Undercover with the Hottie (Investigating the Hottie)

by Alexander, Juli

  “Got it.” I took one long look at the lens on the side of the trash can. I willed my gag reflex to remain calm, and I plucked the lens off and placed it in my mouth. I tossed the mag lite in the bag, whipped out my phone, and made my run for it.

  Will waited at the door to the Women's Locker room. He played his part perfectly. We didn't do more than nod at the guy behind the desk on our way out.

  The chill slapped us in the face as we exited the building. A black SUV screeched to a stop at the curb. The passenger window was down and we could see Nic behind the wheel. I practically pulled the door of its hinges with the adrenaline racing through me, and then I climbed in and slammed the door. Will dove into the back seat, and Nic screeched off.

  “We'll go to the NYC Headquarters,” he said. “They'll have everything we need, and our covers are blown by now anyway.”

  I carefully removed the lens from my tongue. “Do you really think we might get something we can use?”

  “Yes,” he said. Then he glanced over his shoulder. “Will, call your grandmother. Tell her you're both safe.”

  We walked into the building and went to the seventh floor. Retinal scanners confirmed our identities before we were allowed to pass into the Agency's space. A group of five people in lab coats greeted us and held out a petri dish. I opened my hand to drop in the lens, but it was stuck to my hand. I automatically started to shake my hand to dislodge it, and the group yelled for me to stop. I froze, terrified that I'd hurt the only link we had to my aunt. One of the women squirted the lens with a liquid and pulled it off gently with her gloved fingers. She set it in the dish, and the five of them rushed away with the urgency and efficiency of an organ transplant team.

  Nic ushered us down a hall and into a large open room where Grandma stood in front of one of a line of desk-top computers. Three men in business suits stood with her. Grandma was watching the team that had taken the lens from me. They stood around a large counter ten feet away. They had a computer as well and several strange devices hooked to it.

  We walked over to Grandma, who immediately hugged Will and then me. She actually sniffled once before releasing me. Then she said, “They could get the lens back online any second.” She turned back to her computer.

  “Will,” Nic said, “meet my division director, Section Chief Jobson.”

  Will shook hands with the dark-haired tall man who had an air of authority about him.

  Then, Nic introduced me, and I shook his hand as well.

  Section Chief Jobson said, “I can't tell you how impressed we are with the two of you. I thank you and your country thanks you.” He paused for us to absorb his compliment. “We will recover your aunt. Her safe return is our top priority.”

  I nodded, not sure what to say.

  “Agents Pasvantis and Garcia, this is Will Middleton and Amanda Peterson.”

  Each of them shook our hands, telling us they had heard so many good things about us.

  “Did anything come in while I was in the field?” Nic asked.

  “Sorry, Nic,” Agent Garcia said. “Nothing yet.”

  Nic frowned and then quickly covered with a neutral expression. He was trying to hide his worry from us, but I knew things were not good.

  There was a murmur of excitement from the lab coat team, and when I turned they were giving Grandma a thumbs up. She started typing frantically on the keyboard. I moved over to stand behind her and watched the screen. I had no idea what she was doing. She was typing all kinds of strings of code, and her fingers were flying. Her fingers stilled and I held my breath. Come on, please work. Please let the lens give us something to go on.

  We waited until I had to finally sneak a breath of air.

  Then a bunch of tiny images appeared on the screen.

  Will and I leaned forward. Grandma clicked on the top left image. “The lens continued to function for two hours after she removed it. It didn't transmit, but it did take photos. Let me go back to the initial images.” A screen dropped out of the ceiling near the wall, and suddenly we were seeing the images on the big screen as Grandma scrolled through them. Sink, water, blur, more blur, part of Christie's arm. Then the lens is righted and we see Christie's face as she presses it onto the trashcan.

  Behind her, over her shoulder, we can see an arm, clad in a black shirt.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Grandma scrolled again and again and we watched the attacker come into view. Christie ducked just as he faced the lens, giving us a couple of perfect shots of his face. Then she started to fight. If Christie weren't missing, I would have thought some of the fight images were worth framing. She had great moves. But the tide turned, and we saw that she was losing ground. As we continued to scroll through the images, we saw another figure, this one in workout gear, join the fight. The latecomer was a woman in a jog bra and Lycra tights. She didn't appear to be very tall, but she was fairly muscular. We watched the attacker subdue Christie with the woman's help. My aunt stared wide eyed at the camera, the man's hand over her mouth, his hairy fingers pressed up against her nose.

  Grandma stopped the scrolling and clicked on the images of the man's face. “I'm sending these to Lee's team for identification.” Then she returned to the images, letting them scroll as a slide show so that we could take a quick look at each image on the large screen before it moved on to the next. “I'm not sure Amanda should see this,” she said, as the woman's arm came around Christie's neck, pressing into her throat. Christie slipped into unconsciousness and slumped down out of the picture.

  As we watched, the man tossed the limp Christie over his shoulder and carried her away, her head and arms hanging down his back and bobbing around with his movements.

  My stomach cramped.

  “We never saw the woman's face?” Nic asked.

