Inside Man

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  “You loved him,” Scott said, his tone hard.

  Dima flinched. There was no doubt in Scott’s voice. “How long have you known?”

  “That you and Tom were lovers? Always.” Scott shrugged. “Then Santiago tapped you to lead the unit in his place. You hated it. You’ve felt like a fraud ever since.”

  Dima swallowed. “Are you done beating me up for exposing you, Scott?”

  He drew in a breath. Let it out. “Damn it,” he said softly. “Christ, Dima…you’re right.”

  She touched his arm lightly. “I am always right. Repeat that whenever you disagree with me.”

  Scott gave a soft laugh, just as Socrates let out a soft volley of whines and yips, scratching at the pipe frame of her cage.

  “You called her a red setter…” Dima said, listening to the dog go crazy. “You got close enough to see her.”

  “I parked three blocks away and came to the house the back way,” Scott said. “No one on the street would have seen me. I stopped and let her sniff my hand on the way through, so she’d know I was friendly.”

  “There are no headlights on the street,” Dima said urgently and moved to the front window. She stood beside the curtain so the street light wouldn’t illuminate her in the window. “Socrates barks at cars.”

  She felt, rather than saw, Scott move. He grabbed her arm and shoved her coat against her. “Move it.” He yanked her toward the back door.

  Dima ran with him, adrenaline giving her a boost of speed.

  They were both a step beyond the back door when the house behind them gave a preparatory rumble. The roar of the explosion and the blast wave shoved them across the deck, over the skeletons of rose bushes and onto the snow beyond.

  For a while, the world was just static. She didn’t quite pass out, but may as well have.

  Then sense seeped back in.

  Dima rolled onto her back, her ears throbbing in time with her head, and everything aching. The chill of the snow helped snap her back to reality. That, and Socrates’ long red tongue. The dog whined, licking her cheek.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” Dima said, fighting to raise her hand to pat the dog. Bits of lumber, splinters, ashes and dust were pattering down around them, sprinkling the top of her head.

  Scott groaned. He was closer to the rose bushes.

  Socrates bounded over burning lumber and licked his face as he pushed himself up.

  Dima twisted to look at the cage where the Danes kept Socrates during the night. It was a twisted lump of fencing and mangled pipes, with Dima’s brushed steel fridge lying on top. The fridge was bent into a bow.

  Scott pulled on Dima’s arm. “Up. Get up.” His voice was muffled. “Dima! Come on. Move it!” He lifted her arm. Her coat was shoved onto her shoulder. She got the other arm up. She smelled burned wool and realized it was her coat giving off the stench.

  Scott fastened the buttons. “Look at me.”

  She looked at him.

  He nodded. “With me now?”

  “Yes.” She glanced over his shoulder at the burning shell of her house. Most of the kitchen was gone. The living room where they had been standing only seconds ago was a blackened shell with a fireball in its middle.

  Far away, sirens sounded.

  “Go,” she told Scott. “I’ll be fine.”

  “You need to fade away,” Scott said. “Walk and keep walking.”

  “You, too.”

  Lights were coming on in houses around them. Socrates danced happily around them, her tongue hanging.

  Scott bent and scratched her ears. “Stay,” he told her. “Sit.”

  She sat, panting.

  Scott turned and jogged through the gaping hole in the fence, around the Dane’s barbecue area, to the back fence. He lifted himself over and was gone.

  Dima pulled her loose hair out of her coat and reached for the clip she kept in the pocket, then remembered it wasn’t there. She shrugged and moved toward the fence on the other side of the yard. She was still groggy from the sound concussion and couldn’t slide over the fence the way Scott did—hell, he was ten years younger than her, for a start. She could use the pea trellis as a ladder, though.

  Twenty minutes later, she stepped off Strathmore Avenue to cut across the school grounds to the train station and the parking lot. Regretfully, she would have to steal a car. The Kobra had just knocked her off the grid. The longer she could stay dead, the more time she would have to find the son of a bitch and return the favor.

