When he leaves our booth, I pull the small vial of tasteless, odorless liquid from between my breasts and empty it into his glass. It mixes with his bourbon instantly, undetectable to the human eye or tongue. The first real smile of the night crosses my face. Soon, I’ll be rid of this loser and on to better marks.
He returns with two shots—the straight vodka I requested and another I recognize instantly. I literally force myself not to roll my eyes at his blatant attempt to be cute. My inner voice tells me to stab him in the eye, steal the keys, and get this over with as soon as possible.
“Here’s your vodka.” He sets the shot glass in front of me, and I smile appreciatively, as expected, before I toss it back. “Now for a little something sweeter. Here’s your first screaming orgasm of the night, and here’s to many more.”
When he lifts his bourbon for a toast, I happily raise mine to clink our glasses together. “To many more, indeed.”
Just not with you.
The contents of his glass disappear, sliding down his throat before a devious smile crawls across his face. My response is more relaxed, knowing by the time we reach the congressional offices, he’ll start to feel the effects of the extra kick I slipped him.
With the tab paid, we leave the bar and walk hand in hand the two blocks back to the office building. By the time we reach the south side entry doors, David is already feeling the effects of all the alcohol he drank plus the extra sedative. We should have just enough time to make it through the security checkpoint and up to the eighth floor before he becomes too sloppy drunk to manage.
The open, airy interior of the Hart Building is much more modern than the older Senate offices. The halls teem with people at all hours of the day and night, especially when significant bills are on the cusp of passing and those involved want to stake their claims. This evening is no different, with staffers rushing back and forth between offices and conference rooms. Their attention is focused on their specific assignments, so they don’t even bother glancing in our direction.
David throws his arm over my shoulders as we walk down the spacious hallway together, leaning his face close to mine as he whispers loudly. “You are so fucking beautiful. I can’t wait to bend you over the desk, pull your long blond hair, and smack that perfect ass every time you scream my name.”
“Let’s hope the office is empty, then. What a sight the others would see if they’re still working.”
“The Senator hasn’t been in the office all week. His daughter is getting married this weekend, so he’s overseeing the huge tent going up in his backyard. The other staffers left before I did today, so his office is all ours.”
The office doors are solid glass, allowing natural light from the central atrium to illuminate the external spaces. Walking past the aides’ offices and desks in the outer area, we stop in front of a thick, wooden door that conveys the opulence and prestige of the position without the need for further explanation. He retrieves his keys from his pocket, unlocks the door, and lets me step inside first.
The senator’s inner sanctum is two-stories high, and every bit as lavish as I imagined it would be. The rich mahogany wainscoting wraps around the bottom half of the room, and the masculine, dark-green walls stretch up to the ceiling. Large works of art adorn the high walls, each one costing more money than I’ve made in my entire life. The hypocrisy is astounding—they don’t serve the people here. They help themselves while riding on the backs of the people.
He moves behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and burying his face in my neck. His body sways back and forth, unable to steady himself with the room spinning so fast around him. “Are you ready to have some real fun?”
“Absolutely.”
His arms drop from my sides just before his knees give out, and his body crumples to the floor in a heap of drunkenness. I step over him and walk behind the big desk, the one that holds all the information I need to copy before I can leave here. The docking port for the senator’s laptop is empty, but his desktop computer is still on. The encryption on his password is strong, but not enough to prevent my portable brute-force attack software from identifying the letters, numbers, and special characters in milliseconds.
After I make myself a system administrator, nothing stops me from copying the data I need to a flash drive. Rifling through his computer files gives me extra ammunition. He apparently believes his computer is safe from any prying eyes, if the very personal pictures and documents he has “hidden” under a folder entitled “Personal Folder” are any indication. Those, I conceal in a special folder on my flash drive. I may need them later.
After I’ve copied everything that could be used as leverage against him, along with the highly classified files on the server that I still need to comb through, I replace the folders with a spyware program renamed to match each one. No matter which icon a user clicks on, it’ll open another door to the network that won’t be detected for some time.
When I finish my job, I make sure everything in the office appears precisely as it was before I entered. The chair is back in place, and the monitor is turned off, nothing showing I was ever here. With the exception of the aide still passed out on the floor, of course. I’ll never see him again since my cover is that I’m only a tourist here in DC and I’m heading back to San Diego soon. But if I ever have the displeasure of his company again, my reason for leaving him here to sleep it off is explained easily enough. And it’ll be all his fault since he drank too much and left me alone in a strange place.
As I leave the office, I don’t bother to close the heavy wooden door to the senator’s private office behind me. If anyone walking by sees David and wants to help him, more power to them. But no one seems to notice anything when I step out into the main corridor. Everyone is anxious to get home after working extra-long hours on a Friday, well past the time average workers have already gone back to their families. I step into the thick of the passing group, easily absorbed by the masses as we make our way down to the lobby level and out the east side of the building. After I step out into the crisp, night air, I hail a taxi and ride away from the scene of the crime, leaving no trace of my real self.
