Blowback (The Black Cipher Files Book 1) (23 page)

His gaze snapped to the screen, an instant hit of dismay obvious on his face. “Damn.”

I scanned through the file quickly. Name, date of birth, ethnic background, parents’s background, religious affiliation, school history, work history.

“Sounds like the same guy.” I wanted his attention away from me, away from my problems.

“Yeah.” Lucas opened the file of another ‘recruit’ and scanned through the details. Smart of him to check more than one file. As he skimmed through more files a commonality became evident. Many of her file subjects had family members killed by U.S. carelessness.

“You see it too?”

I nodded. “Common thread.”

“Yeah.” Lucas didn’t look happy. Even though he’d found Johnny Wishbone, he hadn’t ‘found’ him.

He was close to finding Johnny. Then he’d be gone. Whatever I could do to speed that along, I would. And if possibly I was going to miss him when he left, no one would know that but me.

Lucas just looked at me steadily, frustration in his gaze.

This information was basically a dead end. She had a file about Johnny on her computer but the file had no specific information. No details such as if or where he was sent, dates, assignments, incarceration.

“Maybe he was only a potential recruit.” Not an actual recruit. “Maybe she just has files on anyone who comes to her attention.”

I couldn’t believe I was trying to reassure him. The chance that Johnny was mixed up in Staci’s business was strong. It was more a question of whether she’d tapped him for a terrorist trainee or as an undercover CIA recruit posing as a terrorist trainee.

“Yeah. But then who really checked him out of the hospital? And where the hell is he?” Lucas rubbed the back of his neck. “I have a feeling I can’t shake. Staci Grant is the key.”

Since I’d seen his feelings in action, I didn’t doubt his intuition was right.

Not my problem.
I wouldn’t let it be.

Lucas ticked off what we knew about the situation. “One. Staci dies in a prison camp. Two. Someone posing as Staci checks Johnny out of the hospital. Three. There is plenty of intelligence chatter regarding her. Four. Your mission is to impersonate her.

“Which turned out to be incorrect.” I couldn’t help but point out.

He kept going. “Five. Someone is watching her house. Six. Johnny is in her files.”

Seven. She has a file related to my mission on her computer.

He was right. But I didn’t have to like it. “I’m going to color my hair.”

“Might as well do it together.”

I sauntered to the bathroom as if the need to run from the room, from him, didn’t burn in me.

First I needed to do some trimming. I snatched up the pair of scissors and started chopping in what looked like a haphazard fashion.

“You know what you’re doing?”

“We get training in how to change our appearance.”

“Ah.” Lucas opened a box and pulled out the directions. “Trying to distract me by giving out classified information.”

I ignored him. When I finished cutting my hair, I flushed the trimmings down the toilet in a few small batches.

He tossed the L’Oreal box at me. I ripped open the package and poured the clear fluid into the plastic bottle with the pitch black dye.

“You took the license of one of the short women.”

Damn him for noticing. “She’s eighteen. If anyone questions me, I’ll tell them I grew.”

“Still puts you in the category of standing out.”

“I’ll make it work.”

“Bella is five foot five.”

His words were so shocking, so out of place, I nearly bobbled the fluid.

I shook the bottle mixing the two chemicals and hoped he didn’t catch the tremble in my hands. “Who?”

“You know who she is.”

“I don’t know anyone by that name.” Not now anyway. The odor of peroxide ate at my ability to breathe. I tried to draw in air but my lungs had seized.

Bella. No one could know about Bella.

“It took me awhile, but I finally figured out Donald Christian was only your target because of his connection to Bella Holden.”

Dammit. I’d thrown the piece of paper away.

“Her family died in a spectacular car bomb explosion.” He wrapped a towel around my shoulders, his fingers squeezed in comfort before he let go.

“How terrible for her.”
How terrible for me.

“About the same time as Staci Grant’s grandparents.”

So he’d picked up on the similarity. Rage and fear roiled in my stomach, fighting like two cats, snarling and ripping at my insides. “You must have a really good memory.”

Lucas dragged a chair into the small bathroom.

“She also has an investment account that mirrors Staci Grant’s and yours.” He hammered away as he pushed me gently into the chair. Lucas squirted the color on my shortened hair and started massaging the cool liquid onto the strands.