  In spades.

  [9]

  Quinze-Vingts, Paris, France.

  The long-term storage facility had once been a public parking lot, which gave the facility the unique feature of being able to drive right up to one’s storage locker.

  “Are we going to look strange, walking in on foot?” Warren asked, as Agata surveyed the entrance from across the road.

  “We just got off the train,” Agata pointed out. “They’re used to passengers using storage for their luggage. That’s why I picked them.” Gare de Lyon was two blocks away. Even from here, they could hear the high-speed trains arriving and departing.

  They had ridden the normal Metro line to here, with Agata looking over her shoulder all the way. It was one thing to suspect the Kobra had found her. Knowing he was after her was something else.

  Not for the first time this year, Agata wished she was still with Dima’s unit, working with people she could rely upon. Only, the unit was no more. And now the Kobra was picking them off one by one, if she had properly understood Dima.

  Agata was on her own.

  Warren cleared his throat. “So. Are we going?”

  “I should go in by myself. I rented it by myself. It could be the same clerk. He’ll remember the two of us.”

  “We’ll look like a perfectly normal couple,” he shot back. “You’re not leaving me to freeze on the sidewalk again.”

  It was a minor point, not worth arguing. “Okay, then.” She spotted a break in the traffic and hurried across the road, and up to the drive through entrance of the storage garage. Their shadows were long upon the cobbles, for the short day was nearly done.

  A clerk sat behind the desk, nearly asleep, his head on his hand. He sat in the last of the warm sun beaming through the big plate-glass window.

  Agata pulled out her keys and shook out the storage locker key and unlocked the gate.

  “He didn’t even look up,” Warren murmured, behind her.

  “He doesn’t have to. Camera, staring right at us,” she murmured.

  “So there is.” Warren sounded amused.

  She shut the gate behind them and moved over to the concrete stairs which wound up through the middle of the parking garage. Her locker was on the third level, on the far side.

  “This is why you went out of your way to pick up your keys?” Warren asked, from behind her.

  “It was one reason,” she admitted, as she took the steps two at a time.

  “You said you would explain, Kelsey,” he pointed out.

  “And I will. Just not now. I don’t want to be here too long. It’s a vulnerable point.”

  “Because you don’t know how much whoever it is you won’t tell me about knows. You said that. You’re a woman, Kelsey. You’re telling me you can’t multi-task like every other woman on the planet, and talk while you walk?”

  “I am multi-tasking,” she shot back. “Babysitting you is taking up most of my attention. I’m working on building an escape channel with my other hands.”

  He didn’t answer that.

  “I’ll explain everything once we’re settled somewhere with a stout door between us and the rest of the world, somewhere no one knows who we are. ‘kay?”

  “You figure that’s ever going to happen?” he asked. “A safe place, I mean.”

  “I’m working on it,” she repeated. “Trust me, okay?”

  “You’re the expert,” he muttered.

  She stepped onto the third-floor level, glanced left and right, then moved over
to the bank of meter storage crates against the far wall. She shook out her keys once more.

  Before she inserted the key, she studied the lock and the door, looking for fresh scratches or any sign of forced entry. Then she opened it, withdrew the key and handed the bunch to Warren. “Take the locker key off it.”

  “You won’t be able to close the locker again,” he pointed out, taking the keys.

  “That’s right.” She reached in and tugged out the big duffle bag and hefted it. It weighed as much as she remembered—about thirty pounds.

  Knowing she was being paranoid, but willing to go with the feeling, she lowered the duffle bag to the ground and examined it carefully. She felt under the flaps and inside the pockets—all the little nooks and crannies where a bug might be placed.

  “You’re looking for trackers?” Warren asked.

  “I’m just being cautious. I doubt anyone could have found this place in the hours since we left the temple, because I used a cold passport to rent it. I’ve been wrong before, though.”

  “You have? Did you record the moment for posterity?”

