On The Rocks (24 page)

Glaring at him, she hitched up her chin.
“You’d never do this to Phil.”

“When Phil gets himself knocked up, I’ll
sideline his ass too. Hell, I’ll knit him a muumuu and shove those
prenatal pills you love so much right down his greedy gullet.”

She growled low in her throat and slammed
her palm into the solid wall of his chest. When it didn’t move him
at all, she screamed. “Xander Irwin Duquesne, do
not
tease
with me right now!”

Irwin?

Xander glared over his shoulder. Barked, “I
swore you to secrecy, Marchande.”

Sandwich halfway to his mouth, Phil paused
and looked over. Lifted his brows. Chomped off a huge hunk of a
hoagie.

“What?” Naima asked.

“Irwin,” he muttered, watching the way her
brown eyes shifted erratically between his. He let his head go
loose on his neck and huffed. Mumbled, “It’s my middle name. After
my great grandfather on my mother’s side.”

“Is—” she cocked her head— “Is it
really?”

“No.”

“Sod off, you soddin’… sod head!” She shoved
him away and he backed up chuckling. “What’m I supposed to do all
day? Watch telly? Read penny-dreadfuls and suck down bon bons till
I pop?”

Xander hunkered down on the couch opposite
her. “Do they still make bon bons? ‘Cause bon bons sound so good
right now. Don’t bon bons sound good right now, Phil?”

She turned away sharply, pert nose and chin
in profile. “I rather hate you at the moment, luv.”

Where had he heard that before?

Ah, yes. Kizzie had said something similar
at CosKink because of her outfit. Except she’d wished him death by
fire ants and fleas to
really
sell it.

Where in the world was she right now?

As soon as the thought entered his mind, he
cut it off.

The couch he’d wanted to fuck her on? Naima
was sitting on it.

Now wasn’t the time for another stiffy.

“Hey over there.” Xander nudged Naima’s calf
with his foot. Her gaze came to his slowly, like she’d been jolted
from deep thoughts. “Quit thinking of ways to kill me and tell me
what you’ve got.”

“
Me?”
Blinking fast, she gasped and
clutched the page she held to her chest. “You need something from
me
? But… b-but I’m just a poor widdle
woman
, all
pregnant
and in
capable
…” She made a show of melting
back against the couch cushions and heaved dramatically. “Oh! If
only some idiot man would come save me from me’self…”

Xander sighed and Phil chuckled from across
the room. “It’s like they were separated at birth, huh?”

Exactly what Xander was thinking. Apart from
the obvious, this was just one more reason why Naima and Kizzie
could never meet. They’d team up to give him all kinds of snarky
hell whenever they got the chance. If one ran out of sarcastic shit
to say, the other would be right there, guns loaded.

“Comparin’ me to the tart, are you?” With a
curl of her lip Naima thrust the sheet of paper at him. “Tate was
spotted at JFK. Leavin’ out.”

That got his attention. The image on the
page was of a man coming through the laborious security check at
New York’s infamous airport. The buzz cut of old was gone, replaced
by wavy black hair pulled back behind his head. The clean cut jaw
and cheeks Xander remembered now sported a full-face beard and
‘stache, both low and tapered.

“All they could pull was the image,” Naima
said. “But here’s what, he checked through security under the name
Sean Limewell. Limewell was booked on a flight to Detroit that day.
According to the records, he got on the flight, but there’s no
record of him in the airport on the other end. There’s no record of
him getting off that plane at all.”

So, Lennox had booked two different flights
for two different aliases traveling on the same day. Checked in and
cleared security using the Detroit ticket. Scanned his boarding
pass but didn’t get on the flight. Some time later, he boarded his
true flight going to who knows where using the clean alias, and
leaving anyone who might be searching for him in the dark.

Smart. Very smart.

But Lennox Tate had never been stupid. He’d
just made a fatally stupid choice where Xander was concerned.

“Any chance your contact can search through
the other cameras?”

“Already got ‘em working on it.” Naima
batted her lashes, beaming. “See, pregnant and all, I can still do
my part. What’s with this bloke anyway? Why’s he so important?”

