Lee waited for her to continue, but he didn’t need to know the mind games warring within. They sat side by side on the bench while they waited for the all-clear. “Why’d you become... You know.”
He stared off into the distance as if not really seeing the foothills. “I didn’t always want to be in this field. I went to pre-law at UW and went to work at a company in Seattle as a compliance officer of all things.” He smiled as if he seemed to find that funny now.
“Doesn’t that involve making sure everyone follows the rules in a business?”
He shrugged. “Basically. I’ve always loved a clear set of rules. It’s not really worth explaining. Seems like a lifetime ago. Anyway, I had some mentors in my life and found myself wanting to give back so I volunteered and was asked to mentor an eleven-year-old.” His frown deepened. “Five years later he saw something—in the wrong place at the wrong time—and a hit was ordered.”
Audrey clasped her heart. “You think the hit was ordered through the Network?”
“He never got justice. I figured the only way I could help was to become an FBI special agent. The whole process took a year before I was assigned my first case. I investigated a group of ‘retired’ executives.”
“Money laundering?”
He nodded. “Meanwhile Kendra had taken down a ring of restaurants laundering for drug traffickers. The Bureau put us together and the Kimmets were born.”
“But the Network was always the end goal?”
His blue eyes swung in her direction. “Always.” It was as if someone had electrified his gaze because she couldn’t look away. He stood up and paced, breaking the connection. “Enough about me. How are you feeling?”
“Fine, except I’m a little tired of someone trying to kill us. I don’t understand who would be motivated to do it. It makes no sense for the Masked Network to be behind the attempts. They’re making us go through hoops, but that’s to protect themselves.”
Lee crossed his arms over his chest. His spine remained rigid, keeping a safe distance from the fence. “I agree. And the money-laundering competition doesn’t jibe, either.” His eyes scanned the rest of the resort. In the distance, a hot air balloon soared.
“What else is on our itinerary?”
“Thankfully, not much else for today.”
Their bodyguard wore leather gloves as he approached and opened the gate. “Clear.”
Audrey exited, and the guard cleared his throat. “Earlier... Well, thank you for stopping me before I touched the gate.”
She pulled her chin back in surprise. “Don’t mention it. Thank you for finding the wires.”
Lee took hold of her hand and hurried her back in the direction of the cottage. His fingers squeezed hers. The familiarity seemed almost natural if not for the rush of warmth up her spine. “I was planning to tell you to stop being so nice to the staff. But in a place like this, loyalty—or bribes—means everything.”
“I didn’t think I was being overly nice. Polite, maybe, but—”
“Exactly.” He beamed down at her as they moved to pass by the outdoor restaurant. “It’s second nature to you.”
Their eyes met, and her imagination soared to what it would be like to really be married, to be on a honeymoon—preferably without being surrounded by criminals—and to have a man look at her like that without any pretense.
“Audrey?” A waitress with blond hair pulled into a ponytail stood in front of them, holding a tray of dirty dishes. She took a step closer. “It is you.” She lowered her voice. “What are you doing here?”
Felicity Burnett. She belonged on campus, in Audrey’s life as a researcher, not here! She looked to Lee for support. How was she supposed to play this? Did she insist that her friend from Duke was mistaken? Lee squeezed her hand tighter, all humor drained from his face.
“Um, Felicity. Hi. Uh...” She really didn’t know how to salvage this. She twisted to place a hand on his shoulder. “Meet my husband, Lee Kimmet.”
Felicity’s mouth dropped. “Husband? What are you talking about? You sent a group text like two days ago. You told everyone you were going full-on airplane mode since your Stanford conference was more like an intensive workshop.”
Lee chuckled, his laugh strained. “Well, I can be intense.”
Audrey fought to roll her eyes. “The funny thing is we’ve actually been married for quite some time. And you can call me Andrea now. I actually used to go by the name Andrea—it’s kind of a nickname of Audrey.”
Felicity narrowed her eyes. “Is it? I wasn’t aware.”
“Yeah, well. We just wanted to keep the marriage on the down low.”
Lee sent her a warning glance. Perhaps she was giving away too much information, but an explanation was warranted. “You know, every marriage has its problems. But, we worked through it and uh...decided on a second honeymoon.”
Judging by the tightening of Lee’s squeeze on her hand, she definitely had gone too far. By the minute, more people filled the space next to the veranda. Would Felicity mention her to the resort owner? The scrutiny they were under from the attempts on their lives would surely cause gossip among the staff. The temptation to chime in, with firsthand knowledge of the couple in question, would be too great to resist for a normal person.
The reality of the situation suddenly weighed her down. This was not a game of twisting the truth because there was no point. Their cover had been blown. Once the news reached the ears of the owner, the security team, or any members of the Masked Network, they wouldn’t be able to leave the resort alive. She needed to convince Lee to pull Felicity into their confidence immediately and beg her to keep it a secret. In fact, if Felicity opened her mouth, would any of them be able to leave alive?
* * *
“What about Caltech and your grant?” Felicity asked.
