“Maria.”
She stood only a few arms’ lengths from him on the dark street in Maribor as sirens grew louder a few blocks away, roaring toward the burning warehouse. Her features became evident as his eyes adjusted to the darkness—blonde hair, porcelain skin, her scent on the slight breeze.
Kent kept the revolver trained on her.
He wanted to ask her how she had found him, but he already knew.
“You knew the address,” he said. “You had it memorized. You only gave me your phone so they could track me.”
“No,” she said. “I gave you the phone in case I needed to track you.”
“I ditched it.”
“I thought you might.” She smirked and gestured toward the MP-412 REX in his hand. “That is a very large gun. Can you lower it, please?”
“I don’t think so.” He kept his aim on her. “You took my gun—”
“You were supposed to be dead. I wasn’t sure I could trust you—”
“I’m still not sure I can trust you,” he countered. “You lied to me. You’re with them.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” she said.
“Then explain it to me.”
She sighed. “I told you the truth—most of it. I really was on Amun’s trail, and they caught wind of it. They did put a hit out on me. Three times I dealt with their assassins. They always seemed to know where I was, or where I was going to be. But… I was never disavowed. I suspected moles in the agency. So I went dark and hid out at the safe house. Cartwright organized it. He spread the intel that I was disavowed. I didn’t know they stopped looking for me. Every day I expected someone to come—one of theirs.” She paused for a long moment. “But they didn’t. You came.”
“It was Morris,” said Reid. “He was working with them.”
“Cartwright said the same.” Maria shook her head. “I don’t want to believe that.”
“It’s true. In Rome, after I got away, there was an assassin. They knew each other, he and Morris.”
“This assassin, did he…? Or did you…?”
“He did,” Reid confirmed. “He killed Morris. Not me.”
Her gaze fell to the street. “And what about Alan?”
Reid blew a soft sigh. Of course she would know about that. It didn’t look good for him that he’d kept it from her. “That wasn’t me. I found him dead in Zurich. I think Amun tortured and killed him to get to me.”
“Why?”
“Because he…” Reid trailed off. He was fairly certain that Reidigger had helped him put the implant in his head, but he wasn’t going to tip his hand to her again; not until he was certain he could trust her. He lowered his pistol to hip level, but he didn’t take his finger off the trigger. That distinct feeling, the hairs on the back of his neck, hadn’t gone away. “You didn’t come alone.”
“There are two others with me,” she said plainly. “Watson and Carver. You know them. Or you did.”
“And they’re here for what? Waiting in the shadows for their chance to strike?”
“No,” said Maria. “I took their guns.” Very slowly, she reached behind her and pulled out two pistols—each a standard-issue Glock 27. She held them up for Reid to see, and then cautiously put them down on the pavement. “They’re watching to make sure you don’t hurt me.” Then louder she said, “And they would be very stupid to try anything. They know you. They know what you’re capable of.”
Reid noticed the shadows shift in his periphery. He turned slightly to see a tall African-American man in a long coat reveal himself from the mouth of an alley. Watson, he knew. Across the street, in the dark doorway of an apartment building, was a second man in a baseball cap—Carver, presumably. Both showed themselves, but neither moved further.
“The lead,” said Maria. “What did you find?”
“Nothing,” Reid lied. “Dead end.”
She raised an eyebrow suspiciously. “So you blew it up?”
“They did. There was a bomb. I barely got out in time.”
“Hmm.” Clearly she didn’t believe him, but she didn’t prod further.
“Is that really what you’re doing here, Maria? Following a lead?” he asked. “Or did you come here for me?”
“I came here to help you,” she said vaguely.
“Help me.” He scoffed. “Help me how? Are we going to be a team again? You and me and these two?”
“No, Kent. I want to help you… and as strange as this might sound, I think the best way for me to do that is if you come with me. Come in from the cold.”
He almost laughed. “You think that the best way for me to stay out of the hands of people I don’t trust is to walk right into the den of people I can’t trust?”
