Jake was leaning against the front of his desk, talking to a woman who had her back to Alexis. The expression on his face hovered somewhere between polite and confused as he said something Alexis couldn’t hear. The way the woman stood, her head cocked to the side with one foot curled around the heel of her other, seemed familiar but Alexis couldn’t quite place her.
Until she turned around.
Agent Sarah Webster.
“Alexis!” Sarah said, smiling brightly. “I was hoping to see you and say ‘hi’.”
With Sarah’s back to him, Jake made a face at Alexis and his hands came up in the universal what-the-hell gesture.
Alexis almost laughed at her teammate, though judging by the way Sarah was coming toward her, as if she expected a hug from her colleague, Alexis suspected Sarah thought the smile was for her. Instead of embracing her colleague, she stepped back to stand beside Isiah.
“Sarah,” Alexis said. “This is a surprise.”
Sarah stopped a few feet away, still smiling, and shrugged. “I’m down here on vacation. I thought I’d stop by and say ‘hi’ to you and Director Shah. Jake said she stepped out for a minute though.”
Behind her, Jake mimicked a baseball base coach, pointing to the exit with one hand and wildly circling the other. Shah hadn’t just stepped out, she’d run.
Which didn’t sound like Shah, but then again, it was entirely possible that Shah already knew why Agent Webster was in town and just wanted to leave the agent to cool her heels. Because one thing Alexis knew for certain was that there was no way in hell Sarah Webster just happened to be on Tildas Island for a vacation.
“And who’s this?” Sarah asked, her eyes drifting over Isiah appreciatively.
Jake cocked his head and silently asked her the same question. He already knew who Isiah was, but no doubt Jake wanted to know why he was there with her.
“This is my boyfriend, Clarke.” Alexis slipped her arm through Isiah’s. As she leaned closer to him, she caught a faint scent of aftershave. Had he smelled this good in the car? She lifted her face toward the collar of his shirt and the bare skin above it, but Isiah gave her arm a little squeeze. “It’s my day off,” she continued as she put an inch of space between her and Isiah. “I needed to drop off a file and pick up my waterproof earbuds before we head to the beach.”
Jake snorted then covered it with a cough. Alexis wasn’t the least worried about the way Sarah was eying Isiah, but she’d never trusted Agent Webster and she wasn’t going to start now.
“Speaking of which, Babe,” Isiah said. “Tony is waiting at the boat, we should get going.” He added that last bit as he tapped on his watch. Jake, the thirty-seven-year-old pre-pubescent boy, was now making exaggerated hip-thrusting motions, pointing to Isiah, and mouthing “You the man.”
Then suddenly Jake straightened and Director Shah walked into the room.
“Director Shah,” he said, his voice as serious as an undertaker’s. Shah shot him a look of amusement then, without missing a beat, she came forward. “Clarke, it’s nice to see you again.” She held out her hand to Isiah. Alexis had no idea where Shah could have been standing to overhear the subterfuge, but she was damn glad both Isiah and Shah were quick on their feet. Not that she would have expected any different, but still, it was nice not to be disappointed.
“Director Shah, good to see you again. You ever get a chance to try that restaurant I recommended?”
“The one over on the point? I did and it was perfect. Thank you,” she answered. Then turning to Alexis, she added, “It’s your day off. Not that I don’t like seeing you around the office, but you know how I feel about taking the time when you can.”
Alexis nodded. “I came to grab my earbuds and drop this to you. It’s that file you asked me to look at.” As she spoke, Alexis handed the manila envelope filled with the papers from Huck’s file to her boss.
“And what did you think?” Shah asked.
“I think it’s likely the defense will claim diminished mental state, but I think the prosecutors will be able to counter it pretty efficiently. My notes are inside,” she said, bullshitting her way through the situation. That Shah also felt it important to keep things hidden from Sarah Webster was something Alexis would ponder later.
“Great, thanks. I’ll take a look. Now, weren’t you headed out to some beach on St. John or something today?” Shah asked.
