Third Hour

by Lisa Phillips

  “You are so chicken.”

  Talia didn’t know how to describe it, except that it was like the director had sucked on a lemon. “I’ll have you know I’ve faced down men a whole lot scarier than Mark Welvern.”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t have feelings for them.”

  “And Mason? Would you like me to bring up your feelings for him?”

  Talia shook her head. She didn’t want to wave her hand. She’d never fool Victoria by acting blasé about it. “I’m not talking about that.”

  “Then talk to me about this bank robber.”

  Talia pulled out her tablet and looked to see if the scans she was running had pulled any results. She forwarded three things to Alvarez. All were possible sightings across town of the man she’d gotten on surveillance. The images were in profile, or the person had a hood on so it was only the lower half of the face. Could be him.

  She felt sick at the idea that he was out there. “Hopefully Alvarez will pick him up soon.” She glanced at Victoria. “I’m relying on him to catch the guy.”

  “You think this bank robber is the guy who targeted you?”

  “I don’t want to think it is, but I have no proof either way.”

  Victoria waved her into a chair, and they both sat facing each other. They’d talked like this so many times. Lately Talia hadn’t been able to face the director. Yes, Victoria pulled her out of that pit. Calling it a pit was the nicest way she could describe it. She should just be thankful. Instead, it was like her head was still there.

  As though part of her mind hadn’t been rescued, and it was still in that basement. A nightmare she couldn’t get out of.

  Trapped.

  Talia shut her eyes and leaned her head back, but she’d glanced at the window before she did. All she could see behind her closed lids was the sight of Mason leading his daughter to the break room, with that bag of take-out cartons in her hands. The same way he’d led her. Protective. Caring.

  She didn’t want to be coddled. She’d been trying to be strong.

  Then one tall, gorgeous federal agent with a gun wandered up to her. Now, she was just as helpless as ever. No, actually she wasn’t helpless. He hadn’t treated her like she couldn’t do this by herself.

  He’d wanted to be there to help her. And she’d run off like a scared little rabbit.

  Now he was leaving. Would she even be back here tomorrow? Probably not. Talia most likely wouldn’t ever see him again. Nice to meet you. Good bye. She’d like to have said it had been a pleasure, but given the bank robbery and the murder, she wasn’t sure she could.

  Talia opened her eyes. She needed to ask Victoria a question. “Why did he kill Sarah Palmer?”

  Victoria’s attention never softened. She knew Talia couldn’t absorb that emotion on top of her own. That she’d break even knowing Victoria was suffering on her behalf, a simple case of empathy. They’d been through too much together. It was enough just to know her boss understood.

  Victoria kept her voice soft. “I don’t know, darling.” She was only fifteen or so years older than Talia, but that endearment was nice. Victoria had told her that she could count the people she cared about on one hand, and that Talia was one of them.

  “Is he going to come after me again?”

  “You think the team will allow that to happen?”

  “They aren’t here,” Talia pointed out.

  “Welvern and I came over as the ranking agents in their place. It holds more weight and means Stanton can’t co-opt us into assisting him.”

  “Because no one gets to tell you what to do?”

  Victoria flashed straight white teeth. “Not if I can help it.”

  Talia figured her plum lipstick had long since worn off. She’d actually put it on this morning after weeks of not bothering, because what was the point? And for what; nothing but a bank robbery. Though, the fact Mason had seen her looking her best made her feel at least a little better.

  Too bad about the rest.

  She shook off that line of thinking. “What about when the President calls?” Victoria might like to think no one told her what to do.

  “I try not to let that happen too often,” Victoria said. “Otherwise he gets upset when I remind him that it’s he who owes me a favor.”

  Talia actually laughed. It felt really good. Fatigue fell off her like scales. Thank You, Lord. “I worry about working for you.”

  Not just because of the reason the NSA had allowed her to be transferred to Victoria’s team.

