| |
––––––––
WE DIDN’T TALK ABOUT the sex. It was as if it had never even happened. As soon as she picked up Lukas’s trail, Clark turned cold. I told her I was going with her, but she acted as if I was some bratty younger brother that she couldn’t shake.
We went to the airport and hopped a CIA plane. I argued my way onboard by saying that I was an official representative of the British government. That much was true, but I didn’t have authorization from MI6 to go along.
Regg called to ask me what I was doing. His anger was barely contained over the phone, and that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Something wasn’t right with the whole situation. If Southie had infiltrated my company, how high up did the rot go? Was it Regg or someone he answered to? Would they appreciate my interest in following Clark, or would they try to shut it down before the plane took off?
I got my answer to that real quick.
“Out of the question,” Regg said. “You are not authorized to take off. I want you here in London. And by the way, when were you going to tell me that Clark was already in the country?”
“That’s something you have to take up with the American government,” I said, neatly sliding out from beneath that accusation.
“Theo, you cannot go to Germany,” Regg explained.
“I’m going as a private citizen,” I said.
“Then you’re not going to come back to a job,” Regg threatened.
“I’m sorry?” I asked, feigning confusion. “You’re breaking up.”
“Don’t play that game,” he fumed.
“I’ll have to call you back,” I said, hanging up the phone. I turned to the pilot and gave him a thumbs-up, indicating that I’d gotten permission.
They allowed me to board, and we were wheels up a few moments later. I walked to the back of the plane where Clark was spread out across two seats, studying some intel on her tablet. I sat down opposite her, trying to get her attention.
She looked up briefly only to give me a slight smile, then dove back into her work. I felt discarded, as if we had never really been partners. There was no way I could communicate my fears to her. I’d said over and over that I didn’t trust what Vinny told us, that I didn’t think Lukas was involved and I didn’t know who Southie was or if he even existed.
“On top of everything, I’m not sure we can trust any of our bosses,” I said, exasperated.
“I trust mine,” she replied, proving that she was listening.
“I don’t,” I grumbled. “Why are they trying to keep us apart? We’re only trying to get the missing agents back. Why would they want to come between us and mission success like that?”
Clark shrugged, finally looking up to meet my eyes. “Maybe it’s the British that we can’t trust.”
“Has Washington given you anything?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she replied, handing over the tablet.
I scanned the documents she was studying. They were maps and a few transcripts from recorded phone calls. All the information seemed to be in order. It all seemed to point to a place deep within the German countryside where Dark Sparrow was said to operate. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being led around by our noses.
“What proof do you have that Dark Sparrow even exists?” I asked.
“They killed Ryan,” she snapped, demanding her tablet back.
I handed it over, unconvinced. “Someone killed Ryan,” I agreed. “But if these guys we’ve been chasing are criminal masterminds, then the state of affairs in the underworld is worse than we thought.”
“No criminals are smart,” she responded, diving back into her studies.
“Some of them are,” I argued, thinking about Southie and his or her potential infiltration of one of the greatest organizations in the world.
Clark froze me out, and we spent the rest of the flight in silence. It wasn’t particularly long. Over land between one European country and another, we landed in Germany before first light. From there, we traveled to a safe house established by the American government.
Clark checked all the closets before taking her shoes off and going into the bedroom. She closed the door, making no indication that I was welcome to join her. I thought about our glorious joining at my apartment and wondered if I would ever have a chance like that again. I should be grateful for the chance to make love to her once. Many other men who’d had the same opportunity had given their life for the privilege.
“I guess I’m sleeping on the couch!” I called out.
There was no response. I didn’t take off my own shoes out of habit. I wasn’t convinced that we were safe, and it bothered me that the CIA knew where we were. Regg had called my phone several times, but I was ignoring him. When the sun was up, I could get a new phone and pretend that my old one had died. It was a transparent ploy, but it gave me plausible deniability. If I could argue that technology was the problem, that gave me an excuse for the blatant insubordination I’d shown.
But at the moment, I needed to rest. There was a lot of work ahead of us, and experience had taught me that I had to sleep when I could. Clark was doing the same, and so, with a heavy heart, I lay down on the couch and closed my eyes.
Sleep didn’t come immediately. I was treated to visions of Clark’s body, her beautiful breasts and silky hair bobbing beneath me. I hated how strong my feelings were and the fact that I couldn’t just turn them off whenever I wanted to. I hated the fact that I had flown all the way out here to be with her, but she wasn’t giving me credit.
