Vortex (11 page)

I turned around, but Chief Marshall stood between us, arms folded across his chest.
The pained expression Dad wore made my stomach feel even sicker than earlier.

“Yeah, Dad?”

“Be careful.”

“I will.” I left and caught up with Kendrick, deciding to drag one more answer out
of her. “Aren’t you worried … about going home? Running into people you know while
you’re doing secret-agent stuff?”

“I’m a lot more worried about getting through the seven-hour flight.” She flung the
door open to her room and went inside, leaving me to guess what she meant.

CHAPTER SIX

JUNE 10, 2009, 7:00
P.M.

It took an hour and a half of the seven-hour flight for me to see what Kendrick meant.
Honestly, I’d never seen anyone with such terrible motion sickness.

“We’ve ridden in helicopters dozens of times, how is this different?” I asked her
as she leaned over the garbage can I had just swiped from the bathroom a few minutes
ago.

“I’m fine for an hour or so … and then this … happens.” Her face was buried deep in
the garbage can now as she heaved out whatever was left in her stomach.

Luckily, this was a private government flight. I waved Dr. Melvin over despite Kendrick’s
protests. She wiped her face with a tissue and leaned back against the chair, closing
her eyes.

“You’ve got to give her something. She’s been barfing for two hours straight … started
about ninety minutes into the flight,” I said to him.

“I can knock her out with antinausea drugs.”

Kendrick shook her head vigorously. “The second I’m unconscious, one of those evil
time-traveling bastards is going to pop up on this plane and kill me.”

“Do you have any documentation of EOT attacks while in flight?” I asked Melvin.

He looked like he was trying not to laugh. “None at all, Agent Meyer.”

“Yet,” Kendrick said, reaching for the trash can again.

I pulled her hair off her face. “I think you’ve suffered enough.”

I nodded to Melvin and he retreated down the aisle and then returned with a syringe
full of something. He jabbed her in the arm with the needle and her eyes closed seconds
later. I got up from my seat and lifted the armrest so she could be stretched out
across both seats.

Melvin tossed a blanket over her and smiled. “This will probably be the most peaceful
rest she’s had in over a month.”

I stumbled into the aisle and took the only empty seat left, next to Stewart. Then
I leaned back and closed my eyes, knowing I wouldn’t sleep. How long had it been since
I’d slept soundly, like Kendrick? It felt like, by now, my body had been trained to
survive on very little rest.

*   *   *

“Jackson? Wake up,” Stewart said, nudging my shoulder. “ETA is five minutes.”

Did she just call me Jackson and not Junior?

I rubbed my eyes and stretched my arms over my head. “Wow, I can’t believe I fell
asleep. Any EOTs show up?”

Stewart pushed her lap tray up and snapped it into place. “Yeah, about ten of them.
None of us wanted to get up, so we sent Dr. Melvin to deal with it.”

I laughed and yawned at the same time. “He probably bribed them with candy.”

Both of us looked out the window and watched the New York skyline get bigger as we
dropped toward the ground.

“Are you glad to be home?” she asked.

“Not really,” I said.

Her eyes met mine and I could tell she was searching for meaning in my answer. Why
wouldn’t I want to be back here in my comfortable life?

“What about you?” I pressed. “What’s your New York cover? You were here for two years,
right?”

She grinned maliciously at me. “It turns out I’m from your neighborhood … well, not
really,
but that’s been my cover on occasion. Spoiled daughter of an Irishman. I have my
own Upper East Side apartment, a couple buildings away from yours. And that little
test mission I did yesterday won me a very fast car.”

Isn’t she a little dark to be Irish?

“Great,” I mumbled.
So I get my Dad shipped off somewhere unknown and Stewart gets a car
. And I had a feeling as soon as we landed I’d be forced to listen to her speak with
an Irish accent for the next week. Maybe that was better than the French character
she’d been maintaining for the last three weeks.

Kendrick was still passed out cold when we landed. Melvin said she would be loopy
for a couple more hours. We stuffed her in the back of a car and she slept all the
way to her building. Even just the twenty-minute drive from the airport to her apartment
was enough for me to feel a strange sense of freedom, except it wasn’t the comforting
kind. More like wide-open exposure. My senses were a little too alert as we drove
through the streets of New York.

