The Secret Chord: The Virtuosic Spy - Book 2 (16 page)

After seeing off her final overnight guests her patience and her nerves had stretched to a filament. She double-timed it up to the second floor and down the hall to Sedgwick's room, storming the barricade with two firm raps. The door abruptly swung open and the force of it nearly sucked her inside.

"Oh. It's you." Sedgwick planted an arm against the doorframe and grinned at her. "Afraid I was dead? Or hoping I was?"

He'd showered and dressed—a clean pair of khakis and a blue polo shirt—and apart from a lingering pallor he seemed largely recovered. Caught off guard, Kate fumbled for an opening line before hitting on the most obvious one.

"How are you?" She looked beyond him, confirming he was alone.

"Not too bad. Joints are kind of achy. Not sure if that's from the fever or from McBride throwing me around the room. Did you want to come in?" He swung the door wider. Deflated, Kate walked in, thwarted again in her effort to be incensed.

"I thought I'd find Conor here with you." She flopped into the chair near the bedside table. "Plotting or scheming, or doing whatever spies do when they get together."

"Plotting and scheming pretty much covers it." Sedgwick sat down at the foot of the bed. "I only woke up an hour ago. Haven't seen him."

Kate cast about for a topic of conversation, wondering what she hoped to accomplish before impulsively posing a question she hadn't expected to ask.

"What went wrong that day?"

"He still hasn't told you." The softness of Sedgwick's tone surprised her.
 

"He tried, I think he wanted to, but he couldn't." She dropped her gaze to her hands resting in her lap. "He has nightmares. I've heard them a few times, but he doesn't know."
 

After a long silence she looked up at Sedgwick, who absently rubbed a hand over the globe-shaped finial of the bedpost, as if it were a crystal ball that might provide answers for both of them.

"Everything went wrong," he said, echoing Conor's words. "He had to run away from all of it. There was no other option, but that's hard to remember when you're sweating it out in the middle of the night. He'll tell you when he's ready."

Kate nodded, looking restlessly around her. Odd, to sit like a tourist in one of her own guest rooms, evaluating the amenities from an outsider's perspective. Were the curtains as clean as they should be? Her attention settled on an edgeless lucite picture frame sitting on his bedside table. The photograph inside showed a beautiful, smiling Indian girl with a lustrous braid pulled forward over her shoulder. She wore a red school jacket and white skirt, and held the handlebars of a dusty bicycle.

"Is she your daughter?"

Sedgwick gave a self-deprecating snort. "No, luckily for her. I'm an honorary
bhaiyya
—elder brother—and a stand-in if I'm honest. McBride still reigns as Number One
bhaiyya
."

"Who is she?" Kate picked up the frame and studied the photo more closely.

"Her name is Radha. Her father sold her to a dance-bar pimp in Mumbai when she was twelve years old. McBride bought her back so to speak, and nearly got himself killed in the process. One of his little adventures. She's at a convent school in Agra, now. I visited her three months ago and she wanted me to send the photo to him. At the time I didn't know if he was dead or alive, but I wasn't about to tell her."

Sedgwick laughed, a grudging sniff of appreciation. "He can be as cold-blooded as he needs to be, has some amazing talents, but self-protection isn't one of them. He won't put on the armor. Leaves him vulnerable to everyone and everything that wants to stick to him—needy children, old ladies, tuberculosis—"

"Tuberculosis?" Kate glanced up sharply.

"Oops. Shit. Forget I said that." Sedgwick made a wry face and changed the subject. "Where the hell is he, anyway? I figured he'd be hoisting me out of bed at daybreak."

"Off somewhere, I guess. I can't find anybody who knows. Tell me what you meant by—"

"Wait. You're saying nobody's seen him?"

"Maybe he walked into town. He can't be far. The truck and my car are still here."

Sedgwick was up and at the window before she'd finished. He looked down at the parking lot and then turned to study her, the cool speculation she'd seen the previous evening dropping over his face like a mask.
 

"Well,
my
car is gone. Fortunately, there's a tracking device under the hood."

S
HE
COULDN
'
T
BELIEVE
Conor would run away, but the evidence and Sedgwick's conviction were hard to challenge. He tore into his duffel bag and came out with a laptop and a slightly larger square device, then ran from the room with Kate close behind, chasing him down to the ground floor.