Alexis nodded. “We need to swing by Beni’s and pick her up then we’ll head out.” She hoped Shah would pick up on what Alexis was telling her.
“That sounds like a good plan. You three have a good time today. We’ll catch up when you’re back. I hear the fish tacos at the Island Time bar are amazing,” she responded.
“They are and we’ll have some for you.” Isiah reached for Alexis’s hand. “You ready?”
“Let me grab my earbuds,” she said, taking two steps toward her desk. Her desk that held no earbuds.
“Here they are.” Jake walked toward her carrying a pair. “I used them this morning when I went for a run, but don’t worry, I wiped them down after,” he added with a grin.
Alexis had no intention of using Jake’s earbuds, but still the thought grossed her out. “You better have more than wiped them down,” she said. “You better have cleaned the channels and taken off the tips to disinfect them.”
“You are by far the pickiest person on the planet,” Jake groused. “Can you just take her away for her day off and maybe, you know, relax her,” Jake gave Isiah a loaded look.
“Thin ice, McMullen,” Shah warned.
“For the good of the order, I’m willing to take the risk, Director,” he shot back.
Shah shook her head. “You two, get out of here, before McMullen does anything that will land us with a sexual harassment lawsuit.” She gestured Alexis and Isiah toward the exit. “Agent Webster, Steven said you’re in town for a visit. Why don’t we go into my office and you can tell me what I can do for you.”
Alexis and Isiah were out the door before Shah and Webster set foot in Shah’s office. Five minutes later, they were climbing back into Alexis’s car. But before she started it, she pulled out her phone and started typing a quick text to her teammates. She hesitated to add Damian, who’d taken a few days off to spend time with Charlotte, but ended up adding him, knowing he’d be pissed if she left him out of the loop.
“Any interest in telling me what that was about?” Isiah asked as she hit the send button.
“Hell if I know,” she answered. And she really didn’t have any idea why Sarah Webster was showing up on Tildas Island. She only knew she didn’t like it.
“Whoever that agent was, you don’t like her,” he pressed.
Alexis considered brushing him off, but he’d stepped up to the plate and gone along with her impromptu story and she owed him for that.
“You’re right. I don’t. I worked with her in the New York office the year before I transferred down here. She’d been in the DC office for a while, but I think she had a mentor or something that decided she needed to get some experience outside of the beltway. Anyway, she never did anything I could specifically take issue with, but she always struck me as one of those agents more interested in whose ass she could kiss rather than what crimes she could solve.”
As she answered Isiah’s question, she pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward town. “It was weird to see her here. Don’t get me wrong, Director Shah’s ass is one she’d definitely want to kiss, but I can tell you that she isn’t down here on vacation. First, she can’t afford it. She has a brother with a gambling problem and more than once she’s talked about all her money either going to paying off his bookies or going to his rehab costs.”
“And second?”
She refrained from answering as she navigated a particularly tricky intersection that, for some reason, had both a stop sign and a stoplight. “Island charm” is what tourists called it. Most of the locals called it a nightmare. Especially when the cruise ships were in port and no
ne of the visitors knew how to cross the street.
“Second,” she said, picking up their conversation once she was on the road she needed to be on. “Second, even if she is here on vacation, I can’t imagine why she’d want to stop by the office. Sure, Director Shah is there, but it was just as likely as not that Shah would have refused to see her.”
“Would she have come in order to visit you or any of your teammates?” he asked.
“Damian is the only other member of the task force she might know because they were in DC at the same time. But Jake was based out of LA, Beni out of Boston, and Dominic joined the Bureau after she’d been transferred up to New York, though he was based in DC. There’s no one for her to see except me, and believe me, we weren’t enemies, but we certainly weren’t friends.”
Isiah remained silent as she made a few more turns and inched her way through the cruise ship crowds that swarmed the shopping area of Havensted. She was two blocks from their destination when he spoke again.
“So the sudden arrival of Agent Webster aside, what are we going to do about the apparent reappearance of Nik Balraj and Rosen’s plan to compromise an asset?”
