by Misty Evans
Pongo sat beside the chair and dropped his head into her lap, his big dark eyes expectant. He probably needed to pee, needed to be fed. Should she wake Michael or let him sleep? Why hadn’t he set his alarm?
If Titus Allen was doing the president’s morning briefing, what would it hurt to let Michael sleep a little while longer? She rose and motioned for Pongo to follow her. On the way past the nightstand, she set the BlackBerry down. She’d take care of the dog and wake Michael at six thirty. It was the least she could do after he’d taken such good care of her.
Back in her room, she went to slip his sweatpants on when she realized she wasn’t wearing underwear. Damn, after everything last night, she’d gone and left them in his bathroom with the rest of her clothes she’d washed in the sink.
The panties were still hanging over the shower door. Brigit chastised herself like a good Catholic should even though she no longer practiced any faith. Some childhood things were hard to cast off.
Once dressed and the arm sling in place, she tucked the rabbit’s foot into the pocket of the sweats and headed downstairs.
She let Pongo out and discovered the dog food container in the mudroom. Two scoops filled the bowl and she retrieved his half-empty water dish to refill it in the kitchen, absently aware of a pulsing beep as she passed the security panel. Just as she got to the sink, a loud buzz made her jump.
“Deputy Director?” a voice called through the intercom of the security panel. “Pongo’s tripped the motion detectors in quadrant 2A. You might want to shut that section off.”
Crap, she’d forgotten about the security system. Finding the wall panel, she pushed the talk button. “Er, sorry. The director is still sleeping and Pongo needed to go out, and, I, um…”
Another man, another voice, cut in. “He’s still sleeping? But his car is waiting.”
His car? Ah, crud. “He’s going to the office later than usual today, so how about he calls you when he’s ready for the car?”
There was another of those long, pregnant pauses. Apparently Michael adhered to a strict daily schedule. His oversleeping threw off everyone. Brigit tried to lighten the moment. “You gentlemen know where the coffee maker is?”
She got no reply. O-kay. “So how do I turn off the motion detector for the dog’s area?”
The male voice on the other end was stern. “Yellow button, bottom right. Marked 2A.”
“Right-o. Thanks.”
She clicked off the speaker and slouched against the wall. She was really screwing things up for Michael. First with the president, then Titus, now even his security guards.
Tough. There was no reason for her to feel guilty about making him look bad. Her mind flashed back to their midnight talk on the couch. He was messing up her life as well, blackmailing her to find Peter and putting Tory’s life in the balance. Little did he know she would have helped him hunt down her mother’s true killer without any threat at all.
Brigit sank her right hand into the pocket of the sweatpants and rubbed the rabbit’s foot. Suddenly, she didn’t care if she got Michael in a little trouble. It would be interesting to see how he reacted, and it seemed to her he could stand to loosen up a bit.
She made her way to the study, picked up the landline and dialed Truman’s number. “Gunn,” he answered on the first ring. He always answered on the first ring.
“Tru, it’s me. What’s happening?”
“Gidget? Where are you? Still at Stone’s house?”
“Yes. He’s sort of holding me prisoner, but since I haven’t got anywhere else to go right now, it seems like a deal.”
“How’s the gunshot wound?”
“Better. Listen, have you found Peter yet?”
“You on a secure line?”
“Would I call you otherwise?”
“No Peter, but I found Moira. I finally deciphered the call that put us on Tory’s ass from the other night. Peter paid the ransom for Moira to walk free.”
“Damn it, I should have known. Peter and the notorious Moira Raphael.”
“Poster child for beautiful deadly women everywhere.”
Dropping into Michael’s office chair, she closed her eyes and tried to ignore the shiver running down her spine. “Peter put up the ransom money and made Moira pay him back in blood.”
“You got it, Gidge.”
“Where is she now?”