“Tell me who Bella is.” Lucas met my gaze in the mirror, pinning me with piercing intentness.

I knew this interrogation technique. Wait. Stare. Intimidate. I’d perfected it at twenty.

I didn’t speak. Couldn’t.

All this emotion about my family and Bella, my disillusionment with Carson chipped away at me. On the television, Billy Joe crooned about walking alone on a
Boulevard of Broken Dreams
, the lyrics my one stark truth.

I walk alone.

“Obviously she’s important to you.”

I twisted the plastic bag up and knotted it on my forehead. Ripping open the box of Ash, I began mixing the colors, hoping he’d drop the subject.

“You kept one tall and one short i.d.”

God damn him for noticing that too. “Never hurts to keep your options open.”

With a jerky movement, he twirled the chair around straddling the wood with strong legs, the flex of his thigh muscles playing inside the soft denim.

I thought he’d finally dropped the subject of Bella. I thought he was relaxed, until I noticed his white knuckles and the tendons standing out on his wrists. “Right. Make me into Grandpa.”

Then we’ll talk. I could hear the words even though he hadn’t spoken.

“Let me get a feel for your texture.” I ran my fingers through his hair. An excuse to touch him. Even though his words terrified me, the small contact soothed me in some elemental way.

“You could always get a job cutting hair.”

I hesitated, unsure I wanted to continue this conversation but curious to know where he’d go with it. “What does that mean?”

“You’ve been associating with me. Your career could be in jeopardy. Quit the NSA. Cut hair.”

“I have no intention of quitting.” I couldn’t and keep Bella safe. Although now I might not have a choice.

“Why not get a real life?” Like he had. He left that unspoken. “Make connections. Live.”

I couldn’t help but attack. “Oh, like you are?”

“What’s wrong with my life?”

“It’s a fake, fringe life.” I squeezed the plastic bottle spurting the coloring fluid onto his hair as my anger and frustration came bubbling out.

“Tell me.”

“You pretend you’re so involved.”

“I am involved,” he defended. “What about the guys in the restaurant, the men on the stoop?”

“Casual.” I massaged the color into his hair and scalp with slippery plastic gloves.

“No.”

“Yes. And if you were really that connected you wouldn’t have been so reluctant to take this case for Johnny’s mother.”

“Bullshit.” But I could see the guilt, the reserve on his face.

“Don’t you lecture me about being involved. At least I’m honest about staying alone.”

His shoulders tensed under the towel and he quivered with the need to get up and out.

I fumbled for harsh words, anything I could think of, that might drive him away before I let myself lean on him. Let myself deepen that connection I could feel and kept resisting. “If you’d really been involved with your life you wouldn’t be sitting here with me right now,” I said viciously.

“Not true.”

“You’d be working any angle you could to track Johnny down.” Instead of sticking with me.

He opened his mouth to fire back a denial but the truth dawned. “So involve me.”

I wasn’t sure what surprised me more, his agreement with me or his calm request.

“Involve me,” he said again urgently.

I slipped the bag over his head and twisted the plastic up on his forehead. “No.”

Lucas stood up, stood before me, the solemn reserve on his face striking fear. I wasn’t even sure what I was afraid of, him agreeing to leave or him insisting on staying.

“Let me in,” he urged.

I pressed my lips together. I wouldn’t, no, couldn’t.

Lucas said reluctantly, “Donald Christian is a government cover.”

“What?” My greatest fear had materialized. Jesus, could he drop any more bombshells?

“He’s been getting weekly deposits of two grand.”

“When was the first deposit?”

“Exactly two weeks ago.”

The day after he ‘met’ Bella. Shit. Shit. Shit.

I tried to assimilate the new information Lucas had tossed at me like a matador waving a red blanket at an angry bull.

“And you’re just now getting around to telling me this.” My God. Were they paying him to watch her...or recruit her?

I’d asked Carson about Bella and he’d been evasive and dismissive. No need to worry. I should have known. I should have known. My hands balled into fists, hot and ready to pound something. Someone.

Why hadn’t he brought this up sooner?

