I sat up, and with as much dignity as a woman with messy hair and drool on her chin could have, rose to my feet and walked out of the cell.
"If you'll follow me this way, I'll take you to your handler and release you."
I said nothing, just stared at Grayson as he spoke. Now that he was my new BFF, I saw that he was a very attractive man. Thick, brown hair topped smiling, brown eyes. He was built like an athlete. If I didn't have Rex, well, maybe I'd have another option.
Holy crap! What was I thinking? I shook my head to clear it.
Maria stood waiting for me in the lobby. She smiled as I walked up to her and led me out the door. It was night. How long had I been in there?
We climbed into the van, which was filled with twelve little girls who stared at me without speaking. Evelyn frowned. Why was everyone so quiet?
"Okay, ladies," Maria said as she started the van. "Who wants dinner?"
Hands shot up, but the girls still didn't speak. What had Maria done to them? And did she have more of it? We were all silent as she drove to a historic tavern in Georgetown called the Wig and Pen. The maître d' showed us upstairs to a private room with several tables of four.
The filter came off, and the girls squealed, anxious to have tables to themselves. Maria murmured to Evelyn, who nodded, albeit with the usual frown fixed on her face. If she weren't careful, she was going to have frown lines. I watched as Mrs. Trout pulled a chair up to the Kaitlins' table. Which girl was she the mother of? Never mind—I'd find out when we got home.
Food came in family-style—Yankee pot roast, potatoes, baskets of bread, and corn on the cob. The girls dug in, and that was when I finally said something to Maria.
"Thanks for getting me out of there," I said quietly. I left out what took you so long. That didn't seem appropriate.
"It took forever. I called your father who called in a few favors at the Agency. I have no idea who he talked to, but they released you once whoever it was called. Sorry I can't tell you more than that."
I sighed. "It doesn't matter. I'm sure Dad will tell me later." Sure, I wanted to know what had happened, but it could wait.
Maria looked at me funny and then started to giggle. The giggle grew into laughter, and it wasn't long before tears were pouring down her face.
"It's not that funny," I said, a little wounded.
She nodded. "Oh yes, it is!" Maria held out her phone to show me a video of me wrestling Mr. Fancy Pants. "It's all over the net. It's viral!" She broke into fits of laughter again.
I took a bite of pot roast so I wouldn't stab her with my fork. That was the one good thing about getting out of espionage—everyone could film you and post it online. I got out before that became a problem to me.
Maria had done a great job of picking a restaurant. I had to hand it to her—the food was amazing. The meat just fell apart in my mouth, and the au jus was to die for. This might've been the best dinner we'd had so far on this trip.
I had just finished buttering an ear of corn when my cell went off. My buttery fingers fumbled the phone. Could it be Riley? Did Kelly have her baby?
"Merry!" Rex's incredibly handsome face filled the screen. "So, how was prison? Any different than it is back here?" He grinned and looked too adorable for me to be angry with him.
"You saw the video, I take it," I said, a little frostily.
"Everyone saw the video," Rex said. "One of my sergeants showed it to me. Then some of the guys blew up a still of you manhandling a national treasure and left it on my desk."
I rolled my eyes and groaned. "Great. I'm sure the whole town knows now."
He nodded. "They didn't say your name, but you might want to wear a baseball cap or something for a while when you get back." Again, he flashed me a mind-numbing grin.
"Well, thanks for calling and rubbing it in," I said.
"No problem." He laughed. "What are boyfriends for?"
My stomach did a little flip-flop when he said that. Even though we'd been dating a little while, I never tired of hearing it.
"I'll let you go. Looks like you have your hands full. Just wanted to tell you you're my favorite jailbird." And with that, he hung up.
I was just buttering a roll when my cell rang again. This time it was Kelly. If she wasn't pregnant and having a baby any day now, I probably wouldn't have answered.
"Hey, hero!" My friend said into the phone. "Saw some of your handiwork. Nice."