Xander dug his phone from his pocket. “He’s
not.”

“You’ve just had me trackin’ ‘im for the
last couple years ‘cause I got nothin’ else better to do?”

“Uh huh.” Maybe putting Naima on the search
for Lennox was a mistake. Tate was personal, and definitely not
something she needed to know the reasons behind. He changed the
topic before she could press any further. “Want to know about
Abrahan?”

“Don’t think I don’t see that for the dodge
it is.” She sighed, muttered, “Told you you were dreadful at
relationships… All right, let’s have it.”

“He wants to partner up on the NOC
list.”

Naima gasped, her brown eyes going wide.

“Already?” Phil asked.

Xander had been just as surprised. He'd
expected them to do the getting to know you stuff for a while and
then possibly do business together months down the line. This was
better than he could have hoped for.

“He actually said it?” Naima asked. “So I
was right, this
is
Metis.”

“Can’t be a hundred percent, but I’m pretty
sure, yeah. We partner up, he provides the list and I sell to my
contacts. We split the profits down the middle.”

“What’s the buy-in?” Phil asked.

“Half of Metis’s asking price. So, if I act
now, it can be mine for the low low price of four million dollars,”
Xander said like he was running an infomercial.

“Which means Metis wants two,” Phil said.
“Abrahan makes money right off the bat.”

“Yup.”

“That’s an expensive roll call,” Naima said.
“But we have the four, right? From the job with Harvey? “

Phil sucked in a hiss and then
“
ooooo
ed.” Grimacing, Xander angled away, scratching at the
back of his head. The money wasn’t the problem. But that salted
bomb he’d chased all over tarnation didn’t go to his buyer. Nope,
somebody gave it to his secret agent sub.

Store that under things the wife didn’t need
to know about.

“What’s this all about then?” Naima looked
back and forth from him to Phil. “What happened with Harvey?”

“It got where it was supposed to go.” Phil
plopped onto the couch beside her. Handed her a bottle of water and
shook two of those prenatal pills into her open palm.

Naima made a face. She really hated those
things. “So we have the money?”

“Yup,” Phil said. “What’s the play, X?”

And that's why Xander loved the man when he
didn't hate him.

“I told him I was in.” He tossed his phone
the short distance to Phil. “There’s a picture on there of a door
mechanism. Need you to find out who makes it and match the tones on
the first audio file to the digits on the keypad. Second image is
Abrahan. Need his right eye, two hundred pixels. Square. Hi-res.
Oh, yank that IP address for me, too.”

“When's the deal going down?” Phil thumbed
over the device's screen and then got to his feet.

“I don't know. Abrahan just said soon. Could
be tomorrow, could be next week. But we'll be ready to go in four
days. For the party. Best cover.”

A low whistle from Phil. “That doesn't give
us much time to get a plan together on this.”

But Xander already had one. He eyed the
wedding ring on Naima's finger. A little programming and it would
work perfectly…

“That’s it then, inn’it.” Naima shook her
head. “If we partner to buy the NOC list, we get your proof, but
it’s game over.”

“That’s why we’re not going to buy it,” Phil
said.

Naima frowned. “We’re not?”

“Nope.” Xander smiled. “We’re going to steal
it.”

13

August
15
^th

McLean, Virginia

“I NEED A status report, so give me a call
ASAP.” Rachel dropped the receiver onto the cradle a little harder
than necessary and leaned back in her desk chair.

Bill Connolly was an impossible man to
reach. Sure the mission was young, but since he was the go-between
for the agents in the field and the home office, i.e.
her
,
she needed him to report if only to touch base.

Perhaps this was how Connolly worked with
Fletcher. Thoughts of her missing boyfriend cropped up for the
fifth time in ten minutes, and she forced them aside as she had the
four times before.

Maybe Connolly didn’t make contact until
things went bad or until the mission was done. After all, she was
the new SOO, but he was a veteran handler. He probably went weeks,
maybe months without checking in, because his team hadn’t checked
in with him.

