by CW Browning
Alina unlocked the sliding door as Stephanie got out of her car and headed toward the deck. She noted the lack of purse immediately. All Stephanie was carrying was her phone and her keys. Alina's frown deepened and she slid the door open.
“Where the hell is he?!” Stephanie demanded, stalking onto the deck and through the open door angrily.
Alina raised an eyebrow.
“Where the hell is who?” she asked, sliding the door closed behind her and turning to face her old friend calmly.
Stephanie dropped her keys and phone onto the bar and swung around.
“Your Mr. Peterson!” she said sharply.
Alina looked at Stephanie for a long moment in silence before walking over to pull one of the stools away from the bar slightly.
“Have a seat,” she offered, slightly sarcastically. “Would you like some coffee?” she asked, moving around Stephanie and into the kitchen.
The mild reminder of manners wasn't lost on her old friend. Stephanie dropped onto the bar stool with a look of embarrassment, her flash of anger set aside.
“Yes, please,” Stephanie murmured.
Alina turned on the espresso maker and studied Stephanie silently while the machine warmed up. Her friend was a mess. Her brown hair was pulled back in a half-hearted ponytail and she was wearing jeans and a tee-shirt that looked like they were thrown on at random. However, more telling of her state of mind than anything was the complete lack of makeup. That just wasn't done. Not in Jersey.
“Quit staring at me,” Stephanie muttered, pushing her keys and phone out of the way and resting her arms on the bar. “I'm sorry I barged into your house.”
Alina turned to make the coffee.
“I'm sure you'll get around to telling me why you did in your own good time,” she said over her shoulder.
Stephanie glanced up with a flash in her eyes, but it was wasted on Alina's back.
“God, you sound like Sister Angelina from high school,” she muttered.
Alina was surprised into a bark of laughter.
“Good Lord.” She took the full cup of coffee from under the spout and walked over to set it in front of Stephanie. “There's a name I haven't heard in years.”
She turned to the fridge and Stephanie watched her pull out the milk.
“Remember when she caught us sneaking out the window of the girls’ bathroom on the second floor?” she asked suddenly with a laugh. “She was outside waiting for us.”
Alina was taken back in time with the memory. She remembered shimmying down the old rusted pipe as if it were yesterday. They had been so busy trying not to fall and die that neither one of them had bothered to look down. Sister Angelina, the principal of the school, had been standing on the sidewalk below. Waiting.
“Jenny DiStefano told her,” Alina said, setting the milk in front of Stephanie. “She was such a rat. Remember?”
“She ended up marrying Joey Forno,” Stephanie told her, pouring milk into her coffee. Alina opened one of the drawers in the kitchen and pulled out a spoon, sliding it down the bar to Stephanie before turning to get the sugar. “He cheats on her something fierce.”
“Serves her right,” Alina said before she could stop herself.
Stephanie laughed.
“She's still a rat,” she said. “Angela ran into her at the hair salon a few months ago. She said that Jenny was acting like she's made of money, but everyone knows their house is mortgaged ten times over.”
Alina set the sugar in front of Stephanie and turned to make her own coffee. Once she had a full mug in her hand, she turned around and went over to lean on the island, facing Stephanie.
“Talk,” she said, sipping her coffee.
Stephanie set her mug down.
“I have an old friend who works in DHS,” she said slowly. “A few days ago, I asked her to poke around and see what she could find out about Damon Peterson.”
Alina raised her eyebrow slightly, but was silent. When it was clear she wasn't going to say anything, Stephanie continued.
“She sent me an email two nights ago. She felt like something was wrong. She thought she was being watched. If you knew Shannon, you would know how unusual that was. She was never one to over-react or make a mountain out of a mole hill.” Stephanie paused and looked at Alina again. Alina nodded slightly to show she understood. “I tried to call her all day yesterday with no answer. I finally called her direct line to her office this morning.”
Stephanie paused again and drank some coffee. Alina felt her gut tightening. She knew what was coming.
“Her assistant answered,” Stephanie told her. “Shannon was killed in a car accident yesterday. Her car went off the road.”
Alina exhaled slowly, her stomach dropping through her feet. She suddenly felt cold. Stephanie suspected Damon, but Alina knew that Damon was nowhere near Washington. She was pretty near positive that Damon had been halfway across the world in Egypt. But there was someone in Washington who would have every reason to stop Stephanie's friend from finding out anything about Damon or Alina, and that was the person who had brought a terrorist into the United States. Alina met Stephanie's look squarely and the two women were silent for a long minute.
“Well?” Stephanie finally broke the silence. “You have that look on your face.”
“What look?” Alina asked.
“That completely unreadable, unemotional look that makes me want to scream at you,” Stephanie replied shortly, picking up her coffee.
Alina was surprised at Stephanie's vehemence. She had no idea what she was talking about, but her irritation was evident.
“I'm not sure what you expect from me,” Alina said calmly, sipping her coffee.
“Show some emotion!” Stephanie exclaimed, waving her hand in the air. “Surprise. Anger. Amusement. Anything!”
“Are you feeling ok?” Alina asked.
