Inside Man

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Warren drew in a sharp breath. “That’s who is after you, isn’t it? Whatever happened in Austria, it followed you here.”

  She made herself meet his gaze. “Time for truth, Warren.”

  He looked over his shoulder, as a soft chime sounded, the doors of the carriage shut, and the train jerked into motion with a soft hiss and rattle of the wheels. Then he moved over to the seat beside the window and patted the one he’d vacated. “I’m all ears, but you’d better whisper it, Kelsey. No need to make everyone look as ill as you.”

  [10]

  Camp Peary, York County, Virginia.

  Quinn had once been superbly fit and flexible, to a professional dancer level. Years as a sedate music librarian had taken their toll, though. Now, the long distance running and obstacle courses they put the recruits through on a near-daily basis were a grind. Quinn gritted her teeth and got through it, because everything else in her day was so interesting it paid for this agony.

  It didn’t help that today was freezing cold, with a wind which wanted to take off the top layer of her face. Plus, she had put her foot in a puddle in the first mile of the run, and now her foot and ankle were blocks of ice, too.

  At the next checkpoint, one of the tinted, anonymous vans sat monitoring each trainee’s progress, only this one was metallic blue, instead of white.

  As Quinn drew closer, the passenger-side window rolled down and the driver bent to look through it.

  It was Dima Parvana. She put her finger to her lips.

  Quinn glanced behind her. No one was ahead or far behind, for Quinn was at the back end of the class. Not quite last, but almost. Everyone else was twenty-something and keen to impress.

  She jogged over to the open window. Dima handed her a water bottle. Quinn cracked the seal and gulped. “What happened?” she asked, between bellowing breaths.

  “The Kobra is coming after us,” Dima said. “It’s possible you and Noah are out of his range of attention. I can’t guarantee it. Right now, though, you two are the only people I trust.”

  “I’m in,” Quinn said instantly.

  “This is off-book,” Dima said, her steady, calm gaze holding Quinn’s. “If you come with me, it will look as though you’ve left without notice.”

  Quinn weighed it up. “If I tried to check out formally, it’ll get back to the Kobra. He knows who I am, after Austria. I’m still in.” She passed the bottle back to Dima, and opened the door and got in. “Where’s the nearest shower?”

  “Florence,” Dima said, putting the van into gear and winding up the window.

  Quinn’s heart gave a little leap. “That’s where Noah is?”

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  Quinn frowned. “He joked about pasta.”

  “He wasn’t joking,” Dima assured her, as she steered the van back onto the narrow dirt road at the top of the valley Quinn had been running through. “He was telling you what he’s not permitted to tell you. You’ll get the hang of it.”

  “If I get to spend any time at all with him, I might,” Quinn muttered. She used the hem of her sweater to wipe her sweaty face. “So…Florence. How do we get there?”

  Dima considered, as she turned onto another narrow road. This one was a thin strip of asphalt. “I’m not entirely sure. You can pilot a plane, right?”

  Quinn gasped. “No! Jesus, Dima! That’s Noah, not me!”

  Dima laughed.

  Quinn scrubbed at her damp hair. “You’re joking…!”

  “I wanted to see if you remembered how to smile. I’ve got passports and cash, and stone-cold credit cards. Commercial flights will be faster, so we must risk it. Although I’ve watched pilots more than once. I can always wing it, if I have to.”

  Quinn examined Dima’s face. The dark-haired women wasn’t smiling. “You’re joking again…aren’t you?”

  Somewhere between Paris and Valence.

  Cain recognized the cravings building in his chest only when he caught himself rubbing his hand on his knee in a compulsive little movement, hard enough to make his palm sting. The nightmarish quality of Kelsey’s story stirred the impulse to find an escape, which would let him avoid having to deal with the facts.

  It didn’t help that he hadn’t been left alone with time to center his thoughts and find calm, anywhere during the day. He acknowledged wryly that time alone wasn’t likely to happen any time soon. He must sort things out right in front of Kelsey.