"I'll have you know," I said grumpily, "that I saved our girls from that monster. He had giant talons and a razor-sharp beak that—"
"I'm sure you did." Kelly laughed as she cut me off. "And I must say, I prefer this threat over some of the other threats the troop has faced in the last year."
"So are you having that baby or what?" I changed the subject.
"No. Not yet," My best friend's tone changed from laughter to fury. "If it doesn't make an appearance soon, I'm going to make it eat vegetables every day of its life."
"Well, since you're on the phone, I have some people who want to talk to you." Before she could protest, I handed the phone to the first table and announced that Kelly wanted to talk to each and every one of them.
"You're kind of evil," Maria said as she scooped up some potatoes.
"You have no idea…." I said with a wink before shoving more pot roast into my mouth.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
My phone was still making the rounds when the pie was served. Apple à la mode. The warm, flaky crust melted the ice cream in a heavenly puddle of goodness. I'd finished my dessert when Inez handed me back my phone. Kelly wasn't there. Probably too angry to talk to me further. Maybe I'd done her a solid. I'd heard that intensity of any kind could stimulate labor.
Maria pushed herself away from the table. "Man! That was terrific. It's almost like we're just here as tourists."
She didn't have to say it, but I understood her meaning. For one meal, we weren't talking about Riley or the yakuza. Of course, we were talking about one of the most humiliating moments in my life—but that was beside the point.
"No word from Riley?" Maria asked finally. I guess she had to bring him up at some point.
I shook my head. "I'm thinking maybe I'll turn this over to the Agency."
Her eyes went wide. "Really?" I couldn't tell if she liked this idea or not.
"Really. I'm supposed to be here for them." I nodded toward my troop. "And I don't work for the CIA anymore. I want to spend our last few days having fun with the girls. I don't want their memories to be about the fact I'm never around."
Maria grinned. "I don't think that will be first and foremost in their memories."
"Well, I did take down a significant threat for them. Who knows what might've happened if Mr. Fancy Pants had gotten hold of Hannah?"
We laughed for a moment, and it felt good. I hadn't seen Maria in so long. It was nice spending time with someone who had a past similar to mine. If she wanted to stay with us, we could have some fun before we left for Iowa.
"This won't affect your job, will it?" I asked. "If I turn what I know over to Langley?"
Maria looked thoughtful. "I don't think so. Remember, I'm on vacation. It's just a coincidence I was helping you when you got these weird phone calls."
"You're sure you are okay with it?" Hurting her career was not a risk I wanted to take.
"Yes, it'll be fine. Plus, I'll get to hang out with you and the kids. They really are fun." Maria smiled and looked at her watch. "Uh-oh. It's getting late. We need to head back to the hotel. We can call the Agency tomorrow."
As we corralled the girls into the van and headed to the hotel, I felt relieved. Letting this go and letting the professionals handle it would work. They had more resources and a lot less to lose. Yes, there was the pinch of guilt here and there for not helping Riley myself. But what did I really owe him?
Okay—so he helped me with a couple of cases recently. He didn't have to do that. But then, the CIA had a vested interest because it involved terrorists. I was a ci
vilian now. Running around after the yakuza wasn't something I wanted to do anymore.
Maria and I discussed the details once Evelyn and the girls were in bed. I'd call Riley's boss and explain what had been going on. And that would be that. They would find my old handler, and I'd finish up the last two days of our trip on a high note.
To be perfectly honest, my conversation with Hannah had hit a nerve. Her favorite thing about the trip was spending time with me. Except for the fact that they hadn't spent much time with me. I'd been brushing them off to chase nonexistent clues that had led nowhere.
In the past, when I'd been an agent, I'd worked with less. But now I shouldn't have had to. Unless the Japanese crime syndicate was going to send me the details on where Riley was and promise not to hurt my troop, I wasn't going any further with this. Riley was on his own.
