True Honor (6 page)

“Home.”

“That’s normally a good thought.”

“I’m regretting the coming explanations.”

“Start with ‘I’m okay,’” he said. “They’ll eventually forgive the rest. Sleep, Darcy. You need the rest. And I’m not dozing off until you do.”

She smiled. “Well when you put it that way . . .”

* * *

Darcy slept expecting trouble. Sam watched her hand twitch as the noise of the engines changed tempo. She had a blown mission, someone trying to kill her on U.S. soil, and she had to improvise her plans. Darcy was pretty good at thinking on her feet for a retired spy.

He’d always prayed to meet an interesting woman. He didn’t want to spend forever alone, but finding someone who could handle his profession, love of travel, and deal with the danger inherent in his job was tough. Darcy St. James qualified. Did she live in the D.C. area or elsewhere now that she was retired? He’d have to find out. Was Darcy even her real name? He leaned over and touched her shoulder. She was dreaming; he could see it in the movement of her eyes. “We’re here.”

She jerked as she woke. “Sorry, I burnt the eggs,” she murmured.

He laughed softly. “Just a dream.”

“More like a bad memory. I got distracted this morning.” She stifled a yawn as she sat up.

“You’ll crash when this day finally ends.”

“That’s an understatement.” Darcy tightened her seat belt and gathered together her things.

The plane descended and settled onto a runway. It taxied to a far hangar. Sam picked up his bag and Darcy’s and led the way down the stairs. She gestured to the car Gabriel had arranged to have waiting in the secure lot. She got the keys from the lockbox and handed them to Sam.

“I need to make one quick stop, and then we’ll head to headquarters. Sorry for the late night, but they’ll need to debrief you and Gabriel needs my notes.” She circled around the passenger side as she pulled out her phone. “Take a right at the light, cross the Potomac River, and head north on Wisconsin Avenue. We’ll miss the traffic, such as it is.”

He started the car. “What’s the first quick stop?”

“My place.”

Sam shot her a glance, but her attention was already focused on her call to her partner to let him know they were in town. This would be an interesting visit.

Four

* * *

SEPTEMBER 9

Sunday, 11:50 p.m.

Bethesda, Maryland

Sam paid attention to the neighborhood, memorizing the directions on the off chance he’d have the opportunity to pay Darcy a social call someday. The apartment complex she directed him to was unusual. There was a guard and a raised gate at the entrance, and the buildings along streets named Birch, Oak, Willow, and Pine were set farther apart than he would have expected.

“Take the second street, Willow, to the first building on the left. Pull in at the first garage and hold up the badge to the card key reader by the mailbox to raise the garage door.”

“Interesting security.”

“I’d prefer not to have a bomb in the trunk of my car on the drive to work. The Agency is a bit paranoid about things like that.”

“The government owns this property?”

“No, it’s privately owned, but most who live here do work for the government. Some work at the Agency, some are Foggy Bottom experts—that’s the State Department—and a few Pentagon short-tour officers. Basically people with heavy travel schedules, hence the security to protect often empty places.”

The garage door rose, revealing two garbage cans against the east wall and shelves along the back wall that were bare except for four boxes neatly arranged and labeled. “Lived here long?” Sam asked.

“Twelve years.”

“This is way too neat.”

Darcy laughed and got out her keys. “Come on up. This won’t take long.”

Sam retrieved her bag from the trunk. Darcy paused and deactivated the alarm pad before unlocking the door between the garage and her apartment. Stairs immediately turned and went up. “The downstairs of the building is actually another apartment; mine is the entire second floor.” She turned on lights to reveal spider plants reaching down from the open banister above to almost touch the handrail. “They grow faster than I can keep them repotted. Watch out for the roller skates.”

He nearly tripped on them on the second step before he caught her warning.

Sam reached the top of the stairs. The living room was spacious with a sofa, two chairs, and bookshelves. An oval dining table and open counter led into a long kitchen along the back of the apartment. Darcy dumped her jacket on the sofa. “Make yourself at home.” She headed down the hallway toward what must be the bedrooms and bath.

