A Loaded Question

by Danica Winters

  “Eating sunflower seeds again?” Agent Hunt asked. “That is a disgusting habit, you know.”

  Of course, he would be keyed in on her one little quirk. She should have been more careful to keep her mess from hitting the floor.

  “We all have something we do to pacify ourselves. Don’t get me started about your gum popping.” She smiled at him, hoping he would realize she wasn’t about to say anything about his tics.

  Hunt chuckled as she stood up, grabbed her suit jacket and slipped it over her arms. “Where you going?”

  “Out.”

  In all honesty, she didn’t know. The only thing she knew was that she could not continue to sit there and stare at Peahen’s email for another second. Sure, she could’ve just sent him the information he wanted and gotten him out of her hair, but she’d never been the type to give in that easily. If he wanted to be a jerk, two could play that game.

  She pulled up the file on her phone, and waiting for it to load, she looked over at Agent Hunt. “You want to go for a ride? Are you working on something?”

  Agent Hunt shrugged. “As luck would have it, I’m currently beating level 2421 on Candy Crush, so...”

  “Then grab your jacket. I may end up needing someone to keep me from throttling Peahen.” She chuckled.

  “Do I even want to know?” Agent Hunt asked.

  She shook her head. “Probably not, but at the very least we can both get out of the office for an hour and take a ride in America’s finest fleet car.” She laughed as she motioned toward the window where parked out in front of the building was a late-model Crown Victoria she was sure had likely once belonged to someone sent to a retirement home. In fact, she could have sworn that upon getting in the first time she had smelled baby powder, Bengay and menthol Halls.

  “With a line like that, how could a boy say no?” He stood up and grabbed his jacket, holding it over his arm rather than putting it on. The simple action made her wonder if he didn’t feel the same drive to constantly be on point, like she did.

  Yet, if someone saw him and recognized him as an agent, they would think nothing of his prowess or experience just because he wasn’t wearing a jacket. However, if she simply went with her jacket unbuttoned, she would instantly be seen as less authoritative.

  She sighed. She had to knock it off. Picking nits would do nothing to stop the infestation of sexism that ran rampant throughout law enforcement. She just needed to buck up, focus on the task at hand and show Agent Peacock who he was dealing with.

  Making their way out of the nondescript brick federal building that sat within the heart of the city of Missoula, she stopped and pulled out a stick of gum. She had to kick the sunflower seed habit. That or she would have to step up her running time.

  Regardless, as they got into the fleet car, she missed the salty crunch and snap of the sunflower seed shells when she bit down on the kernels. Calories or no, she loved them. Then again, it always seemed like the things she really cared about the most were things that also caused her the most harm.

  As she looked in the rearview mirror and put the car in gear, she watched as a black van stopped at the light—directly behind them and blocking their departure.

  She didn’t like it, the feeling of being trapped in her parking space. It wasn’t an emergency by any means, but this lack of foresight when setting this building up for agents like her—people who had places to be—it gnawed at her. If the people in the van wished harm upon her, it would have been easy to follow through. In fact, this was exactly how she would have set it up, by boxing her into her parking spot, then slipping out of the driver’s side and silently moving to her window. A quick double tap of the trigger and the driver and the van could pull away within seconds, likely unnoticed and unseen by the general public, and leaving her and Agent Hunt dead.

  But maybe she was warped.

  No, there was a major difference between paranoid and protective. This, this oversight, was a matter of safety, not her neurosis.

  She would need to get a sit-down with the region’s special agent in charge, or SAC, and have them look into the logistics.

  Moving to grab her phone and send the agent a text, she heard a crunch of metal and the squeal of brakes from behind her. She jerked, looking up. The van behind her was sitting askew, the back end now resting on the hood of a red Miata. A kid was in the car’s driver seat. The poor thing looked terrified as he unbuckled his seat belt and stepped out of his car.

  Walking to the front of his car, he put his hands over his mouth and squatted down, then stood back up. He mouthed a series of expletives, and from the look on his face, he was likely already envisioning the tongue-lashing he would receive when he told his parents about the accident.

  She didn’t envy him, or those days.

  “Did you see that? Holy crap,” Agent Hunt said from beside her.

  “I know.” She glanced back in the side mirror, watching without being seen.

  The side door of the van wheeled open with a characteristic sound of heavy metal grinding against metal. A man, maybe in his early thirties, with dark hair, brooding eyes and a cleft in his chin, stepped out of the van’s side door. Just the sight of him made her gut clench. There was something about him, something that drew her in and yet spoke of danger.

  She turned in her seat, hoping to get a better view.

  As he stepped onto the street, he looked up at her and their eyes met. For a split second, she thought of looking away, but she checked herself. She wasn’t a demure woman, no matter how handsome the man whose gaze met hers.

  He gave her a stiff nod.