Ouch. I didn't mean that. But come tomorrow, he'd have every resource the Agency had put toward finding him. I had nothing to go on. The only clues I'd found—the cell phone and the weird documents in Japanese—did nothing to further the case. I was a civilian and needed to start acting like it.
Maria said good night and went into her room. I was alone. After brushing my teeth and changing into jammies, I stretched out on the couch. For the first time on this trip, I drifted to sleep without any concerns.
Riley set me up in another safe house once I got back from my meeting with Chlotilde. I toyed with mentioning my meeting with her—partly because I'd have loved to see my handler's face when he found out he'd slept with an Interpol agent. For some reason, though, I decided not to. I wasn't going to spy for the German woman, no matter what she did.
It wasn't that unusual in our field to get propositioned like that. Every nation's spy agency tried to do the same thing. It was just part of the game. Turning people to your own advantage was like filling a sales quota.
I found the new apartment easily enough. It was in a crowded residential district, so having a cab let me off there wasn't going to tip anyone off. I waited until the cabbie was out of sight before entering the building. The elevator took me to the seventh floor, and I found the place easy enough. In minutes, I was already running a nice hot bath.
As I stepped into the steaming water, I thought about Chlotilde. If she wasn't actually interested in Riley, why sleep with him? Seemed a bit unnecessary. I could understand it a little. Riley could charm the panties off most women. It had even worked for me, briefly. But she could've exercised a little restraint.
I toyed with these thoughts until the water turned tepid, and I got out. Slipping into yoga pants and a sweatshirt, I settled on the generic couch and pulled out the packet the German had given me. Inside a blank envelope, I found ten thousand Euros and some newspaper clippings. Disgusted, I shoved the money back into the envelope. They couldn't buy me. That was the oldest trick in the book.
The newspaper clippings were from the last few days. The first article was about an investigation into Midori Ito's dealings with some sort of bank fraud. What did that have to do with me? The yakuza was on my radar here—that was true. But my main assignment dealt with tracing an arms dealer from Russia to Japan. I hadn't found anything that linked the yakuza to the Russians.
The second clipping was an editorial about the US Embassy in Tokyo. There was some concern that the Americans were getting involved in Japanese politics. There was some hinting that the British might be involved. I thought about overhearing Riley talking to someone with a British accent the other night. Again—nothing that related to me. If Riley was involved with the UK, that was his business. I wasn't supposed to get involved in anything outside my assignment.
I rubbed my eyes and read both articles again but could find nothing that had anything to do with me. Interpol was known to chase down international bank fraud. But what did they care if the Americans were schmoozing with Japanese politicians? And what else did they think we were doing here? Holding a chess tournament? Embassies were set up for interaction between nations.
This was ridiculous and obviously a case of mistaken identity. I shoved the papers back into the envelope with the money and got ready for bed. Tomorrow, I'd send the envelope by courier to Chlotilde, rejecting whatever the offer was. Seriously, these Interpol agents didn't do their homework, and I wasn't about to do it for them. I slipped into bed as the whole thing slipped from my mind.
I woke with a start. It was only one in the morning. The dream had kind of gotten to me, but I wasn't sure why. All of this had happened years ago. And it had been a nonevent as far as I'd been concerned. So why was I remembering it all now?
It didn't make sense, really. I'd messengered the envelope back to Chlotilde and never heard from her again. Oh sure, I kept an eye out for a while. You never knew when information you thought was useless could turn out to be something important. But it hadn't. Nothing ever came of it as far as I knew. I'd never mentioned the whole, weird thing to Riley and couldn't find a connection worth exploring.
This was probably my guilt coming out through dreams. And yet…why were the dreams coming in chronological order like this? I hadn't thought about this since I'd left Japan. What was the point of thinking about it now?
It had to be the fact that I was dealing with Riley and the yakuza. My dreams reflected the only other time those two things were even remotely together. That had to be it.
