She ignored the question. “This is Steve Adams, one of my training officers at the CIA.”
Doug shook Steve Adams’s hand. The quick tightening around Steve’s eyes before Doug let go would have been a wince of pain in anyone else.
“Nice to meet you, Steve.”
“I’d like to say it’s a pleasure.”
Sabine didn’t want to feel comfort from the touch of Doug’s tuxedo sleeve against her bare arm, but she did. It wouldn’t take much for one of them to reach out and take the other’s hand.
Focus.
“So, Steve…” Sabine cut through the tension between the two men. “What are you up to these days?”
Steve’s eyes flickered again, a trace of confusion he allowed her to see. “I’m a director at Langley now. I have been for the past four years. You?”
“Same old, same old. You know how it goes.” She smiled. He would know that she had spent the last few years doing what she did best: gathering intelligence on some of the world’s biggest crooks.
“Unfortunately, no, I don’t know.” Again Steve glanced around the room. He was no doubt as aware as Sabine of the eyes watching them, the ears peeled. “Is there somewhere we can talk in private?”
“I can show you to my father’s library.”
Sabine trailed behind Doug across the ballroom with Steve beside her. What did this man, a man she at one time considered a mentor, want to talk about? He’d been so surprised to run into her that something strange must be going on. And why did it seem like Doug already knew what Steve was going to tell her? Probably it was CIA business. How had they even known she would be here tonight, at this party? The CIA kept track of its assets, but this was crazy.
Doug opened the door to a room lined with bookshelves. There wasn’t a spare space that she could see. It was full, and yet the room didn’t feel closed in to her, just warm and open. Sabine would have loved to spend hours in here, lost to worlds of adventure.
The door closed with Doug still in the room. He caught her look and shook his head, like she should’ve known he would include himself, and turned to Steve. “This room is secure. You don’t have to worry about listening devices. You can speak freely.”
Steve’s eyebrow peaked. “Except that you’re here.”
If the look on Steve’s face was anything to go by, Sabine was going to want Doug to be here for whatever was about to be said. Not that she would tell Steve that Doug was anything more than a regular soldier. “It is okay, Mr. Adams. I trust Sergeant Major Richardson.”
Steve’s face was blank, a mask of indifference that said enough without saying anything at all. This man felt the need to hide behind nonchalance, which told Sabine of the gravity of the situation.
She chose a dark wood gondola chair that had a green-suede-covered seat. “What is it?”
Steve scanned a bookshelf beside him, then finally came and sat across the cherrywood coffee table in a chair that matched hers. “You have some kind of nerve showing up here, Ms. Sanders. After what you did six years ago, I would think you’d have the good sense to stay away from this part of the country. Either you’re incredibly brave or completely reckless.”
Doug’s mouth opened, and she shot him a look, cutting off whatever he’d been about to say. “I’d love to know what you’re talking about, Mr. Adams, but I’m afraid I have no idea. Six years ago, when the Tamaris mission went wrong—”
“Went wrong?” Steve’s face flushed. “Three agents, your team, your friends, were all left for dead on that mission. You disappeared. The company spent a considerable amount of time and manpower searching for you to determine if you’d been killed or captured.”
“Captured?” Sabine couldn’t believe it. “I was left for dead, just like the others. I woke up two days later in a French hospital with three bullet wounds. After I recovered, my new handler told me I had to disappear. He gave me everything I needed to start a new life. It was only after I rebuilt everything from the ground up that I started taking on missions again.”
Steve looked her over, as though assessing the truth of her words. “Who is your handler?”
“His name is Neil. That’s all I know.”
“It would be worth your while to find out more about him.” He paused for a beat. “Ms. Sanders, this situation is very serious. For the past six years, everyone at the CIA has wondered who killed the other members of your team on the Tamaris mission. Some even speculated that you killed them yourself and then disappeared.”
“I’ve given my whole life to the CIA. How can they even say that?”
“Because if what you say is true, then those who speculated that you have gone rogue are, in fact, correct.”
“Rogue?”
Steve nodded. “Several times over the last few years, agents out on missions claim to have seen you. There was never any hard evidence to prove it. You’re quite adept at that which we trained you for.”
“This is the most contrived story I’ve ever heard.” Sabine tamped down the urge to rage at the man before her. Instead she tried to remember the respect she once had for him. “You’re saying I was duped into being a rogue agent by someone pretending to be a CIA handler?”
“It’s not out of the realm of possibility, if you think about it. They convince you the situation was so bad it was necessary for you to go dark, part of some super-secret department. They provide you with a new identity…Sabine. Now you work for them, a fully trained CIA operative at their beck and call. It’s clever.”
“I am not a pawn. I would know if I wasn’t working for the CIA anymore.”
Steve didn’t seem convinced. “Not if they didn’t want you to. Whoever you’re working for now convinced you that you’re still a CIA agent when you’ve been number one on our list of rogues since the Tamaris mission. They’re evidently very good at what they do.”
“This whole thing is crazy.”
Doug squeezed her shoulder. “You should listen to him.”