  She scowled at him, unzipped the bag, and glanced inside. It looked exactly the same as the way she had packed it. She zipped it up once more. “Back downstairs. There’s a café across the road and up a hundred yards.”

  “Food, yes,” Warren said. “I’m starving.”

  “There’s food in here,” she said, tapping the bag over her shoulder. “We don’t interact with anyone we don’t have to, until I get a better feel for what is going on.”

  “Then the café is for…?”

  “You’ll see.”

  He gave another soft growling sound, his black brows sweeping together.

  “And lose the sunglasses,” she told him. “You look conspicuous wearing them when the sun has gone down.”

  “Yes, sir,” he muttered.

  The café provided comfort stations for its customers, both rooms accessed via a corridor at the back of the café. Agata pushed Warren inside the first, followed him in and locked the door.

  “A toilet, Kelsey?”

  “There are no cameras in the back corridor and certainly none in here. It gives me the few minutes I need. Out of the way, please. I need the counter.”

  He put the lid of the toilet down, and sank onto it.

  “I’ll need that, too,” she said, hefting the duffel off her shoulder.

  Warren scowled and got back on his feet and leaned against the other wall, his arms crossed.

  She dropped the bag onto the toilet and unzipped it. “Here, eat,” she said, shoving the food at him. She pulled the hair elastic off her wrist and twisted up her hair and snapped the elastic around it, so it stayed out of her face.

  Warren held the bags by his fingertips. “Cheetos?” he breathed. “Jerky?” He turned the foil bag around to read the label and rolled his eyes. “Freeze dried ice cream. Perfect.” He handed them back. “I am not eating that, and I am certainly not eating anything in here.”

  “Have it your way.” She tore open the Cheetos and stuffed a handful in her mouth. She was starving. As she chewed, she pulled the heavy duty laptop out and set it up on the counter beside the sink.

  “I don’t know how you haven’t dropped dead of malnutrition. Is that money?” Warren asked, pulling the duffel bag open to peer inside.

  “Five thousand in euros,” she said, logging in and typing fast. She held out her hand. “My keys.”

  He pulled them out of his coat pocket. “I’m on the run with Jessie Bourne,” he muttered.

  She found the lock key and inserted it, then ran her index finger over the scanner key. “Where do you think the movie got all the good ideas from?”

  “From gangs,” Warren said flatly. “Where do you think the CIA got them from?”

  Agata felt her mouth pop open.

  Warren shrugged. “You’ve got the law on your side. The gangs have no one but themselves to fall back on. Backup plans were for every day, not just emergencies.”

  The laptop beeped its acceptance, tearing her attention away from him. Agata removed the security key, thrust the key ring back at Warren, pulled up the browser and got to work.

  “I thought the Internet was incredibly insecure, especially on public networks?” Warren asked.

  “One. This isn’t using a public network. The satellite connection is built into the laptop and I just logged into a secure server in Washington. Two. I’m using the dark net. Three. The message board is built on blockchain software. And four, no one knows about the site I’m using because the dark net doesn’t index anything. There are six people who could find this site and I trust them all.”

  Only, one of them had betrayed all of them.

  She pushed the worry aside. She had to risk this second contact, and this was as secure as she could make it. Without more information, she would just be circling the bowl.

  “If you were conditioned for survival, how come you don’t know this stuff, Warren?” she asked, as she pulled up the bulletin board.

  “High tech wasn’t encouraged,” he said, his tone sour. “Is that a message?”

  He was changing the subject. Agata let it drop and studied the screen. There were few messages there, because the board was for emergencies.

  The latest message was only two hours old, though.

  Her heart hurrying, Agata opened it.

  Grenoble. Thursday. Watch 6. Mom.

  Agata clicked on the green thumbs-up, and immediately shut down the laptop. She straightened from her hunch over the keyboard, relief touching her. Dima was on her way to France. It would take Dima three days to get here. That gave Agata three days to travel to the mountains in a loopy path which would shake off any pursuit.

  What would be the best way to get there?

