[The Exit 01.0] Next Exit, Three Miles

by CW Browning

  “Well, I won't argue with that,” Damon murmured with a cough.

  Alina shot him a glare.

  “Don't encourage her,” she retorted. She drank some tea, then set the mug down. “Seriously, Angie, why were you following me?”

  “I told you the other day,” Angela replied calmly. “I feel left out. I think you and Steph and Damon are working together, and no one is asking me for any help.”

  “Stephanie gave me a whole report on money-laundering from you,” Damon pointed out.

  Angela shrugged and waved her hand.

  “So what?” she asked. “You guys are doing all this exciting stuff.”

  Alina couldn't hold back her snort.

  “What exciting stuff?” she demanded.

  “That's what I was trying to find out,” Angie retorted patiently. She sounded as if she was explaining something to a child. Alina blinked. She felt a little like she was on a tilt-a-whirl.

  “Let me get this straight.” Alina looked at Angela. “You're following me because you think you might miss something exciting?”

  Damon buried his face in his coffee mug again.

  “Well, essentially, yes, I suppose so,” Angela agreed. “Although, it was more of an attempt to find out what you're doing back and why you came back when you did.”

  There was a short silence as Alina stared at her old friend.

  “And did you discover anything?” she finally asked after she got her voice back.

  “Only that you drive really far too fast for safety,” Angela replied. She set her mug down and pointed to Alina. “Really, I have no idea what you're thinking. If anything happened, you could never control that man's car of yours.”

  Alina couldn't bring herself to look at Damon. She could tell by the way that he had his head buried in his coffee mug that he was enjoying this conversation way too much.

  “I drive too fast?” Alina repeated, her eye twitching.

  Damon got up suddenly and carried his cup over to the espresso machine. A minute later, beans started grinding loudly.

  “Yes.” Angela glanced past Alina at Damon. “And you don't get out much. You really need to get out more.”

  “I'll take that under advisement.” Alina drained her tea cup and suddenly wished it was something stronger. “Anything else?”

  “Nope, that's about all I discovered so far,” Angela announced cheerfully. “But I'm optimistic.”

  “NO!”

  The word shot out in unison from both Damon and Alina. Alina glanced at him and he turned back to watch the coffee stream into his mug. Angela raised her eyebrow, looking from one to the other again.

  “Excuse me?” she repeated.

  “No,” Alina repeated. “You're going to stop following me.”

  Angela looked at her.

  “Why?” she asked. Alina stared at her silently. “Lina, you have to give me a reason. I want to know what's going on. If following you and Stephanie is the only way I'll find out, then I'm prepared to do it.”

  Alina pursed her lips, then sighed.

  “It's not safe,” she said quietly.

  Damon turned from the coffeemaker with his full mug of coffee and leaned back against the counter. He sipped the coffee and watched the two women facing off over the bar.

  “Because of the investigation?” Angie asked.

  “No. Because of...because of what I do,” Alina said slowly.

  “Your consulting,” Angie stated, pushing her mug away.

  “Yes.” Alina raised her eyes to Angie's and, in that instant, Angela peaked past the mask and glimpsed the old Lina that she had always known. “Just...trust me.”

  “Ok,” Angela agreed instantly.

  The mask slid back into place and Alina nodded.

  “Ok?” she repeated.

  Angela laughed.

  “Ok.” She glanced past Alina to Damon. He looked confused. “I'll leave you two to work out your tensions in peace, then. I strongly suggest sandalwood candles,” Angie added, standing up and picking up her purse.

  Alina repressed the sudden urge to scream.

  “Oh, we will,” Damon assured Angela cheerfully. “Alina is just being stubborn.”

  “You know, over-confidence is never a good thing,” Alina shot over her shoulder.

  Angela laughed.

  “I have a good feeling about you two,” she said, waving to Damon as she turned away to head down the hall.