She graced him with a quick smile. “Dominic is going to follow our friend Webster to see if we can figure out why she’s really here. But in the meantime, we’re going to Beni’s and as soon as they are able, Jake and Director Shah will meet us there.”
“We’re doing cloak and dagger shit already and we haven’t even left Tildas Island?”
Alexis laughed. “We don’t know where Webster is going or where she’s staying—not yet anyway—and I don’t want her to see us out and about when she thinks we’re heading out on some boat. I don’t trust her one teensy, tiny bit and so we need to go somewhere we can have the conversation with Shah that we need to, and not worry whether Webster will see us—or worse, overhear us.”
“And Beni’s is the place to do that?”
Alexis tossed a smile over her shoulder. “To be honest, I’m not entirely sure Beni will welcome having us all invade her apartment. I mean we—the team—have been there, but I don’t think Shah has. But to be even more honest, I could use a little bit of fun today and it will definitely be fun to watch Beni get all worked up as we descend on her space.”
She sensed Isiah’s attention on her and though he didn’t know the exact dynamics of her team, he’d been part of an elite team like hers. She trusted that he’d recognize how important the teasing and taunting among teammates was to forming strong bonds—bonds that would serve them well in the field.
After a beat, he shook his head. “You all are weird, you know that? Kind of cool, but weird as shit.”
She laughed and he let out a low chuckle, too.
“All the good teams are, Isiah. All the good teams are.”
Isiah followed Alexis into Beni’s apartment, a third floor walk-up in a building that had seen better days but more than made up for it with its location in the heart of Havensted. The owners of the six-unit complex hadn’t bothered to put much into upkeep but still, Isiah was pretty sure that Beni had lucked out finding the place, given that it was walking distance to both the beach and nightlife spots.
“What’s going on, Alexis?” Beni asked as she shut the door and herded them into a small living room with an eat-in kitchen off to one side. A sofa, two upholstered chairs, and a coffee table filled the living area and a bistro-style table and four chairs graced the kitchen area. It was a nondescript room that the agent hadn’t bothered to personalize, but it did have a large sliding door that opened to a narrow balcony. If Isiah stood on his tiptoes, he could probably get a glimpse of the ocean.
“A couple of things,” Alexis said. “But one can wait until Director Shah gets here.”
Beni stilled and Isiah seriously considered whether lasers were going to shoot out of her eyes with the glare she directed at Alexis. “Director Shah is coming here?”
Alexis nodded.
“Bullshit. She doesn’t even know where I live.”
“Did you really just say that?” Alexis asked. “She knew you were six when you lost your first tooth, of course she knows where you live.”
Beni’s eyes narrowed to tiny slits, but then abruptly, she swung around and stalked to the kitchen.
“I got home at eight this morning after spending eight hours training the security night shift at Hemmeleigh,” she said, referencing the resort where the Summit would be held the following year.
“How’d they do this time?” Alexis asked as she flopped down on the couch. Kicking off her flats, she curled a leg underneath her, obviously comfortable in her prickly teammate’s home.
“Better, but that’s not the point. Why are you here? Why’s he here.” She gestured to him. Alexis shot him a grin. She was definitely enjoying this.
“Need some coffee, Beni?”
“Fuck off. I need some sleep.” At Beni’s reaction, Alexis laughed.
“You can sleep once we’re all gone. You’re going to want to hear all this anyway and would have been pissed off if we hadn’t looped you in,” Alexis said, rising from the couch. “Isiah, since Beni is incapable of playing the host, please have a seat. Beni, come sit down. I’ll make the coffee.”
“It’s the least you can do. Besides, it’s mostly made already, anyway,” Beni grumbled as she passed Alexis on her way back to the living room. Beni sank into a chair then tugged a throw pillow out from behind her. Hugging it against her chest, she scrutinized him. “You going to take a seat?” she asked.
He eyed her for a moment, then sat on the opposite side of the same couch Alexis had just abandoned.
