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THE LONGER I SAT WITH Theo, the more revealing our conversation became. Alarm bells were ringing in the back of my mind, but I ignored them. As much as I wanted to hate him, I could tell that he had a good heart. He was only trying to find his kidnapped operatives before it was too late, and he was nursing a grudge against me for trying to kill him, as any sane man would.
Every time I opened my mouth to talk about Dark Sparrow, I could only think of Ryan. What had his last days been like? I couldn’t imagine that our missing agents were faring any better. I’d never had a chance to bury my fiancé or even properly mourn him. I’d been thrown right back into work without a single day off, expected to pick up the pieces and continue advancing the American flag.
Was it any wonder that I went off the rails briefly to try to get revenge on the man I deemed responsible? That Theo had nothing to do with it was a relief. But once my sights narrowed on Dark Sparrow, they were all I could think about.
I appreciated Theo’s interest in saving the people who were in danger. But my tendencies were more sinister. I wanted them to pay for hurting Ryan, and by extension, hurting me. I tried to mask my smoldering anger, but it was difficult. Some of it burned through, making Theo gun shy.
“When I attacked you in Casablanca,” I began, wanting to make things right between us, “I thought you were responsible for my...friend’s death.”
“Why would you think that?” he asked.
“I had virtually no information,” I continued, forcing myself to speak the words that felt like shattered glass in my mouth. “I knew that he had been working with MI6 at the time.”
“He was more than a friend?” Theo guessed.
I nodded, swallowing thickly. “Anyway, I discovered later that Dark Sparrow was to blame. Not you.”
“I’m grateful that you found me innocent,” he mused, giving me a gentle smile. “I’m also grateful you decided not to mete out the death penalty before hearing the final verdict.”
I laughed. It felt good to laugh. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually felt joy, and it was a strange sensation. Just then, my phone beeped. It was Z with information from Vinny’s contacts.
“What is it?” Theo asked.
“Nothing,” I lied.
Theo shook his head. “And I thought we were making progress.”
“It’s been a rough night,” I replied, ignoring his intuition. “I’m going to bed.”
“How stupid do you think I am?” Theo asked, watching as I stood up and stretched. “I’m sleeping right here on the couch, and if you think you’re sneaking out without me, you’re mistaken.”
I sighed. It looked like I was going to need to be more aggressive if I wanted to follow up on the lead Z had just sent. A number of options floated through my head. I could take Theo with me. That idea was laughable. I could kill him; but I had just established that he was unobjectionable, and I didn’t want to take such drastic action. I could hit him over the head with a frying pan, but he would see that coming. So instead, I fell back on the oldest trick in the book.
“I’m going to take a shower,” I announced, knowing that if he was anything like a normal man, he would immediately picture me naked.
He narrowed his eyes suspiciously but said nothing. I walked back to the bathroom, taking my time. In my clutch, I had a syringe and two different vials. One was lethal and the other was just a sedative. I turned on the tap so that he could hear the water running and put my hair up. I took my clothes off and wrapped myself in a towel, intending to use my body as a distraction.
I filled the syringe with the sedative and tucked it between my breasts. Then I walked back out into the living room, pretending to look for some soap. I saw that my plan was working when Theo gazed at me with intense interest. I could feel him itching to touch me, impressed by his attempts to maintain a calm demeanor.
“Oh, there it is,” I said silkily, pretending to spy soap on the end table beside him.
That there would be soap in the living room was a ridiculous suggestion, and that I would have found it was even crazier. But it didn’t matter. His attention was riveted to my chest as I leaned over, his lower half draining all the blood from his brain. It was a simple task to pull the syringe out and stick him with it.
Only too late did he realize what I had done.
His arms came up, grasping me by the shoulders and shaking me. I straddled him, wanting to ease his transition into unconsciousness. I didn’t want to fight. There was no reason to do so, and only a few seconds before the medicine reached his heart.
“What did you do?” he whispered.
“It’s not lethal,” I said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
He seemed to accept that I was telling the truth and closed his eyes. A moment later, he was out like a light, and I was free to move around the cabin. I returned to the bathroom to grab my clutch, tossed the towel, and found some fresh clothes in the bedroom closet. Dressing hastily, I found a cache of guns and selected a .45mm.
Racing out into the living room, I estimated that I had about four to five hours before Theo woke up. Hopefully, I would be on my way back by that time, and he would thank me for taking care of business.
I regarded him seriously for a moment. Splayed out like a drunken college student, his arms and legs looked uncomfortable. I gave him a light shove, urging him into a horizontal position with his head resting on the arm of the couch. I took his shoes off and set them by the coffee table. Now at least he looked like he was sleeping instead of drugged. It was a minor thing but one that made me feel better as I slipped out the door.
I jumped back into the car and drove the two hours back to Athens. The contact Z had sent me was in the city and supposedly had intimate details of Dark Sparrow’s activities. They were listed in Vinny’s phone only as “Jay,” but a few text chains revealed that Jay knew a lot and wasn’t entirely on board with the operation. That made him a potential informant, someone I needed to talk to.
