by Molly Harper, Stephanie Haefner, Liora Blake, Gabra Zackman, Andrea Laurence, Colette Auclair
Susannah relaxed into his hold with a deep sigh. She had never been intimate quite like this, and it had never felt so comfortable before. He nuzzled her neck, and spoke gently into her ear. “I’ve really enjoyed being with you, Legs. All of you. I’d like it to happen more.”
She was grateful he couldn’t see her face or hear her thoughts. She was enjoying his touch with every fiber of her being but knew she was betraying him every moment they lay together. “I’d like it too,” she said. And after a moment, she continued. “I’d love to hear more about your life, Chas.”
“Tell me something about you first. I love to hear you speak.”
Susannah blushed. She was flattered that he’d say that. “Um, well,” she began, “I grew up in Virginia. I used to ride horses a lot as a girl, went to horse camp, had a particular horse I’d groom every year. It’s one of the things I loved the most growing up.”
“Well, you’ll have to come down to the Savannah ranch. We’ve got a pretty full stable at the moment. Five or six last I checked—we had a loan mare for breeding, so I guess there’ll be at least one more soon. I love to ride! Have since I was a kid. One of the most . . .”
“Peaceful things on earth.” She finished for him.
There was a moment of blissful silence. Susannah wished it could last forever. She was feeling, just at this moment, like she belonged in his arms, in his bed, in his life. Was it just the romance of the evening? she wondered. Then he spoke. “You know,” he said slowly, “I never really knew my father. He didn’t speak much, not to me anyway, and he died before I got old enough to really talk to him.”
“I feel the same way about mine,” she replied. “Though I know it’s different for men. I bet you miss getting to know him.”
“I do,” he said. “It has marked a lot of my life, I think, that particular loneliness. Missing something so important that I never had the privilege to experience. I’ve often wondered how I would have turned out—how my life might have been different if he’d been around.”
There was a pause, and again, Susannah couldn’t believe, or understand, how she felt so at home, so at peace, in the arms of a man she was about to destroy.
“Today,” Chas said hesitantly, “I was brought some information by the operative you saw me speaking with. I don’t want to give you her name, but basically she’s an old contact of my father’s, and she was supposed to kill the head of the organization I’ve infiltrated. We call him the Italian, the man who runs this ring. It’s ridiculous, I know, but that’s what he goes by. . . . But, I shouldn’t’ve told you that . . . or any of this really. . . .”
Chas was starting to slur his words a bit, and chatter a bit more than Susannah was used to. She realized it was the drug taking effect, but she let him go on, hoping for more information while treasuring the time they got to spend together.
“Today,” he said, “she told me something my father had wanted her to pass on . . . and it’s been with me all day. . . . My dad never spoke a whole lot, and he wasn’t particularly sentimental. . . .”
“What did he tell her, Chas?” Susannah asked gently, turning to look at him.
“Well, he wanted me to have something apparently, and he hid it and said something about being proud of me and that he wanted me to find a lady to love, a bride who can weather all that I am. . . . She said he was being very specific. . . .” Chas was sounding more and more disjointed, and he looked like he was having a hard time focusing his gaze.
“Sorry,” he continued, looking confused, his eyes beginning to close. “I can’t keep my eyes open. Something—I don’t know what’s—I think I’m going to—”
“Oh, Chas,” Susannah said softly. “I am so so sorry this has to end this way.”
There was a brief grasp of understanding in his eyes, a moment of shock. And then he was out.
Susannah burst into tears. She had completely fallen for this man, and now she would be his undoing. It simply wasn’t fair. She finally met the man of her dreams and he was on the FBI’s most wanted list. How much worse could it get?
She rapidly collected her things, threw her dress back on, and grabbed her purse. Just before she got in the elevator, she remembered the Celtic “family tree” and stopped in her tracks. Walking back to the bedroom, she saw it on the nightstand and put it on. If nothing else, she wanted him to know that his offering meant something, and that she had accepted the gift he wished to bestow upon her. And also, she wanted a part of him with her. If he wanted it back? Well, he’d have to come get it, that was all. She took one last look at him on the bed, smoothed his hair, and pulled the covers over him. He’d wake up in about five hours with the worst hangover imaginable, but that would be the only damage. It would give FTP enough time to get the information they needed, surprise the criminal network before Chas could alert them, and make their arrests, leaving a shattered crime ring in their wake.