  “No, but I'll send this over to Guttuso's team. They can search the reflective surfaces to see if we caught her reflection.” She typed, clicked a couple of times, and then went back to the images.

  Nic checked his phone and then went to another computer about five feet down the counter and logged on. “We sent a team in to secure the gym as soon as we got you out. They're sending the employee names and information now. The gym has a thousand members, but they are sending over the information on those who checked in today. They're working on questioning those people immediately. The staff person at the desk when you were there didn't go in until one, so we are tracking down the employee who worked the previous shift. We're lucky that this is an expensive gym that uses photo IDs for members, otherwise we'd only have outdated driver's license pictures and whatever we could find on social media.” He turned to the Section Chief. “We've got a team of analysts on it already. So far, the man who attacked Christie in the locker room has not been identified among any of the members or gym staff.”

  On one hand, I knew that they were working hard to get my aunt back. Lots of smart, well trained people were working very hard. On the other, my aunt was missing and we didn't know what was happening to her.

  “Will and Amanda,” Nic said. “Set up at that computer.” He pointed across the room to a computer station with two chairs. “I want you to go through the rest of the images from the lens and see if anything else unusual happens in that locker room in the next few hours. Go through every image. Then go through them again. If you find anything, no matter how insignificant it seems, call me over to confer. When you've gone through all the images from after she leaves the locker room, start from the beginning. Actually, start from the images where she gets out of my car down the street from the gym. Go slowly and look for anything we didn't the first time. We know that they disabled her subcutaneous tracking device before removing her from the locker room.”

  “It's after eight,” I said to Will as we scrolled through the images. “She was taken at eleven forty three.”

  “We are going to find her, Amanda.”

  “How did they know who she was?” I asked him. “How did they know how to disable her tracking device?�
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  “It's weird, isn't it?” Will turned his chair toward me. “I mean Nic has been out poking around. It would make more sense if somebody figured out he was spying on them. But Christie has been at the loft most of the time. I wouldn't think she was as exposed.”

  “So maybe they saw her with Nic before she went in to the gym. Or maybe somebody tipped them off, somebody in the Agency, or somebody from that Avaritia Militia group.”

  “I think those are the most likely answers.” He nodded. “Unless they traced her through us. If we attracted negative attention and they identified her as our 'mother.'”

  “How do they disable a device like that anyway?”

  “I don't know. Should I go ask Grandma?”

  I nodded. “Find out. I'll keep looking through these. We can multitask.”

  He came back a few minutes later. “She says they had to have targeted the tiny device with radiation to disable it. She said that there are quite a few different kinds of these devices. Almost all can be disabled with electricity. She thinks it means something that they didn't just use electricity on the device.” He looked away from me. “She said that the amount of electrical current necessary could have caused her to lose bladder control so if they knew how to disable it another way, it made sense to choose that instead.”

  I wanted desperately to think that this was a sign of their humanity, but I knew it wasn't. They didn't care about Christie, and they could well be hurting her now. I took a slow, deep breath. “Then we were probably right. It may be somebody from GASI.”

  “They have a team working from that angle as well.” He reached out and grabbed my left hand, holding it in his right.

  “Well,” I said, faking a small smile, “let's get through these pictures.” I turned back to the screen and started sliding through them with my right hand.

  The noise level in the room increased with an excited hum of conversation. I turned to Grandma, and she motioned us over. We scrambled to her workstation.

  “We've identified the male attacker,” she said. She pulled his picture up on the large screen, and next to it, another photo of the same man.

  “Who is he?” I asked. I knew how important the answer was. Once we knew who had her and what their associations revealed, we'd know how much danger Christie was in.

  “He's a mercenary. We haven't encountered him on American soil before. He has a reputation in Europe. We were able to identify him with assistance from Interpol. They haven't released his likeness to us in the past. They cooperated when we admitted that the life... that an agent is involved.”

  The life of an agent. She meant that Christie's life was in danger.

  “H-he doesn't have ties to this country?” I asked.

  “We have a short list of people he would be most likely to work for. None of the top five make sense in light of Christie's abduction. Now that we have his name, we can find him. We will find him. And we will bring Christie home.”

  A mercenary with no connections to the US or to groups operating in the US. What was he doing? Who was he working for? And why didn't GASI know more? Weren't they an intelligence Agency? Weren't they supposed to know about... everything. Frustration and rage warred with grief and exhaustion as I struggled to get control of myself. Pull yourself together, Amanda.

  “We have a second set of teams coming in, with fresh eyes, and untapped energy,” Nic said. “We need you two to go back to the loft.”

  Will and I started to protest, but Nic held up a hand. “No arguments. Brenda will be there by one a.m. I'll catch catnaps here. We need you to be at the loft in case Christie is able to reach out somehow. We also need you to sleep. You will be of more use to Christie fresh. Also, you may realize something about the images or the abduction that you didn't originally if your minds have time to process the information. We will have you working again by nine a.m. I promise. If anything happens, I will call you immediately. You won't miss anything. You have my word.”