  “That day will come,” Victoria said. Because she knew. “Right now we have to deal with what’s right in front of us.”

  Talia figured she was right. There would come a day, probably not far off, when she’d have to answer for some things. Victoria had promised to stand with her then, as she did now, but Talia could only pray that everything they’d built withstood that storm. Instead of it all crashing down.

  Talia nodded slowly. “This guy put a target on me.” She thought it through. “Maybe because you got me back, he’s decided to mess with me again. The money, the bank robbery. Could all be his plan to destroy my career.”

  “Because of his attempt to make it look like you took the money?”

  Talia nodded.

  “But you were easily able to reverse it.”

  She didn’t want to nod again. Her neck was starting to hurt. So Talia said, “Yes, and he’s too good to not be able to make something like that stick. He could have made it so damaging I’d have never been able to get out from under suspicion.”

  That wasn’t fear talking but the knowledge that this guy was exactly that good.

  Victoria had a thoughtful expression. “Instead, he chose the human element. He called you out by name, in front of the Secret Service.”

  “It wasn’t the hacker.” Talia sat up straight. “It was someone who wanted me to think it was him. Someone who wanted to do his work, maybe even impress him for whatever reason?” She had no way to prove it.

  Still, someone capable of hiding a server on the dark web, and then make it nearly impossible to hack, would never be that sloppy. Right? Her enemy had beaten her. This guy who’d transferred the money, not so much. Why hadn’t she seen that before now?

  She’d been so overwhelmed with Mason, and nearly getting kidnapped, and also Mason…she just hadn’t seen it.

  “We need to find that bank robber.”

  Talia nodded. “We really do.”

  . . .

  Mason thought about saying goodbye to Talia, but she seemed to be in a pretty deep discussion with her boss. There wasn’t much point in staying late tonight. Half the team had come in and loaded a paper plate of Chinese food, then left before clean up.

  Rayna caught the direction of his gaze. “Did she not like me?”

  Mason reached over and squeezed the back of her neck as they headed for the stairs. “That’s not it.”

  She twisted toward him, dipped her head and touched her forehead to his collarbone. When she leaned back, he said, “I spent time with her today, and it gave me the impression something happened to her. Something serious. Maybe even traumatic.”

  They took the stairwell down. It was their thing, jumping two at a time together in a race. The way they had when she’d been training in soccer. Then volleyball. Then basketball. Then volleyball again. The girl could not manage to pick one sport and actually stick with it.

  Halfway down to the basement level where the parking garage was, she glanced back to where he trailed her like an old man. Having a seventeen-year-old daughter certainly made him feel old.

  “Mom says PTSD can affect anyone, and then also all that stuff about how you never know what a person has been through.”

  “I hate when people pour my cereal for me,” he intoned, using his grandma’s voice. “They don’t know how much I want.”

  She finished it for him, equally as high pitched. “They don’t know what I’ve been through.”

  Mason grinned and she laughed. Not that th
ey laughed about people who had suffered serious trauma. That wouldn’t be cool. But with his ex-wife’s constant litany of people’s serious and heavy problems, he’d had to provide Rayna with some kind of outlet. A place where stress could bleed off, and she could maybe even laugh a little.

  So they’d laughed.

  Stella, not so much. It was like she wanted them to be serious all the time, when life was way too short for that. Way too short for Mason to live his life with a woman who insisted she knew how to “fix” him.

  Rayna hauled the door open, huffing like it weighed a thousand pounds. “I don’t think you could ever be with a simple woman.”

  Mason stopped before he stepped through it. “What does that mean?”

  “Kerri has this guy. He’s a lead guitarist for some band over in Breckenridge—his dad is in the Navy—but he wanted to rebel so he has these sleeves of tattoos, even though he’s only a junior.”

  Mason had to fight letting a reaction slip out. He’d taught himself to stay stoic. If he jumped on her with an overblown reaction every time she told him something, eventually she would stop confiding in him at all. So he said, “Uh-huh.” Like that was only mildly curious information.