  He held up his hand. “Wait. Wait a moment.”

  Kelsey stopped speaking and raised a dark blonde brow at him. With her hair pulled back into the braid, her eyes seemed even larger and her body more insubstantial and willowy. It was sanity-swiping to hear words like ‘assassination’ and ‘double-agent’ come out of her mouth. She was so far away from James Bond or any of his Bond women. There wasn’t a skerrick of glamor anywhere on her now she’d got rid of the pretty—and memorable—fur vest and white snow pants.

  She was an engineer who’d tinkered with the mechanics of a Mars rover to get better mileage out of the thing…

  He pressed the flesh between his eyes, and accepted he was tense, because fear was kicking up his adrenaline.

  “Let me sort this out,” he said, keeping his voice as low as hers had been. “This Kobra is a Russian spy master, who has been working for Russian intelligence since before the Soviet Union fell. He’s got spies planted everywhere, knows everything American intelligence does, almost before they do. He is responsible for entire units of intelligence people going missing, being killed or plain captured by the Russians and stuck in a Gulag somewhere…and no one knows who he is?”

  Kelsey must have sensed he wasn’t repeating this just to mug her with the wildness of it. She nodded, her face calm. “It’s what my unit, Unit 7C on the books, but we all call it Seven Seas—it’s why they formed the unit. Just that. Find the Kobra and destroy his information channels. We thought we were getting closer, in Austria. We thought we had found the first crack in his armor, only it closed up again.”

  “And people died, on top of it,” Cain muttered.

  She sighed. “Yes.”

  “And he’s coming after you now.”

  “Yes.”

  “Even though the unit was disbanded after Austria.”

  “Yes. I don’t know why. It doesn’t matter, anyway. He sent a man—a team, most likely—and by sheer fucking good luck, we got away from them. Only, we know his face now. I can figure out who the Kobra’s man is from here.”

  “I can see why the Kobra wouldn’t like that. It’s not just a crack. It’s a whole door you’ve got your hand on.”

  Kelsey smiled. It was the same warm, liquid expression she had used at the ticket counter, which had momentarily dazzled him. This time, it felt like a reward. “Yes, exactly.”

  Cain realized he was rubbing his palm on his knee again and made himself stop. “That’s why you pulled me along with you. The Kobra won’t give a hoot that I’m a civilian and don’t…didn’t know who he was. If he’s kept his real identity successfully hidden for, what, thirty years?—he has to be utterly ruthless about eliminating every possible chink in the wall which hides him…and I’m a chink.”

  She nodded again, her expression sober.

  Cain rubbed his temple instead. “You figured this out the second it all went down in the temple. Wow.”

  Her expression turned apologetic. “I’d rather let you think I’m that smart. I only put it all together after the phone call to Dima in the hotel. I was following a hunch, that’s all.”

  “A hunch which told you to take me with you?”

  She grimaced. “I think a part of me drank your detail’s Kool-Aid. I didn’t for a moment think it could have anything to do with you.” She paused. “Neither did you,” she added, her tone gentle.

  “Not until he pointed the gun at me,” Cain admitted. “I think it’s the first time I seriously considered the possibility that my father’s enemies believed I was worth the time to come after. I don’t know how I feel
about it not being about me, after all.” He put his hand on the folded table, making it stay still. His palm stung against the cool Formica which lined the folded back underside.

  “You’ve insisted all along that the detail was your father’s way of keeping you under his thumb.”

  “Because it is,” Cain said. The tension in his chest increased. “Do you have any idea what it feels like to be locked into place, with no way out?”

  She shook her head a little. “You’re a grown adult. You could walk out of your apartment. Head to China. No one would stop you.”

  “You think I didn’t try that?” he shot back.

  Her eyes widened. “The gangs…” she breathed.

  Cain gave a hiss, as the tension wound tighter and the need to go find a drink pounded in his temples. He flexed his hands. Turned the left one over, and curled in his thumb. One…breathe…two…breathe…three…breathe….

