“Brandon got the position,” Henry told her. “Brandon Hall got the fucking Deputy Director position.”
Vanessa hissed a breath through her teeth in sympathy and circled his desk. Her hand was cool as she pressed it gently to his forearm, which was bared from the sleeves he’d rolled up to his elbows, and she rubbed his skin, petting him like a cat. Henry closed her eyes and focused on the sensation, trying to clear his head and get back into the game. But he couldn’t help the anger that had flashed through him at the memo that had just landed in his inbox only minutes before. He had spent years working hard for the Agency, doing everything that had been asked of him, putting in all the hours and all the overtime, turning in absolutely perfect paperwork, giving up any opportunity he’d had of having a family and a normal life, and for what? To have the position he’d coveted since it’d been opened get pulled out from under him by some upstart asshole who he technically outranked. It was like watching his life’s work spiral down the drain with a single flush.
“I’m sorry if it seems like I’m over-reacting,” Henry started to say.
“You’re not over-reacting,” Vanessa argued. “If anybody knows how hard you work and how much you deserved that position, it would be me. In my view, you have every right to be frustrated and pissed off.”
“Thank you, Nessa,” Henry said. He took her hand and gave it a squeeze before brushing his thumb over the soft skin on the back of her hand. Then he let go and asked, “Any progress on that list?”
“I should be asking you that question,” Vanessa said. “We’ve both been working on it all day. I was hoping at least one of us would have found something by now.”
Henry sighed and dragged the two-page list back in front of him, scanning down it as he tried to focus on something other than the missed opportunity for promotion. He felt like he’d been over the list a million times, and he had yet to figure out what was so special about the assignments that Riley had been on over the year that would have Brandon Hall—the bastard—and his secretary seemingly conspiring. “Are you sure you copied down the information from the database correctly?” he asked, tossing the sheets onto his desk again with a heavy sigh.
“Absolutely positive,” Vanessa said. “You know me. I double-check everything, and I triple-checked this. There is no way I copied any of this down wrong.”
Henry sighed and shook his head. “I can’t find any sort of connection,” he said. “Not with the little we’ve got to go on.” He pushed himself out of his chair and stretched, snagging the list and folding it. “I think I’ll go upstairs to the records room and look at the actual files,” he said, tucking the folded sheets into his pant pocket. “Would you care to join me?”
Vanessa gave him a bright smile and nodded. “Sure thing. Let me get my copy of the list off my desk so we can make notes on it,” she suggested. Henry snagged his suit jacket off of the back of his chair and shrugged it on as he followed his secretary into the outer office. She paused at her desk long enough to grab her smartphone and her copy of the list of assignments, and then he took her elbow gently in his hand, leading her out into the hallway.
It was a short trip down the hall to the elevators, and the ride to the seventh floor where the records were kept was made in silence as Vanessa checked emails and responded to messages on her smartphone. Henry leaned against the elevator’s back wall, watching her work with a small smile on his face. His eyes followed the graceful curve of her neck as she bent her head over the small screen, the dark curls of her hair falling over her olive skin. He reached out to brush his fingers over the curls but pulled his hand back as the elevator dinged and stopped on the seventh floor, the doors sliding open onto a short hallway leading to a single set of double doors.
“I hope this doesn’t take very long,” Vanessa said, tucking her phone into her pocket and stepping out of the elevator. “I’m ready to get done with this and get some sleep.”
Henry was ready to get done with it and get something other than sleep, preferably with Vanessa, somewhere dark and secluded. He, wisely, decided to keep those thoughts to himself. “I think after all of this is said and done, I’m going to sleep for at least twenty-four hours straight,” he mused, leading her to the doors at the end. He fished his access badge out of his wallet and swiped it through the card reader set in the wall by the door. It beeped twice in rapid succession, and the red light on it switched to green before the doors clicked and swung open to admit them.
The room the two of them stepped into was massive, taking up much of the entirety of the seventh floor, lined with row after row of file boxes and folders and leather-bound books. The air held a musty odor to it, like a library full of old, mildewing books, and the entire room was as silent as a tomb. Vanessa’s heels clacked against the marble floors as she stepped into the room ahead of him, breaking the sanctity of the silent room, and Henry followed her as she strode to the large marble circular desk at the center of the room. Behind it sat an old man, his short hair solidly gray, his dark skin wrinkled and lined with age. A pair of wire-framed glasses perched on the end of his nose as he squinted at a newspaper laid out on the desk in front of him. He barely looked up from it as he turned a page; it crackled in the silence.
“Mr. Cage, Ms. Ioannides, so lovely of you to visit me up here,” the man said. He finally looked up at the two of them and studied them with a pair of eyes that were a strange, vivid blue. “To what do I owe the honor?”
Israel Jones was one of the oldest agents still in the Agency’s employ. Long retired from the field and from any supervisory duties, Israel had been put in charge of the records room to assist any agents who bothered to come upstairs to look at the handwritten and typewritten filed reports on paper instead of examining them on the computer screen. That was something that didn’t happen much lately; a lot of agents didn’t bother to go all the way to the seventh floor and wait for Israel to find what they needed when they could just pull it up with the stroke of a button and the click of a mouse. Henry constantly worried that Damon Hartley or some other wise guy would decide that Israel’s job was no longer necessary and forcibly retire him. As such, he made it a point to visit the seventh floor as often as he could get away with, if only to ensure that the records room—and Israel’s job—stayed necessary.
