I walked into the tavern downtown, looking for my former boss. It was packed with the dinner crowd. A mom-and-pop place, it was dark with dull décor, but it had the best burgers in the state. I wondered if Riley knew that. He didn't seem like a burger guy to me, unless it was made of tofu. The thought of tofu burgers made me shudder. I was an Iowan. Burgers made of plant matter didn't exist on my radar—something I was very grateful for.
Riley was seated in a booth in the back. He was facing the rest of the interior, including the door. Damn. I wanted that spot. It was ingrained in spies to pick the spot where we could see everything. You never wanted your back to the door.
I sat down opposite him and felt uncomfortable. But with two spooks, what could you do? Someone had to sit with his back to the door. In this case, it was me.
"I ordered for both of us, something called a Reuben Burger," Riley said with a frown. Uh-oh. It must be bad news if he's eating real food.
A frazzled looking waitress chewing gum stopped by just long enough to drop off two bottles of beer. She was busy and probably wouldn't even remember that we were here. That's why Riley had picked this place. We'd stand out in a salad joint—mainly because I would be dramatically crawling across the floor, begging for greasy food.
"The Reuben Burger is famous here. They make their bread fresh every morning." I took a long drink of beer. It was nice and cold.
"Just trying to fit in," Riley said. He looked worried. Something bothered him enough to go all undercovery on me.
"So what's up?" I asked, taking another drink.
"You know, I've been in shitholes all over the world. It always amazes me when I find them here in the U.S.," Riley snarled.
Wow. It must be worse than I thought.
"This is a good place," I said defensively. "The owners have had it all their lives, and their kids work here." I indicated the two young men working the bar. "It's clean, and the food is great. So give it a break, Andrews. Why am I here?"
Just then the waitress dumped two baskets full of beer-battered French fries and the biggest burgers Riley had probably ever seen. The Reuben Burger truly is a work of art. Half a pound of corn-fed Iowa beef, piled high with corned beef, smothered in melted Swiss cheese, and topped off with fresh, authentic German sauerkraut. The buns were made of rye bread. I took a huge bite and savored it.
Riley watched me, bug-eyed, before picking up the bun and staring at what was underneath. I went up to the bar and grabbed a small plate, which I brought back and filled with ketchup. I dipped a couple of fries, ate, and washed it all down with beer. Heaven.
"I'm not going to talk to you until you at least take a bite," I said. His snobbery was bothering me. He'd picked the place, after all. What did he expect them to serve? Bean sprouts? I was pretty sure they still tarred and feathered you here if you asked for that.
Riley shot me a look before lifting the huge burger to his mouth and taking a fairly plausible bite. His expression changed from horror to surprise. He chewed, swallowed, then ate a couple of fries.
"That's pretty good," he said. "I owe you an apology."
"Whatever." I rolled my eyes. "What's wrong?"
Riley held up two fingers. "Two things. First, the Middle East office picked up some chatter about you. Al-Qaeda's considering a jihad against you for Ahmed's death."
"What?" I wasn't quite sure I heard that right. "For a moment there I thought you'd said Ahmed's friends have called for a holy war against me."
"They're just considering it. I thought you should know," he added.
"Okay…" I said slowly as I tried to digest this information, "next you'll be telling me the Colombian Cartel is coming after me."
There was a brief pause as Riley smiled weakly, "Actually…"
"Oh come on! Really?" I slapped my hand on the table. I was more angry than anything. If I was smart, I would've been terrified. But I wasn't. Smart, that is.
He nodded. "We're on top of it. We have some inside guys trying to spread misinformation. Hopefully, they'll give up on the idea before they start auditioning hit men."
"Hopefully?" I just stared at him. "We can't get a little more concrete on that? Like maybe definitely or absolutely?"
"I'm working on it. I don't want you to worry about it. Think of it as something that's being taken care of."
I grumbled, "I'd rather think of it as something that didn't happen at all." Great. Now I also ran the risk of being hunted by two different kinds of terrorists. Which is fine if you're actually still an employee of the CIA, but not so great if you are retired. Maybe instead of getting a cat, I should get an attack dog. Or two.
"What's the other thing?" I asked. "You said there were two things you had to tell me. I'm hoping this won't be as bad as having al-Qaeda and the Colombians after me."
Riley sighed. "I don't think you're the target," he said, looking at me as if that piece of news would upset me.
"Oh good. So this will all blow over and go away then," I said, taking another bite of burger.
He shook his head. "It won't. Not as long as Lana's at your house."
I dropped the burger into the basket. "What? You think Lana's the target? But that's ridiculous. She showed up after Ahmed and Carlos. Whoever is doing this didn't even know she was coming here."
"I've found several connections between Lana and all three dead guys." He shrugged. "Several," he repeated—which was unnecessary since I'd heard him the first time. "I haven't found a secure connection on all three to you."
I frowned. "It still doesn't make sense. Why make it look like they are targeting me?"
"Red herring," he said.
"You know, you use that phrase too much." I pointed a fry at him before eating it. I thought about asking the waitress to bring me some mayonnaise. I liked dipping my fries in mayo. But that would probably give Riley an empathetic heart attack.