The driver took the bags up to the door outside and I still hadn’t gotten Kendrick
to wake up. I had to yank her from the backseat and then toss her over my shoulder.
I could feel her head swinging back and forth behind me. Her long hair nearly touched
the sidewalk. While I stood in front of her apartment door, digging for the keys in
her purse, I heard a noise coming from inside.

My heart started thudding, but I clicked into agent mode and held tight to the back
of Kendrick’s legs while drawing my gun and holding it at my side. I turned the doorknob
slowly and heard someone shuffling inside.

“Whoever you are, don’t move!” I yelled.

I pointed my gun in the direction of the kitchen and a tall guy with blond hair came
running into the living room with a huge knife in one hand.

I immediately raised my gun and moved my finger over the trigger. “Drop the knife,
now!”

“Oh, God.” The dude’s eyes completely bugged out. “Okay … just put her down and you
can have my wallet … whatever you want.”

I lowered my gun after hearing the panic in his voice. Then I noticed he was wearing
a pink apron and something was cooking. Something that smelled like stewed tomatoes
and onions. “Um … sorry, I think I have the wrong apartment.”

“Wait! This is Lily’s place,” he said. “I’m Michael…”

“Michael?”

“Her fiancé.”

Fiancé? As in getting married? Kendrick is getting married?
And to a guy who obviously hadn’t had a single self-defense lesson in his life? Talk
about fifteen-year-old-girl gossip … this would make Tempest headlines, for sure.

I tucked my gun away, deciding to fall into step with whatever cover Kendrick had
created until she woke up and could fill me in. “Sorry, I thought you were an intruder
or …
something.
”

I tossed Kendrick onto the couch and Michael set the knife on the coffee table and
leaned over her. “Lily, you okay?”

“She had some issues on the flight. The doctor knocked her out with something so she
could sleep.” He was still looking at me like I might shoot him. “We work together,”
I added.

“Do all CDC employees carry a weapon?”

CDC? Not sure I could fake this cover job.
Let’s just hope Michael knows as much about the Centers for Disease Control as he
does about self-defense.

“Brand-new standard protocol,” I said.

His face relaxed and then he jumped up. “Are the bags still outside? Let me run and
get them, you must be ready to pass out after carrying her up the stairs.”

I made another attempt to wake Kendrick while Michael went to get her suitcases. She
stirred a little and finally opened her eyes. “God, are we home already?”

“Yep, safe and sound.” I helped her sit up and then looked around the room for the
first time. Everything was pink and flowery. Wedding-planner books were strewn across
the coffee table. This was the most girlie, anti-secret-agent apartment ever.

Good cover, I guess.

“And I’ve already had the pleasure of meeting your soon-to-be spouse.”

She rubbed her temples and groaned. “Oh, God…”

“You couldn’t have warned me? Seriously, I pulled a gun on the guy, thinking he was
an Eyewall agent or an EOT.”

Her eyes widened. “Shit … tell me you’re kidding…?”

I shook my head just as Michael came banging through the door, lugging two suitcases.
“Lil, you’re awake.”

She sprang up from the couch and practically jumped over the coffee table before wrapping
herself around him. “I knew you were here, I smelled my favorite dinner.”

“Well … I’m going to go check out my place,” I said, stepping around the hugging couple.

“Wait, you have to stay for dinner,” Michael said. “You deserve a good meal after
putting up with Lily for weeks.”

“Please, Jackson,” Kendrick said, lifting an eyebrow.

Was dinner a bribe to keep me quiet about the fiancé thing? Guess I’d have to find
out.

“All right, if you insist.”

*   *   *

“This is seriously the best coq au vin I’ve ever had,” I said to Michael during dinner.

“It’s soaked in a wine sauce for twenty-four hours and the tomatoes and onions add
the final touch,” he said.

“Michael’s going to culinary school,” Kendrick told me. “He’s almost done and already
has a ton of job offers from some of the best restaurants in New York.”