"Get me your keys," he said over his shoulder.

"I'll drive. I'm coming with you."

"No, you're not."

"Then I won't give you the keys."

Sedgwick pulled up at the foot of the stairs and glared at her. "You think I can't start a car without keys?"

She was composing a scathing retort when the front door opened and Conor stepped into the lobby, balancing a large white box on one arm. Before the moment could elude her again Kate gave voice to her pent-up wrath.

"Where the hell have you been?"

Conor froze with his hand on the doorknob. The box wobbled at a dangerous angle and he steadied it, staring at the two of them.

"At the bakery in Montpelier. Abigail asked me to collect the cake for the anniversary group booked in tonight. She didn't tell you?"

"It's morning. She's not scheduled to be here."
 

"Since when does that matter?"

"Why did you take his car, for God's sake?" Kate hiked a thumb at Sedgwick.

"It's a Mustang." Conor shrugged, as though further explanation would be superfluous.

"It's government property you dickhead, and it's got a trunk full of surveillance equipment among other things." Sedgwick did a slow-motion collapse on the stairs, looking weary. "If you'd been stopped for speeding we'd be dealing with a shit-storm right about now."

"Jaysus, really?" Conor smiled faintly. He pulled the keys from his jacket and tossed them over. "Good thing I wasn't, then. Don't leave those lying around in your pockets from now on." His dark eyes lost their glitter when they shifted back to Kate. "So, I guess you thought I'd scarpered for the border, or the airport or someplace. That's what you expected from me?"

"Not as much as he did." Kate was still fuming. "Don't try throwing me on the defensive, Conor. You've got no right to the high ground. You told me you had pneumonia last winter, but this one is telling me it was TB. Who's lying?"

Conor glared at Sedgwick. "Thanks very much."

"Sort of slipped out."

"You can't pretend you didn't have time to tell me all this yourself." Kate paused, seeing Conor's annoyance abruptly darken into something more threatening. Without further warning, he exploded.
 

"And what exactly was I supposed to say, Kate? Lovely of you to have me here, and by the way I'm an undercover MI6 agent, just off a badly fucked up black ops project with the DEA?" He slammed the box on top of the registration desk. "Yes. I got TB in Mumbai. Last winter."

"How?" Kate asked.

"I suppose I caught it off someone else," Conor snapped. "As one does. People get tuberculosis in India, along with malaria and cholera and a bunch of other biblical diseases we don't much worry about in Hartsboro Bend. Then, while I was hiking around in the fucking snow in Kashmir, I caught pneumonia as well. So, nobody was lying and now you know; and can I just say that if you'll be going off your nut like this every time a new fact emerges, you should probably start drinking a lot more than you do now."

Kate had never seen him so angry. Instead of fueling her own rage it gave her an irrational urge to smile. Avoiding his eyes she approached the desk and peeked into the box, relieved to find the cake still intact. She turned to his scowling face, and a belated sting of anxiety erased the inclination to laugh.

"Tuberculosis is curable, right?"
 

"Not always, but in this case, yes. Thanks for asking." He took a deep breath, and continued more calmly. "I did a six-month therapy with shed-loads of pills and was cleared a few weeks ago at Copley Hospital. Darla saw me there, ask her. She haunts the place."

"Good." Kate closed the cake box and smoothed her fingers over the top, calming the atmosphere. "Are you hungry?"

Conor squinted at her, as though suspecting a trap. "Ehm, yes?"
 

"What about you? Breakfast?" Sedgwick gave a nervous start as she spun around to face him. He was still perched at the bottom of the stairs, in neutral territory.

"Yeah, sure. Whatever. Coffee, anyway."

"Well, come on, then." She picked up the cake box and started down the hall, and like obedient school boys the two of them fell into step, following her into the dining room.

"S
ORRY
TO
SCREW
UP
your love life, dude." Sedgwick shot Conor a skeptical glance. "She's sort of out of your league though, isn't she?"

"Feck off." Conor plucked a strip of bacon from the agent's plate. "You'd best be nice to me if you want any more of my primaquine."

"I was wondering where those pills had gone."