When I reach the interior of my small home in Alexandria, Virginia, I reset the alarm, kick my high heels off, and pull the blond wig off my head. In the summer, the wig and the net holding my long black hair in place can get uncomfortably hot—close to the point of feeling as if a heat stroke is imminent if I’m not careful. But January in Washington, DC, is cold enough not to notice I’m wearing it for the most part. Before I even make it to my bedroom, my phone starts ringing, and I know who it is before looking at the screen.
“Hello?”
“Hello. This is Erika with HairBenders Salon. I’m calling to confirm your appointment on Wednesday morning at 9:15 at our Cameron Station Boulevard location.”
“Thank you for the reminder, Erika. I will be there.”
We disconnect, and I grab my laptop out of the safe. Before I hand this flash drive over at the designated drop Wednesday morning, I want to memorize everything that’s on it. I’ll also make my own copy. The information I nabbed could come in handy one day if I play my cards right. Every move I make must be calculated, weighed, and measured first. Every step I take must be plotted and coordinated. The dangers are too real, and the odds are stacked against me, but sometimes there’s no choice but to roll the dice and hope for the best.
I’ll have to face the consequences of getting caught red-handed with the classified information if my cover is somehow blown. Sometimes the risk is worth the gamble.
With the jump drive inserted into my laptop, I open the folders and mentally prepare myself to go through the highly classified data, document by document. My near-photographic memory is both a blessing and a curse, but right now I’m going with a blessing. It helps me connect the dots when I have to recall information from something I read ten documents ago, but my memories can’t be admitted as evidence the same as physical documents can.
> Some of the files contain information I already know. Nothing too exciting—the Americans are watching the Russians who are watching the Americans. The ones they know about anyway. My name still isn’t on the list, so I’ll survive another day. Time gets away from me the deeper I dive into the senator’s files. My stomach growls, reminding me I haven’t eaten anything since this morning.
My cheap-ass date only sprang for the alcohol because he thought he’d get lucky tonight, but the joke’s on him. I stand and stretch before walking to the refrigerator to stare inside until something I want to eat magically appears.
I’m still waiting…and staring.
After I quickly calculate the time it takes to cook something from scratch versus the time it takes to order delivery, my decision is made. Chinese food delivered hot to my door, it is. The shower calls my name, mainly stemming from my need to wash any remnants of that loser off my skin. But the truth is I’ve grown weary in my bones of this job and how much it demands of me every time I step out the door.
This is not the life I’d planned when I was a child. If there were any way I could wash it all away, watch it flow down the drain with the bathwater, I would take that shot in a second.
Chapter 2
Silas
Kira walks down the hall to the bathroom and leaves the door standing wide open behind her as she adjusts the water. Telltale sounds of her undressing before opening the shower door help me visualize her every move. Before leaving the safety of my hiding place in the shadows inside her home, I wait another few seconds, listening intently to verify she’s actually inside the tub.
As a fellow spy, she would know the tricks of the trade already. Our number one offensive move is confusing the enemy by making him believe we’re doing one thing when we’re actually using misdirection to gain the upper hand. When I hear the water falling in waves, I know she’s washing and rinsing her hair, letting the water pool in her long black hair before releasing it with one large splash. Now that I’m confident she didn’t sense my presence inside the house with her, I move silently toward her laptop.
She’s obviously not on her game tonight. No spy worth his—or her—salt leaves a computer unlocked, the flash drive plugged in, and the stolen documents still open on the desktop. With a few clicks, I erase all evidence of their existence from her computer and eject the flash drive. Just as I slip it into my pocket, the sound of water coming from the bathroom falls silent, then the shower door opens again. The noise of the hairdryer covers my exit from her house, just in time to avoid the teenager delivering her food.
From my vantage point outside, I wait and watch the exchange. Usually, I’d be long gone from the scene, but not this time. Not with this case. Nothing about this situation fits the conventional mold, from the person I’m watching to the reasons why I’m doing it. Even Kira’s actions don’t match the typical spy patterns. She’s all over the board—unpredictable and difficult to follow one minute, to downright sloppy and amateurish the next.
After she pays the delivery boy and closes the door, I watch with a smirk I couldn’t contain even if I wanted to, which I don’t. She hasn’t yet realized both the drive and the data she saved are gone, but she will as soon as she sits down to eat and finish perusing the pilfered classified documents. This is where her predictable response will kick in—she’ll run to the door, fling it open, and rush outside, straight into the cold January air, without protection or checking her surroundings first. All mistakes even rookies at The Farm don’t make during their initial training.
She is an enigma wrapped in a contradiction.
Thankfully, she can’t hear the chuckle that escapes from me when she reacts exactly as I suspected she would. The front door stands wide open while she rushes around the perimeter of her house in nothing but her bathrobe and slippers. When she makes it back around to the front, she stands on the porch, her eyes scanning up and down the street in front of her house. But she can’t see me from where I’m watching at the moment.