Finding her way back to the elevator, she checked her cell phone. She had a single text from Bossman with a single word in it:
Casablanca
Shit. A code 5. Dialing his number, she was relieved when he picked up on barely the first ring.
“Legs?” the Boss said, panic in his voice. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she said, “he just knocked off. What’s with the code 5?”
“Get your ass down here, now.”
“On my way. But what’s the problem? He’s out. Is it one of the others?”
“It’s not that. It’s you, honey. Oh god . . .” Bossman seemed to be choking on his words.
“What is it, John?” she said, real fear in her voice now.
“It’s something we got from his phone. He was recording all his conversations. Susannah . . .”
“Just spit it out.”
“He broke your cover. But what’s worse than that? He called you a whore, Legs. And a joke. He smeared your rep. And it’s about to go public. I have to get you on the first flight out of here, or the entire operation will be compromised. And, oh shit . . .” He paused again. She thought she heard the sound of Lisa Bee screaming in the background. “Susannah . . . I have to fire you. Effective immediately. Get down here, so we can get you the hell out.”
And just like that, it happened. It went up in smoke. All possibility of a happy ending lay in scattered shards at her feet. The man she thought she loved, that she feared she had betrayed, had betrayed her far worse than she could have imagined. He broke her cover? That put her in grave danger anytime she was overseas—so she would never be able to travel again. And frankly, it eliminated the possibility of 90 percent of the work she loved to do stateside. And he called her a joke? This hurt more than anything else she could imagine.
So her cover was blown. And she would become a joke. Could she work in the office like Lisa Bee, or learn more about hacking from AJ, or work another job entirely? Sure. But undercover work was her passion, her career. When she was a little girl, she loved spy stories, and games involving secrets. As a young adult she had devoured autobiographies of undercover agents, fantasizing about a life of disguise. And when her father died she knew that criminology would be a huge part of her life. When she made that her major in college, she knew she was on the right track. And now the man she had let inside her had ruined any possibility that she might continue to pursue the path she loved. Swallowing the bile in her throat and the rage in her guts, she decided to ignore the break in her heart. Summoning up all the courage she had left, she got on the elevator and went down to meet her fate.
9
SUSANNAH PULLED UP in front of her mom’s house in Alexandria, Virginia, with lines of mascara running down her face. She’d been crying for the past day as she flew in from Paris, packed up her DC apartment, and made her way back home. Lisa Bee promised to clean out her desk, since for security reasons they couldn’t have her anywhere near the office. It hadn’t made it any better that she wound up smeared on the front page of the tabloids with headlines like “What an International Whore Looks Lik
e” and “Selling It to the Highest Bidder.” She didn’t even understand what had been leaked and what the stories were about—they were so convoluted and seemed to portray her as an international call girl, not an undercover agent. Regardless, she’d had to wear dark sunglasses and a wig just to walk around her neighborhood. She hadn’t told her mom much about the situation. After all, it was better to keep it under wraps, and her mom never knew the half of it to begin with. She just told her that she’d been fired and would need a place to stay for a bit. Her mom was only too happy to have her come home.
Janice Carter was waiting on the porch when Susannah pulled up in the old yellow VW bug. She had always wanted Susannah to drive a sleeker, safer car, but Susannah had fallen in love with that old sweet car. At least it wasn’t one of those sports cars Susannah always mooned over. Janice was a beautiful woman, and her fifty-five years had aged her in just the right ways. She had light blonde hair, a beautiful smile, and eyes like a hawk. She always wore cardigans, no matter what season, and with her curvy body she looked like something out of Mad Men. Today the cardigan was yellow, worn over a rust-colored blouse, with stunning 1950s-style jewelry to match. Janice owned a small accessories store in town and had made a name for herself in unusual knickknacks and rare gifts.