  As he turned, he gave her one more appraising glance and rushed to shut the van’s door. He moved with the practiced, smooth movements of someone like her—someone who spent their life in the shadows. As the door shut, she looked into the vehicle. Behind him, lining the walls, was a collection of surveillance systems.

  Her breath caught in her throat as she instinctively reached for her sidearm.

  Not for the first time, her gut was right—the man was nothing but danger.

  Chapter Two

  He was a broken man. With every day that slipped by, he found himself sinking further and further into his all-consuming sadness. He had to do something to pull out of this funk before he disappeared into himself and his work, forever.

  For the last year, ever since Tiff’s death, he had been living day to day only through the habitual motion that came with being a private contractor with STEALTH. In truth, they were his saving grace. Though he had worked for a variety of security companies, if it wasn’t for the Martins, he wasn’t sure he could have gotten on with another contracting group in the state he was in.

  He wasn’t doing great—even he could admit it. Thinking about it, he wasn’t sure he had said more than a word or two in the last month aside from what he had to say for work. Strangely, the realization didn’t bother him. He didn’t mind being alone.

  It was almost a comfort to know he was the silent harbinger of death. He was like a shadow—no, a ghost—who could come and go around the world, doing his job and never really being noticed. He was completely, inarguably free.

  Maybe that made him better than most in their line of work. With the ability to be anonymous came the talent to disappear into a crowd. And in being invisible came a great deal of power. The unseen and unnoticed could do anything, go anywhere, take anything and slip away just as unnoticed as they had been when they arrived.

  He was a warrior—a Spartan. A man kept at the edges of society to do the things that most were incapable of doing. His only loyalty was to his brothers and sisters in arms and to those they were sworn to protect. He was at worst the monster under the bed, and at best the man who everyone called when there was no one else to save them. But he would never call himself a hero.

  Antihero, maybe.

  Dealer of death. Maybe.
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  Instrument of powerful women and men. Definitely.

  And just as with Tiff, he was merely another piece of a giant puzzle, whose pieces were constantly shifting and swirling until they were destroyed before a real picture appeared. They were part of the action and reaction, the tug-of-war between factions, governments and companies with agendas and guidelines he would never know.

  Well, at least usually. This month was far simpler than most. He had been tasked with attempting to hack into a machining company that may or may not have been selling state military secrets to China or another opposing faction. The company had hired them to spy on their employees—and make sure they were not, in fact, selling secrets—and also to check the measures the company had in place to prevent such actions. Millions of dollars, as well as their current and future contracts, were all on the line.

  His investigation and attempts to breach through company security measures could literally make or break the business.

  No pressure.

  As long as the company had done their legwork and vetted, trained and kept their employees and IT personnel reasonably happy, he doubted he would find anything—or at least anybody who was selling secrets. In cases like these, in which there had been a leak or suspected leak of classified information, the breaches were usually not done maliciously or for monetary gain by the person or people responsible. Nine times out of ten, at least in the cases he had surveilled, an employee had merely said something over the phone, in an email or near their at-home smart device. The captured and recorded conversations then fell into the wrong hands, and the person responsible for the breach was none the wiser that they had just lost millions of dollars’ worth of secrets. It was seemingly innocuous moments of ineptitude that often led to the biggest corporate losses.

  No matter how many classes he taught to these large companies and their employees, their general lack of understanding of how modern infiltration tactics worked appalled him. No matter how many times he tried to tell people that modern tech was a tremendous risk to their secrets, it was amazing how many CEOs, COOs and CFOs still openly talked, emailed and chatted about their company’s secrets. More often than not, they didn’t spill major secrets in one sitting. Rather, they told the truth and secrets in small, chewable bits—bits that those listening and transcribing could eventually piece together. A ghost could get just about anything so long as they stayed unknown.

  Add in a phone call from someone on the infiltration team’s staff, and bingo—whoever was eliciting information would likely have more than they could even use.

  And though he couldn’t help but shake his head at the civilian population’s general lack of awareness when it came to safety, he couldn’t help but be a little grateful. With everyone turning a blind eye to security weaknesses, he had the opportunity to use it to his advantage. The good guys and the bad guys thought the same way. Once a person understood a bit about the human psyche and the common “it can’t happen to me” mentality, it was easy to get almost anything he wanted.

  He glanced around at the equipment that surrounded him inside the van. This much equipment may have been a bit overkill, but it was better to have it and not need it than need something and not have it—but that could have been the good old Boy Scout in him.

  “How much closer you want me to get before you attempt to break into their system through their Wi-Fi?” Mike asked, looking back at him from the driver’s seat as they pulled to a stop at the light. “Did Zoey manage to hack in?”

  Troy opened his mouth to tell him no, but as he started to speak, he was stopped by the telltale sound of squealing brakes behind them and the inevitable thud and crunch as he was tossed forward from his seat.

  Troy landed on his hands and knees between the two front seats in the van. He jumped into action, did a rapid self-assessment and then cleared Mike for injuries. They would both be fine. He glanced back to the equipment. Nothing looked any the worse for wear.

