Tamed by Love (Agent Lovers Series Book 2) (9 page)

“Is there anything we can do?” Chris asked, pointing to the files. “Twiddling our thumbs isn’t exactly our style.”

“I’ll give you access to all the personnel files for the people who were connected in the past with the TDAs in any way. Maybe we’ll find a clue there.” Townsend pressed his lips together and ran his hand across his forehead.

Strange that it affected him so deeply that six of his agents were in grave danger; after all, that’s how they earned their daily bread, in a manner of speaking. They had been given the best training and could deal well with the most difficult situations. But everything was different this time. No ‘simple’ assignment. There was unbelievable amount at stake. Their lives, without a doubt. Even the security of the entire nation could be affected if the buyers weren’t found quickly enough.

“I know how good you are.” He pointed to the files on the edge of his desk. “If anyone can find a clue in these, it’s you two. Other than your wives, whom I haven’t been able to reach, I have already informed all agents about the situation, including your brother. He’ll reach your place shortly to help you protect Elizabeth. Maybe it would be a good idea, if you, Robbins, and your wife, were to keep a low profile at Blackwood’s, because there’s no note in Jennifer’s or Liz’s files bout being married. The buyer won’t be able to make any connection with you two. Whatever you need, you’ll get it. Just ask.”

“Thanks. We can deal with it,” Gray said confidently. But inwardly he couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that they were facing a serious challenge. He stood up and reached for one of the files. “I’ll be happy to brief my wife myself on the situation, at a time when I see fit, Sir.”

Although Townsend’s expression was skeptical, he nodded. “As you wish.”

Chris got up and took the other file. “Both agents should know about it, Gray.”

“Not immediately,” he said firmly.

“I think your partner’s right, Blackwood. They must be briefed immediately.” The Lt. General came out from behind his desk and stood in front of the two men.

“There’s no question about it, Sir, that Liz and Jennifer will learn about it. Just not yet, when we don’t have our hands on anything at all. Liz and Jennifer aren’t the type to ‘collect information, evaluate it and then deal with it.’ They would immediately go on a collision course like bulls in a china shop. Tact isn’t one of their strongest virtues.”

Townsend nodded and crossed his arms. “Their impulsiveness could really become a problem. Until now, everything has always gone smoothly in their assignments. But this is something completely different. Rash actions must be avoided at all costs.”

“I only hope Jennifer doesn’t get suspicious,” said Chris. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to tell her as to why we’re moving in with you for an indefinite amount of time.” He scratched his head before he grimaced, which drew a brief chuckle from Townsend.

“You’ll think of something, Robbins,” said Townsend as he gazed after the two men once they were dismissed.

***

Gray felt like he had been sitting on hot coals for the three hours since he returned home from Townsend’s office. A seeming eternity since he hadn’t been able to reach Liz on her cellphone. And with every unsuccessful attempt, he became more worried. When he finally heard the sound of the front door, he breathed a sigh of relief. Liz was home safe.

Barely an hour later, Jeff showed up, asking for asylum because of ‘water damage’ that would make his apartment uninhabitable for a while. To his blunt question as to whether a child was on the way, Liz just laughed and gave him a powerful punch to his shoulder.

Chris, Jennifer and Brutus arrived just in time for dinner. Out of the blue, a whole group of handymen had arrived at their place—as Chris claimed—to start on the renovation that had been in the works for a while in and at their house, making it nearly uninhabitable.

Gray and Chris groused for a while about their own experiences with handymen and those they’d heard about, but Liz and Jennifer sensed fairly quickly, that they were hiding something. Their cheerfulness seemed artificial, the innocence, feigned. It was almost like a dark cloud before a violent storm. Something wasn’t right. Not at all.

***

“Do you have the feeling they’re hiding something from us?” Jennifer asked Liz some days later when they finally had some privacy.

“It does seem a little odd that one of them is constantly buzzing around us, but that could just be a coincidence, couldn’t it?”