It was early morning, nearly four a.m. local time. Anyone who wasn’t up to no good was at home, asleep. I located Jay’s apartment building and drove past it, parking the car several blocks away. It was likely that I would have to find a new vehicle, especially since the window of the little Smart Car was smashed out. It was definitely going to attract police attention as soon as they discovered it, and likely to be reported by well-meaning neighbors if I parked too close.
Hurrying down the street, I kept my eyes peeled. No threats materialized, though, and I was able to make it to the low-rent building quickly. No doorman or guard was stationed in the lobby, and I had free access to the stairwell. At Jay’s door, I stopped and pulled my lockpicks out. The lock was a low-tech tumbler assembly, no match for my skills.
What I wasn’t expecting was the reception I received once inside the apartment. Jay wasn’t asleep but prepared for an intruder as if he expected company at that early hour. He had a baseball bat in his hands and let it fly, narrowly missing me as I ducked.
I pulled my pistol out, aiming at his head. He lowered the bat automatically, raising his hands in the air. There was a standoff, where neither of us dared to look away. Finally, he seemed to appreciate the fact that he wasn’t dead yet. That meant that I wasn’t an assassin, or at least, I wasn’t there in that capacity.
“Who are you?” he demanded in English.
“Never mind,” I snapped, not bothering to disguise my American accent. He’d clearly pegged me for a foreign agent, and I wasn’t going to waste time pretending otherwise. “What do you know about a missing CIA agent?”
“You’re CIA?” Jay replied.
“Answer the question!” I yelled, bobbing the gun so that he knew I meant business.
“I don’t know anything,” he insisted.
“I know you’re working with Dark Sparrow,” I said, moving toward him.
“Then you know I can’t talk to you.” He backed away, looking around for an exit.
“Talk and I’ll leave quietly,” I suggested. “No one will ever know I’ve been here.”
“They’ll know,” he said, continuing his backward trek toward the kitchen door.
“If you don’t talk, I’ll shoot you in the knee,” I threatened, lowering the weapon to aim for his joint. “Then everyone will know I’ve been here and they’ll assume you talked.”
“Okay, okay.” Jay waved his hands, hoping to calm me down before I pulled the trigger. “Here.” He pulled a burner phone out of his pocket and held it out.
“Put it down on the table,” I told him.
I wasn’t born yesterday. Handing an object off was Sandbagging 101 at the agency. It was a perfect excuse to get the jump on an opponent, and I wasn’t going to play that game. Jay lowered the phone onto the coffee table with shaking hands, stepping back the moment he had accomplished his goal as if it was a live bomb.
I reached for the phone, and he charged me, managing to reach me a mere second before I was able to pull the trigger. He pushed the gun up over my head, twisting my finger so that the weapon dropped. I half expected it to go off, but it merely slid away to the other side of the room, giving neither of us the advantage.
We squared off, now that I was unarmed. He tried a right hook and a left jab. I kicked him in the stomach after blocking each of his attempts. He reached for a lamp and hit me with it, bringing the ceramic bulk of it down like a rock. The force was so great it shattered the lamp, slicing into my palm as I held my hand out to defend myself.
I kicked him again, harder this time. He fell back against the kitchen doorway, both arms out to stop himself from falling. I grabbed the phone, still feeling like it held some value. Then I dove for the gun, retrieving it and rolling to my feet to stop Jay from advancing. But when I scanned the room, searching for the threat, he was gone.
I hurried to the kitchen, the only way he could possibly have escaped. There was a door at the far end that led to a fire escape. I pounded through it, finding myself on a narrow metal ledge. Two ladders ran up to the floor above and down to the floor below, but I could find no trace of Jay.
The sun was coming up, shedding light on my activities. I had a split-second decision to make. I could continue looking for Jay and expose myself even further, or I could take what I had been given and return to the safe house with Theo.
I wanted both, but I couldn’t have them. After deliberating for far too long, I holstered the weapon and climbed down the ladder to the street below. I hopped a city bus across town, covering my tracks. After a few miles, I got off and stole another car.
By the time I got back to the cabin in the hills, I was beginning to feel tired. There were bruises from my brief fight with Jay already beginning to show themselves. I was going to have to cover them with makeup if I wanted to go into the field again. Too many bruises on a woman’s body drew looks—and not the kind I wanted to deal with.
Theo looked up from the couch as I came through the door, angry with me but still groggy. “Where have you been?” he demanded.
“I went to see one of Vinny’s contacts,” I said, too pissed off to make up a story. I’d already drugged him so that I could go to the meeting alone; I didn’t need to pretend otherwise. “A man named Jay.”
“Jay?” Theo asked, making no move to leave the couch.
“I think he has some kind of training,” I continued. “He gave me this.” I pulled the phone out of my pocket and set it on the table.
“You’re bleeding,” Theo observed.
I looked down at my hand. The cut from the lamp was deeper than I’d originally thought. The blood was still fresh, and it was pulsing from my hand. But despite its gory appearance, it didn’t hurt that much.
“It’s nothing,” I snapped.
Theo sighed, pushing himself to his feet, his eyes blinking rapidly as if fighting off a hangover. “Come on,” he said.
“Where?” I asked suspiciously.
“To the bathroom,” he muttered. “To get you cleaned up.”