My assignment in Japan had hit a dead end. The CIA had decided that there was no connection in the case, and a few weeks later, I'd been transferred to another country and another case. I'd thought about Chlotilde. She'd never contacted me after that. I remembered thinking at the time that maybe she had just been trying to get back at Riley for seducing her. And I'd never thought of it again before now.
I fell back asleep after tossing these thoughts around for a few more minutes. I'd learned to let go of a case that went nowhere. It happened a lot more than you might have thought. Sometimes a case turned out not to be a case after all. You dropped it and moved on. And that's what I was going to do.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The girls woke me up the next morning, jumping around like the little balls of energy they were. More than one showed me the video of me wrestling the vulture to the ground. It always ended with them laughing hysterically and me wishing I knew a black-hat hacker who could remove it from YouTube.
We decided to take them to a pancake restaurant for breakfast, and they were beyond excited. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been so excited about breakfast. I couldn't help but smile as they danced around us, singing songs they made up about waffles—Mr. Fancy Pants suddenly forgotten. This time, I was going to enjoy a meal with them instead of worrying about my old boss or anything else.
Maria and Evelyn emerged from their room, both smiling. Well, I think Evelyn was smiling. It was hard to tell. It might have been more like a disgruntled smirk. But I didn't care. We only had two days left in this city, and dammit, we were going to enjoy them.
"When are you going to call it in?" Maria murmured as we climbed into the van.
"After breakfast," I answered. No point in calling out the troops on an empty stomach. That was never a good idea. Breakfast was the most important meal of the day, and they weren't kidding. Some of the biggest mistakes in judgment I ever made were when I was hungry. In fact, that should be in the training. Maybe I'd throw that at them after I handed Riley's case over.
The waitresses were fun. They teased the girls and brought them crayons and paper to color with. The girls were having a great time, and for once, the Kaitlins mixed it up and didn't sit together. Now that was huge.
"What's on the agenda today?" Evelyn startled me by speaking. She was sitting with Maria and me for the first time on this trip. It was kind of weird.
"The Spy Museum," I said with a wink to Maria.
Maria shot me a look. "Seriously? The Spy Museum?"
I shrugged. "Why not? I've wanted to check it out since it opened. You can't tell me you aren't curious."
"Yeah,
sure. I guess I was afraid it'd be corny," she said. "But what the hell? Let's go."
The girls erupted into screams when we told them. And the screaming didn't abate until we pulled up and parked. Have you ever been in a vehicle with a bunch of squealing little girls? I thought we should have considered weaponizing them.
After we paid admission and dragged the girls out of the gift shop, we headed in. I was getting excited. It was the one place in DC I'd never been to, and I couldn't wait to see what they had. I'd just have to be careful and not tip my hand to the girls. They didn't know I'd been a spy, and I didn't want that to change.
The first thing we had to do was go into a room with placards on the walls every foot or so. We were told to line up in front of the cards and memorize what was on them. That would be our cover story and assignment.
"Who designed this?" I asked with a giggle.
Maria shushed me. "I'm trying to memorize my cover."
I looked at mine. Okay, I'd play. Usually I did this for real, so how hard could it be? My card said that I was a sixty-five-year-old male Italian fishmonger who was in the US visiting his son who lived in Alexandria, Virginia.
Damn. I'd never been to Italy. I would've loved an assignment there but never got one. It would've been a far cushier job than the one I had in Bulgaria. That was for sure. You really didn't appreciate electricity and fresh water until you didn't have it.
And an old man who sold fish? I didn't even like fish. Oooh, maybe I could build that in—I sold fish because I didn't like it and therefore was not likely to "get high on my own supply!" I had a good memory but still went over and over the placard to burn Guiseppe Tutti's life into my head. I'd never had to be a different age, let alone sex, before. This was going to be interesting.
"Time's up!" A woman in a docent uniform announced. She told us that we had to check in on computers throughout the exhibit for assignments and leads. At the end of our tour, we'd be tested by a computer program to see if we'd survived. I was grinning like an idiot. This would be so easy. How cool was it that I got to pretend to be something I already was?
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