“I don’t think so. They’re either barricaded in Gray’s office or prowling around the house. And have you noticed how every night they check the windows and doors to make sure they’re closed and locked? It’s like they’re gearing up for an attack or something.” Jennifer chewed on her upper lip and finally said, “And this renovation work that had been in the works for a while came up so unexpectedly! I didn’t even see a handyman, because Chris made me leave the house in such a hurry. And every night since we’ve been here, I’ve been pestering him about what’s up. Do you know what I mean? He’s hiding something. I’m quite sure of it.”

“Hm… It really sounds suspicious. Something isn’t right.”

“So what should we do now?”

“We attack. Since you haven’t had any luck with Chris, I’ll try to squeeze some information out of Gray. As soon as I’m alone with him, I’ll ask him if there are any problems. And you should try again with Chris.”

***

“Gray?” Liz snuggled up to him and stroked his chest with her fingertips. Minutes before that they had made passionate love and she knew this was the perfect moment to pounce.

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“What have you been working on so secretly? Jennifer and I have the feeling it concerns us in some way.”

“How did you come up with that?” Gray sat up and looked at her. The innocent expression on his face was a bit too innocent to be genuine. He could be as stubborn as a mule. If he didn’t want to tell her something, she wouldn’t be able to pry it out of him. Since he reproached her for being the one who shut herself off, this seemed a mockery to Liz. Gray could easily compete with a clam.

Annoyed, Liz blew a strand of hair out of her face. “You’re all acting so…um…well … secretive. Most of the time you hole up in your office. As soon as Jennifer or I get close, you talk about weed killer. Is that topic so interesting, that it offers so much fodder for conversation?”

“Of course! How many different kinds of weed killers do you think there are?” He laughed, raised a hand and swept a strand of hair behind her ear. Gray had to touch her again to be sure everything was okay. And sweeping Liz’s hair out of her face had become one of his favorite past times.

“Don’t make fun of me! If there’s something that involves me, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course! Right now I can’t tell you about what we’re working on. I’ll tell you later, fair enough?” When Liz smiled and nodded, he knew that would satisfy her for the moment. At least that’s what he thought. He only asked himself, how long that would last. Hopefully they would soon find a clue to put an end to this nightmare.

He pulled the blanket up over both of them and put an arm around Liz after she fell asleep. Then he kissed her tenderly and smiled when she snuggled closer to him and murmured his name in her sleep. Gray closed his eyes and with a sigh, drifted off to sleep.

But even in his sleep, he couldn’t let go of the fear that something could happen to Liz. Again and again he awoke in the middle of the night and looked around for any intangible danger before he pulled Liz tightly against him. Her physical closeness calmed him, reduced Gray’s apprehension of an impending disaster to a minimum until he finally fell peacefully asleep just before dawn.

“And? Did you find anything out?” Liz asked Jennifer the next morning. They sat together on one of the wide lounge chairs and talked.

“As you can imagine, I drilled Chris like Swiss cheese all night. I just couldn’t make any progress. He only said it was about a computer problem and they were correcting it.”

“Aha! So, a computer problem? Gray said he would tell me more later. If he believes he was able to lull me into a false sense of security with that…”

“So what do we do now?” asked Jennifer, who wasn’t content with the sparse information.

“How do you feel about taking a closer look at Gray’s office as soon as we get the chance?”

“That’s not going to be easy since they barely leave the room.”

“Earlier I heard them talking about going to the base. Then we’d have more than enough time and could scour the office and the computer at our leisure.”

“They won’t leave us alone. They’ve been behaving like watchdogs toward us for days. They definitely won’t leave until Terence arrives,” said Jennifer.

Chuckling, Liz stopped her with a wave of her hand. “We’ll take care of him as soon as he’s here. Two against one, Terence doesn’t stand a chance.”

Gray, Chris and Jeff left the house after Terence arrived, as assumed. Liz played the perfect hostess and Jennifer spoke animatedly to him on the patio over a cup of coffee.

“I hope you two haven’t instigated any fights or wrecked any cars lately?” he asked, chuckling, as he scratched Nero behind his ears.

“We’ve been virtuous and proper housewives. Ask Gray; he’ll tell you,” said Liz.