In fact, she hasn’t seen, heard, or felt me watching her at any time in the past year and a half since I returned from Moscow. Standard GRU training should’ve refined her skills and honed her senses to be able to identify a tail with barely a second glance, even one carried out by a seasoned agent like myself. She can get an invitation into a senator’s office, maneuver through secure areas, and steal information from a secure system, and yet, she has tunnel vision where her own safety is concerned. Like not covering the keypad when she enabled the alarm, giving me a full view of her four-digit code. The inconsistencies in her skills and deeds don’t make sense to me.
Her shoulders droop noticeably when she releases a defeated sigh. She drops her head back, closes her eyes, and curls her hands into tight fists. If she could kick her own ass right now, she most definitely would. But there’s more than anger in her body language. A pained expression crosses her features before being quickly replaced with almost paralyzing fear. She knows she fucked up and there’s no way to explain it away, no way to reclaim the data now—from either her computer or from Senator Hunt’s. When I wiped hers, I made sure it was wiped CIA clean.
Even I couldn’t retrieve it now if I wanted to.
This surveillance is throwing me off my game. I’ve never been one to show my hand like this, and now she knows without a shadow of a doubt she’s being watched. She knows someone was in her home. She knows the data she stole earlier tonight was taken right out from under her nose as soon as she let her guard down. If I’d revealed myself to anyone else in the trade, I’d be a dead man by morning. But with Kira, I’m betting on another angle.
The desperation she so easily displays—from the way she covers her face with her hands before running her fingers through her still damp hair to the way she keeps glancing up and down the street, as if the flash drive will mysteriously appear out of thin air—tells me I’ve hit the jackpot with reading this peculiar Russian spy.
She’ll be reckless enough to try to get back into the senator’s office. The same senator who just happens to be on The United Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
When she turns and walks back into her house, I remain in place for a while longer. Now she knows her cover is blown so she’ll be watching for movement, looking for any vehicle that seems out of place in her quiet little part of the neighborhood. I’m guessing that dinner she ordered isn’t looking too appealing right now, with her stomach in knots and her nerves set on edge. She has plans to make to try to find a way back into the secure offices now, especially since she burned her bridge with the aide tonight.
An hour after the house is completely dark and still, I stroll over to the next street, slide behind the wheel of my car, and make my way back to my apartment. There’s only one viable prospect for her now, and I have my own preparations to make to attend the black-tie political fundraising event, where the buy-in for a plate easily costs $1,000, but that’s lowballing compared to the individual donations of $30,000 or more. This is the life in DC—someone is always fundraising for something, and someone else is always more than willing to donate to it for a favor in return.
I need to dust off my tuxedo and get an invitation to the party for myself. I have a hot date all lined up for tomorrow night—she just doesn’t know it yet.
Back inside my apartment, I sit down with my secure CIA laptop to check out the contents of the flash drive. At first glance, it seems she copied everything she could find in hopes of finding anything of use. It’ll take time to go through all the documents and identify any significant national security risks we’re facing as a result of this breach. That research will have to wait until later, though, when I can give it to one of my sidekicks. It’s already been a long day and night.
Stick a fork in me, I’m completely done.
* * *
When I step into the Atrium of the Ronald Reagan Building on Saturday evening, my undercover training immediately kicks in. The room is as tall as it is long, with a rounded glass dome th
at adjoins the third-floor ceiling. Both upper floors are wide-open promenades, providing an excellent view of the grand room below. Flowing rolls of white gossamer fabric are draped all the way from the glass above to the floor below, gathered strategically to create the ambiance and rich tone of the gala. The music from the jazz band on the stage at the far end of the room carries on the room’s acoustics, adding to the overall mood and vibe.
A waiter approaches with a tray full of champagne flutes, so I take one to sip on as I begin mingling with the crowd. Saying hello to complete strangers as I work my way through the party, acting as if I know them and I belong here, keeps suspicious eyes from staring too long. They return a polite greeting and quickly resume their conversations. Listening for tidbits of information as I pass by is second nature to me now. It comes as naturally as breathing. I’m just waiting for the right conversation to catch my ear.
When I slow and turn, taking a lingering perusal of the people at the party, my gaze locks on the sexiest woman in the entire room, standing regally at the top of the stairs, unaware of her beauty and allure. Kira’s long black hair shimmers, catching the soft white twinkle of the lights and reflecting them like tiny bursts of starlight. In a sea of black cocktail dresses, she stands out even more in her pure-white, floor-length gown that leaves one shoulder bare and clings to her every curve, beckoning every man in the room to her beauty.
Then it hits me. That’s precisely her intention—mesmerize and hypnotize the men with her exquisiteness, then knock them on their ass with a hidden syringe or a tiny vial of liquid sleeping medicine. The congresspeople, aides, and other staffers in the room have the access she desperately needs. Experience tells me she’s meeting someone soon to turn over the information she stole—someone who expects nothing less than success. Whichever unwitting victim falls into her web will do, as long as she can use him to get back into the secure office and on the secure servers.
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