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Alina glanced at her watch as her phone vibrated again. She left the house an hour ago. Since then, she had three missed calls. This would make four.
“You’d think it was the damn apocalypse,” she muttered to herself, lifting a case of Pepsi into the red cart. “How the hell do they all function when I’m not here?”
She pulled her phone out and glanced at the screen, ready to hit the ignore button. Alina paused when she saw that it wasn’t a phone call at all, but an incoming encrypted message. She raised an eyebrow and swiped the screen. The message was from Reyna, her contact in Egypt.
Alina slipped the phone back into her pocket and pushed the cart to the next aisle to grab a box of frosted Pop-Tarts. Honestly, she didn’t know how Angie could consume all this sugar. She looked at the next item on the list and shook her head. Bagels. She should have known.
Reyna was working faster than Viper had anticipated. She hadn’t expected to hear from her until tomorrow at the earliest. The size of the message told her Reyna included attachments, and large ones at that. They would have to wait until she returned from her supply run.
When her phone vibrated again a few minutes later, Viper’s lips tightened in annoyance. She pulled her phone out again and glanced at the number.
“Yes?”
“You sound annoyed,” Damon told her, sounding gratingly cheerful himself. “What’s wrong?”
“My phone hasn’t stopped since I left. I’m ready to turn it off.”
“I know Michael called. Who else?”
“Stephanie, Angie, and now you.” Alina paused next to a display of cleaning sprays and picked up a bottle of multi-purpose lemon-scented cleaner, tossing it into the cart. “How do you know Michael called?”
“He called me when he couldn’t get you. He had not-so-glad tidings.”
He paused and Alina waited. When he didn’t continue, she sighed.
“Do you want me to guess?”
“His boss had dinner with one of the VP’s of Trasker last night. Turns out they’ve been running an internal software audit on all their execs with access to switch the Ebola virus with the antidote,” he told her. “They narrowed it down to two names, and Trent is one of them.”
Alina’s brows drew together in a scowl.
“Damn. That’s a problem.”
“Yep.”
“I’m just finishing up and then I’ll be back.” She steered the cart toward the check out.
“Viper,” he said in a low voice, “it’s no coincidence he came after Angela.”
“Oh, I know,” she said grimly. “At least now we know what his endgame is. The question is who’s behind it.”
Hawk watched through his binoculars as a pit bull bounded out of the door, a tall, brown-haired man behind him. The dog would have cheerfully kept going but for the leash pulling him up short as his owner locked the door behind them.
Hawk studied Blake Hanover thoughtfully. He knew who he was, knew he was an FBI agent in Washington, DC who was in the Marines with Michael, and that he’d helped Stephanie not only a couple weeks ago with the bombs, but also last fall with the North Korean hacker. He knew Blake had declared war on the Casa Reinos Cartel. The man obviously had guts, and Viper liked him. That was good enough for Hawk. Viper didn’t take to people easily, if at all. Their line of work didn’t exactly foster trusting relationships.
Blake turned away from the door and headed across the sidewalk to the grass courtyard, waiting as the dog kicked up his leg in front of a bush. Damon lowered the binoculars and glanced at his watch. It was almost noon. The morning had been spent babysitting Angela and scouring the local hospitals for Trent Whitfield. His patience paid off when he came across not only his name in Virtua’s database, but also his temporary local address. Trent was at an extended stay hotel in Mt. Laurel.
Blake and the dog began moving again, and Hawk lifted his binoculars again to watch as he led the dog across the parking lot to a black Challenger. He opened the passenger’s door and the dog jumped into the backseat, circling on the seat twice before sitting down. He closed the door and circled around to the driver’s side. A moment later he was pulling out of the lot.
Once the Challenger disappeared down the road, Hawk lowered the binoculars and tucked them into his jacket pocket. He got off his motorcycle and started across the large grass courtyard. He didn’t know how long Blake would be gone, but he was glad he took the dog. While Hawk had worked around animals before, he preferred not to. Unlike Viper, he didn’t have a magical way with them.
Stephanie's front door was closing behind him a few minutes later.