  “She gave him the total runaround. Like, crazy town. And he’s still calling.” She frowned with her eyebrows, nose, and mouth. It was his favorite expression of hers. As though the world exasperated her even as much as it confused her. He felt the same way. “She said it’s like he gets off on the drama of it.”

  “You think I’m like that?”

  “No.” She let go of the door, and they headed for the car. “I think you’d get bored with someone simple. Or someone who has it all together. You need a woman you can…help. Someone who wants you to take care of her.”

  “As opposed to a woman who needs nothing from me?”

  “Because she’s fine.” Rayna laughed. They’d both heard him and her mother have this conversation before. “She’s not fine, by the way.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “I don’t know.” His teen sighed, like all teens sigh. So much weight of the world. “She has a new client. I tried to get on her computer and look at the file, but she changed the password.”

  “Uh…good.”

  Rayna waved a hand. “I have to know how to help mom.”

  “She’s fine, remember?” At least, he knew his ex-wife wanted to be fine. Maybe that was just what she told the world. Or she had a therapist of her own, a shrink for shrinks that she could talk to. Did they do that?

  Mason said, “Where’d you park?”

  She looked up at the row of cars in front of them, which included his six-year-old SUV with a hundred-fifty thousand miles on it. The brand new Camaro Rayna’s mother had bought her was… She turned around. “Uh.” Leaned around his back. “Over there.” She smiled, triumphant at being able to locate her car.

  He walked her to it. “Thank you for bringing dinner. Today was crazy.”

  “You’re going home now?”

  “Yes, Mom,” he said. “I’ll go right to sleep like a good boy.”

  “I’m gonna tell Gramma you said that.”

  “Don’t.” She wouldn’t, would she? He might be a grown man, but his mother would still threaten to get her spatula out and teach him some manners. “Please, don’t.”

  Rayna grinned her perfect little angel smile.

  Mason shook his head. “Go on now, trouble.”

  She kissed his cheek. “Goodnight, Daddy.”

  Rayna didn’t often call him that anymore, but once in a while it slipped out. He shifted the backpack with his laptop in it on his shoulder, and waited to watch her pull out before he headed to his car. She knew to wait for him by the exit, and he followed her home just to make sure she was okay. He thought about stopping in and saying hi to Stella, but didn’t. Instead he thought about Talia as he drove on to his townhouse.

  Was she really the kind of woman he needed in his life? Some women, as he well knew, wanted to be strong in a way that factored out a man. His opinion was that no one should be weak. People were people, and they each had hard—and soft—parts to who they were. He had a whole lot of respect for people who had faced awful situations and yet could still hold their heads high. Stand up. Keep going.

  He’d been raised hearing tales of his grandfather in the south. Strength had been bred into his genes in a way that made him take that mantle proudly. To live the life so many before him hadn’t been given the chance to.

  Talia understood that. She’d fought beside him today, even without a gun. Her skills were evident. But so was her fear. He’d seen her push through it, though. Stand for what was right, despite how she’d fled from meeting Rayna. He had a feeling that was because of what had happened to her.

  He had to admit, at least to himself, that he was disappointed. He’d have liked for them to meet. Maybe next time. He could find out what Talia’s panic had been about. He could make it good for her. Nonthreatening.

  The fact he even wanted to do that work was interesting. She was the first woman who’d piqued his interest in months. He didn’t want to waste the chance. Didn’t want to let it slip through his fingers. It might be something worthwhile—or did he just want someone to take care of, as Rayna had said, because he was lonely?

  Mason parked in his garage, walked down the drive to retrieve his mail, and headed inside. He dropped the mail on the counter and set his backpack on the floor.

  The blow came from behind him.

  Before he could register what had happened, his body dropped to the floor.