"Nicked them. When I went for your keys."

"Nice to know you haven't lost your edge."

Kate appeared, coffee carafe in hand, and frowned at Sedgwick's plate of half-eaten pancakes. "You're not doing a very good job of keeping up."
 

Sedgwick rolled his eyes. "Look who you're comparing me with—he eats like he's going to the chair."

She twitched a glance at Conor's empty plate before sitting down and pouring herself a cup of coffee. "What have you been discussing? You weren't supposed to start without me."

"Just trading insults," Conor said. "You haven't missed anything."

He was trying to keep up, also—to find a balance in the shifting terrain of Kate's mood. Since last night he'd seen her move through anger, bitterness, anguish and tenderness, and then back to anger again. He'd made the rounds through most of those as well. With anger put aside—at least for the moment—he detected a renewed smidgen of warmth between them, but also the sense of a retreat, as though they'd each pulled back to opposite corners, measuring out a safe distance from which to avoid being hurt. He decided not to dwell on what that felt like, or what it meant. He turned his attention to Sedgwick.

"Last night you said the DEA wasn't interested in hearing your report. Why?"

"Wish I knew." Sedgwick pushed the remains of his breakfast around his plate. "They flew over an officer to deal with the transport of Walker's body and settle down the Srinagar police, who naturally wanted an explanation for why they'd just lost six officers. I expected the guy to debrief me on the spot but he told me he didn't have clearance to hear anything, and he told the police their answers would be coming through diplomatic channels. He seemed genuinely in the dark. Privately, he said DEA headquarters was freaking out, and he'd seen a few characters in the hallways who smelled a lot like CIA. His official purpose was to put me on administrative leave until further notice."

Next to him Conor heard Kate abruptly shift in her chair with a small sigh of distress. She appeared tired and shaken, but managed a smile in waving off his concern. "Of course. The CIA. Why not?"

"Sounds fishy," Conor remarked.

"You think?" Sedgwick shot him a sarcastic glance. "What else would send me running into the arms of Frank Murdoch? For better or worse I'm buddied up with him on this gig, flying under the radar to hide the fact from my own agency." He poured himself a third cup of coffee before continuing with clipped efficiency. "So, this is where things stand. First we've got Tony Costino, desperate to deliver the twenty million dollars he promised Dragonov, which he thinks you have. Then we have Robert Durgan, who most likely got your location from a mole inside MI6, and he's essentially been told you and Thomas cheated him out of a huge piece of business. He's only waiting for a guaranteed return on investment to justify the risk of coming after you. Dragonov's assassins might find Tony before he can close a deal with Durgan, although we can't depend on it. We need a strategy for both defense and offense, but first let's go back to the question you dodged last night, McBride." Sedgwick put his mug down and rested his elbows on the table. "Where the hell is the DEA's money?"

"Haven't a clue," Conor admitted. "We did the transfer to a bank account Thomas set up in some South American country."

"Uh-huh." Unlike the previous evening the agent's gaze was focused and alert. "A country like Brazil, for instance?"

"Sounds as good a guess as any, I suppose. Why Brazil, in particular?"

"He used to launder some of Kotwal's money through a bank manager in Porto Allegre. Why did he do it?"

Conor explained his brother’s foresight in questioning the idea of putting twenty million dollars into an account Dragonov could access, and Sedgwick's face brightened.

"It must be the bank in Porto Allegre." He thumped a fist on the table. "Excellent. You've got the password for the account?"

Conor met his eyes without flinching. "Nope. He didn't tell me."

The decision to lie and its actual delivery was an instinct that formed in the space of an instant, before he even understood why he was doing it. In keeping with his training in this particular art, the words fell from his lips without hurry or hesitation, but Conor was less anxious about Sedgwick's reaction than Kate's, since the statement was a direct contradiction of what he'd told her earlier.

Sedgwick spat an obscenity, dropping his head in frustration while Conor extended a booted foot under the table to carefully rest on top of Kate's. So much depended on how she would respond, and he had no idea what to expect. She had already turned her head to him, her mouth opening to speak, but stiffened as she felt the pressure of his foot. He could only risk a glance, serving as an implicit plea. It was enough. Kate pressed her lips together and began gathering the breakfast dishes.