He looked around, noting the dog bed near the couch, and moved through the living room to the dining room. Stacks of papers and file folders on the table illustrated just what Stephanie was in the habit of using the dining room table for, with a noticeably empty spot the size of a laptop in front of one of the chairs. Damon glanced into the kitchen and turned and went down the short hallway. On the left a door led to a spare room that was half storage. The door across from it opened into a bathroom. Damon glanced into both, then continued to the door at the end of the hallway. This was clearly Stephanie's bedroom. After a quick glance around, he returned to the dining room and began systematically going through the papers spread over the dining room table.
If Viper knew he was here, she would be furious. Someone was hemorrhaging information about her and Hawk wasn’t discounting any possibility. While she was limited by a sense of loyalty and friendship, Hawk was not. He was doing what needed to be done. Until they found the leak, everyone was a suspect.
And that included Special Agent Stephanie Walker.
Damon made quick work of the dining room table, moving on when he was finished. He did a cursory turn around the living room, then headed back to the bedroom. His lips pressed together grimly as he thought of Kyle in the organ loft at the funeral. His gut tightened, as it did every time he allowed himself to think about the assassin with Viper’s head in his crosshairs. If it wasn’t for the freak chance of a kneeler slamming, Viper would be dead, her head blown apart with a single round.
How the bloody hell had it all come to this? Two months ago he was in the old Soviet bloc, secure in his mistaken belief that the only way their cover could be blown was if they themselves blew it. When Harry summoned him back to the States to watch Viper’s back, he knew something was wrong, but he never dreamed they had a leak.
Hawk stepped into Stephanie's room and looked around. It wasn’t neat, but it wasn’t a disaster either. There seemed to be a kind of organized chaos, kept under control by the fact that Stephanie clearly didn’t spend a lot of time in her bedroom. He went to the closet first, his attention drawn to the safe. Crouching down, he examined it for a moment before reaching into his pocket and extracting a pair of latex gloves. He pulled them on and bent over the safe. It was a standard dial combination safe and he had it open a few minutes later. He moved a stack of ammo boxes and three pistols, reaching for a pile of folders underneath. He began flipping through them, scanning the contents quickly.
As soon as Viper told him she was made in Damascus, he knew they had a serious problem. Even so, he was inclined to believe it was isolated to Viper, until Singapore. The stitches in his gut and the dull, throbbing ache from the surgery and his cracked rib were a constant reminder someone meant business, and that business affected the entire Organization.
Hawk finished going through the folders and set them aside. He pulled a metal box out of the safe and opened it, finding a stack of cash. a passport, birth certificate, social security card, and old driver’s licenses. Shaking his head, he closed the box and replaced everything in the safe exactly where he’d found it. Closing it, he spun the lock and stood up, looking around the closet.
Clothes hung from the wrap-around railing, and shoes and boots were haphazardly balanced on two shoe racks. A stack of clear storage tubs took up one corner, holding what looked like linens. He turned to leave the closet and was just stepping out of the door when something caught his eyes. A black bag had slipped and fallen to the side, trapped between the wall and the clear storage tubs.
Hawk raised an eyebrow and reached for the bag, frowning when he felt items inside. Carrying it out of the closet, he set it on the bed and looked inside. He pulled out a large manila envelope and glanced inside. Cash. Damon frowned and glanced back at the safe. Why did she have what looked like a couple thousand dollars in cash outside the safe? Especially when he already knew she kept cash inside the safe?
He set the envelope aside and reached in to pull out a folder. Damon flipped it open and his eyebrows soared into his forehead when he found himself staring at John Smithe’s birth certificate.
“What the...”
He sorted through the documents in the folder, all John’s, the frown growing. Why did Stephanie have all John’s personal and confidential identity documents? And why weren’t they destroyed in the fire that destroyed everything else?
Hawk set the folder down, his lips settling into a deep frown, and reached into the bag again to pull out a long, white envelope. His fingers felt something hard inside and he opened the envelope, tipping it. A diamond ring fell into his hand.
Damon held it up, examining the ring. The band was white gold, twisted to look like vines. The vines separated and came up to hold a decently sized diamond solitaire.
The realization came to him suddenly and Damon stared at what he instinctively knew was Alina’s engagement ring. Why did Stephanie have it?
Hawk dropped the ring back into the envelope and stared at the small stack growing next to the bag. Why did Stephanie have any of this?
