Beneath the Surface

by Meredith Fletcher

  Nothing the other Athena grads—like Allison Gracelyn and Tory Patton Forsythe—or Principal Christina Evans could do would stop it.

  At last, after fifteen years of pain and frustration, Shannon would finally have her revenge.

  Chapter 7

  O ut of respect, Rafe waited for Allison to continue, even though the story had definitely taken on even more intriguing aspects. He knew about Senator Marion Gracelyn’s murder. The nation had learned about it and mourned the loss of a great woman.

  “I thought that had been solved,” Rafe said gently.

  “It had. But there were…extenuating circumstances.” Allison’s voice carried a lot of emotion, but it never wavered. That was Allison, though. She never broke down or became too emotional to do her job.

  Rafe waited. He knew it was hard. Allison had been close to her mother.

  “I can’t go into all of it,” Allison said. “Not yet. But I will someday. I’ll owe you lunch and a dinner, because it’ll take that long to tell it.” She sighed. “And that’s only if this thing ever comes to an end. We followed the trail that turned up as a result of Kestonia to Puerto Isla. That was a difficult op to put together. You know what it’s like down there.”

  Rafe did know. He’d conducted missions in Puerto Isla on a handful of occasions. On each one he’d barely escaped with his life, and he bore scars from two of them.

  “I do,” he said.

  “We were successful down there. After a fashion.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “My friends and I.”

  Ah. That was interesting. Friends meant that whatever op Allison had finessed hadn’t been through the NSA.

  “If you didn’t do this through the organization,” he said, referring to the NSA, “then you must have some amazingly talented friends.”

  “I do,” Allison stated quietly. “That’s why I called you.”

  “Point taken.” Rafe grinned and noticed in the phone’s reflective metal plate that Shannon had stopped taking pictures. “So Shannon showed up down in Puerto Isla.”

  “She did. And when the trail led to Cape Town, South Africa, she turned up there, too.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. No one does. But she was there and she almost got in the way.”

  “I don’t suppose anyone tried asking Shannon how she happened to be there.”

  “Do you realize that you use her first name with increasing ease?”

  “No,” Rafe responded.

  “You do.”

  “Maybe you want to suggest a code name.”

  Allison did. It wasn’t ladylike.

  “Potty mouth,” Rafe said. “Animosity much?”

  “There’s a lot of history where Shannon is concerned,” Allison said.

  “How did you get to know her?”

  “She went to Athena Academy for a while. She’s the only student that was ever kicked out. What she did was reprehensible, but to make matters worse, she tried to take me down with her.”

  Rafe understood how that could be the kiss of death. Allison didn’t hold grudges, exactly, but she definitely knew who her friends and who her enemies were. Those balance sheets were always up to date.

  “What did you find out that put you onto her?” Rafe deliberately didn’t use Shannon’s name.

  “After Cape Town, I peeked into her electronic records. Phone. Internet. At home and at work.”

  Rafe didn’t say anything about the illegality of such a thing. There were rules, and there were rules. After 9/11 a lot of those rules had changed or weren’t as strictly enforced. When it came to getting an op done, an agent did whatever was necessary.

  He glanced back at Shannon, who was sitting patiently in the car. He sighed tiredly as he thought about the way he’d thought about being her champion.

  You’re thirty-three, brother. Way too old to believe in that kind of nonsense.

  But it was precisely that kind of thinking that had drawn him into the NSA after he’d pulled eight years with the Army Rangers. As soon as he’d turned eighteen, he’d signed in and finished his GED while in the service.

  If Homeland Security and the other alphabet agencies hadn’t gone trolling for guys with military experience who weren’t overly educated, he’d have stayed in and done his full bit. But the NSA had come along when he was twenty-six. He’d pulled five good years filled with excitement and danger till he’d gotten tripped up in North Korea.

  Shannon punched a speed-dial number on her iPhone. The phone rang twice before it was answered.

  “Yo.” The voice was youthful and peppy. Laser beams and electronically enhanced radio commands sounded in the background.

  “Gary, it’s Shannon.”

  “Hey, Shannon. What do you know?”

  Shannon strained to hear over the sounds of warfare.

  “Dude,” another guy’s voice crowed, “he just blew you up so bad!” Maniacal laughter echoed over the phone. “Look! There’s pieces of you splattered all across the screen! That is so messed up! This game is totally sick.”

  “I was on the phone,” Gary said. “It’s work.”

  “Yeah, the other four-letter word.”

  “I’m gonna get blown up a little while I’m on the phone,” Gary protested. Then he turned his attention to Shannon. “What d’you need, boss lady?”

  Ignoring the irritating noises, knowing that Gary was at one of his interminable video games, Shannon said, “I need you to do some deep research for me.”

  “Hang on just a sec.”

  Shannon stared at her “rescuer.” Something had gone on. Bad news, probably. She could tell it by his posture, the way he looked as if the weight of the world had been dropped on his shoulders. She felt bad for him.

  That’s stupid, she told herself. For all you know, he’s just been told where to dump your body.

  The war noises quieted.

  “Had to get out here where I could hear myself think,” Gary said. “He can kill me the rest of the night and he won’t catch up to me.” The sound of a refrigerator door opening carried over the phone.

  Shannon imagined Gary as he prowled restlessly through his refrigerator. Twenty-six years old, he was red headed, pale and skinny, with a penchant for black concert tees and khaki shorts. He lived in a small walk-up apartment in Brooklyn, but he worked part-time for ABS as a researcher, fact-checker and computer tech support. He was also a great copywriter/editor for breaking stories and he was receiving writing credits.