  Chapter 9

  Talia didn’t want to eat the crust of the pizza, but she’d skipped lunch so she finished the whole thing. Welvern had wolfed down three slices while Victoria stabbed a plastic fork into a chicken salad.

  “Sorry you guys didn’t get your steak.”

  Victoria glanced at Welvern. He said, “Don’t sweat it. We have time.”

  Talia wiped her hands on a napkin, wondering if he meant tonight’s dinner or a time where it was just him and Victoria. Maybe it was both.

  “There’s another slice.” Welvern nudged the corner of the pizza box.

  Talia blew out a breath. “I’m stuffed.” She didn’t want to get into all that. With the weight she’d lost in the past few weeks, the team insisted she finish every meal they shared. And then have dessert.

  Victoria eyed her over the salad. “That piece is mine.”

  Talia motioned to her. “There you go.” She was all for salad, but when there was pizza instead? No way. Apparently Victoria was in the mood for both.

  Welvern leaned back in his chair. “Are you guys okay?”

  “Why would we be?” Talia asked. “Today was weird.”

  Victoria nodded. “So weird.”

  “Okay, that doesn’t reassure me.” Welvern eyed Talia, then Victoria. “Both of you are acting bizarre. Is this about the hacker?”

  Talia glanced at Victoria. Had she told him everything? Her boss nodded in answer to the unspoken question. Talia said, “I may or may not have come face to face with my nightmare this morning. How I feel about that, I didn’t really get the chance to process, considering he then tried to kidnap me. Although, honestly, seeing him in the flesh—if it was him—felt a little anticlimactic. I mean, how does reality ever measure up with the monster in your head?”

  Welvern took a sip from his bottled water. “You want me to punch him in the face for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “After Alvarez finds him.”

  She nodded. “Although, if you could also get the US attorney to file so many charges he never gets out of prison for the rest of his life, that would also not go unappreciated.”

  “I prefer the punching.”

  Talia actually smiled, even though Mark wasn’t that kind of FBI agent. Mark did things by the book, but she also understood his feelings. He would be professional about this. Not just because Victoria would insist on it, or because his oath demanded it. They all w
anted this guy to go down.

  He’d caused so much chaos already, trafficking in a deadly weapon and funding scary medical research at a lab that had turned a Portland college into a war zone. Mark had been on the ground to clean up the aftermath of what had happened at that research college. He’d seen first hand the damage this guy had done.

  Mark had done his part, while Victoria had done hers—getting her alias name in a dark web sale. She’d been the one who purchased Talia back. The only way she’d been able to find her and get her home before she was lost forever to some psycho.

  “Hey.” Victoria touched Talia’s knee.

  Talia shut her eyes for a second and shook her head. “I’m okay.”

  She just had no desire to go home alone. Working wasn’t the problem. Going to church wasn’t the problem. Eating, and trying to get some—but not all—of the weight back on, was a challenge, but it wasn’t the problem.

  Closing her eyes and trying to sleep was.

  “He’s still messing with me.” Talia needed to say it out loud. Not that she’d thought after he tried to sell her, he’d then leave her alone. But she’d at least thought it would give her more than a few weeks of peace to figure out she was back with the team.

  Victoria said, “I called a CIA contact of mine and gave them everything we had. They’re looking into it.”

  More people knew what had happened to her? Talia pushed aside the embarrassment. They had to catch him. “Thanks.”

  “And the FBI is still running forensics on the…” Mark hesitated. “…place where they held you.”

  Talia started to tell him thanks as well, but her tablet chimed with an incoming video call. She tapped the screen. “Maybe it’s Alvarez with an update.”

  Welvern grabbed the pizza box and walked out with an armful of their trash.

  Considering Alvarez had a flip phone that did nothing but make calls and text—which he didn’t do—she wasn’t sure how that would work. But it was possible he’d found a place to make a video call.

  She said, “Hello?”

  The screen loaded. A living room, with Mason tied to a chair. Blood dripped from the side of his mouth and down his chin.