Stephanie made a frustrated sound and finished her coffee in one gulp.
“No!” she cried. “My friend from college was killed yesterday under extremely suspicious circumstances, while trying to find out information about your friend from God-knows where, who is now missing in action. And all you can do is stand there looking bored!”
“I'm not sure that any of those are necessarily related,” Alina pointed out dryly. She set her coffee down with a sigh and took Stephanie's empty mug over to the coffee maker to refill it.
“Shannon would not have over-reacted. If she thought she was being watched, then she was being watched,” Stephanie stated defensively. “I don't buy the whole car accident that was an accident thing.”
“Oh, neither do I,” Alina agreed, “but we differ on who, exactly, may be responsible for your friend’s accident.” The machine stopped brewing and Alina brought Stephanie the fresh cup of coffee. “You're jumping to the conclusion that the person she was asking questions about is the person who is responsible.”
“Wouldn't you?” Stephanie demanded, reaching for the sugar.
Alina watched as she started loading up her coffee with sugar. She blinked, momentarily diverted by the amount of sugar going into the coffee.
“Why aren't your teeth falling out?” she asked.
Stephanie glared at her and Alina grinned, picking up her own cup of coffee.
“Ok. To answer your question, no. I wouldn't automatically assume that the one had to do with the other. However,” she continued when Stephanie opened her mouth to argue, “I've been trained to look at things a little differently, so we can't really use me as a good standard. Let me put it to you this way. Damon wasn't in Washington yesterday.”
“Where was he?” Stephanie asked, reaching for the milk.
“My best guess?” Alina sipped her coffee. “Egypt.”
“You know that for a fact?” Stephanie demanded.
“Do you know for a fact that he wasn't?” Alina shot back softly. Stephanie paused. “You're convicting a man without knowing all the facts,” Alina told her. “I'm very sorry for your loss, but your anger i
s directed at the wrong person.”
“Why do you think he was in Egypt, of all places?” Stephanie asked after a moment.
Alina sighed and took her coffee over to the bar and sat next to Stephanie.
“I think he's gone to get the name of the person who hired the assassin to come after Johann...and now you,” she said quietly.
“And that person is in Egypt?!” Stephanie demanded incredulously.
Alina shook her head.
“It's complicated,” she said with a sigh.
“Everything with you two is complicated! That's all I ever hear! No explanations, just that it's complicated or you can't tell me,” Stephanie complained. “I was willing to give you both the benefit of the doubt, but now things are getting out of control. What the hell is going on?”
Alina was silent. Stephanie stared at her and Alina stared back as the silence lengthened.
“So it's like that,” Stephanie finally said.
Alina shrugged.
“I've already told you too much as it is,” she told her.
Stephanie drank her coffee, her frustration evident as the two women sat in silence. Alina glanced at her old friend. She wished she could tell Stephanie something, anything, to put her mind at rest. But, with the death of her friend in Washington, this had now gone beyond Stephanie's security clearance and into the realm of national security. Alina knew this, but she couldn't even tell Stephanie that much without telling her too much.
It all went back to Cairo and what she had seen and heard two years ago. The man in the room with Johann, and the assassin that they had been discussing as they walked out of the room. Everything was intertwined and, unfortunately, Stephanie had been drawn into the web as soon as that arms dealer had floated up in the river. Whether or not Viper had taken the job to come back to Jersey, Stephanie would have still ended up in this same position, with no knowledge of what, exactly, she was up against.
“Let me ask you this,” Stephanie interrupted Alina's thoughts. “Do you work for our government?”
Stephanie's eyes met hers, and Alina smiled slightly. She was finally asking her the one question that Alina knew Stephanie had assumed since they had their conversation over bagels on the deck the day after Martin Sladecki caught his train to the afterlife.
“Yes,” Alina confirmed.
Stephanie nodded.
“Ok,” she said.
They lapsed into silence again and Alina knew that Stephanie was working through the pros and cons of working blindly with Alina. After another moment of silence, Stephanie sighed.
“I'm going home to get dressed and then go into the office,” she said. “I'm going to find out where Johann is and get John to go with me for some recon. Then, I'll come back here with John.” She stood up and collected her keys and her phone, turning to face Alina. “We'll go from there and decide what to do about Johann.”
Alina stood up and it occurred to Stephanie that she looked neither grateful nor apologetic. She simply nodded and Stephanie left the house with the distinct impression that, regardless of what she or John did, Alina was going to do what she felt needed to be done. She had her own agenda and she was going to follow that, with or without the rest of them.
Stephanie wasn't sure how she felt about that.
Alina waited until Stephanie was gone before reactivating the security perimeter. She carried Stephanie's empty coffee mug to the sink and set in inside thoughtfully. A slight frown creased her brow as Alina absently refilled her own mug. Once it was filled, she reached up for the sauté pan and waited for the island to move aside. A minute later she was seated in front of her monitors, her laptop open, and the island back in place at the top of the steps.