She turned her frown on him. “Why? How do you know anything about this?”
“After we saw each other in the Dominican Republic, I gave your information to my commanding officer. He said the same thing. I told you the CIA denied all knowledge of you. They’ve been looking for you. Though how you managed to change your name and Ben’s—and stay hidden this whole time—is beyond me.”
“We didn’t change Ben’s name. I never told the CIA that I had a brother. We went our separate ways for a while after he had graduated from high school, and then he joined the army. We had different last names, anyway, so when I needed a new identity, I borrowed his. It wasn’t too hard for the government to find they had accidentally lost a few key records of Ben’s. The ones that linked us.” She shrugged. “It wasn’t anyone else’s business but mine that I have—had a half brother.”
Sabine looked back at Steve and dread settled over her like a storm cloud. “Are you going to have me arrested?”
He worked his mouth. “You should at least come in to Langley so we can get this whole thing sorted out. There’s a lot of stuff to unpack, if we’re going to figure out what happened and who this handler of yours is…who he works for.”
“Not before I figure out what happened to Ben.”
Steve frowned. Sabine filled him in on what had happened since her brother’s death and her investigation into who was responsible. She left out the part about her intruder and the exploding hard drive.
Steve sighed. “I understand you want justice for your brother, but the army is no doubt conducting an investigation.” Steve looked at Doug, who nodded. “While I’m not unsympathetic to your situation, it’s of the utmost importance that you yield yourself to us for questioning. We have to get to the bottom of this.”
Sabine strode to the far end of the room and stared at a shelf of historical novels. Her eyes refused to focus on the titles printed on the spines. Her brain was far too full, trying to process what Steve had told her. Could she really be a rogue agent?
Sh
e picked through her memories and tried to find some indication that her handler, Neil, was anything other than the CIA agent he had claimed to be. Before seeing Christophe Parelli killed by someone who looked exactly like her, she would have said for certain Neil was who he had said he was. Now she couldn’t be sure.
There was just no way to predict the outcome. Sabine could end up in prison, disgraced or most likely the victim of an accident that brought about her untimely demise. If she really had been duped into working as an agent against the CIA, then she doubted whoever it was would let her live long enough to provide the actual CIA with enough evidence to discover their identity.
Sabine had been a victim once, long ago. After that she had vowed never to return to such a helpless state. The truth about Ben’s death would stay hidden unless she was able to help Doug figure out who had killed her brother and why. There was no way she could turn herself in to the CIA for questioning when they would most likely detain her indefinitely.
She turned back and found both men watching her. “I will help you find out who it is I’ve been working for.”
“Good—”
Sabine cut him off. “But not until after Doug and I find the person who killed my brother. You need to keep this to yourself, Mr. Adams. Do not tell anyone you’ve seen or spoken to me. In return for your promise, as soon as this is over, I’ll turn myself in to the CIA. You can do whatever you want with me.”
“Sabine…” Doug’s voice was guarded. He was probably right to be worried.
“I’ll even work out a meeting with my handler. You can set up surveillance. I’ll wear a wire. You can use me however you want to find out who it is I’ve been working for. But I do what I need to do first.”
Steve shook his head. “I don’t know about this.”
“I don’t need you to agree, Mr. Adams. I can walk away right now. I can disappear again, and you’ll never find me. I’ll still get what I want—time enough to hunt for Ben’s killer—while you get nothing.”
A thought occurred to her. “If my handler really is working against you, they’re no doubt keeping tabs on their asset…me. If they think I’ve given you anything, they’re going to close up shop as fast as possible and go so far underground that you’ll never figure it out. It’s what I would do.”
Doug nodded slowly. “Not before they get rid of all the evidence.”
Sabine caught his gaze and knew he’d reached the same conclusion as her. “They’ll kill me. Which is not part of my five-year plan.”
Steve rubbed a hand down his face. “You want me to pretend I never saw you when a roomful of government staffers just witnessed the two of us meet and leave the room together?”
“There’s no reason to believe they’ll say anything. Or that they won’t. It’s a risk, but a calculated one that I can live with. I think I can trust General Richardson’s taste in friends.”
Doug folded his arms. “You can.”
“You want me to sit on this until you decide to turn yourself in? You’ve been gone for six years as far as anyone at the Agency is concerned.” Steve blew out a breath. “You want me to let you leave on good faith?”
“You know me, Mr. Adams. Or at least you did. If what you say is true, I was duped. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve been nothing but an upright agent of the intelligence community my whole working life. That means, despite being deceived, I’m still as trustworthy as I ever was.”
Steve studied her for a moment and then nodded. “Give me some insurance, and I’ll trust you.”
Sabine snorted. “Typical. You’ll trust me, but not without something to hold over me? That’s hardly trust, but I don’t suppose I expected differently from a CIA agent.”
“I could detain you right now.”
Doug put himself between her and Steve. “You could try it, but you wouldn’t get two feet from my father’s house with her.”
