out the
ink in the dim moonlight.

A receipt.

For the meal Lennox said he had cooked
himself.

Head shaking, she shoved the trash into the
can and slammed the lid on top of it.

Lennox hadn’t changed one bit.

17

McLean, Virginia

“HOW’S THE SALAD?”

Rachel looked up from her meal to the man
across from her. Agent Atwater —no, she would
not
call him
Colin— shoved the corner of a thick sandwich into his mouth and got
to chewing.

“Fine.” The bowl of produce was nothing
special. Lettuce and tomatoes. A crouton or two. Kinda hard to mess
that up. But Atwater seemed to ask a million questions about every
little thing. Took that ‘The More You Know’ PSA to a whole ‘nother
level. Details were great when running an op. In the civilian world
they amounted to idle chit chat.

“Yours?” she asked, because that’s what the
depth of the conversation required.

“Well…” Atwater launched into a dissertation
of sorts over the bread and Rachel tuned all the way out.

If she’d stayed on campus and eaten at her
desk, she wouldn’t have this problem. But she’d been cooped up in
that office for going on a week now and she desperately needed air.
To see trees and grass up close, not solely from her little corner
window. Thank goodness the pace of her new position would settle
down in a few days.

Two huge operations were set to go live
soon— the Culverson op in seventy-two hours, and the Galletti op in
less than twenty-four. Culverson would likely be a cake walk.
Strictly surveillance, zero contact. Just a look-see that should
take her agent roughly five minutes.

Comparatively, the Galletti op would be a
slow walk on hot coals. Her tech team had worked tirelessly to come
up with a means to initiate a man in the middle attack on Abrahan’s
computer. Hard to do when both Metis and Galletti were operating on
a private, anonymous network that more than likely had safeguards
in place that rivaled the Agency’s own.

As it stood, their only choice was to
initiate the attack from Galletti’s computer itself. Running
terminal commands to convince Metis’s computer that Abrahan’s was
not the destination but a pass-through, and rerouting the
information to a designated computer at Langley. To get it done,
Kizzie and Lennox would be sitting ducks for seven to ten
minutes.

Seven to ten minutes wasn’t long, but when
so many things could go wrong it was an eternity. Had Rachel’s
stomach tied in a knot, hence the light salad. She’d dragged out
prayers she hadn’t uttered since her first communion, imploring
God, the angels, all the saints, and her dear Aunt Mabel —rest her
soul— to let this job go off without a hitch. Things staying tits
down would be awesome.

“Rachel?”

She snapped her head up, coming dab smack
with Atwater’s scrutinizing gaze.

“You zoned on me for a minute there.” He
chuckled.

“Sorry, my mind’s on other things.”

Atwater’s narrow head bobbed. “I can
understand that. How’s the op going?”

Frowning, she made a show of looking
around.

They were in a deli off campus. Two
construction workers in hardhats and orange vests dined at the
table across from them. An older woman with ash-colored hair and
huge Jackie-O inspired shades sat at the table behind the workers,
sipping a mug of something hot and reading a paper. There were at
least six other civilians in the building, not including the
husband and wife team that ran the place. Not exactly a secured
room at Langley, was it?

“I won’t discuss it here,” she said.

He smiled. “Gotcha. So, did you see it?”

She stabbed her fork through a cherry
tomato, feeling an odd satisfaction when the fruit exploded. “See
what?”

“That show I told you about? Came on last
night.”

Agent Flip-Flops over here went home and
watched TV the night before. Rachel read through more OCA requests
and woke up with her face melted to some paperwork on her desk.
She’d half expected there to be ink on her forehead.

“No,” she said, “been a little too busy for
TV lately.”

“Oh, Rachel, you’re gonna love it. Last
night…”

Atwater was off to the races again with the
words and the sentences and the talking. This was definitely the
last time he tagged along for lunch.

Tossing out a timed “Uh huh” between bites
of her food, she shifted her gaze out the window beside them. A man
sat at a bus stop across the street. Hard to see his face, but she
had the feeling he was looking at her. Dressed in slacks and a thin
sweater, he touched the brim of his gray driver’s cap. Doffed it
just as a bus pulled up in front of him, blocking her view.

“Rachel…?” Atwater said. He turned in his
seat and craned his neck to see out the glass. “Everything
okay?”

“Yeah. What were you saying?”

Atwater returned his attention to her.
“So…”

Rachel’s gaze went back out the window where
the unwieldy transport was pulling away from the curb. The man
wasn’t on it. Instead, he pushed to his feet and shuffled away, a
cane leading his slow charge.

“So, you think maybe we can do dinner some
time?”

Rachel shook her head. “I’m sorry…
what?”

“Dinner. We’ll keep it quiet.”

The man was moving a little faster now.
Almost at the crosswalk that would take him out of her field of
vision.

She grabbed her purse and started to slide
out of the booth. “I gotta go.”

Atwater gripped her wrist. “I came on too
strong, didn’t I?” That boyish smile he thought was charming
stretched his lips. “I didn’t mean to scare you off.”

Another glance out the window.

Rachel pulled her hand free of his and dug
in her purse. Yanking a couple of bills from her wallet, she tossed
them onto the table and then headed up the narrow aisle way.

She went by the woman reading the paper. Her
bag snagged the table and she turned back. “Excuse me.”

Rachel hurried out the side door and started
in on a brisk walk. Her shoes clipped the sidewalk, the tiny noise
sounding off in a steady rhythm. That part in the movie where the
female agent runs after her contact while wearing stilettos? So not
a real thing.