“No clue. She and Peter were bedfellows once. Maybe they are again. Wouldn’t be the first time they escaped together. Either way, he rescued her, and her job was to assassinate O’Bern. O’Bern disappeared on her, but you took his place. Since you’ve been trailing her almost as long as Peter, she must have seen it as divine intervention. An even trade.”
Peter might have viewed it the same way. “Remember the last time they worked together? In Italy?”
“They escaped on a cruise ship dressed as an elderly couple.”
“Better make sure all your resources are playing their A game. Peter’s a master of disguise. I’ll be in touch.”
She returned the handset to its cradle. Her mind whirled with a dozen to-dos, but she knew it was all up to the FBI, Customs and other agents watching the airports, bus terminals and boat docks to find Peter, Tory and Moira. The problem was, had always been, finding three people out of thousands, who could use a dozen different means of escape.
Her stomach growled. Since she couldn’t face the day and what it might bring on an empty stomach, she ventured back to the kitchen.
Her breakfast usually consisted of a cup of tea, but this morning she needed something stronger. She was starving and tea just wasn’t gonna cut it.
In one of the cabinets, she found a fancy espresso machine that probably cost more than her entire set of kitchen appliances. Before the fire anyway. She checked the pantry and found a bag of beans and a coffee grinder. It would make a lot of noise, but if that didn’t wake Michael up, he needed sleep far worse than anything else.
As the mill ground the beans into powder, Brigit brought Pongo in from his outside run. She even remembered to punch the yellow button and reactivate the backyard’s motion detector.
Ten minutes later, one espresso and one cappuccino were ready. And still there was no Michael.
She carried the drinks upstairs, sipping the foam of her cappuccino.
Michael was still in the throes of deep sleep. His massive body covered the king-size bed with complete abandon. It was funny to see him so relaxed. In that moment, he was perfectly at peace. Brigit felt her own body mellow in response.
Unable to bring herself to wake him, she set the espresso on the nightstand and resumed her seat in the chair to drink her cap. She might as well return the favor of observing him while he slept.
Michael woke with a start, his heart jackhammering at his rib cage as the realization he’d overslept hit him. Overslept? The very idea he’d slept period shocked him.
Brigit’s voice, perky and smug, came to him from the corner. “Morning,” she said. “Sleep well?”
He jerked upright, glanced at her and then at his bedside clock. Why hadn’t he set the alarm? “Jesus, it’s seven o’clock. I’m late.”
Hopping out of bed, he shot a hand through his hair and turned his back to her as he adjusted his pants around a morning erection. “How long have you been sitting there?”
“Long enough to know you talk in your sleep.”
“Jesus,” he said again, snatching up his phone.
“I already spoke to Director Allen, and he’s handled the President’s Daily Brief. I took care of Pongo and called Irene to let her know you’d be late. I think she might have stroked out.”
He stopped dialing, hit the disconnect button and turned to face her, his erection much less full. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
She was wearing her nylon exercise pants and top again. For some reason, he was disappointed. “What, and miss the chance to snoop through your house?” She grinned as he scowled. “By the way, there’s something I want to ask you.”
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br /> He slapped the phone down and picked up the white cup of nearly black liquid. “I can hardly wait.”
“Do you like your job?”
The sip of liquid choked him. It was cold and much too strong. “What?”
“I know you feel a duty and a huge responsibility as Deputy Director, but do you enjoy your position as such?”
Before his life had gone to hell six months earlier, Michael would have answered yes in a heartbeat. He’d been a good Director of Operations. Every day when he’d walked into the office, he welcomed the buzz of adrenaline in his veins. His group of spies had met the challenges of international intelligence with cunning and flexibility that had outlasted several administrations.
Since being promoted to Deputy Director of the CIA, he’d continued to be outstandingly good at his job. What he didn’t experience anymore was the buzz of excitement, the thrill of meeting the endless challenges.
Nowadays, the challenges seemed like overwhelming problems. When he thought of the future, it was a black abyss. Lately, he’d caught himself daydreaming a lot. Most of them involved moving to Greece or Italy and living on a boat. Last night, he’d journeyed into sexual fantasies about Brigit.