“Yes, I do.” She took a small step toward him. “Because right now I know you better than you know yourself. I know that you may never trust them again, not fully.” She took another step closer. His grip tightened around the revolver. “But we have resources. You can be reinstated. We can help you.” She took one more step, until she was close enough that he could reach out and touch her.
From this close, he could see the intensity in her slate-gray eyes. She seemed sincere; he had to remind himself again that she was very well trained. Deceit was second nature.
But he had to be able to get to the sheikh if he was going to follow the potential lead that the Amun member had given him. It was possible, maybe even likely, to be a dead end, but he had nothing else to follow, nowhere else to go from there. And since Mustafar was being held in a CIA black site, he wouldn’t get within a half mile of the sheikh before being gunned down.
But he didn’t tell her any of that. Instead he said, “I need more than that. You’re right that I can’t trust them. I need you to give me one good reason to trust you.”
She thought for a long moment. “You don’t remember me. But I remember you. I care about you, Kent… more than you might think. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
He shook his head. “Without the memories, those are just words to me.”
“Okay then.” She spoke quietly so that Watson, standing about twelve feet from Reid’s right, couldn’t hear. “How about this: you have two girls back home. I know you’re smart enough to have sent them somewhere, but that can’t last forever. The agency knows about them, which means that Amun might know as well. We can put a security detail on them. I don’t know who might be bad, but I know a few that are definitely good. People I know we can trust.”
Reid frowned. “What does that mean, you don’t know who might be bad?”
In almost a whisper she told him, “I don’t think Morris was the only one. I never had reason to suspect him; neither did Cartwright. And Morris wouldn’t have known where I was before the safe house. He didn’t have access to that information. But somehow Amun did. There’s someone else—maybe more than one, and higher up. Come in, and help me find them. We can’t do that from the outside.”
“If you’re right, and it’s someone higher up in the agency, they may have been the ones that tried to have me killed before,” Reid reasoned. “What’s to stop them from trying again?”
“We go on official record,” she said. “We can go over Cartwright’s head. I have a contact, someone I can call. You tell your story—the attempted murder, the memory implant, Paris, Belgium, Rome… and we send it up the chain, past even Director Mullen. Make sure everyone knows that Kent Steele is not just alive, but back from the dead. Get the National Security Council involved. Hell, if they try anything stupid, we send it to the press. Make it public. We protect your girls. We take down Amun. We find the moles.”
Reid thought for a long moment. Coming in from the cold seemed like a monumentally foolish idea at face value, but Maria’s arguments were valid. It could help to flush out moles in the agency. His girls could be protected.
And most importantly, he could get to the sheikh. Otherwise, what would he do? It would either be a wild goose chase or he would have to make his whereabouts known to try to coax Amun out of hiding. Even so…
“It’s risky,” he said.
“You can handle it.” Maria grinned. “You’ve handled worse things than bureaucracy.”
Reid glanced over his shoulder. Agent Watson hadn’t moved. Neither had Carver. If the agency truly wanted him dead, they would have supplied these two with a better method than just a pair of service pistols. He was out in the open on a dark street in the slums of Slovenia; they would have tried something by now.
The girls will be safe.
You can get to the sheikh.
“Fine,” he said at last. “You say you care about me. You say I can trust you. This is your chance to prove it.” He thumbed the hammer of the revolver into safety position and tucked it into the back of his pants. “I’ll come with you. But I’m not giving up the gun.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to.” She stooped and picked up the two Glocks from the street. Then she motioned with her head and the two agents, Carver and Watson, emerged from their shadowy positions. Neither said a word as the four of them headed toward a black SUV parked on the next block.
“Where are we going?” Reid asked as they walked.
“Zurich,” she replied, “to the CIA’s European headquarters.” She chuckled softly.
“What’s funny?”
“Oh, nothing really,” Maria said. “I was just thinking about the look on Cartwright’s face when he sees you. He is not going to believe his eyes.”