And Rachel was in very sensible pumps…

Crossing the street, she walk/jogged to
catch up to the man, doing her best to not bring attention to
herself while still moving quickly.

She risked a glance behind her. Thankfully,
Atwater hadn’t followed.

But the woman who’d been reading the paper
wasn’t far behind, those shades in place as she padded across the
concrete.

Rachel’s brow knit. Something about that
woman was familiar.

No, that wasn’t the word, and right now she
couldn’t think of a suitable replacement. Rachel didn’t know the
woman at all, but she’d seen her before. Where?

She shrugged it off. Seeing familiar-ish
faces in a relatively small town didn’t qualify as newsworthy.

Didn’t mean she was being followed…
Right?

She took another peek back. A black SUV had
pulled up to the curb, the rear door open. The woman climbed in and
then the mammoth ride was going by, dragging a warm breeze behind
it.

Right. Not being followed.

She refocused on the old man. Up ahead, her
target slipped down an alleyway and Rachel slowed. It wasn’t quite
eleven in McLean, but the sun was bright and the skies were clear.
The lunch rush hadn’t struck yet, so there were only a few people
milling about. Just one or two were enough to scream for help
should the man she was chasing turn out to not be Bill
Connolly.

Still, going into an alleyway wasn’t smart
business. And going in unarmed was downright stupid.

She dug in her purse and palmed the handgun
there; peeked into the alley.

Empty.

Graffiti lined the walls, a random mishmash
of letters and pictographs that would probably get painted over
soon. In the center of the lane, a metal door stood ajar in the
wall of concrete to her left. Above the door, a handful of sprayed
on black stars.

She paused. Those stars on the wall were
like a poor-man’s version of the memorial back at Langley.

Reminders of death.

Never before had death breathed so firmly
down her neck. But if she kept death as the forefront, she wouldn’t
take the risks necessary to get the job done.

Rachel glanced toward the mouth of the
alley. Swiveled her head to the dead-end.

Muzzle leading the way, she took a breath
and went inside.

BILL GLANCED OVER as the old metal door
squeaked back on its hinges. A gun came through the entryway first,
carting Agent Hayford behind it. He had to give her credit. Not
every desk agent would follow a man into an alley. But she’d pushed
aside her fears and done it anyway. Proof that confidence he knew
she had in her just needed a chance to be unleashed.

“Holster your weapon, agent.” His words
bounced off the walls of the room, sounding louder and harsher than
he intended.

“Come on over,” he motioned to the dingy
card table where he sat, “take a load off.”

Hayford shut the door and engaged the series
of manual locks. Her heels clicked across the dusty floor and she
sank into the metal fold-up chair across from him.

A scowl on her face, she looked around.
“What is this place?”

“Another hidey-hole, just long-since
abandoned.” Bill let his gaze roam around the room,
remembering.

The space wasn’t big at all, maybe fifteen
by fifteen feet. No windows, just two bare bulbs dangling from
lines overhead providing weak yellow light. They’d been up there so
long the bottoms had caked over with dirt. The floor was painted
concrete, hunter green in its heyday but a dingy avocado this many
years later. An old faux-wood desk was shoved up against one wall.
Behind it, another door with a latch and padlock, the key lost long
ago.

“Front side was a pub.” He pointed toward
the door behind the desk. “Mostly agents would gather here, but it
was open to civvies, too. We had tons of these places all around
the world. Depending on where you are, you still might find one or
two that are like this, but as better security became available,
made sense to upgrade.”

Rachel frowned. “But Langley’s just a couple
of miles away. Why have a hidey-hole in McLean?”

“This was in the days before everyone had a
cell phone.” He chuckled. “And not every agent tags home base,
Hayford. Some are in so deep the risk is too great. So we’d meet
here. To anyone watching, the contact from Langley and the NOC are
just two people who happen to be in a bar at the same time.”

Nodding, she set her purse on the table and
turned to face him. “I’ve been trying to reach you, Connolly.”

“I know.”

“So you’ve been deliberately ignoring my
calls?”

“Yes,” he said bluntly.

“Why?”

“Couple of reasons.” He fiddled with his
cane, turning it about its axis by the grip. “First, this is your
mission. I gave your position on the matter some thought after our
meeting in New York. In your shoes, I’d be a little miffed if
Langley went over my head and doled out Intel I wasn’t yet privy
to.

“Second, if you’re going to lead, you have
to
lead
. If you have info to get to your team, you get it to
them. Would I have done this with agents other than Baldwin and
Tate? Probably not. But those are two of my best and I trust you
with them, and them with you.”

He took a deep breath and glanced away.
“Lastly, Metis is smart, Agent Hayford. Whoever this is, they’ve
been able to infiltrate our Agency and pick off sensitive Intel for
the last twenty-odd years and not get caught. Chances are high
they’re monitoring missions, which means they may be on to you and
what you’re doing.”

Her eyes widened and she sucked in a little
breath. “Me?”

“You.” He bobbed his head. “I don’t want
them to know who you have in your corner. Now, I don’t want to
frighten you, but you need to be aware of your surroundings at all
times. Notice anybody out of place, any agents suddenly sticking
too close to you…”

“I’ve been—” Rachel snipped off the words
and shook her head. “I’ve had the weirdest feeling that I’m being
followed.”

Bill twisted his head to look at her,
frowning.

“It’s silly, I know, but since I took over
for Fletch, I’m stressed and my paranoia is at an all time high. I
keep smelling things in my office.”