“Wait, you said ‘once we’re all gone.’ Who else is coming over?” Beni asked Alexis, glaring in the general direction of the kitchen where Alexis was sliding the coffee pot from the machine.
“Jake will be here, too.”
“Dominic?”
Alexis shook her head. “We had a visit from Agent Sarah Webster. You ever meet her?”
Beni considered the question then shook her head. “No, what’s she doing on island?”
“Said she’s on vacation, but I don’t believe her. Neither does Shah, which is why we’re meeting here and not at the office. Dominic is going to follow her.”
“You all seem awfully blasé about following one of your own,” he said.
Both women looked at him, then Beni looked at Alexis as if to ask if she wanted to field the question.
Alexis poured two cups of coffee, then rummaged in Beni’s fridge for something. Pulling out what looked like a jar of juice, she proceeded to pour a glass of that as well. After putting the jar away, she brought all three drinks over, setting the two coffees down on the table. “No cream or sugar, Beni doesn’t believe in them,” she said to Isiah.
“I believe in them,” Beni said, picking up her mug and cradling it between her hands. “I just can’t be bothered to shop so I’m usually out.”
“Anyway, about following Agent Webster,” Alexis said, holding her glass of juice and retaking the seat she’d vacated earlier. “You know how in any group there’s always that one person or a few people who clearly have their own agenda?”
He nodded.
“It’s less of an issue in a corporate setting, but you should know how detrimental it is to teams that need to operate the way ours does—the way yours presumably did.”
“By the time anyone got to the teams, those people were usually weeded out. But yeah, I know what you’re saying.”
“The Bureau is bigger than the SEAL teams. We’re elite, but not as elite as the SEALs, and so sometimes agents slip through. Sarah Webster is one of them. I don’t like that we have to keep a watch out for people like her, but we’d be crazy not to,” Alexis said.
Alexis had a point there, the Bureau was much bigger than the SEALs and with size came more room for error. “Fair enough. But what do you think you’ll find by following her?” Isiah asked.
“And you said that I’d want to be looped into
whatever it was you wanted to talk to Shah about and I can’t imagine Sarah Webster—as interesting as her presence is—rises to that level,” Beni interjected.
“You’re right, she doesn’t. And as for what we’ll find by following her?” Alexis shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe nothing. But like I said, I’m not the only one who thinks her visit is weird. Shah does, too.”
“And the reason we’re meeting?” Beni pressed.
“We’ll wait for Shah and Jake to get here so we don’t have to repeat ourselves,” she said. But she’d no sooner finished her sentence when there was a knock at Beni’s door.
Rising from her seat, Beni left the room then came back with Shah and Jake trailing behind her.
“Coffee anyone? Juice?” Beni asked, gesturing Shah to the second chair in the room. Jake looked around then rather than sit between Isiah and Alexis, he grabbed a chair from the dining table.
Shah declined the coffee as she sat.
“Is that Alexis’s juice?” Jake asked, eyeing the glass in Alexis’s hand. When Beni nodded, Jake accepted the offer and less than a minute later, Isiah was surrounded by three FBI agents and one of the most renowned—and elusive—FBI leaders he’d heard plenty about but never met. Yes, that was a little something he hadn’t shared with Alexis.
Alexis had spoken with respect about her boss when they’d been at the Goodman’s. But that hadn’t been the first time he’d heard Shah’s name. Over his more than a decade as a SEAL, he’d heard her name at least a dozen times during his deployments. But it wasn’t just the quantity of times her name had been mentioned that had him recalling her, it was also the people who’d spoken about her. Leaders he respected, those at the highest levels, whispered about her—usually with gratitude, but always with respect and maybe even a little awe.
“So, Alexis,” Shah began. “Why don’t you tell us all about this little bombshell you stumbled across? Pun intended,” she added as she placed the file of papers on the coffee table. “By the way, Lieutenant Clarke, it’s nice to actually meet you.” Shah leaned over and offered her hand.
Night Deception Page 8