She was also an exceptional baker and always had treats on hand at the store. Today, she had made peanut butter brownies, Susannah’s favorite, as well as strawberry lemonade, and she was eagerly waiting to give her little girl the comfort she deserved. Janice suspected there was more going on here than Susannah had told her. And she suspected a man was involved. This could be the only reason for such a dramatic exit.
Susannah walked up to the porch of the beautiful old clapboard house and into her mother’s arms, and she wept, no longer able to keep it together. Janice embraced her, and lovingly soothed back her hair. “Now, now,” she said, “surely it can’t be all bad.”
“Oh, Mom.” Susannah sniffled. “It’s far worse than that.”
“Want to tell me about it? I made your favorite.”
“Okay,” she said. “I do think I need to talk about it. But it’s a lot, I’m warning you. There’s a lot I haven’t told you.”
“Well,” said Janice with a smile, “it’s been a dull week. Perhaps you can liven it up a bit. You know I live vicariously through you. ” And with that, they walked into the kitchen.
‡‡‡
EXPERT COMPUTER HACKER AJ “Fingers” Jones sat in the place she called mission control. Her clients perceived that she lived in New York or LA or Chicago, as she met them there on a regular basis. The truth was that she had a different identity in each city. To many this would seem tricky or frustrating or downright exhausting. But not to AJ. To AJ, this was the only way to live. By creating several different lives she accomplished two goals: to keep the real AJ hidden and to make several different incomes at the same time.
Mission control was located in Denver, Colorado, in the back of an old mortuary. An ex-lover of hers had owned all the real estate in the southern part of the Highlands and had literally given the place to her in a moment of unbridled passion. The fact that she had gotten him drunk, drugged him, and blackmailed him might have had something to do with the decision. Regardless, she left that torrid weekend in Aspen ten years ago as a property owner of the perfect front: an abandoned mortuary in what subsequently became one of the hottest areas in town. She left with the keys, the stock certificate, $70,000 in cash she had won at a poker game, and a wicked case of rug burn.
She had set up a state-of-the-art surveillance system in the basement, the place where the bodies used to be kept, and the place where she now lived and worked. She loved the history of this old mortuary and kept the feel of it intact: mason jars for her glassware, toe tags for labeling her files, old medical paraphernalia as décor. For the first few years there, it appeared to be just an abandoned building, but she kept having to deal with squatters and kids who wanted to get high. To her chagrin, it got worse when marijuana was legalized. Finally she decided to lease the upper floors to a well-known Denver restaurateur who turned the place into one of the finest restaurants in town. Despite the noise, it was a better cover. The owner knew that the basement was off-limits, but just in case anyone tried to get in, she’d installed a bank vault door with more bells and whistles than the State Department. Her main entrance was a small door in the back of the building. She frequently threw on a bloody apron and carried a butcher knife when she exited. No one ever asked her any questions.
Right now she had several computers open and working and several surveillance screens up. She was patched in to the FTP system and site, and had been watching, with fury, all that had happened in Paris. She gulped down a third chocolate croissant—the only form in which she consumed chocolate—and followed it with a glass of extremely rare, extremely expensive Bordeaux, courtesy of one of her LA clients. She wasn’t sure what was making her more angry: the fact that Susannah was getting hurt repeatedly by this man or the fact that this man was such an excellent operative. Or the fact that she could hear, faintly, the sounds of children at play in the park across the street. The neighborhood, which used to be filled with abandoned warehouses, was now the stomping grounds of yuppies, the gay community, and the nouveau riche. And their children. AJ hated children of any age, and found the sounds of them playing, a joyful noise to many, to be like the screech of nails on a chalkboard. This, coupled with the difficulty of hacking into Chas’s computer, was really pissing her off. Try as she might, she was having a very hard time breaking through his firewalls. And regardless, she never liked a man who used proxies to hide his IP address. She found it cowardly.