He looked in the bag and saw a couple boxes of ammo and pulled out a Beretta. Beyond that, the bag was empty. Damon dropped the gun back into the bag and picked up the white envelope thoughtfully. This was all John’s. Yet, it was in Stephanie's closet. He pressed his lips together thoughtfully, staring at the collection of items. What joined them all together? It appeared to be a fairly random assortment. Cash, gun, ammo, old diamond ring, personal documents...not exactly a collection you would keep in a bag in a closet.
Hawk’s eyes narrowed suddenly and he gathered the folder and envelopes together, putting them back into the bag. It wasn’t a collection you would keep in a closet, but it was certainly the types of things you would keep in a safe; or a safe deposit box.
Damon put the bag back where he’d found it and quickly went through the rest of the bedroom. Nothing else of interest presented itself and he left the bedroom a few minutes later. He glanced at his watch, noting how long he’d been in the apartment, and went into the spare room. He did a quick, thorough search of the storage half of the room, then headed out of the condo and back to his motorcycle.
Why did Stephanie have the contents of John’s safe deposit box in a bag in her closet? More importantly, why hadn’t she told Alina about the ring? If nothing else, wouldn’t she want to give her old friend the option of keeping it? Yet, Damon was positive that Alina knew nothing about any of it.
Hawk climbed onto his motorcycle and pulled on his helmet. Was that everything? Or was there something else that wasn’t in the bag? Hawk stilled and stared unseeingly across the parking lot. Something like an external hard-drive with attachments sent by Dave Maschik from Iraq twelve years ago?
Alina pressed her lips together and closed her eyes, counting slowly. When she reached ten, she opened her eyes. The offending sight was still here.
“Angie!”
Her voice bellowed through the house.
“Yeah?” Angela’s voice was faint and muffled by the floor between them, coming from the dining room.
“You want to come explain this?” Alina yelled down the second floor hallway.
There was a long pause, then she heard Angela’s footsteps coming down the hall from the back of the house.
“Explain what?” she called from the bottom of the stairs, her voice much louder now.
“My bedroom.”
Alina waited as Angela came up the steps and rounded the corner.
“Oh that!” Angie exclaimed, coming down the hallway towards her. “I’m just trying to help you out.”
Alina felt her eyelid start to twitch.
“Help me out with what?” she bit out.
Angela joined her in the bedroom door and looked surprised.
“Getting laid, of course!” she said. “I honestly don’t know what’s wrong with you, but you have a perfectly delicious man who just keeps following you everywhere, and he slept on the couch last night!”
Alina stared at her for a beat.
“What?”
“He did! I came down for a drink of water in the middle of night and he was asleep on the couch in the living room. Enough is enough. The tension between you two is insane.”
Alina turned her attention back to her bedroom. She didn’t think she’d ever seen so many candles in one place. Every available surface was covered. It didn’t end there, unfortunately. Somewhere, somehow, Angela had unearthed just about every red pillow in the house and artfully arranged them on the bed, turning it into something out of a bad porn film. On her bedside table, a bottle of wine and two glasses were arranged next to a large, empty bowl.
“What’s the bowl for?” Alina heard herself asking, even though she was sure she didn’t want to hear the answer.
“Strawberries,” said Angela promptly. “That’s why they were on the shopping list this morning. I’ll fill the bowl before I go to bed so they’re all ready for you.”
“Oh for God’s sake.”
“And I put massage oil on the dresser,” she continued with a wink. “If you don’t get laid tonight, he’s a monk.”
Alina’s other eye joined the first in involuntary muscle spasms and she raised a hand to pinch the bridge of her nose.
“Oh trust me, he’s not a monk,” she murmured under her breath.
“What?”
“Nothing. Take it all down. I don’t need your assistance in my love life, thanks all the same, and I most certainly do not need strawberries and massage oil.”
“But–”
“No!” Alina’s voice hit a decibel she rarely used and she felt the iron control on her patience slipping. “This is ridiculous! I don’t have time for this.”
“That’s the problem! You have to make time! Lina, I don’t know how long it’s been, but you’re clearly in a dry spell. It’s not natural to go too long without sex, especially when you have a gorgeous Hunk O’ Mysterious just hanging around with nothing better to do!”
“Nothing better...” Alina stared at her old friend, speechless.
“I know if I thought he’d look twice at me, I’d throw myself at him,” Angie continued, unaware of Alina’s struggle beside her. “I really don’t understand what your issue is. And don’t give me any bullshit about working relationships or not having time. Everyone has time for sex. Even the President has time for sex.”