  Alina followed her, gritting her teeth at the chuckle she heard coming from the vicinity of the coffeemaker.

  “I'm glad one of us does,” she muttered.

  Angela stopped at the front door and shook her head at Alina.

  “I don't know what you're waiting for,” she said bluntly. “Men like that don't grow on trees.”

  Alina just looked at her, then reached over to open the door. She stood to the side expectantly and Angela laughed.

  “Ok, ok. I'll drop it.” She stepped outside into the afternoon sun. Alina followed her out the door and closed it behind her. Angela looked at her in surprise. “Where are you going?”

  “I'm walking you to your car,” Alina answered. She grinned when Angela stared at her. “I'm curious to see where you hid it,” she lied smoothly.

  Angela laughed and they stepped off the front step together.

  “It is a good hiding place,” she said, blissfully unaware of any reason for ulterior motives on her old friend's part.

  When Alina returned to the house, Damon was standing on the deck, staring out over the back lawn. She stepped through the sliding doors and joined him at the banister. She had traded her tea mug for a water bottle and she handed a second one to Damon. They stood in silence for a moment, her shoulder brushing his arm. She lifted her water bottle to her lips, her eyes moving over the back yard while her mind raced.

  There was another player. The question was whose team was he on? Was he one of Johann's men? Was he from Washington? Was he one of Solitto's goons? And why had Damon almost seemed like he was expecting it?

  Alina rested the water bottle on the banister. The late afternoon sun had shifted to the front of the house, casting long shadows over the back. The light flickered over the lawn, and she lifted her gaze to stare further into the trees. Pieces of the puzzle were starting to emerge in her mind but she wasn't sure where to put them. One thing was clear: everything kept coming back to Johann. Now that she had found him, she just had to finish the job and then everything else would fall into place.

  “When are you going to Johann's?” Damon asked, uncannily addressing her thoughts.

  “Tonight.” Alina picked up her water bottle and moved away to sit on one of the Adirondack chairs.

  Damon turned and leaned on the banister, watching her with hooded eyes.

  “And our visitor?” he asked.

  “One thing at a time,” Alina answered, smiling faintly.

  Damon seemed to be on the verge of saying something when a beep came from his jeans pocket and he reached into it to pull out a blackberry. Alina looked back over the lawn as he turned away to answer the phone. She caught sight of movement in the trees and watched as a doe came into view. The head turned and big brown eyes seemed to stare straight at Alina across the distance. Alina stared back, allowing the peace of the evening to fill her mind. After a moment, the doe turned and continued steadily on her way. Alina raised up her legs to sit crossed-legged on the chair, setting the water bottle on the wide arm. She rested her hands on her knees, cleared her mind of thought, and closed her eyes, breathing deeply. Tonight she would finish what she had started two years ago.

  She had failed then.

  She wouldn't fail tonight.

  Cairo had been crowded two years ago when she arrived. It was always crowded in the smelly, over-populated city, but it had seemed to Alina to be even more so then. She followed Johann there, ignoring all the intel of his so-called Mossavid connection and ignoring her own conclusions regarding the cell. She had ignored the duplicity of her gover
nment and focused on her job. They never asked questions. They just did their job. That was what they were paid to do, and that was what Alina had done. Johann was no different.

  At least, she hadn't thought he was any different at the time. As it turned out, he had ended up changing the course of her life that morning.

  She found him in the city easily enough. He had been in a hotel and hadn't seemed overly concerned with keeping his movements secret. His security detail was extensive and they had been efficient. She was unable to attempt a sniper shot, which is what she would have preferred. Viper was forced to enter the hotel and improvise.

  Now, in her minds eyes, she saw it as clearly as if it had just happened.