His cock jumped and he mentally smacked himself with a dose of logic. Psych 101: everybody enjoyed escapism, especially when they had a high-stress job or had recently survived a trauma. He didn’t need Brigit, or any psychiatrist, crawling around in his head to point out the obvious.
“Thanks, but no thanks to the armchair analysis. I see an agency shrink once a month as required by my position.” He pointed to his head. “Cogs are all working fine.”
She had the decency to blush. “I wasn’t asking as a psychiatrist. I was just curious if you liked always being the responsible one, the one everybody counts on. You have a lot of pressure to be perfect, in your family and in your career. Always on time, always in control, always living up to the ideal brother, ideal leader.” She shook her head. “Don’t you ever want to take a break from it all? Or just be late to work once in awhile?”
Her assessment made his skin itch. He was so far from perfect on the inside, it terrified him. He couldn’t take a break from life, though, not even to be late for work. The Michael Stone persona wouldn’t let him.
“I’m going to jump in the shower.” He held up the cup. “Think you can make plain coffee?”
“You have a top-of-the-line espresso machine and all you want is coffee.” She sighed and stood up, reaching for his cup. “No further analysis necessary, but psychotherapy is advisable.”
He frowned at her back as she left the room.
Chapter Twenty-Five
By noon, Brigit was stationed on a bench at the park across from her charred loft. She’d picked up the impounded Ford from the police lot and recovered her wallet before visiting The Gap for clothes and a kiosk for a new mobile phone, all under the watchful eye of the security detail Michael had assigned her. She was no longer a suspect in Ella’s kidnapping and the guard had left her once she landed at the DHS headquarters on Murray Lane, where she’d promised Michael she would stay put until he called.
That morning, she’d shared some pertinent facts about Peter which were missing from his dossier so Michael and his band of merry men could start digging. That way, she looked like she was cooperating while giving herself breathing space to do her own behind-the-scenes work. The first of which was to visit her loft.
Two I-beams jutted out of the debris at opposite sides, pointing black fingers at the sky and resembling a weird jack-o-lantern grin. The lower section of the building had been damaged as well, just not as extensively. Yellow tape cordoned off half the block and the State Fire Marshall’s official investigation had begun before the site had cooled.
Less than thirty hours after the fire, though, the place sat alone, abandoned. Reporters had gotten video for their stations. Gawkers had taken photos. No-trespassing signs had been posted along with the yellow tape, but no one was around, except for the occasional street patrol driving by to make sure looters weren’t pilfering anything from the store or destroying potential evidence.
Brigit forced herself to stare at the I-beams and the charred half-walls. Was it Peter’s fault or was it hers? He’d never harmed any of the children he’d kidnapped before. Was it her interference with O’Bern that had driven him to set her up for the kidnapping? Even so, why the fire? He had definitely wanted to drive home his point. If only she knew exactly what the point was.
She’d started the fire, albeit accidentally, that had taken his mother away from him. Maybe this was some kind of long-coming retaliation.
Low clouds rolled in from the southwest as Brigit sat wrapped in a new trench coat. A few errant raindrops heralded an approaching downpour and she was glad she’d bought an umbrella. Absently twirling it by its handle, she scanned the windows and rooftops of buildings to the north and east.
Something told her Peter had been close by, not just watching her from this park a few mornings ago, but actually living in the vicinity. He might still be there, knowing she would come back to the loft, as all victims of a fire did.
If he, Tory and Moira were still in the neighborhood, they might have front-row viewing of Brigit sitting alone, and that’s exactly what she wanted. There were no cops, Feds or other undercover law enforcement anywhere in the vicinity. Because of the impending storm there wasn’t even a mother-child duo in the park.
Come on, she willed one or all of them to appear. I’m here, come get me.
