Shadows Amongst Light (The Spy Who Loves Me) (2 page)

             
Real, unimaginable evil. This job could be a frightening rush at times. One that was as addicting as it was destructive. Far better and more potent than any drug.

             
For me, it felt like I was losing little pieces of myself with every new assignment I performed for The Organization. It was hard to look at myself in the mirror anymore and not be sickened by what I’d become. Even harder to maintain my faith in human kindness in the face of what I saw each day. The hatred, the destruction. That was the real power of evil. It destroyed you from within. Each day it was getting harder to figure out who were really the good guys anymore. My judgment was clouded, which was probably why I’d decided to walk to The Organization meeting tonight rather than take my car as Noah had been telling me to do for weeks now.

             
I was restless and had been for weeks. That was exactly the way I felt this night when I found myself face to face with yet another uncertainty. Someone was following me.

             
There was definitely something a little too familiar and about the man that I’d, spotted earlier in a storefront window and then again later when I’d stopped for coffee. I’d seen this creep somewhere before. Only he wasn’t really much of a creep. At least not as far as looks. But I knew that most creeps didn’t always look the part.

             
Had I not been lost in thought and pretty much working off sheer exhaustion then I would never have chosen a noisy, crowed nightclub to duck into, knowing that this guy was going to follow me in there. I knew that I needed to either find out why he was following me or lose him. I certainly couldn’t afford to have him follow me to the meeting.

             
As I made my way across the crowded dance floor, I spotted the back entrance to the place and headed towards it hoping the suave man following me would continue to do the same. I was in luck. He took the bait.

             
Why was someone like him following me in the first place? He didn’t really fit the usual profile for a bad guy. Did he know who I was? That was a distinct possibly considering the information I’d recently uncovered. But if that were true--why me? Why not one of the other team members? More specially Noah.

             
I stepped out into the muggy D.C. summer night and slipped close to the edge of the door flattening myself against the shadowed part of the wall, reaching for my weapon from its hiding place beneath my jacket.

             
The second he walked out of the club, I had him.    

             
“Freeze...that’s far enough.” I’d caught him off guard, shocking him into obeying for the moment. I took a second then to access the situation. This guy was well dressed. He would probably be considered quite handsome in a polished sort of way. Definitely not your typical terrorist, so what was he doing out in the field and more importantly, why was he following me?

             
I tried to ignore the voice in my head that told me I’d already slipped up by letting him force me into reveal my cover. I was out here in this deserted alley alone without backup. I was vulnerable and I wasn’t thinking clearly. I needed to find out what this person was up to and if in fact he had friends close by.

             
He had barely gotten through the door when I’d surprised him. He was only half facing me in the darkness. I dropped my purse and took a step closer, doing a quick but thorough pat down. He was carrying a Glock. Standard weapon of choice for most government agents. Who was this guy?

             
I tucked his weapon behind my back in my waistband of my slacks and walked around him so that the only light, a stark exterior bulb would be shining directly into his eyes while I remained in the shadows. I could now make out his features more clearly.              

             
“Start talking,” I told him, hoping that he wasn’t picking up on all my uncertainty. For the first time that I could remember since joining The Organization, I found myself unnerved by someone.

             
Lesson number one when it came to fighting terror, was to never, ever show the enemy any emotion. Certain never let him see you hesitate.

             
This had to be some sort of sign or something. It was definitely time to move on. Not only was I a danger to my child, and myself but I was becoming a danger to everyone within the Bureau. I was hesitating. Second-guessing myself. If word were to get out about this as well as how sloppy I’d gotten lately, then I’d have to be dealt with. Oh, not taken out in the literal sense but ‘dealt with’. And the person doing the dealing would be Noah. A hard position for any human to be faced with. .

             
I tried to focus on what I was supposed to be doing here. I needed to deal with the problem in front of me not let my mind wander off on yet another tangent. I glanced around the alley for a means of escape in case this guy figured out what a phony I was. It hit me then that he was smiling, actually smiling at me. My enemy was finding my slightly unorganized way of handling things somewhat funny.

             
I just caught the sound of his laughter over the noise of the club. It was just a little too confidant in a strange attractive kind of way. I found myself committing yet another no-no. Never, ever see your enemy as a human.

             
“What would you like me to talk about?” he asked in a slightly accented voice that was equally as alluring as his laughter.

             
“Cut the comic routine. Who are you and why are you following me?” I told him trying not to react to all that charm that he literally oozed. I did find myself wondering how someone like him had come to be what my second sense was telling me he was. The enemy.

             
“What makes you think I was following you? I could be just another guy out for a good time or maybe I just wanted to meet you? After all, you are a very attractive woman.”

             
“Uh huh. Sorry, but I’m not buying it. So let’s try again shall we? Who are you and why are you following me?” I asked again while I took in all the details of his tall, slightly yuppie good looks.

             
He definitely did not fit the part of bad guy. If I were to have met him on the street under different circumstances, I would have figured that he was just your normal well-to-do success story.

             
From the cut of his gray suit right down to the four hundred dollar pair of shoes, he exuded success. There was no way anyone would ever mistake him for evil. But then, that was probably the whole purpose behind his polished cover. You’d never know what hit you until it was too late.