  The lobby only had a few people scattered about, mainly tourists waiting for their bus and the occasional guest shuffling out of the dining room. It was mid-morning and the sun filtered through the windows in the lobby, casting bright long triangles of light over the worn tile floor. Alina was in the shadows, beneath a wide marble staircase leading to the upper levels, dressed in the long flowing burka of a local woman. The bottom half of her face was covered and the head-covering cast enough shadow over her upper-face as to make identification impossible. The elevator was nearby, and it dinged open just as Johann exited the meeting room where he had been closeted for almost half an hour. Three children rushed past Viper as she moved forward, out of the shadows.

  It was the children who had saved Johann's life that day.

  He had been coming out the meeting room, his head turned, speaking to someone right behind him. In her mind's eye, Viper clearly saw the Carotid artery, her target, in his neck as he turned his head. She moved with speed which threw his security detail off-guard. Her hand came up, the .45 ready to fire mid-stride. She knew exactly how many men she had to get through to make it to the side door that would be her exit. She had already averaged her likely success and injury rate. She knew how many clips she would use and how quickly she would have to empty them.

  Viper was striking.

  And then the children had swarmed around Johann's legs instead of continuing through the lobby.

  Everything happened very quickly after that. Alina immediately lowered her firing arm, but it was too late. One of the guards and one of the children had already seen it. Chaos ensued instantly. An alarm was shouted, Johann was thrown to the floor and covered by the man closest to him, and Alina spun away as multiple members of his entourage drew weapons.

  But not before recognizing the western face of the man Johann had been speaking to as he exited the room.

  Within seconds, the children had been herded into the room with him and the door closed. The soft click of the latch as the door closed heralded the deafening eruption of gunfire. The lobby cleared out instantly and Viper was forced toward the back of the hotel. The following few minutes were nothing but a blur to her. She had taken one bullet through her outer thigh on her retreat, but managed to stop the damage there. By the time she had vaulted out the back of the hotel and into the alleyway, four out of seven of Johann's security detail were dead.

  But the man she had come for was left very much alive.

  Damon pressed the end button on his phone and turned back to Alina. She was sitting in her chair crossed-legged, eyes closed, hands facing upward on her knees. Her breathing was deep and Damon saw with one glance that she was far away. He leaned on the banister and watched her for a moment. Her dark hair rested on her straight shoulders and her long eyelashes were dark against her cheeks. Damon knew that Viper's whole body was a weapon. Yet, to look at her now, no one would ever guess it. She appeared relaxed and supple, at peace with the world. He thought back to when they first met in boot camp. She had been almost bewildered back then. But she had a belly full of anger and their drill sergeant had seen that right off. He pushed Alina harder than the rest of the women in the unit, and she excelled beyond even the men. By the end of the three-month period, she had broken almost every record in the camp. The two that she had not been able to beat were the two that Damon broke himself.

  Damon smiled to himself now. They had clicked as soon as they met in the mess hall and their friendship very quickly blossomed into a friendly rivalry. It hadn't taken that same drill sergeant two blinks of an eye to catch on to that, and he did everything he could to work them against each other. The result had been that Damon had never physically worked harder in his life. By the time they were getting ready to graduate, they had developed such a close relationship that, he remembered, everyone was fully expecting them to request the same orders so that they could continue their friendship. Their relationship had been built on respect and friendly rivalry from the very beginning. There had never been anything more, although many of their fellow sailors always thought differently. At graduation, they stood together simply as friends and sailors.

  After graduation, they headed out to begin their military careers. After a year, he went into the SEALs and he heard that she had migrated into Military Intelligence. He lost track of her then, and it was a few years before he saw her again. They had both been in the classified training facility of the CIA for over two weeks before they finally saw each other in the hallway. Damon still remembered the look on her face. She stared at him, nonplussed, for a very brief minute before cursing loudly and hugging him at the same time. She informed him that she was done competing with him. The last time had nearly killed her. Damon had agreed whole-heartedly.

  And so their friendship had continued, grown, and trust was added to the mix. Through the years, as they had run into each other unexpectedly in random parts of the world, it had always been as if no time had passed, and Damon learned not to question it. If he ever wondered why they kept running into each other, he had learned not to question that as well.