Sam slowly set down the suitcase as he looked around. Light blue carpet, deep blue and white fabric for the chairs and sofa, framed modern art on the walls; on the entertainment center with a TV and nice stereo equipment were shelves holding a matching series of progressively larger pottery pieces.

LEGOs making a half-built castle were on the floor in front of the recliner. A stuffed dog peeked out behind the vase of daisies on the side table and a plush bear guarded the phone. Walt Disney videotapes were stacked beside classic Westerns. A child’s finger-paint art was on the walls beside the expensive paintings. From the size of the hands, Sam would guess maybe a child about age five.

A man’s hat was tossed on the dining room table and a pair of running shoes about size twelve were near the basket where newspapers, magazines, and mail were piled. The well-read magazines on the floor back toward the basket ran to cars and
Popular Mechanics.

Darcy was married . . . she had a daughter.

Sam picked up Darcy’s wedding picture from the end table. She looked happy and young. Her smile was stop-a-guy’s-heart beautiful, focused entirely on the man beside her. The second framed photo on the table looked recent, maybe six months old. Her husband had their daughter wrapped up in his hunting jacket that reached almost to the child’s feet, and they were together holding up a stringer that held ten good-sized bass. Sam could appreciate the need for a photo to document that catch.

She’d done nothing to warn him, and she couldn’t have missed his interest in her. She’d deceived him deliberately. He set the picture frame down slowly. He didn’t appreciate getting used.

He looked around the room again, absorbing the full impression and then surprisingly found himself smiling and relaxing. This was what he would have expected for Darcy had he not known her real job. This place looked like her, and it felt comfortable. Right down to the spelling book resting on the last cushion of the sofa with a pencil stuck in it to hold the page. She was a woman who would live like this, with her life out in the open, rather than tuck it away in tidy corners.

Darcy walked back into the room carrying a small suitcase, having changed from casual clothes to a more formal red blouse and navy slacks. Power colors. They looked good on her, and as much a part of her personality as the elegance he had seen by the pool tonight.

“You need a kid’s bike in the garage.”

She lifted an eyebrow as she slipped in an earring.

“This illusion. It doesn’t work without the kid’s bike in the garage.”

She blinked at him, and then a small smile appeared, just at the edges of her mouth. She walked into the kitchen. “You want something to drink before we leave?”

“As long as you don’t offer me a juice box.”

She poured them both tall glasses of lemonade from a pitcher on the top shelf of the refrigerator. The juice boxes on the second shelf were fruit punch.

She held out one of the glasses. “You’re guessing.”

“Am I?” He drank the lemonade, studying her, smiling just a little because he was enjoying the moment. “I could look closely at that patio door to your small second-story balcony where you probably keep a small grill and a closed lid box for the charcoal bag. And there will be little handprints on the glass at your daughter’s height. The bathtub will have at least a few toys on the ledge and even the medicine cabinet will run to pediatric formulas of cough syrup.

“I bet your husband is the one who enjoys the neatness, and you’re the one who clutters the kitchen drawer with coupons and carryout menus. His razor items will be neatly aligned in the bathroom drawer, but there will be a few whisker hairs along the edge of the floor tiles where the broom wasn’t 100 percent thorough. You could tell me all about him and your daughter, but you’ll never make the sale.”

He reached out and ran a finger down her arm, stopping at her wrist by the new watch she had put on to replace the one that had gotten wet. “If you had a daughter and a husband who loved to go fishing, Darcy, you would know how to swim.”

She took one step back and then laughed. “You’re good.”

“After years training to see things, I sure would hope so.” She wasn’t married, she didn’t have a little girl, but it was a masterful presentation. And at the moment he didn’t want to explore why he was intensely relieved that this was an illusion. “You would be a jealous wife and mother. You wouldn’t be doing the job you do if you had a husband and daughter waiting for you to come home. You’d want to be spending your time with them.”

He’d pegged her, but he didn’t want to rub it in, so he smiled and looked around the apartment. “The lack of a wedding ring was also noticed, although that could easily have been explained as a reality of your job so as not to put your family at risk. They’re traveling tonight? Your mythical husband and daughter?”