The other option was to reach out to Lennox
or Kizzie directly, but she didn’t feel good about going that route
just for general contact. Since they were in the thick of things,
she could inadvertently tip off their location with a ringing or
vibrating phone. And since Lennox was point, the chain of command
was such that she’d have to talk to him. She didn’t love that idea.
Better to check with Bill who had practice with these things.

She wouldn’t be bugging Bill if Atwater
wasn’t going all helicopter mom on her. He seemed to drop by daily,
asking how things were going. The constant check-ins were overkill,
and instead of keeping her calm with the knowledge that she had
someone to turn to, it grated on her fraying nerves. Was this radio
silence normal?
Should
she have minute-by-minute knowledge
at this stage of the operation? Rachel just didn’t know, so in an
effort to not look like the noob she was, she kept a straight face
and assured him things were going smoothly.

She prayed that was the truth. If anything
happened to her agents, she wasn’t sure how she’d handle it, and
she darn sure didn’t want to find out.

Picking up yet another file from the endless
pile on her desk, she flipped back the manila jacket and frowned at
the documents inside. An OCA request, third one she’d come across
in roughly two hours. The Office of Congressional Affairs served as
the liaison between Congress and the Intelligence community. Kept
the folks on the Hill up to date with all the things the various
agencies were doing.

At least that was the intent. In actuality,
the OCA wasted a lot of an SOO’s limited time and energy with
requests to know about things best kept
secret
. Sheesh!

Groaning, she dropped the folder on her desk
and put her face in her hands. This was why Fletch was always in a
tense mood inside these walls. Nothing worked like it was supposed
to around here.

A notification binged on her computer and
she glanced at the screen. In ten minutes, she had another meeting
with yet another team to get caught up on their mission specs.
Since she’d worked under Fletcher before, some of the information
was familiar. The rest of it was above her clearance level at the
time. Now she had to go cram more details into her tired,
overstuffed brain.

She needed another coffee but she wanted a
nap. She could just close her eyes for a minute or two…

A rap on the door snapped her head up. Her
hands flew to the keyboard in an attempt to look busy.

“Come on in,” she called, her usually upbeat
voice flat and unenthusiastic.

Agent Atwater pushed through her door and it
took more effort than usual not to roll her eyes.

“Figured you’d be hitting a slump.” He took
one of the hard chairs on the opposite side of Fletcher’s desk.

Her desk.

Then he set another white and green cup
before her.

Rachel blinked. Was this man a java genie or
what?

“How’s it going?”

Three words he
had
to stop saying to
her.

“Tiresome…
worri
some,” she admitted.
“I’m not sure if I’m making the right moves with my teams, and
there’s no way to know until they’re in the thick of things.” She
sighed softly and motioned to the OCA reports on her desk. “Plus,
there’s a lot to catch up on.”

“The shoes are bigger.”

His shoes must be flip-flops then, because
the man was rarely at his desk. When she was in crisis mode just
getting the basics together, he was surfing the halls delivering
coffee.

“You seem to fill them with ease, Agent
Atwater,” she said, taking a sip of that blessed jump juice.

His wiry chest puffed out. “It’s all about
managing what you can, Rachel.” At hearing her name, her brow
popped up, but he went on. “So long as you keep your people alive,
it’s a good day. The Agency will always be here. There will always
be terrorism to fight, Intel to collect— or disseminate, depending
on our angle.”

“That sounds a little pessimistic.”

“Nope,” he smiled, “I’m a rainbow-after-rain
kinda guy.”

“Maybe that’s not the right word…
Defeatist?” Rachel frowned. He cocked his head. “Like no matter
what we do, how much ground we gain, we’ll never win.”

“It’s not that. I just mean the game will
never end. As long as there are people alive there will be someone
fighting for power. There will always be a need for us, and the
agents we put at risk. So, keep your people alive, and if you stop
a bomb or two in the process, so be it. But your end goal has to be
keeping your people alive.”

After a moment, she bobbed her head.

Coffee and counseling. Hm… Maybe Atwater
wasn’t such a bad guy after all.

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure. Oh, before I forget, I brought
you these.” He shifted to the side and dug something out of his
front pocket. He set two squished blobs on her desk. The red
spheres inflated almost instantly, and she glanced up at him from
behind the rim of her coffee cup.