  Kelsey was still looking at him when he made himself sit up again. “Better?” she said softly.

  She’d recognized what he was trying to do.

  “No,” he ground out, his throat tight. “Let’s finish this. Ducking it won’t make it go away.”

  She seemed to understand, which meant she had more empathy than she usually extended toward him. “You resent your father,” she prompted.

  “You have to understand this, going forward,” he said. “You think you already do. I guarantee you’ve got it wrong.”

  She waited.

  Cain realized he had his hand on his knee again. He curled it into a fist and left it there. “They figured I was good for the gold medal, going into the Olympics. The odds were far better than even. I was already being courted by conglomerates for sponsorships and advertising.”

  “They were that certain,” she breathed.

  “Part of my training was how to seduce the press, how to press the flesh, be charming. They were grooming me for the bright lights after I stepped off the podium. I thought my mom would burst with giddiness every time she looked at me.” He closed his eyes. His mother’s shining, proud face…he hadn’t thought of her in a very long while. It hurt too much.

  “You said they banned the allergy tablets you were using,” Kelsey prompted softly.

  One…breathe…two…

  He nodded. “After they officially kicked me off the team and the press storm was over…that was when my father flew to Colorado and explained what had really happened. His greatest political rival was the Governor of Michigan, Harold Ford. Ford had three members of the Olympic committee in his hip pocket, and a scandal of any sort would kill my father’s run for Governor. Ford was re-elected in a landslide, thanks to me.”

  “You were the pawn,” Kelsey pointed out. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Story of my life,” Cain muttered. “The day I was kicked off the team, my mom had a stroke. She was announced dead on the way to the hospital.” Cain raised his brow. “Want to tell me that wasn’t my fault, either?”

  Kelsey bit her lip. Her eyes were huge.

  Cain shook his head. “That’s when I lit out for China.”

  “You really made a cold decision to move to New York and join a gang?” she breathed.

  He blew out his breath. “I wasn’t thinking at all right then. New York was a long way from Chicago and it’s full of famous people. I’d be nobody there. Who in New York cares about a failed athlete who was famous for five seconds? Only, being in New York didn’t take away the anger.” He gripped his hand into a fist. Could he speak of what happened next?

  Kelsey touched his wrist, a light touch designed to draw his attention. “I know a bit about the next few years.”

  He nodded, relief touching him. “You probably know more than I do,” he admitted. “All I know is what others have told me and sometimes…flashes of recall.” He shuddered. Those moments of clarity were terrifying.

  “I get the picture,” Kelsey said. “You went down a dark rabbit hole. It happens.”

  “I’m not telling you to win your sympathy.” His voice was harsh. “I’m telling you because of what happened, the thing which got me out of it.” His throat tightened.

  Her body, cold. The stench of blood.

  “I don’t know what happened for sure,” he said. “I woke up…sobered up, I suppose. And I was…” He couldn’t say it. He’d never spoken the words except to one person. “I was in the worst sort of trouble, with no idea how I’d got there. I was straight enough to recognize how serious it was…and I made a call.”

  Kelsey let out her breath, as if she had been holding it. “To your father.”

  Cain nodded. “He flew to New York that night. Then things happened. The trouble went away. I went through six months of rehab and got sober. Then my father came out to Palm Springs and strongly encouraged me to find a new life. Something completely different.”

  “So. A history professor.”

  “History is harmless,” he said and reached for her can of soda. “I need the sugar,” he added apologetically and drained it.

  She rested her sharp chin on her hand. “You owe him…”

  “No.” He shook his head. “As far as he’s concerned, we’re square. He destroyed my biathlon career. Bailing me out of my second life choice was his way of paying me back.”

  “Only, you don’t see it that way,” Kelsey finished softly.

  Cain crimped his fingers around the can. “If I knew for certain everything I did in that time, then maybe I could square it away like he can.” He touched his temple. “It’s black in here and the bits I glimpse…they’re scary. I don’t want to know.”