  Her mind moving faster and faster, as she planned and brainstormed and put together strategies, Agata dug into the Cheetos packet and chewed another mouthful.

  Warren’s eyes narrowed. “News,” he guessed.

  “Grenoble by Thursday. That’s when my backup will be there.”

  He considered that. “Why not London, or somewhere busy?”

  “I don’t know, Warren! We couldn’t risk a heart to heart, not even with this setup, okay?”

  He picked up the bag of jerky and held it out to her. “You’re hungry. Eat.”

  “I am eating.”

  “Protein,” he insisted, waving the bag.

  She snatched it from him and tore it open and shoved a piece of the chewy meat into her mouth.

  Her stomach growled. She gobbled two more pieces.

  Warren held up the fob of her key ring, so the keys and tiles and tools swung to the bottom of the big ring. “Is this paracord, Kelsey?”

  She looked at the grubby white knotted cord. “That is military grade Type IV paracord, manufactured to the MIL-C-5040H standard. It can carry seven hundred and fifty pounds of dead weight. Untied, the fob provides eight feet of cord. The tool next to it can cut it. The tiles have other uses. And the keys are a good standby set of knuckle dusters.”

  He looked amused. “You’re one of those preppers, Kelsey?”

  Agata gave a hiss of annoyance. “I’m a fucking engineer, goddamit!”

  He lowered the keys, his smile fading. “You’re kidding me.”

  Agata grabbed the ice cream and tore the packet open. “Lemme guess. A girl can’t be an engineer.” She shook a handful of the ice cream into her mouth and chewed fast. She was still ravenous, although she needed sugar, too.

  Warren shoved the keys in his pocket. “You’re not kidding…”

  “Honors at MIT,” she said gruffly.

  “Why engineering?” he demanded.

  “Why not?” Her voice was rising. So was her irritation. “Engineers help people, Warren. They build things. They make life easier.”

  Warren’s mouth turned up on one side. “Where are the horn-rims, then?”

  “And what are you studying, remind me?” She shook another
mouthful of ice cream into her mouth. They would have to move on in a minute, but first, she needed more calories.

  Warren scowled. “You said you read the brief. It had to be in there. Celtic history.”

  “History,” she said, pouring scorn into her tone. “There’s a useful degree. How does history help people now? Today?”

  He shoved his hands into his pockets. “It helps them by keeping me far away from them.”

  She lowered the foil packet, absorbing his sober expression. He meant every word.

  “We shouldn’t stay here much longer,” he said. “Someone will need the room soon.” He was shifting subjects again.

  Agata resealed the ice cream and dumped it in the duffel bag. She sorted through the contents, assessing and itemizing in her head. Everything was as she remembered. “Burner phones, money, spare passports, blank passports, not that we’ll need…ah, there we go. Here.” She pulled out the stubby little Smith & Wesson revolver and held it out to him. “It’s a 642 police special. The .38s will stop anyone long enough to escape. All you have to do is wing them. Do me a favor and hold it properly, huh? All that sideways shit is pretentious and fucks up your aim.”

  Warren gazed at the gun. He made no move to take it. His gaze lifted to her face. “No.”

  Agata lowered the gun. “You must know how to use them, with your history.” She couldn’t quite bring herself to say “gang” out loud, even though he had already used the word.

  His throat worked. He shook his head and in the harsh overhead light, she spotted dampness at his temples. He was breaking into a sweat just looking at the thing.

  Agata glanced down at the revolver, then back at him.

  He swallowed again. “I don’t want it.” The words were decisive. His tone was strained.

  Agata nodded. “Fine, more for me,” she said lightly, even though it would have been useful to have a second gun to cover her rear or her flanks, if it got to the point of exchanging bullets. She bent, pulled up the thick leg of her pants and shoved the revolver into the wide top of her boot. She pulled the leg back down over the boot and straightened.

  Warren had recovered. He wore an urbane expression, and his arms were crossed once more. “What’s the plan?”