             
It was in this uncertain state of mind that he caught me off guard and took a step closer to me. And I tried not to show him how much that unnerved me. I was the one in charge here. The one with the gun. I wasn’t supposed to show fear. Another one of those tried and trues.

             
“That’s far enough. Don’t come any closer,” I told him in what I’d hoped was a confident voice, but it was clear he wasn’t afraid of me. He simply picked up my purse and handed it back to me, smiling as he walked past me. He knew he had me, so why didn’t he finish the job that he had come here tonight to do? Why not eliminate the problem while she was making it easy for you?

             
“What are you doing?” I asked when he would have walked away from me without so much as another word, inviting whatever trouble he represented back to my side.

             
“I’m leaving you...for now, that is. I think tonight is definitely my lucky night.”

             
“Oh? And why is that? Because I’m not cuffing you and hauling your butt off to jail or interrogation? Because I’m willing to let you go for now?”

             
“No, Cameron
Alexander
,” he answered in that attractive voice that didn’t bother disguising just how full of it he considered me to be. “Because I had the pleasure of seeing you again. You were right, you know. I was following you. But you wouldn’t have taken me in. Sorry to burst your little bubble, sweetheart, but you weren’t very convincing. Maybe you’ll have better luck the next time we meet.”

             
With those words, he simply walked away from me unthreatened. Certainly not intimidated one little bit. And I sank down to my knees.

             
Who was this guy? How did he know me? I didn’t recognize him as any known fugitive as my instinct was telling me that he was. But surely, if I’d met him before, as his words had clearly implied, then he’d be...what? In custody? Yeah, I’d really proven that point tonight.

             
I’d acted as if this was my first day on the job. I wasn’t a novice. I’d been with The Organization for more than three years now. I knew how to handle a possible threat like this guy posed, for crying out loud. So who was this guy? More importantly, why was he following me?

             
Something in the way that he’d emphasized my last name made me believe that he knew about my marriage to Noah, although how anyone could have found out that fact was hard to imagine. Not even the higher-ups in the FBI, not even Adam Manning, Noah’s boss knew about it. We’d deliberately covered up our marriage and backtracked it to the point that we were certain no one would ever stumble across any record of its existence. So how had this guy found out?

             
I turned to look in the direction that he’d left but he was gone, but certainly not for good. Not if I could trust that uneasy feeling at the base of my spine that had never once let me down before.

             
I would face this guy again. It wasn’t over, not by a long shot. He’d only been playing with me tonight. I’d meet him again, no matter how desperate I was to get out of the game. Like it or not I still had unfinished business with him.

             
I had a decision to make before that time came. I had to decide how I was going to manage to stay alive.

             
I was still trying to understand why I’d reacted to him the way that I had when my cell phone sounded reminding me all over again, of just how late I was.

             
I’d made so many mistakes tonight leading up to this final one. Standing down against an enemy agent. If I hadn’t made the fateful decision to walk instead of listening to Noah, then I wouldn’t have ended up being followed by my mystery man in the first place. And I wouldn’t have ducked into the club to try to catch him at his own game, which clearly had failed miserably, then I wouldn’t have ended up on this ridiculous personal mission, instead of concentrating on what I should be doing in the first place.

             
I could almost hear Noah’s anger and frustration with me. I’d put my life on the line. For what? For a stupid hunch. I could be completely wrong about the guy. Given my emotional state as of late it was a very real possibility that I’d simply misread everything.

             
If I hadn’t wasted the time, it took to put my child and myself in jeopardy without any clear results I could be with Noah now. Not standing here alone in this deserted alley.

             
But none of that mattered now. The point was I hadn’t done any of the things that I should have. I fished the cell phone out of my purse when it continued to ring off its little hinges.

             
“Hello?”

             
“Cameron? What exactly do you think you’re doing? We’re all here. So where are you?”

             
That was Gina Manning’s way of getting the point across to me in no uncertain terms. Not that I needed any help. I knew how much Gina disliked me. Even if I’d been on time tonight, Gina would have found another way of showing her displeasure. At least I always knew where I stood with her.

             
As the only other female agent in our group, I believed Regina, a.k.a. Gina Manning, resented my presence in her men’s only club. She had been the queen bee for five years before I’d come onto the scene. Gina didn’t like to share her ‘boys’, as she was so fond of referring to the other four male members of our team.

             
But that wasn’t the only reason Gina and I were never going to be friends. I’d saved her life about two years ago when I was still considered a rookie, and she was supposed to be the seasoned pro. Gina had resented that obligation to me from the start.

             
And then there was the fact that I was ‘seeing the boss’ or so she and everyone one else in The Organization believed was to be the extinct of Noah’s and my relationship. I think this was actually something that Gina pictured herself doing. After all, Noah and Gina’s father were good friends. Adam Manning was like a father to Noah.

             
“Gina, I’m sorry. I ran into a little snag, but I’m on my way. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” It seemed that no matter how hard I tried I could never bridge Gina’s resentment towards me.

             
“Whatever, Cameron. Just get here. This is an important meeting--you knew that. Noah told us all to be here on time. We have a lot of information to go over tonight. You’re holding things up.”