“Is that so? Glad to hear it!” Terence took another sip of coffee and rubbed his eyes. Fatigue was getting the better of him, and he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. He was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the conversation. Finally he lost the battle with his fatigue and closed his eyes. As if in slow motion, Terence’s head fell against the chair’s backrest.

Jennifer got a pillow from the living room, put it carefully behind his head and leaned the backrest into a more comfortable sleeping position. Then she quickly ran after Liz, who was already on her way to Gray’s office.

“Of course! The door’s locked,” said Liz. Jennifer disappeared and reemerged with a multi-purpose pocket knife.

“Let me have a shot at it!”

“Where did you get that?”

“I always carry something like this in my make-up bag. Don’t you?”

“You don’t have a make-up bag.”

“And you do?” Jennifer expertly opened the door and pointed. “Come into my parlor. Hopefully Gray hasn’t put in any passwords on his computer. If he has, the deck is stacked against us.”

“Then he probably wouldn’t have locked the door.”

And Liz was right. After the computer booted up, they had access to all the files.

“What are we looking for?” Jennifer asked.

“We’ll simply look to see what Gray was working on last. Maybe that will help.” Liz retrieved a list of all the folders and documents Gray had recently opened.

“Look! There’re our names.” Jennifer pointed to two files and Liz clicked on them. Their personnel files opened up next to one another on the screen.

“Why would Gray have these on his computer, Jenny?” Liz asked.

“No idea! There’s Jeff’s file, too. Open his!”

Liz opened the file. Then gradually they opened the other personnel files until all twelve were open in front of them.

“This has to be all the active TDAs,” said Jennifer.

“But what’s Gray doing with them?”

“Apparently he is looking for something. Do you see the whole query? They’re comparing each of the files with one another, looking for something. But what are they looking for? Do a search for ‘commonalities,’ so we can see what he’s already found out.”

Liz entered the command, and under the heading “Secure,” six names appeared, among them Jeffrey Blackwood. Baffled she looked at Jennifer. “Why aren’t our names there? And why only six of the twelve?”

“Look! There’s a saved query.”

Liz opened it and this time they found their names among the six. But why were they saved under “N-Secure?” Suddenly, she understood what was going on.

“The computer problem! Chris told you they were working on a computer problem, right?”

“Yeah, so?” asked Jennifer blankly.

“Think about it. There are twelve active agents in our unit. Six of these are considered secure, according to this information. That means that the other six—including us—aren’t secure!”

“What does that mean? Not secure? Do you think someone had access to our files?”

“That’s exactly what could have happened. Probably someone with a low security clearance had access to our files. Something that shouldn’t have happened.”

“Where does that leave us?”

“At least we know why the guys have been acting so strange.”

“True again! But why didn’t they just tell us?”

“Maybe they didn’t want to upset us?”

“Come on, with our jobs, almost nothing bothers us. They should know that,” said Jennifer shaking her head. “My God, they really should have told us.”

“I promise you, they will.”

“Oh yeah? And when do you think that’ll be?”

“Sooner than they planned.” Determination showed on Liz’s face. She wouldn’t let them put her off anymore.

Liz closed the files until there weren’t any more on the monitor. Then she shut down the computer. They had found out enough to explain their husbands’ unusual behavior. Liz closed the office door behind her and Jennifer locked it.

***

Terence looked up and stared for a moment at the bright blue sky above him. Confused, he looked around. Then he grabbed the pillow from behind his head and sat up on the lounge chair, before he turned curiously toward the soft sound of gurgling water.

Liz and Jennifer were swimming in the pool and waved cheerfully whey they saw that he was among the living again. “Apparently, jet lag hit me harder than I thought,” he mumbled to himself, rubbing his eyes and the bridge of his nose. He desperately needed something caffeinated so he would be somewhat coherent and shuffled to the kitchen.

He drained the first cup of coffee at the kitchen counter and returned to the patio with the second. With the cup poised at his lips, Terence watched the two women. They got out of the water and came toward him in extremely tiny bikinis. A truly refreshing sight.