“I’d hoped you would confide in me,” he said, answering my unspoken question reluctantly. “Hoped you’d ask for my help.”

“I don’t need your help.” I couldn’t afford his help. It was imperative I touch base with Bella. Now. I wished I could go see her, visually confirm her safety but it was too dangerous. I could tap into the cameras at her dorm. It was risky but, in that moment, necessary.

He already knew she was important to me. I’d thought as long as I kept her identity a secret, she was safe.

“Yes. You do.” He caught my bicep as I brushed past.

The clock radio buzzed. Time for me to rinse.

I unclipped the plastic bag, tossed it into a garbage bag from the duffel, and bent over the sink. Lucas pushed away my hands, rubbing his fingers through my cropped black hair, slowly washing away the dye. I wished I could wash away my worries as easily.

So far all of my information had come from Lucas. Maybe he was playing me. If he was, I’d fallen right into it.

“I can practically hear the synapses firing in your brain,” Lucas said grimly.

I didn’t answer. I’d already given away too much. Time to start acting like the independent, aggressive agent I was.

I ignored him and dried my hair.

“I can help you.” Lucas made one last stab at trying to insinuate himself into my world but it wasn’t going to work. Nothing he could say would sway me.

I was on my own.

He wrapped the thin white hotel towel around my head.

I tried to get past him, but he curled his fingers around my bicep and pulled me close. Leaning into me, he brushed his mouth against my ear...and dropped another bomb.

“Bella’s name is in Staci Grant’s files.”

TWENTY-SIX

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

As Lucas rinsed his own hair, I stood frozen. I knew it was a mistake to let him know how much that revelation rocked me but I couldn’t seem to pull it together.

Bella was supposed to be safe. Untouchable. I’d spent the last thirteen years of my life making it so.

A phone rang.

The sound jerked me out of my fog and I reflexively drew my weapon out of the holster. No one was supposed to know we were here.

I blinked.

“It’s my cell, Jamie.” Lucas stood in front of me, hands raised. His voice rumbled in a soothing, calming tone. “My cell. We’re fine. You’re fine.”

My hand tightened around the grip. Bella. I had to protect Bella.

“Bella’s fine right now.”

I lowered my weapon slowly. God, I was a mess. The events of the last few days jumbled around in my head, too much to assimilate. Every time I turned around some new betrayal punched at me.

Lucas pressed a button on his cell phone, not taking his eyes off of me. “Goodman.”

My arms hung at my sides as I stood in front of him, lost and more alone than I’d felt since age fifteen. The weight of the 9mm pulled my hand down like an anchor setting a ship and I sank onto the floral bedspread.

“Hey.” He still watched me. “It’s Barb.”

He turned slightly, his profile stark in the muted light. I wondered if he wanted a more private conversation. Maybe. I couldn’t bring myself to move.

“Great,” he murmured into the phone and beelined for the night stand at the side of the bed. After pulling out a pen, he scribbled on the complimentary hotel paper.

“What?” Lucas gouged the pen into the pad.

She must have the final component of the drugs in the syringe. I couldn’t bring myself to care, not at this moment. Too many disasters in too short of a time. Bella, connected to Staci Grant, was the final straw.

Lucas’s hand was white as he wrote down whatever Barb told him. The hard ballpoint scratched audibly in the small room.

Mental note. Make sure to remove that pad when we leave. Lucas had probably made an impression on all the pages in the little booklet.

“Uh-huh. Okay. Thanks, babe. I owe you one. Watch out.”

He pressed the off button but didn’t move.

“You okay?” he asked.

I wanted to laugh. Okay? No. I hadn’t been okay for years.

Through it all ice trickled through me.
Bella wasn’t safe. Bella wasn’t safe.
If she was in Staci Grant’s files something was terribly wrong. Carson must have known Bella was on some agency’s radar and he hadn’t said a word.

Betrayal ate at me like acid at skin. I wasn’t okay but I needed to know what Barb had to say.

“What was in the syringe?”

He didn’t answer.

Nothing could faze me now. I waited, instinctively knowing Lucas needed time to sort it all out. We weren’t going anywhere tonight.

“The data files you sent were the final piece she needed to put it all together.” Lucas said cautiously, “The chemical was an antidote.”