  A thin shaft of daylight shone through the base of the van’s back doors, and even from where he sat, he could make out the unmistakable red paint of a car’s hood wedged under their bumper.

  Son of a... Not today. Not right now.

  They had a job to do. And the last thing they needed was some local law-enforcement officer poking around. Though he hoped they would be smart enough not to ask too many questions once they established who he and Mike, and STEALTH—the private contracting company that had given him this assignment—were working for.

  Federal and international acronyms, those of the law-enforcement kind, with enough weight to them that they could get out of pretty much any situation.

  A minor traffic accident was going to be no big deal. Heck, a smile and a nod and it could all be over and they could all be back on their merry ways.

  Or at least he hoped so. But, just like in the past, the minute he assumed anything was going to be simple was the minute he got bit squarely in the rear end.

  Mike started to unbuckle, going for the door.

  “Wait here. I can handle this,” Troy said, moving to the back and stepping out of the side door.

  “It’s just a kid,” Mike said, giving him a wary look.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going to kill him,” Troy said with a chuckle. Who did Mike think he was? He was a man who sought to eliminate the evil from this world, not add to it.

  He stepped out of the van, pushing back his hair from his face as the wind caught it. He hated his hair this long, but ever since coming back stateside, he had wanted to shake things up a bit. It wasn’t what most people would call lengthy at a few inches, but to him it was past the point of acceptable.

  Assessing the area around him, he glanced at the black car with its backup lights on. Looking at him was a woman. Thick brunette hair, the kind he’d like to run his fingers through, hazel eyes and—from what he could see of her—a pinup figure.

  He quickly glanced away.

  No. She couldn’t notice him, or them or this. I am a ghost. No one sees me.

  He glanced back at the woman, who was now fully turned around and staring at him and the van. He smoothly shut the door and blocked the view of the equipment inside.

  As he looked to her, their eyes locked. In that moment, there was no glancing away, no ignoring the ache in his chest and no way he could go unnoticed.

  She had seen him.

  For the first time in a year, someone besides his team had noticed his existence. It was as if in that moment, with those piercing hazel eyes, she made him real.

  Chapter Three

  Once, while at training at Quantico, Kate had walked into a trap she could have never seen coming, and the mistake had consumed her. It was strange and inexplicable, but the man in the rearview mirror made her feel exactly the same way. She had the same sickening knot in her stomach that told her it wasn’t just some random coincidence that he had wrecked right into her life.

  What if he was watching her?

  She tried to shake the feeling off, but couldn’t stop herself from devolving into a hyper state of paranoia.

  During their live training sessions at Quantico, they were often required to do open surveillance exercises where they too were being surveilled. It was one of her most and least favorite drills. She loved the art that came with the background work and the setup that came before going after their target, but she hated the fear and anxiety that came with constantly looking over her shoulder.

  Seeing that van parked behind them in the street—it made all of her hate and anxiety come crashing back down.

  She was never alone.

  No matter where she went in the world, or what she did within the Bureau, someone would always be watching over her. And there was always a trap waiting for her if she took one step off the prescribed path.

  Before going to work as a special agent, Kate had prided herself on being a rule follower. She was th
e kind of woman who was perpetually ten minutes early, never came to a party empty-handed and was always on time with her thank-you notes to hosts and hostesses. If she had been raised in the South instead of on the Oregon coast, she would have been the next debutante princess.

  It was what had made it an easy choice for her to head directly to the doors of the FBI as soon as she graduated college summa cum laude from Vassar. The physical and psych testing had been no big deal for her to pass, but when it came to spatial awareness and tactical directives, she had struggled. Being able to memorize license plates forward and backward of every car around her, and then keeping track of people’s faces, clothes and assumed beliefs and values... It had all been an incredible struggle.

  Looking back, she would have happily done three years of organic chemistry over having to go through another round of surveillance training.

  She could have never been a spook.

  Agent Hunt cleared his throat beside her, pulling her attention back to the moment at hand. “You okay over there?”

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she glanced back up at the rearview mirror and watched as the dark-haired man walked around to the end of the van and stopped beside the kid. The boy who had rear-ended him was midmeltdown, tears streaking down his adolescent cheeks, and she didn’t have to hear his words to know that he was apologizing profusely.

  The man from the van reached up and put his hand on the kid’s shoulder, but there was something jerky and forced in the way he moved, as if actually touching another person was causing him some kind of physical discomfort.

  The strange realization made her smile. At least she wasn’t the only one with war wounds.

  “Kate?” Agent Hunt asked.

  “Huh?”

  “I think it would be a good idea if we headed inside. We don’t need to get wrapped up in whatever is going on here,” Agent Hunt said with a smile. “I should have guessed that things would go all kinds of wheels up the second we try to take a break. The BuGods have it out for us,” he said, using the slang for the Bureau.