“Oh really? You’ve discussed it with him?”
Angela glared at her.
“Don’t get sarcastic with me,” she snapped. “I’m trying to help you here.”
“You can help me by removing all of this from my bedroom,” Alina retorted, turning to go down the hallway toward the stairs. “I’ll take my chances with the dry spell.”
Alina closed the door and crossed the den to the desk, sinking into the chair and dropping her face in her hands. Her shoulders began to shake on their own and she closed her eyes as laughter welled up inside her. Candles and strawberries! Good God, she probably would have mounted a ceiling mirror if she’d had the chance! Viper imagined the look on Hawk’s face if he walked into the room alight with all those candles and her shoulders shook harder.
Angela was right. Damon did sleep on the living room couch last night. What she didn’t know was that Alina spent the night in the command center. Damon went upstairs when he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer, and decided to crash on the couch until she came up. The problem was that she didn’t come up until dawn. By then he was awake, and stiff, and not too happy about falling asleep on the couch.
Alina lifted her face from her hands, staring out the window across the front lawn. If Angela had even an inkling of what was going on, she would forget all about her obsession with getting Damon and her together for the long haul. If she even suspected half of what was going on, she’d realize what a bad idea it was.
And it was a bad idea.
No matter how she looked at it, this new relationship with Hawk was dangerous. It was distracting to them both, and it only served to underline the inevitable fact that they were not likely to make it out of this alive. They had both used up their nine lives long ago, and were existing on borrowed time already. Now, with someone in Washington determined to see her dead, that time was running out. It didn’t matter that when she was with Hawk she was probably the happiest she’d ever been. It couldn’t last simply because they couldn’t last much longer. Sooner or later, someone would catch up with them. If it wasn’t Kyle, it would be someone else. There was no shortage of mercenaries out there, professionals who made their living the same way she did. Eventually, her number would be called. The best she could hope for was that she went out fighting, and took a few of them with her.
A wave of melancholy crashed over her and Alina frowned. She had always known this life was a lonely one, but somehow Damon had managed to partially convince her it didn’t have to be. And part of her still had hope. Hope that she would find the bastard in Washington before he found her, or Hawk. Hope that they would have more time together; time to share the cities they loved so much with each other. Hope that they could build enough memories to last a lifetime, however long that lifetime may be.
Unfortunately, hope never did count for much in her world.
Viper sighed, opening her laptop. She had work to do. She didn’t have the luxury of sitting here dwelling on what could have been, or what might be. Reyna had sent her information, and she had to evaluate it to see if it shed any light on the mystery surrounding Jordan Murphy and Dave’s death.
She was surprised at how quickly Reyna got her information, even though she’d worked with her enough in the past to know how efficient the agent was. Once she contacted her, Viper knew she would be on the ground in Madrid within twenty-four hours. The speed with which she got actionable information once she was in place was what impressed her.
Alina began a security scan of the encrypted zip file and opened the accompanying email, skimming it quickly. She raised an eyebrow as she read. Jordan Murphy had spent six months in Madrid on a medical visa, paying rent and utilities on a one-bedroom flat in the heart of the city.
“Pretty impressive for someone who was already dead,” she murmured.
The medical procedure was listed in the official records as a clinical trial for acute sinusitis up to and including reconstructive surgery on nasal passages. Reyna went on to state the real purpose of the procedure included more than just the nose. Jordan Murphy had full reconstructive surgery.
Viper was far from surprised. If you had the money and the inclination, plastic surgery was a popular option for people like her. It was the ideal way to disappear, as long as you could guarantee the records would never see the light of day. Unfortunately, that could rarely be guaranteed, as evidenced by Reyna finding the sealed records for Jordan Murphy.
The security scan finished on the encrypted file and Alina opened it. Reyna found the file in the archives of a medical warehouse. How she had located it, or gained access was never explained, but she did note in the email that the records were scheduled to be destroyed next month. Reyna had simply scanned the whole file and sent it to her, leaving the original in the warehouse.
Alina clicked through pages of typed notes, detailing the surgery and recovery, scanning through until she reached a page with a photo attached. She sucked in her breath, staring at the photo of Jordan Murphy taken before the procedures began.
Viper was staring at the same face from the photo attached to the application for the Organization.
She was looking at Kyle Anthony March.