It was foolhardy, and probably pointless, to put herself out as bait. Yet she continued to sit on the bench and wait. Human motivations were typically illogical. The intensity of those motivations even more so. It was easy to grasp a motivation like Michael’s because the situation involved a direct assault on a child in his family. Motivation for revenge and the intensity of his reaction were normal.
From her case studies, though, Brigit had found most people’s motivations and the intensity attached to them were as ambiguous and individual as their fingerprints.
Like her hatred of nightlights. At thirty-three years old, she was still scared of the dark. Irrational, illogical, but deep-seated. The prospect of sleeping in the dark could bring on a panic attack and yet the sight of a harmless nightlight did the same.
While she wanted revenge for her mother’s death and she certainly wanted to stop Peter from injecting fear into other children, her real motivation to hunt him down was to free herself from the fear of the dark. The night of the kidnapping, he’d snatched her from a warm bed and she hadn’t been able to see his face in the dark room. He’d terrified her so badly she’d never again been able to survive a dark bedroom. Locked in the bathroom with Tory, she’d cried hard and long enough Peter had brought in the nightlight.
After years of therapy and nightmares, Brigit had a favorite fantasy. She shoved the nightlight down Peter’s throat.
It was irrational, illogical and something in real life she would never do, no matter how much she hated him. She would not become a murderer like he was, and the very thought of such blatant personal revenge made her sweaty with guilt.
But the fantasy reoccurred after every incident she linked to Peter, and grew along with her frustration when he managed to escape police time and time again.
The day had turned dark as night and streetlights sprang to life. Rain began to fall in earnest. Brigit rose from the bench, opened her umbrella and started for her car in the lot a block down.
A torrent of rain burst loose before she took two steps. She jogged to her car, grateful she was still wearing her running shoes. Just as she slipped the key into the car door’s lock, a gust of wind jerked the umbrella and she nearly lost her grip. By the time she got it under control and slid into the car, she was drenched.
She wasn’t sure what fired up her instincts, but immediately she knew she wasn’t alone in the small space.
Self-defense training kicked in, prodding her to get out of the car. Tamping
it down and the urge to look in the rearview mirror to discover her visitor’s identity, she shook her head to knock some of the rain out of her hair.
Tilting her head down, she used her right hand to lift wet strands from her neck, and wondered if her intruder meant to harm her. As she straightened her head back up, a cold gun muzzle pressed into her neck.
Harm intended.
Her gaze darted to the rearview mirror. A hooded figure with eyes rimmed in dark eyeliner stared back at her. The woman grabbed a handful of Brigit’s hair and gave it a jerk, snapping Brigit’s head back against the headrest. “We’re going to make a deal, so listen carefully.”
The accent was Palestinian. Brigit swallowed hard, but this was what she’d been hoping for. Contact. “Moira. It’s been a long time.”
“Put your hands on the steering wheel.”
Brigit complied. “Can’t keep my left arm in this position long,” she said. “Thanks to you.”
“I aimed for your heart.”
The lump in Brigit’s throat grew. “I know. What I don’t know is why.”
“Why?” Moira laughed without humor. “You have screwed everything up, all along, hunting Peter, hunting me. I wanted it to end. You gave me the chance when you walked to the podium.”
“I don’t want you, or Peter. Just Tory.”
Anger made Moira’s voice shake. “Yes, well now I want Peter, to kill him, and you’re going to help me.”
Peter must have really pissed her off. Had he double-crossed her? Promised her an easy escape and then failed to follow through?
But why? She worked for him. Knew how to pull off assassinations without leaving any trace evidence behind. Brigit suspected the woman had even tapped witnesses to Peter’s misdeeds before. Moira tied up his loose ends with efficiency and mercilessness. What would make him ruin the arrangement?
The old adage about no honor among thieves was true, yet love and passion still motivated them. Thieves, terrorists, assassins…all were human at their core, and hence, prone to human vices. Moira had loved Peter once, maybe still did, and he’d risked ransoming her to take out O’Bern.