She lit a cigarillo and leaned forward in her chair, pushing her curly blonde hair back over one ear. AJ was blessed with mocha-colored skin, blonde hair, and a slammin’ body that she was very proud of, since she refused to exercise and believed gyms to be “Satan’s Playground.” She was fond of saying that she liked to work off her meals in the bedroom, and that if everyone got laid as much as she did, gyms would be out of business. “There’s gotta be somethin’,” she murmured, furiously ticking away at the computer keys of two keyboards at once, “I just know it.” She was listening to a live recording of Peggy Lee singing “Is That All There Is?” and she laughed at the irony. “I know, Peggy, I know. There’s gotta be somethin’ more.” AJ had been a cabaret singer in her early years and couldn’t work unless there was a jazz standard on in the background. For that reason she had a state-of-the-art surround sound system installed. It cost a pretty penny, but it was worth it.
Chas had a very complicated maze of firewalls protecting his information. She’d explored the first hard drive and now was looking into the second. Was it possible to have a movable firewall? Every time she got beneath his security measures, more popped up. She had tried password after password to no avail. In addition, he changed them every day, or so it seemed, judging by the little headway she’d made. AJ was confounded in a way she neither liked nor respected. And it was making her boil with fury.
She was trying to access a document labeled “Tada Gan Iarracht,” the phrase that Chas had tattooed on his arm, meaning “Nothing Without Effort.” “You got that right,” AJ said, letting out a large puff of smoke. “This is a MASSIVE pain in my ass.” She tried the word “Oakley” with various numbers, then the names of every one of his known relatives. She even found the names of the pets he grew up with, also to no avail. Then she looked over all the information again. His background. His colleagues. His supposed crimes. And a look in his eyes that he only had when looking at Susannah. And then she let out a laugh. “Well, goddamn. He’s a fucking romantic.” After several tries she typed in the password “LegsPalmer” . . . and suddenly the document opened, and the keys to his whole life were laid out before her.
AJ took a deep puff of her cigarillo and finished the Bordeaux, drinking straight from the bottle. Smiling, she turned on her favorite recording: Thelonius Monk’s “
Well, You Needn’t,” sometimes referred to as “It’s Over Now.” Then she turned to her keyboards and let out a long howl. “Oh, how I love it when the mighty fall!” she said with gusto and got back to work.
‡‡‡
CHAS WAS ABOUT TO board a flight at Charles de Gaulle back to New York. It had taken him the better part of a day to get over the drugs and the emotional pain he felt but was trying to ignore. The problem was that he didn’t know which part of Susannah was real, which part was fake, and which part was her agenda. His computer and files were still there, intact, so he didn’t think she’d gotten what she’d come for. But what had she come for? That was the confounding part. Did she just want to have the last laugh?
Then again, he had betrayed her first, and in a far more destructive way. When he woke up yesterday morning, still groggy, late for another meeting with Pierre, he felt it had served him right. He just didn’t realize it would sting so badly.
When the meeting with Pierre and his cronies had finished, Chas took Pierre aside to apologize for his lateness, and also to try to patch up the mistake he’d made in breaking Susannah’s cover. Maybe there was still a way to stop the intel from becoming public? Or at least to put it off for a bit, until she was back in the States? “After all,” Chas said, trying to sound cold, “she’s really small potatoes. No big deal. And she was a really great fuck.”
Pierre had grunted and smiled, only saying, “As you wish, Monsieur Palmer. As long as our job goes as planned in two weeks, I don’t care who you fuck. But remember: one false move, and you’re done—and so is she.”
Now Chas turned his thoughts to Susannah. He thought of the time they spent together, the woman she was, and how she made him laugh. Fuck it all, he thought. I’ve got to try to make things right with her. This may be my only chance. Maybe it was time to put this foolish quest for revenge on hold. Maybe it was time for him to settle down a bit, get married, have kids. . . .
He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the visions inside it. Of Susannah in a wedding dress, radiant and gorgeous, of her as the mother of his children. That was something he had never even remotely desired after the childhood he had lived through. He was being ridiculous, and it was probably just the drugs still in his system. His whole life was built on pursuing revenge, and he wasn’t about to throw it away. Yet as he boarded the airplane and accepted a drink from a pretty flight attendant in first class, someone who would have once caught his eye, he looked away. Now his thoughts were only of Susannah. He promised himself one thing: that he’d come clean to her and try to undo the damage he’d done.