  Her eyes were steady. Unexpectedly wise. “You’d rather go on believing you’re the scum of the earth than find out for certain.”

  Her observation, stringent and direct, loosened the tension in his chest. He let it all go with a deep sigh. “That’s the baggage you’re dragging with you, Kelsey. I figured you should know.” He rested his hands on the table once more. This time, they stayed there and didn’t fidget. “And now, if you don’t mind, I need to power down for a bit.”

  “Before you oscillate out of control?”

  He understood the concept instinctively. “That is the perfect analogy.”

  She moved to the other side of the table. “This is as far as I can go,” she warned him, and opened the laptop. “Ignore me.”

  He didn’t speak aloud the response which rose in his mind, that he hadn’t been able to ignore her since she had appeared in the café and stolen his focus. She had been an irritant from day one—grit in the machine, she would say. Yet she was working to save his life. It put the balance on her side of the spreadsheet.

  It also meant that trying to clear his mind, to find calm and acceptance, was almost impossible.

  He stared out the window at the blank darkness beyond and farther afield, where lights flickered by. Was he in another black rabbit hole? If he was, no one was left to haul him out, this time.

  He was on his own and, as his personal history proved, he was spectacularly useless at getting himself out of trouble. It was likely he wouldn’t find a way out, this time. No matter how bad it got, it would merely be Karma catching up with him.

  It didn’t bother him as much as the idea of pulling Kelsey down with him.

  Someone at Langley—probably Santiago’s office—sent a car to drive Lochan from the hospital to his apartment in Georgetown. It waited at the curb beyond the front doors of the hospital, the exhaust pipe pluming steam, the tinted windows hiding the interior. No one called Lochan’s name out as he lifted himself out of the wheel chair and thanked the orderly, yet he knew the car was for him.

  As he walked stiffly toward the black sedan, a bright red Mazda Miata whipped around the sedan and pulled into the curb just ahead of it. The passenger door popped open.

  Lochan paused, weighing his options.

  The driver of the Miata leaned across the passenger seat enough to spot Lochan on the pavement. It was Leela. She wore sunglasses and a
wool cap pulled low over her ears, but he would know her anywhere.

  She didn’t speak or wave to him. She didn’t need to.

  Lochan changed directions and walked as fast as he could manage to the Miata and dropped into the seat. He was shaking from that simple effort.

  Leela leaned across him, grabbed the door and shut it. She already had the Miata in gear. She dropped the clutch. The engine snarled as the little red car leapt away from the curb and shot out from under the portico into weak sunlight. Lochan winced at the brightness, anyway.

  He waited until she merged the Miata onto the freeway and had settled into top gear. “My house isn’t safe, then?”

  Leela shook her head. “Dima’s place was destroyed last night. Lea took a deep dive. Dima, too. Agata on the run somewhere in France. Scott is God knows where. I’m hoping he’s with Dima and helping her. I don’t know about Ren. Scott will know.”

  “Quinn and Noah?”

  “If Dima is smart, she’ll pick them up and take them with her. They’re new and untainted and she’ll need every bit of help she can get.”

  Lochan sighed, then winced as the stitches in his belly twinged at the movement. “And we are diving, too?”

  “Not too deep,” Leela said. “You shouldn’t have been discharged for days yet, only you were a sitting target in the ward.”

  “That’s what Santiago said. He had a nurse lined up for me at home…”

  “Yeah, well, what Santiago knows we have to figure the Kobra knows, too. I’m taking you somewhere else, instead. You’ll have hot and cold running medical care, and me in between.”

  Lochan sighed again, this time with relief. He plucked her hand from the steering wheel and kissed it. “Thank you.”

  Leela took her hand back, used it to wipe her cheeks dry. “It’s going to get ugly now,” she said softly.

  “Everyone looking at everyone else.”

  “Only reason I’m looking at you, Soler, is because you’re cute. Just so we’re clear, ‘kay?”

  He stirred himself to the effort required to make his voice strident. “Cute? I’m cute?”