The life seemed to drain from Audrey’s face. Lee glanced around. Had she seen something or was there something about the grant that depressed her? Audrey shrugged. “Still in process. Starting in the fall, but Felicity, since it’s a government grant, we probably shouldn’t talk about it in public. Enough about me. What about you? I thought you planned to stay at Duke all summer.”
“I’ll return in the fall.”
Lee put his hands in his pockets and straightened. “I’m intrigued, as well. I heard Octavia handpicks her employees and usually for the long-term. I didn’t think anyone could work here temporarily for the summer.”
“True, but there was a last-minute accident, and one of her employees was out of commission. I happened to apply for a short-term job at a restaurant she frequented. Good timing for me, I suppose. Octavia offered me a job I couldn’t refuse.” Felicity’s gaze flickered to a table of men speaking in hushed tones. One man in particular caught Lee’s attention and he fought back a reaction. An arms dealer the FBI was told was hands-off, for the moment, crossed his arms in front of his chest and nodded.
Lee pondered Felicity’s answers. Everything pointed to the employment being a carefully planned setup. The question was whether Audrey knew it or not. If he was right, Felicity was a danger to his mission. If he was wrong, she might be dangerous to Audrey.
“Hope you don’t mind if I ask Octavia for your references,” he bluffed. “I’m thinking of opening up my own restaurant and am looking for the same type of excellent service to offer our guests.”
Audrey’s eyes flashed, and her forehead creased and smoothed on a loop as if trying to work out why his sudden change to the cover story. He’d fill her in as soon as he knew for sure they were safe to move on. In the meantime the bodyguard had caught up but stood in the shadow of a cypress tree.
“Felicity, was it?” Lee asked.
“Yes. Myers.”
“Myers?” The surprise in Audrey’s voice couldn’t be mistaken.
Felicity didn’t flinch. “Yes. Seems name changes are all the rage, wouldn’t you say,
Andrea Kimmet?” She said the name with emphasis while an amused grin crossed her face. “I’m pretty good at accepting change and forgetting the past.” Felicity’s eyes flickered to Lee. “Hopefully, you are, too. Excuse me. I need to get back to work.” Again, her focus darted to the table with the arms dealer.
Definitely an agent who seemed to be saying, “Don’t blow my cover and I won’t blow yours.”
He put his hand, with a loose hold on his cell phone, on Audrey’s back. “Of course. I’m sure we will get a chance to catch up further this week.”
“Happy second honeymoon, Andrea,” Felicity said again, emphasizing the fake name.
Audrey blinked rapidly. “Um, thanks. You, too.” They walked a few steps. “Why’d I say ‘You, too’? She’s not on a second honeymoon.”
“You were flustered.” He looked over his shoulder to make sure his camera lens was pointing at Felicity as he casually tapped the side button to snap a photo. Unfortunately, Felicity was doing the exact same thing.
“What are the odds that one of my friends from Duke would be here?” Her eyes glistened. “I’m sorry, Lee. I’ve put us in danger again, haven’t I?”
“You couldn’t have known.” Unless he was the one being fooled. “How exactly do you know her? What did she do at Duke?”
“She was a teaching assistant. Probably the cushiest assignment in the entire school because she always had time to hang out with the other TAs and postdocs. Everyone loves her. She’s probably one of the most popular people I know at Duke because she takes a genuine interest in everyone’s labs and networks like crazy so she always knows who you should talk to if you run into a problem or need more input.”
Every government agency in the world had spies placed at universities, sometimes as professors or teaching assistants, especially rampant at research universities. In the US, they were often tasked with recruiting, protecting vulnerable researchers and developing any potential future assets. He sighed. “We’ll know soon enough who she’s working for.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your friend screams agent to me.”
He felt her start to spin and pressed his hand on her back. “I don’t think she’d appreciate if we caused our friend in the shadows any reason to pay her more attention.”
“But how? Why? Tell me specifically the method you use to merit such a judgment.”
“Sorry, classified.” Admittedly, it’d become his standard answer when he didn’t want to explain himself.
Audrey rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Felicity and I got our nails done together, went out for sushi and ice cream. We’d go to a matinee once in a while.”
“Agents can still eat ice cream and watch movies. Did she seem different than other teaching assistants?”
“Only that she seemed to have more free time than anyone else, but she is—was my friend. And if we should worry about anything, it’s that she can clearly tell when I’m lying because I’ve never had a need to before! And yes, she might’ve been intense, but so am I. A lot of people in academia are. But we still hung out and talked about normal things like guys—”
“Guys, huh? Were there a lot of those in your life?” The questions rushed from his mouth before he could filter them, as if he needed to know for the sake of the mission. Where the surge of jealousy came from, he didn’t know. The outburst didn’t even make sense to him.
She gave him a side glance, clearly irritated. “One or two.”
“Were they serious?” He almost groaned aloud. What was his problem? Audrey gave enough pause he could’ve interjected with “Never mind, it’s none of my business,” but instead he raised his eyebrows, waiting. He already knew from her background check that the last known relationship was with some hotshot rumored to be the next Elon Musk of the future. Too bad there wasn’t a photo of the man; not that it really mattered.