“I was hoping you could help us look up some files, Israel,” Henry said, nodding to him in greeting. He took the list out of his pocket and slid it across the desk to him. Israel adjusted the glasses on his nose and looked at the list closely.
“This is a lot of files to read through, you realize,” he said. “And a lot for me to look up at once.”
“I’m aware,” Henry agreed. “Let’s just start with the most recent ten and go from there.” Israel nodded and slid off of his stool, stretching his lanky arms before retreating into the stacks. Henry watched as the man disappeared around the corner of one of the large shelving units, and then he looked to Vanessa, giving her a smile. She didn’t return the expression.
“Do you think we’re on to something, or are we just chasing our tails?” she asked. Her slim fingers traced along the edges of her copy of the list, her manicured nails scraping the paper.
“You’re the one who brought me the list,” Henry said. “You tell me.”
Vanessa cracked a small smile, but it quickly faded as she sighed. “I’m just worried that this is a diversion away from something more important,” she admitted. “Clearly, something is going on around here. If it weren’t, I don’t think Brandon would have managed to snatch the Deputy Director position out from under you.”
“You think that’s related?” Henry asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Maybe,” Vanessa hedged. “I suppose we’ll find out soon enough, won’t we?”
“I suppose so,” Henry agreed as Israel emerged from the stacks, a pile of folders and a leather-bound book balanced precariously on his spindly arms. Henry rushed forward and took the stack from the man before he dropped it, and Israel gave him
a grateful smile for his consideration.
“Those are the files for the twelve most recent assignments on your list,” Israel said. “Two of them were next to the last file I was going to pick up, so I went ahead and grabbed those too. Do you want me to go ahead and get the rest?”
“Just the next eight please, Israel,” Henry requested. “I don’t want to overburden you too quickly.” He nodded toward the stacks on the right. “The tables are on the other side of those, right?”
“Yes, just go make yourselves comfortable,” Israel said. “And good luck finding whatever you’re looking for.”
“Thank you,” Henry said. He motioned with his head in the direction of the stacks. “Come on, Nessa. Let’s get started on this before something else happens that drags us away from this and back into the real world.”
Vanessa laughed softly and nodded, heading into the stacks. Henry let her lead the way to one of the smaller conference tables beyond them, where he offloaded the pile of files in his arms onto the table. He’d barely taken his seat when the chirp of his cell phone’s ringtone broke the otherwise quiet room.
“Shit,” Henry muttered, digging it out of his pocket and glancing at the screen. It was Scott calling, which meant it couldn’t be good at all. Scott almost never called him when he was in the middle of an assignment. Worry shot through him as he answered the phone. “Hello?”
“Henry, I need a favor. A huge one,” Scott said without preamble. He sounded out of breath, as if he had been walking or jogging, and anger and annoyance underlay the breathlessness. Henry raised an eyebrow.
“What sort of favor?”
“Riley and I are in a sticky spot,” Scott explained. “It involves a museum break in, a police chase, and a burning car. Don’t ask,” he said before Henry could. “We’re in the middle of nowhere, trying to get away from the car and back to the hotel before the cops find the car and then find us. Do you think you could get out here and pick us up?”
Henry looked at the pile of folders in front of him and sighed. “Sure. Where are you at?” Scott rattled off the street and the nearest intersection, and Henry nodded. “I know where that is. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He hung up without another word and rose from the chair he’d barely been able to sit in. “This is going to have to wait. Scott’s gotten himself into a jam and needs a hand.”
“Told you the real world would intervene,” Vanessa said with a smile. “I’ll stay here and work on these. Why don’t you go dig Scott out of his hole and then come back to join me when you can? I’ll call you if I find anything particularly major.”
Henry smiled at her and then leaned down, pressing a soft kiss to her lips, tasting their familiar sweetness as he finally ran his fingers through her dark curls. She returned his kiss with a smile before he stepped back from her. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he promised. “And you be careful. If you’re right about everything going on in the office tying together, then you could be doing a dangerous thing by digging into the past. If you need me, do not hesitate to call. I’m never too busy for you.”
Chapter Fifteen
Scott was still furious as he stalked down the sidewalk ahead of Riley, leading her down the street away from the burning car they’d left behind them. Riley followed him in silence—blessed silence—and she hadn’t spoken a word to him since he’d castigated her while torching their rental car. He was grateful for the silence; it gave him the chance to blow off rarely felt steam, and he didn’t have to worry about snapping at Riley for saying something that, in his angry state, he would see as stupid.
He rarely lost his temper like that. His reputation in the Agency had been that he was cool, calm, and levelheaded. But in the past two days, he’d lost his temper more than he had in the past year of working. He was relatively sure that that was a record for him.