After a few hours of shuteye, I woke to the sound of Clark in the shower. I could tell it was her from the way she moved. She shut the door, blocking me out, and then ran the tap until it was warm.
I imagined going in there to see if I could reconcile with her but decided that was a bad idea. As sweet as she had been the previous night, I knew she could turn deadly in a heartbeat. Since she was occupied, there was something more pressing that I wanted to do.
I went into the bedroom, careful to move stealthily. Clark’s phone was on the bedside table, indicating that she felt safe leaving it unhidden around me. I was going to uphold that trust, but first, there was something I needed to do for my own piece of mind.
I knew Clark’s contact at the CIA was a person named Z. If I could get in touch with this person, maybe I could open up a channel of information previously unavailable. Z had been the one to get most of the intel that we were working off of. Z pointed us to Athens and then to Germany. If anyone would know what was really going on with Dark Sparrow, it was him or her or them.
Clark had a facial recognition scanner as her lock screen, but I had a workaround for that. Using my own phone, I called up a picture taken at the safehouse in Greece. I used the software MI6 provided to create a 3D representation of Clark’s face and held it up to her phone screen. The hack worked, and the phone opened, revealing more information than I was currently looking for.
There were files on the device, along with contacts. Just a week ago, I might have been tempted to dig into what Clark was reading, but with the advancements in our relationship, I wanted to give her privacy. What I was really after was Z’s take on Regg. Something about my handler made me nervous. And his insistence that I stay away from the case after pushing so hard for me to be involved felt wrong.
I scrolled through Clark’s contacts until I found Z at the bottom. Sending a quick text, I asked for any information on Reginald Banks. A moment later, I got a “thumbs up” emoji from Z, indicating that whoever it was received my message. I knew that they weren’t going to be able to provide an update right away, but I stayed in the bedroom for a moment, hoping the phone would light up with an assurance that Regg was playing for the right side.
When that didn’t happen, I set the phone back to its lock screen and put it down on the bedside table. I managed to get out of the bedroom and back to the couch before Clark emerged from the bathroom.
She had a towel wrapped around her chest, and her gorgeous hair was pinned up at the top of her head, still wet. I watched her traverse the home, making no secret of my desire. She ignored me, disappearing into the bedroom without a second glance.
I shook my head. I had known she would be a handful to deal with. I supposed it was useless to hope that once we broke the ice, things would be different. Now I needed a cold shower, so I took advantage of the few minutes we had left to duck into the bathroom and take care of my needs.
We reconvened in the living room fifteen minutes later. I tried one last time to pull her back before she went off the rails entirely.
“Can we talk about this?” I asked.
“No,” she said. She was packing a goodie bag with weapons and tools, including surveillance equipment and costume changes.
“I just have a bad feeling,” I tried again.
“You didn’t have to come,” she replied.
“I’m not going to leave you out to dry on your own,” I objected.
She finally gave me a smile, and I realized that we weren’t back at square one. We were somewhere between two and three, even though I’d seen ten and wished we could get back there before too long.
“We can still walk away from this,” I said.
“No,” she snapped. “I’m getting revenge for Ryan. If you died, I would get revenge for you too.”
That stopped me. It was the closest thing to ‘I love you’ that I ever expected to hear from her. The comparison between me and her former fiancé was a good one. But I didn’t want revenge; what I wanted was a living, breathing girlfriend that I could count on not to run half-cocked into dangerous situations.
“I don’t need revenge,” I told her. “I just want you.”
“And I want you too,” she replied, jamming a pistol down into the bag. “But I have to do this first. It’s unfinished business. Then we can talk about the future.”
“But what if we do this and then we have no future?” I argued.
“Then that’s what happens, and we deal with it,” she answered, cold as a January frost.
I shook my head, stroking my chin as my mind raced to come up with another angle. She finished packing and approached me. Sliding her hand into mine, she squeezed my fingers. Tipping up on her toes, she kissed my cheek.
“I appreciate what you’re doing, but my mind is made up,” she said. “You can come with me or you can stay here. But I’m going.”
I sighed. It was the sweetest kiss-off I’d ever been subjected to, but that’s all it was. She was a force of nature, and I was just an ordinary guy left swinging in the wind. I watched as she picked up her bag and headed out the door. It didn’t take me two seconds to decide to join her. Whatever happened, I wasn’t going to let her face it alone.