  “What are you thinking?” Alina's voice cut into his thoughts.

  He grinned. Her eyes were still closed, but the tension of awareness was back in her body.

  “Just thinking back over the years,” Damon answered.

  Alina opened her eyes and looked at him. They were laughing.

  “You make it sound as if we're eighty,” she said, lifting her arms above her head and stretching.

  Damon laughed.

  “We may as well be, with everything that has happened,” he retorted, straightening away from the banister and moving toward her.

  She shrugged and lowered her arms, disentangling her legs and lowering them to the deck.

  “That's true,” Alina admitted, looking up at him. She reached out and took the hand he held out to her, allowing herself to be pulled up out of the chair. The touch of his hand was warm and comfortable, sending a shiver of awareness up her arm. But when her eyes met his, she saw that the laugh had gone out of them. “What's wrong?” she asked.

  “That was Stephanie on the phone,” Damon told her after the briefest of hesitations. He released her hand. “They have another body.”

  Alina felt her stomach lurch in an unfamiliar, sinking feeling. She knew what he was going to say before he even said it.

  “They think it's Johann,” Damon told her.

  Chapter Ten

  Damon rolled to a stop near the curb and surveyed the scene before him. The quiet residential street in Cherry Hill was hard to miss, even though it looked just like all the other quiet residential streets in this development. Poplar Lane was closed off and local police had set up the perimeter, their cars with flashing lights blocking all traffic from entering. As Damon watched, two of the police cars slowly pulled out of the way to allow a coroner’s van to roll through the makeshift barricade. He took the opportunity afforded by the temporary breach in the blockade to roll his Jeep up behind it and hold his ID out the window.

  “Mr. Peterson. Miss. Walker is expecting me,” he said shortly to one of the officers.

  The young policeman took his ID and walked away from the Jeep to speak into the mouthpiece attached to his collar. Behind the perimeter, the coroners van rolled slowly down the street t
o come to a stop outside the house from Vipers' surveillance video. Spotlights were set up all around the house. A few neighbors were settled on their porches, watching the activity as people in suits and black windbreakers scurried around importantly. The entire scene was one of quietly controlled and efficient chaos.

  Somewhere, behind it all, Viper was lurking. They had taken separate cars from her house and Damon was glad for that. Hot anger had been palpable after he told her the news, her legendary control slipping, and Hawk didn't want to be anywhere near her until she calmed down. She agreed that he should go meet Stephanie at the scene while she watched from a distance. Where, exactly, that distance was, he had no idea. But Viper had already pulled the Camaro out of the garage and disappeared down the drive before he thought to ask.

  Damon caught sight of Stephanie as she stepped out of the front door, stripping off latex gloves as she spoke to someone over her shoulder. A uniform called something to her and she looked up and right at Damon. She waved him forward impatiently. Damon took his foot off the break and rolled forward, holding his hand out for his ID as he rolled past the uniform who held it out to him, waving him forward importantly.

  “You're just in time to take a look before they move the body,” Stephanie called to him as he got out of the Jeep. Damon strode up to her, holding out his hand to shake hers. “I'm still waiting for a positive id. We may have to wait until God-knows when, unless your people have some information mine don't,” she continued, shaking his hand briskly and turning to walk with him toward the house. “The problem is that no one has a picture of him, but based on height, weight, and physical description, I think it may be him.”

  “You don't sound sure.” Damon detected the hesitation in her voice immediately.

  Stephanie glanced at him and smiled ruefully.

  “There is a somewhat distinctive mark on this man's face,” she admitted. “It doesn't come up in any of the physical descriptions of Johann Topamari that we have seen. John is trying to confirm that now.” Stephanie motioned him to the side of the house. “The body is actually in the back yard,” she explained. “We're processing the house now. It would be easier to walk around, if you don't mind.”