Alina opened a folder on an embedded drive and typed in her security password. A second later, she clicked opened a picture, dragging it to one of the plasmas on the wall. Viper sat back with her coffee, propped her feet on the table, and stared up at the smiling picture of a man. Two years ago, he had been well-known in the western world. Now, he was a household name. Then, he had been busy clawing his way up the political ladder. Now, he was representative of an establishment; a force that could not be reckoned with.
He was a person beyond reach.
Alina's eyes narrowed and she sipped her coffee. The pieces of the picture were falling into place and at the top was Cairo. Damon had gone because he learned something that led him there. He learned something that made him suspect what Alina already knew. That meant that someone else was feeding Damon information.
That, in itself, didn't alarm Viper. Just as she had spent years building up an information network across the world, so had Hawk; it was what they did. But she was concerned with how much his informant knew. Everyone who knew anything about Cairo was at risk now. The death of Stephanie's friend illustrated that fact perfectly. She hadn't known anything, but she started asking questions about an unknown DHS agent who was in New Jersey. That had been enough to make her dangerous.
Alina sipped more coffee and frowned. Why was Damon here? And why was he posing as a DHS agent? The questions that had been haunting her for the past few days were back again, but with new urgency. Had Hawk been set up? And if so, why? Who would have brought him into this mess? Harry? Or was he protecting someone? Was he here to protect someone in Washington?
Alina stared at the picture on her screen. God, she hoped Hawk wasn't here to protect that son-of-a-bitch. That would be enough to turn her stomach.
So close! Alina dropped her feet to floor impatiently and went back to her laptop. She was so close to fitting all the pieces together! But Damon didn't fit anywhere, and neither did the agent in Washington. She could certainly see why Stephanie thought Damon was involved, but Alina knew better than that. She knew the man on the plasma screen was responsible, either directly or indirectly, just as he had been responsible for so many other useless and wasted deaths across the globe. The question was why? Was he protecting Damon? Was he framing Damon? Or had that agent simply become a liability because of her communication with Stephanie?
Alina paused and stared at her screen absently. Maybe Hawk had nothing to do with Stephanie's dead DHS agent. Maybe she had fallen into Stephanie's trap of not seeing outside the box. Alina sat back slowly. Maybe she was looking for a connection with Hawk because that was what made sense. But what if it was just something as simple as the fact that the agent had been in contact with Stephanie, and Stephanie had become Target Deux on The Engineer's list.
What if the man in Washington was just being paranoid and sloppy?
Alina stared at her laptop for a moment before reaching forward to hit a button, disconnecting the secure link she had just opened to one of her contacts in Washington. Her gaze went back to the picture on the plasma screen.
One day, she promised it silently. All sins are punished one day.
Dimitrius looked through the scope of his rifle and focused in on the little house in the woods. As far as houses went, he supposed it was as good as any. It was a one level rancher with a front porch that ran the width of the house. It sat on three acres of quiet property, buried in the wooded countryside of Pennsylvania next to the river. There was an old, dilapidated barn toward the back of the property and a lot of scraggly crabgrass mixed with bare patches of dirt. It looked as though someone tried to cultivate a garden of sorts in the front, but time and nature had triumphed over the effort. The land looked unkempt and wild, and the house didn't look much better.
Dimitrius watched as a shadow moved around in the front room, wandering aimlessly back and forth in front of the window. A black sedan was parked in the front of the house, pulled off to the side, and Johann was inside.
Waiting.
Dimitrius lowered the rifle and picked up his binoculars, scanning the woods thoughtfully. The only restriction placed on his contract was that Johann had to complete his mission before he was eliminated, and The Engineer had planned everything accordingly. He would be here waiting when Johann returned. He had n
o doubt that Johann would return here when he was finished, there would be no other way out. The roads to the north, west and east would be clogged and impassable. The only way for Johann to make a clean exit would be to come back here, across the river. That was, if he even left.
Dimitrius hadn't ruled out the possibility that Johann had planned his attack as a remotely activated strike. Not for the first time, he wished he had been able to determine the details of this attack that Johann had planned here in the States. But he hadn't been able to find out anything other than that it involved Three Mile Island.
Dimitrius raised his binoculars and looked in the direction of the river just beyond the trees. He couldn't see the Susquehanna from his vantage point over the house, but he knew it was less than a mile distant. Once you crossed the river, Three Mile Island was only a few miles up. He wondered absently how Johann planned to get past the security in the area. It was a daunting task, and one that he thought would have been impossible. But Johann had found a way in.
He directed the binoculars back to the woods surrounding the house, turning his attention back to the matter at hand. He had to decide what would be the best approach to his target and he scanned the woods before coming back to the clearing, pausing on the old barn thoughtfully.
He was still weighing his options when movement caught his attention a few moments later on the access road that led to the house from the main road. Dimitrius turned the binoculars and watched as a white utilities truck bounced its way toward the house. It barreled up the road, throwing up dust in its wake, and came to a stop behind the black sedan. He watched as four men piled out of the truck and walked up to the porch. The front door opened and Johann was framed briefly in the door before he moved out of the way to allow the men to enter the house. The door closed behind them and Dimitrius lowered his binoculars again thoughtfully. Four men plus Johann. Before he strung Ahmed up from the tree, it would have been five.