Steve’s eyes widened. “I see. It’s like that, is it? You’re willing to go to bat for a loose cannon?”
Sabine was as surprised as Steve that Doug put himself between her and the complete destruction of her career and her reputation. Any way she looked at it, this was bad. Was he really willing to jeopardize his life, as well? She stared at Doug’s back. In most ways, they were polar opposites. Not to mention that he didn’t even trust her. Why was he doing this?
After everything they’d been through, Sabine had come to admire him. She could even admit she was attracted to him, but there was too much grief over Ben between them for anything to develop romantically.
“Being a loose cannon is part of her charm.”
Sabine wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Was Doug trying to compliment her in a roundabout way? If she was a loose cannon, he was about as impulsive as a piece of plywood. Talk about opposites attracting.
Steve looked around Doug. His eyes zeroed in on her. “You have one week.”
“A week!”
“That’s all I’m giving you. Seven days from now I expect to get a call from the security guards at Langley asking if I’ll authorize your admittance.”
Sabine nodded. That was the best offer she was likely to get. “Done.”
She reached up and clasped the flower on her necklace, one of the last gifts she’d received from Ben. A peace offering for the way he had blown up after he’d found out she was a CIA agent. Now that might not even be true.
“You have something to give me?”
Sabine found a notepad and pen in the top drawer of the desk, scribbled on it, tore off the page and handed it to Steve. “I’ll see you in a week.”
Steve Adams pocketed the paper and closed the library door behind him.
She turned to Doug. “You didn’t seem too surprised about what Steve had to say. You want to tell me what you knew about all this?”
“You want to tell me what was on that piece of paper?”
“No.”
Doug smiled, completely disarming her. “Good, because I’d rather dance with you anyway.”
“But—”
“Sabine.” He came around the desk to her. “Let’s go back to the party. We both need time to let this settle in.”
“But—”
He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it. “Have I told you how beautiful you are in this dress?”
EIGHT
Doug held his arms loose, when everything in him wanted to clasp Sabine to him as tight as possible as they swayed slowly in the middle of the dance floor. Couples all around them moved to the rhythm of an old love song, caught up in the moment.
The comment his dad had made when she entered the ballroom ran through his mind. Was she the one? He could hardly see there being a time in either of their lives when they might be free to begin a relationship. No matter how appealing the thought was.
And yet it felt so natural to hold her in his arms. He wanted to keep her there as long as possible, but circumstances seemed to conspire against them. A cloud of foreboding settled on him—like if he let her go he’d lose something he would never get back.
Doug wanted to go to Langley with her when she turned herself in. He wanted to be her line of defense. Mostly he wanted to stick with her and see where this might lead, and there was little time to lose if they wanted to find out what had happened to Ben.
But Sabine was wound so tight, she needed to take her mind off what was going on.
He was still floored by everything he’d learned about her from Adams. The CIA guy had been genuinely surprised to see her. When Adams had said she’d been AWOL for the past six years, Doug had discovered why. Watching her process the news that she’d been so thoroughly deceived into being a rogue agent and then come up with a solid plan that Adams had agreed with had been impressive, to say the least.
Doug had a huge amount of respect for the woman in his arms. She possessed strength few people would even be able to understand. Even so, there was hardness in her that he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to penetrate, no matter
how close they grew. There was little that was soft and sweet about her, despite how good at dancing she was.
“You’re a great dancer,” Sabine said.
Doug chuckled.
She tipped her head back. “What?”
“I was just thinking the same about you.”
“Oh…well.” She glanced around everywhere but at him. “This is a wonderful room.”
Warmth moved through him, and his stomach unclenched. “It is. My mom and dad used to dance in here late at night when they were all alone. They’d put a record on, dim the lights. I would sneak in past curfew, and they’d be in here, totally oblivious to anything except each other. It was kind of frustrating. And also gross to a teenage boy.”
Sabine laughed and then seemed to realize they had stopped dancing, and yet he still held her.
“You should do that more often.”
“What?”
“Laugh like that. It’s a pretty sound.”
“Thank you. You’re sweet.”
Doug rolled his eyes. “I don’t think I’ve ever been called sweet before.”
“It’s true.”
“Do me a favor and don’t tell anyone, okay? I’ve got a reputation to maintain.”
Sabine looked at the floor and then back up at him, her eyes a shade darker. “I’m scared.”
“I couldn’t tell.”
“That’s because I’m good at my job. Which is probably what got me in this mess in the first place.”
“Sabine—” He was going to tell her to leave all the worry for tomorrow, but she cut him off.
“You are sweet.” Her eyes held his.
Doug shifted his weight.
“You loved seeing your mom and dad dance.”
“Yeah, I did. I loved how in love they were, but they also made it clear I was a part of what was between them, so I didn’t mind too much when it felt like I was overlooked. When my mom was diagnosed, it was like the light went out of my dad’s eyes. He kept it together for her, though. Then she died, and he threw himself into his work like never before. I left for basic training, and when I came back it wasn’t to the father I’d known. He was never the same after she died.”
Double Agent Page 7