  “Nic,” I said, “please. Please let us stay.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder. “Do as I ask, Amanda. We will almost certainly have the information we need to stage a rescue by tomorrow morning. We aren't likely to acquire it tonight. Go get some rest.”

  “Who's driving us?” Will took me by the hand and led me to the agent Nic specified.

  We both climbed in to the back seat of the black SUV, and Will put his arms around me. I rested my head on his chest and soaked up the comfort he offered.

  Once we were safe and sound inside the loft, Will tried to take care of me. He turned on all the lights so it wouldn't seem so empty. Then he started making sandwiches while I lay on the couch staring at the ceiling.

  He came over with a sandwich on a plate with apple wedges and a glass of orange juice. I scooted over, and he sat beside me. “You need to eat.”

  “You don't have to take care of me, Will. I'm a big girl.”

  He looked down at me with a sad smile. “If they had Grandma, you wouldn't make me a sandwich?”

  “No,” I lied.

  “You wouldn't try to make me feel better?”

  “No.” I gave him a pouty face.

  He reached out and ran his thumb over my bottom lip. “Eat something please.”

  “Let me up.” I surrendered. “Let me sit so I can eat.”

  He laughed. “How rude.” He stood and let me swing my legs to the floor so I could sit up.

  Then he handed me my plate and drink. “I'm going to get mine. Be right back.”

  He had to reassure me just to walk fifteen feet across the room. “I think I'll be okay by myself for the three minutes you will be over there.”

  After we ate, he covered me with the afghan from the corner of the couch. The he lay down on the couch beside me. With his arm around my waist, I finally relaxed. I couldn't help Christie tonight. She would want me to sleep.

  That was my last conscious thought until I woke to daylight streaming in through the skylights. First I saw Will asleep beside me. Then Grandma peered at me from above where she bent over us on the couch. “Good morning,” she said with full volume, startling Will out of his sleep.

  “Grandma!” My brain raced to shed the sluggish aftereffects of sleep. “When did you get here? What's happening? Do we know anything?”

  “Grandma!” Will exclaimed, scrambling off the couch and falling to the floor at her feet.

  “Don't worry, Will. I know you two fell asleep on the couch. I came in at one and didn't have the heart to wake you. So I slept on the other couch.”

  “I'm sorry,” he said as he stood up.

  “I'm sorry too,” I added. “But do we know anything?”

  “We have managed to pinpoint his entry into the country two days ago. We tracked his movements to Washington, DC and then here. We are gaining on him, Amanda. Give our people a little more time, and we will get him.”

  For the first time since I'd learned of my aunt's disappearance, I felt true hope. We were going to find her. Everything was going to be okay.

  “If you guys want to grab some hot showers, I'll order breakfast from the diner down the street.”

  “A diner will deliver?” Will asked.

  “They say New York is where dreams come true,” she said with a grin. “I guess somebody's dream was for hot breakfast to be delivered to your door.”

  “I thank them,” Will said. “And no offense to your cooking.”

  “None taken,” she said. “Now get ready. We'll get back to Headquarters when you two are ready.”

  I showered quickly and didn't bother with my hair. The warm water helped with the tension in my shoulders, and when I climbed out, I actually felt human again.

  I dressed in jeans and a top. Then I pulled on the one hoodie in my closet for warmth and comfort. I took a moment to text Sidney, Leah, and Logan that we hoped to see them later today. We had only told them that we wouldn't be available for the near future. They answered almost immediately with enthusiastic messages that they couldn'
t wait. I hoped that we'd have Christie back today, but if we did, I wasn't leaving her side.

  When I opened the bedroom door, the smell of bacon greeted me.

  “I ordered omelets, Amanda. I also got hash browns, bacon, and bagels.”

  “Sounds terrific.” I fixed my plate and then decided a bagel would have to work. “I miss biscuits,” I admitted. “They don't embrace biscuits in the north.”

  “I love biscuits,” Will said.

  I ate a bite of the omelet and then said, “I wonder where the line is. The biscuit line. Is it in Virginia, or along the Tennessee-Kentucky border.”

  “We could look it up,” Grandma suggested.

  “I can live without knowing.” I chomped on some crispy bacon.

  We finished eating and took another SUV to Headquarters. Nic had circles under his eyes. He was sucking down some Starbucks coffee. “Hey, guys. You get some sleep?”

  “We did,” I said. “Did you?”

  He did the hand through his hair thing that he does when he's stressed. “Not much.”

  Fifteen minutes later the fluorescent lights had begun to fray my nerves. The team was in the middle of something that could be our big break in tracking the attacker.

  Nic had an earpiece and was hearing the blow by blow, but we were left out in the cold.

  I glanced at Will. “If we're going to keep working with GASI, things are going to have to change. We need to be treated as equals and not excluded from everything.”

  “You're right,” he said. “They think we are toys. They take us out when they want to play with us and then they try to put us back in the toy chest.”

  “I am not a toy.”

  He winked. “If you were, you'd be Kickbutt Spy Girl, an action hero.”

  “Aww. That is the sweetest thing anybody's ever said to me.”