"The bad guys—let's call them X— wanted us to think of you as the target. They wanted us to worry about and fuss over you. Then, while we were focused on that, they'd go after Lana."
I shook my head. "No. I still come back to the fact that Ahmed showed up dead at the camp, where Mr. X knew I'd be. Then he threw Carlos in front of my car. Lana didn't even come into play until after that."
"Mr. X?" Riley asked.
I shrugged. "It's more sinister than just X, don't you think? Or Dr. X. That might be better."
He rolled his eyes. "I don't understand how the murders of Ahmed and Carlos are involved either," Riley said. Half of his fries were gone now. "But the connections are there, and they are hard to refute."
I sighed. "Okay, what are the connections?" I didn't really think this Monsieur X (kind of a French twist to that one) was after Lana. But Riley must've felt he was being ignored, so I'd hear him out. I hoped this didn't mean I wasn't still getting a forged backstory from the CIA. I was kind of looking forward to that.
Riley held up one finger. "Number one, Lana had a connection to Ahmed. The Russian mob had sent her to the Middle East on two separate occasions to serve as a liaison. We don't know what she did there, but in each case she entered Ahmed's safe house and left a couple of hours later."
I nodded. "Okay, so that makes sense. The Arabs love blonde, blue-eyed bimbos. I can see where that might work. But maybe she didn't even meet with Ahmed. They wouldn't risk exposing him like that. Chances are she met with underlings."
Riley shook his head. His fries were gone, and he was now eating mine. I pretended I didn't see that. "Ahmed's always had a thing for blondes. He went through a slew of European prostitutes over the years. Hell, I almost bleached your hair and sent you in there once."
"What? You almost what?" I stared at him. Part of me thought, Well, you wished you'd been hot enough to be used for sex, but the other part of me wanted to strangle my former handler with a bar rag. A dirty, greasy one.
"I didn't do it." Riley waved me off like this was no big deal. "I just said I thought about it." Like that was okay.
"I told you," I growled through clenched teeth, "that I didn't do stuff like that. Don't you remember that I specifically told you the 'sex-for-secrets' thing was a total no-go?" I was pissed. I'd always thought of our working relationship as a partnership. I had no idea he thought he could dress me up and whore me out anytime he wanted.
"I didn't do it, Merry." He rolled his eyes like he didn't know what the big deal was. "It's a non-issue."
I glared at him for a few moments. Toyed with the thought of killing him with a straw right here. Straws make excellent weapons. You just need to put your thumb over one end and it'll go through an eyeball like nothing.
"It's not a non-issue," I hissed.
"Fine. Whatever," he said, throwing his hands up in the air. "We can argue about that later. The important thing is that Lana met with him, and may have had sex with him, on two occasions."
"You thought you controlled me so thoroughly that you could just send me out to sleep with anyone." He reached out for one of my fries, and I yanked the basket out of reach.
Riley sighed. "I didn't do it, Wrath. I thought of it for, like, about one second, but I didn't act on it."
I folded my arms across my chest. "The fact you thought about it is bad enough."
"Let's deal with this later. We need to focus on the task at hand."
"Which is? That Herr X (German was definitely more sinister) is after Lana? You still haven't proved your point," I said with a hint of total hostility. I wasn't going to let him off the hook, but we needed go over whatever it was he thought he had.
"Wait for it." He held up two fingers. "Number two—I found flight records showing Lana made six different trips to Medellín over the last two years."
"That doesn't necessarily mean she met Carlos the Armadillo. Maybe she was on vacation." I said that, but to be honest, now I was starting to wonder. I mean, who goes to Medellín on vacation?
Riley nodded. "Yes, but each time, she took the same taxi out to the country—to the same location as Carlos' third home. The place where he goes with his mistresses." He sat back in the booth and loosened his tie a little. "I had Espinoza, our South American guy, check into it. Lana always used the same cab driver from the same cab company. Always." What was with him repeating things to me? Did he think I was an idiot? I needed to talk to him about that.
"Espinoza is good…" I murmured. He was used for everything down there. "But why would Lana be so stupid as to use the same cab and driver every time?" I felt a small nibble of doubt in my stomach. Until just recently I'd thought Lana stupid enough to do something like that.
Riley ignored me. "And the third thing is that we found a connection between Lana and Midori."
My head snapped up at that. "Lana told me that Midori was a real bitch. She didn't say anything more. I chalked it up to those rumors we'd heard about the Russian mob and the Yakuza."
He nodded. "They had the closest connection of all. Lana was holed up with a highly-placed Russian official back in 2012, for about nine months. Midori was his aunt."
My eyes grew wide. "What? Are you serious? Midori had family? I'd heard that she ate her young."
"So you see—we have a bit of a problem here." Riley sat back, ignoring my jab. His basket was completely empty. He'd eaten all of it. I thought of warning him that he should get some antacid for tonight but changed my mind.
"Lana!" I cried.
"What is it?" Riley asked.
"I left her at home. Alone!"