So badass CIA agent Lily Kendrick was going to marry a chef. This gossip got better
and better by the minute.

“I can totally see why.”

Michael grinned at me and refilled my wineglass. “So, how did you end up working for
the CDC and going to med school? You barely look old enough to be out of high school.”

I wiped my face with a napkin, giving me a second to think. “I’m not really a med
student.” Kendrick coughed into her napkin, but I ignored her. I couldn’t pull off
being a pretend soon-to-be doctor. It just wasn’t within my abilities. “I’m mostly
doing data entry for the CDC and really basic intern-type stuff. Unfortunately, I’m
not a science genius like some people.” I rolled my eyes toward Kendrick. “And my
dad’s in the pharmaceutical business … so
he’s
really the one that got me into the CDC. Lots of corporate and government connections.
You know how that goes.”

“The family business,” Michael said. “My parents own a restaurant in Jersey. More
like a diner. But I was always creating new meals and sometimes they’d even put one
on the menu.”

Michael was a tall, slim, average guy who probably would have had no idea what to
do with that knife he’d tried to threaten me with earlier, other than dicing onions.
How did he end up crossing paths with a CIA agent and then hooking up with her?

After dinner, Kendrick walked me to the door while Michael was cleaning up the kitchen.
“Thanks for … going along with my story. I should have told you. It’s just—”

“That’s what we do, right? Lie to civilians?”
Forget who we are … who we were
. I opened the door and looked out into the hallway. “See you in the morning.”

“You know where your place is?” she asked.

“Well, you’re twenty B and I’m twenty F. I think I can find it.” I only had to walk
about forty feet down the hall to find my new apartment. I pulled out the key Marshall
had given me and opened the door and then shut it behind me. The smell of mildew and
dust filled my nostrils as I searched for a light switch.

“Somebody must have died in here,” I mumbled to myself.

“Just needs a little cleaning,” a voice said from behind me.

I turned around instantly, whipping my gun out and pointing it toward the farthest
corner of the apartment, where I could just barely make out the shadow of a man.

“Relax, Jackson. I’m just here to deliver a message from your boss,” the man said.

My feet moved on their own, toward him. “What’s the verification code?” I demanded,
following standard protocol.

He recited this week’s code words perfectly, then took a step closer to me. Headlights
drifted past the window and I got a one-second glimpse of his face. I lowered my gun
and fumbled around for a light switch. There was one on the wall by the front door.

A single light filled the whole apartment. An old man with gray hair grinned at me.

“Uh … Senator Healy?”

“So, you
do
recognize me,” he said.

Only because we’re planning on crashing your ball next week
.

“Yeah, from TV and the newspaper,” I stuttered. “What … what are you doing here?”

And why do you know our top-secret verification code?

“Months of training have gotten you wound a little tight. You’ll have to loosen up
and slip into the real world again.” He unbuttoned the front of his suit jacket and
slipped it off, tossing it over one arm. “I know everything about you, Jackson. No
secrets between the two of us, understood?”

Yeah, right, maybe if I was five I’d fall for that
. “Sure.”

He smirked at me, like he knew what I was thinking. “You have no idea how excited
I am to see you reaching this amazing potential.”

Okay, I’m in the CIA and even I think this is super-creepy
. “You said you had a message for me?”

He nodded. “Just a few items that Chief Marshall couldn’t tell you in such close proximity
to the others … Very good work you did in Heidelberg, by the way. I hear Agent Stewart
has taken a liking to you.”

“I wouldn’t exactly say that.”
He’s not the substitute chief, is he?

He drifted into the very small kitchen area and ran a finger over the countertop.
“We’d like for you to pursue that. Stay on her good side. Maybe even take things a
little further if you feel the urge.”

Now I was just confused. “Um … are you trying to tell me Chief Marshall wants me to
hook up with Agent Stewart?”

He shrugged. “Do what you can with that one. We’ll understand either way.”

Obviously he’s met her
.

“Is that all you … wanted?”

“No, there’s more.” Senator Healy turned to look at me and the casual expression dropped
from his face. “Lily Kendrick is very important to this project, to this division,
and we can’t have her …
distracted
.”