“Her first chance to go with him on a business trip to the city, a day away from school for a father-and-daughter moment,” she offered with a smile.

“Yes, it would be a good memory. When was the last time you were actually here?” Why did she even ask him to make this stop tonight, try the deception out on him? She probably had her reasons, but he wasn’t nearly good enough to read a woman’s mind. Especially not this woman’s.

“Six months and seven days ago.”

He looked back at her, startled by the time period. He slid his hands in his back pockets, intrigued. “You’re what we would call
rated
in my business—very good at what you do that this level of cover would be maintained for such a spur-of-the-moment need.”

She nodded at the compliment. “I am very good at what I do but also truly retired. We need to go.”

He put his glass in the sink beside hers. “Mention to the woman who comes in to make fresh lemonade every week that she earned her pay.”

“I’ll do that.” She picked up the small suitcase she’d packed.

He shut off the lights behind them as they walked down to the garage. “Is this what you call a bolt-hole?”

She reset the security alarm. “The hotel was a bolt-hole, designed to be a safe place to disappear. This is more of a cover blind, a place to list as my residence that will hold up to the basic levels of a background check. And it is home, as much as any place on the East Coast is. Of course the cover blind in Paris is a bit more interesting.” She put her suitcase in the backseat and slipped into the passenger seat. “You’ll need to take a left at the light.”

“That was your territory? Europe?”

“For the majority of my years in the Agency.”

He followed her directions out of Bethesda toward McLean, Virginia.

“Would you mind one more stop?” Darcy asked. “The corner deli up ahead. I need good coffee for the upcoming hours, and I probably ought to drive the last mile to headquarters as security will pitch a fit with you. I don’t suppose you’re carrying three kinds of photo ID and your passport?”

He laughed. “I’ve got my charm.”

“That and waking up the Department of Defense liaison officer ought to do it.”

He tossed over his wallet. “There’s probably a Navy ID in there somewhere.”

SEPTEMBER 10

Monday, 12:24 a.m.

Central Intelligence Agency / Langley, Virginia

Traffic circled around the I-495 Capital Beltway to the George Washington Memorial Parkway in Virginia, and a few cars took the exit marked with a small brown sign to the George Bush Center for Intelligence CIA/FHWA. The night shift was already here, but those who worked the European desks often preferred to work Europe day hours and were trickling in.

Darcy found her two IDs as she reached the security gate. She lowered the driver’s door window and handed over her IDs and Sam’s Navy photo ID. She endured the flashlight in her face, then the beam moved to travel around the interior of her car and stopped on Sam. Darcy blinked away the spots in her vision and reached for the coffee mug in the cup holder. “DIA will have called down clearance for Sam.” The security checks would take a few minutes.

“That stuff will kill you.”

The voice helped her place who was on duty tonight. Dressed in black, walking in the dark, he’d been a man with a flashlight. Darcy blew on the coffee to cool it. “Not in the next five minutes. So far no one has tried to tamper with the coffee bean shipments.”

“They do, and this will be a nation of sleepy, surly people. Nice to have you back, Dar.”

He stepped into the security booth to check her ID against the clearance sheet.

The bomb-sniffing dog jumped up to put two paws on the open window. Darcy bobbled her coffee. The German shepherd smelled the cinnamon roll she’d picked up in a moment of weakness at the deli counter. “Henry, you know as a rule I don’t share.” Her fingers were sticky with melted sugar, but she ignored the resulting mess to rub her hand under the dog’s muzzle. “You’re cute and you know it.” They were buddies even after two years of absence. Her noon jog had her passing his kennel, and he was often allowed out to run with her.

“Down.”

Henry obeyed his handler.

“You’re clear, Dar. And your friend has an admiral vouching for him, so I suppose we’ll let him pass. An escort will be waiting at the front door with his visitor’s badge.”

“Thanks, Kevin.” She accepted back the IDs, surprised at the easy treatment. She pulled into the complex and glanced at Sam as she handed him back his ID. “Your security clearance must be pretty high to get you off so lightly on the checks.”

Sam lifted his ID and blew off a thin film of powder. “Probably higher than yours,” he offered, amused.