After he’d called Henry and asked for a bit of assistance, he stuffed his cell phone back into his pocket and chanced a glance over his shoulder. Riley was still walking behind him, not looking at him as she strode down the street, her mouth moving as she muttered to herself, just low enough that he couldn’t hear what she was saying, though he thought he heard the word “Linus” at one point. An ugly scowl crossed her otherwise pretty face, and she looked up in time to see him looking back at her. Sighing, he slowed down, dropping back to let her catch up with him. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know, Scott. What do you think?” Riley asked with heavy sarcasm, rolling her eyes. “I only just got yelled at for doing my job. That’s all.”
Scott heaved out another sigh and shook his head, stuffing both of his hands into his pockets. “Look, Riley, I’m sorry,” he started to say.
“No, you’re not,” Riley snapped back. She whirled on him and shoved him. He staggered into the brick wall of the building beside him. “Don’t you even apologize for it, because I know you don’t mean it. If you were really sorry, you wouldn’t have fucking done it in the first place.”
“Riley, I am sorry for yelling at you,” Scott said. “But you’ve got to understand, this isn’t a regular assignment. You put us in serious danger back there. All it would have taken was a bullet as well placed as yours for us to end up dead or dying. And while my life sucks ass right now, I’m not quite ready to leave it yet.”
“And you think I am?” she asked. “I love my life, and I love my job. Not many agents can actually say that and mean it. But I can. I don’t have anything else. So do you honestly think that I’m stupid enough to do something that will completely compromise the one life option I have open to me? I know what I’m doing, Scott. I’m not incompetent.”
Scott felt a sense of overwhelming sadness surge through him at her words. Riley honestly thought that this was her only option in life, to hire herself out to a government that didn’t give a shit about her and do whatever they told her to do—including killing other human beings? Dear Lord, her life must have been messed up before she’d been drafted into the Agency’s employ if she thought this was a better opportunity than what she had had.
His thoughts about Riley’s motives for joining the Agency made him recall his own, and his frown deepened. He’d been twenty-three, a year into his SEALs training, when he’d been approached by his superior officers, accompanied by a man in a suit who’d introduced himself as Damon Hartley. “I have an opportunity for you to serve your country even more than what the SEALs will allow,” he’d said, and Scott had been foolish enough to believe what Hartley had told him. And when he’d realized how he’d been duped into joining the Agency, his patriotic duty played off of like it meant nothing, it’d been too late for him to get out. He’d been forced to simply make the best out of a bad situation, discovering extra motivation in the form of Amy, but that hadn’t lasted either.
In a bit of a funk from his thoughts and unable to help himself, Scott reached out and grasped Riley’s forearm, drawing her to a stop beside him. She glanced down at his hand but didn’t try to pull away. “Riley…” He blew out a breath and looked away from her for a moment, brushing his free hand through his hair before clearing his throat. “You told me earlier that you’d tell me why you thought there would be an investigation opened on you. Why you were so scared by the prospect.” He suddenly hoped, desperately, that she would be honest and truthful with him, because he wanted to go back to the Internal Affairs department and be able to say, “Riley Walker is clear. She’s not doing anything to compromise herself or the Agency in any way.” He couldn’t imagine that a woman who saw her options as limited as Riley saw hers would do something to compromise her livelihood.
Riley stared at him for a moment and then tugged her arm free, shaking her head as she started to walk again. Scott scrambled after her, thinking she wasn’t going to tell him, but then she started speaking, her voice just loud enough to carry over to him.
“I didn’t tell the truth,” Riley said, clutching the strap on her bag so tightly her knuckles turned white. Scott had to lean closer to hear her be
tter. “About…about what happened to Kevin. Not the whole truth, anyway.”
“What did you do? Just file a false report?”
“I left out part of what happened,” Riley admitted. “And I falsified parts of the rest.”
“Like…like what?” Scott asked, unsure that he really wanted to hear the answer but knowing he had to find out anyway.
“Like the part where I went in the room after he died and didn’t get out like I said in my report,” Riley said. Scott’s eyes widened, and he stopped her again.
“Riley, that isn’t a matter of just leaving out a detail here or there,” Scott said. “That’s a flat-out lie.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Riley said, her voice rising. “You think I haven’t been dwelling on that since January? Every day, I keep expecting Internal Affairs to drop out of the sky on top of me and put me down like the lying idiot I am. You have no idea the stress I’ve been living under.”
“But why?” Scott asked, trying to understand what would motivate her to turn in a false story when she filed her reports. “Why would you change your story?”
“Oh, come on, Scott, think about it,” Riley said. “If I were to say that I had gone into a room where a vampire had appeared and murdered my partner before I could get there, they’d lock me up so fast my head would spin. Besides which, if they’d known that I was in the room, the first thing they’d do is nail me for his murder, whether I had anything to do with it or not. They already tried to do that when I told them I was still in my sniper nest. Imagine what they’d do if I said I’d gone in the room.”
Scott was beginning to understand why Riley was so terrified of the idea of an investigation into her activities. If this came to light, she would be turned over to Internal Affairs and would be lucky to see another sunrise after that.
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