“Obviously not or I wouldn’t be here. And I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
Fair point, but he felt better about knowing. “What else did you usually talk about?”
She shrugged. “Life on campus, really. She’d always ask if I saw any up and comers in the classes I taught...” The wind was out of her sails now. She practically deflated in front of him. “Oh. She used me, didn’t she? I mean it is unusual to remain a teacher’s assistant for that long, but I didn’t give it much thought because we’re friends. At least I thought we were.”
“I took a photo of her. She clearly took a photo of me. We’ll know for sure once our intel is back.”
“You don’t think she’s on the wrong side, do you?”
“I don’t, but either way we need to be sure. If she’s planning a sting, or other intel-gathering that jeopardizes our mission, we need to know sooner rather than later.”
Communication among agencies had improved over the past several years but in baby-step increments. If they were both deep cover from different agencies, it’d take a lot of red tape to get any heads-up about stepping over turf. Just last month an NSA agent was investigating a criminal that turned out to be an undercover FBI agent. There were still bugs in the system.
They reached the cottage and Lee waited on the balcony while Audrey changed outfits. He checked his email and an encrypted message confirmed the phone call time. He attached a photo to another email and hoped the Bureau could trace Felicity’s true identity by the time they spoke in a few minutes.
He dialed the number and entered a required passcode. One ring later a breathy voice answered.
“It’s about time you set up a call. When I woke up it took me five whole minutes to understand why the nurses were calling me by the wrong name and why I was in the hospital in the first place. I started to wonder if they’d mixed up patients and removed my spleen by accident.”
He took Kendra’s angry tone as a positive sign of her prognosis. “I’m sorry about that. You were already unconscious when I had to provide identification for you.”
“Yeah, I figured it out. I suppose saving my life grants you some leeway. I’ve had some visitors keeping me updated. Did you really make Audrey take my place?”
“Yes.”
“Probably the right call. I heard you ran preliminary security checks on her before you left. I have the complete results.”
A door slammed within the cottage. Audrey was likely about to join him in a moment. “Listen, before I have company, why was I kept out of the loop with the Sylvia matter?” His throat tightened with emotion that shouldn’t have been there, but they were partners, and yet the powers that be thought he should be left in the dark. If they didn’t trust him or he didn’t have what it took to do the hard assignments, he wanted to know now.
“Simple. Sylvia knew things she shouldn’t. Always one step ahead, enough so we suspected a mole.”
“You suspected me?” His world shifted slightly. He’d dedicated his career to service toward his country, and they thought he couldn’t be trusted?
“I don’t think that’s necessarily why. Sylvia only wanted to work with me and the Bureau agreed it’d be best to keep it that way in our cover as well, for authenticity.”
Authenticity. What a joke. Everything about their relationship was fabricated.
The door slid open and Audrey stepped out wearing a flowing green sundress. “Is that Kendra?”
He nodded and plugged in a split headphone adapter. She slipped in the earbuds he provided before Kendra continued. “Listen, I have some news that both of you need to know. The ballistics report came back on the gun that got me. It wasn’t from the initial shooter’s gun.”
His veins turned ice-cold. “Wait. What are you saying?”
“There was another shooter besides the one I took out.”
She didn’t need to spell it out any further. Lee knew without a shadow of a doubt that whoever shot Kendra was likely the same one that wanted them dead.
Audrey swung her gaze to Lee before speaking. His eyes had widened slightly, but his face didn’t hold the shock she felt. “So theoretically someone could’ve followed us to the hospital, to the hotel and even...” She let her voice trail off. It wasn’t a newsflash that someone wanted to kill them, but somehow hearing about another shooter seemed to make it more real.
It seemed unlikely that someone who wasn’t a guest or employee would manage to infiltrate the resort’s security without being seen. Except, no one was ever seen tampering with the sauna because they were clever and technical enough to bypass the security cameras. What type of threat were they dealing with?
“If the other shooter was someone in the same organization as the gunman you took out, wouldn’t they have access to talk to the Masked Network guys? Or the resort owner here? If everyone here knows Lee is an agent, why haven’t they swarmed us yet?”
“The shooter I took out was the last member of the organization unaccounted for, so we aren’t sure the threat is the same.”
“You’re saying it could be anyone.” Lee raked a hand through his hair. “That’s almost worse.”
“We have an entire team investigating and teaming up with interrogation of the members. You’re still clear to stay on mission. I feel certain we’ll have more answers soon, but until then, keep your head up and stay in the game.” Kendra exhaled. “Oh, and Audrey, you officially have top-secret clearance.”
That caused a reaction. Lee dropped his mouth. “What? That takes weeks, months, even. How’d you pull that off?”
“I didn’t,” Kendra answered.
“Oh... It’s probably for my grant,” Audrey explained. “I was expecting that any day now.”
Lee raised an eyebrow, the headphone cables swinging in between them. “That would’ve been nice to mention.”
“You didn’t ask. It didn’t seem to be a requirement for you to make me an asset.”
“It would’ve eased my mind, though.”
“Yeah, well. Get this,” Kendra said. “She has a higher clearance than we do.”
Undercover Twin Page 10