  “Ah,” Gary chortled. “Last bottle of apple juice. The gods of war must really be smiling down on me.”

  “Focus,” Shannon told him. “I just e-mailed some pictures to you. I need the guy in them identified and his background checked.”

  “What kind of background?”

  “As deep as you can go.”

  “Want to give me a clue about what direction to look in? The closer you can get me, the more time you cut off the search window.”

  Shannon thought for a moment. “Try looking in the military first.” From the way he’d seemed to move and how quickly he’d acted, she felt as though that was a good match for him. “As I learn more, I’ll let you know.”

  “Sure. How soon do you need this?”

  “Yesterday.”

  Gary laughed. “You always say that.”

  “Let’s put it this way—if you can get the info back to me in a couple hours, I’ll talk Mike into letting me cover the next big videogame show. And I’ll have him okay you as an assistant for it.”

  “Seriously?”

  Shannon thought about it. Video games weren’t her thing, but she was aware they were attracting larger and larger audiences. Even making the agreement, she wouldn’t be entirely losing out.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Sweet! I’ll call you in a couple of hours. Are you going to be at this number?”

  “If I’m not, give the pictures I sent you to the D.C. Police Department and tell them to start looking for me.”
>
  “Seriously?”

  Shannon looked at the man near the pay phone. “Seriously.”

  “So she’s a bad guy,” Rafe said, looking at Shannon Connor.

  “I haven’t been able to track her records all the way back,” Allison said, “but it looks that way. She’s been getting heavily encrypted communiqués from China—from Shanghai, in particular—for years.”

  “Tips on the stories she broke?”

  “Not all of them, but enough. Every one she’s gotten from Shanghai has been huge. Career changers. Political upheaval. Big.”

  Rafe’s heart hardened a little toward the pretty blonde. “I wish you’d let me know that before you got me in this deep.” He would have turned down the job. One of the primary reasons he’d bought in on the op was to protect the woman.

  “I needed you,” Allison said. “If I’d told you what I suspected, you wouldn’t have come.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Rafe had to admit that Allison was right. If he’d known the woman wasn’t an innocent or possibly didn’t deserve protection, he wouldn’t have come. He’d have stayed on that damn beach and remained a hermit. Hermits had simpler lives.

  “Why haven’t you taken her down?” Rafe asked. He didn’t bother to take the displeasure out of his words. Even if he had, Allison knew him well enough to read between the lines.

  “I don’t have anything I can prove. I can’t even prove it to you.”

  “I know you. You don’t have anything to prove to me. If you get a bad vibe on her, then she’s got to be bad.”

  There was a slightly uncomfortable silence, then Allison said, “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For pulling you into this. If everything had gone right, I would have had you shadow her back to New York and let her go. I needed someone who was off the books. Someone that wouldn’t connect up anywhere in case this op turned high-profile.”

  Well, it had certainly done that.

  “And I wanted someone good enough to save her if things went badly at that end.” Allison paused. “I wanted you for this. I just didn’t know that you would…get involved on a personal level.”

  “I’m not,” Rafe said automatically. But he was sure they both knew he was lying. After everything that had happened to him, after all those boring months in Jacksonville, he’d gotten vulnerable. He’d wanted to believe in good things.

  Rafe had guessed that he would have been expected to follow Shannon back to New York after the night’s foray. He’d already been fantasizing about spending a few days in New York and accidentally bumping into Shannon at some point. Probably nothing would have happened, but it would have been fun to see.

  At the very least, it would have been a good change from that lonely expanse of beach.

  “That’s water under the bridge,” he said. “What do you want me to do with her?” Personally, he was ready to walk away.

  “I need you to take care of her for a little while longer,” Allison said. “Just till I can make some other arrangements. It won’t take long.”

  Rafe took in a deep breath and let it out. “I’m not entirely happy with that. And the longer that takes, the less happy I’m going to be.”

  “I know. But she’s not going to trust anyone else.”

  “She doesn’t trust me.”

  “She trusts you more than anyone else I could get down there to take over for you.”

  “All right. But I want out of this. Soon.”

  “You will be.”

  “What do you want me to do with the assets we’ve used tonight?”

  “Just leave the car and the weapons there. I’ll have them taken care of.”

  “Sure. And you may want to double back the ID you used to lease the car.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s gotten to it and she’s been on the telephone.”

  “It’s covered,” Allison said. “Shannon always was high-maintenance and a lot of trouble.” She paused. “Keep the earpiece, but we’re going off this frequency for the time being.”

  Rafe understood that. Allison was probably “borrowing” the satellite communications relays involved, as well. The longer she “borrowed” them, the greater the chance of discovery.

  “I’ve got your cell phone information,” she said.

  Rafe knew that she should have. After all, Allison had arranged for the cell phone and had it waiting for him in the car.

  “All right,” he said.

  “If you need me, let me know.”

  “I will.” Rafe said goodbye, stripped the earwig from his ear, shoved it into his pocket and walked back to the car.

  “Did you get everything worked out?” Shannon asked when the man opened the door.

  “Yeah.” His response was nearly noncommittal as he opened the trunk, stripped the holster and gun off his hip and threw them inside. He added extra magazines. “Get out of the car.”

  Anger stirred within Shannon. “Stay in the car. Get out of the car. I’m not five years old.” She didn’t budge.

  “I get that,” he said. “I can’t make you stay in the car. I can’t make you get out of the car. You’re not five years old.” He didn’t even look at her. “Stay in the car if you want. It’s your choice.” He turned and walked away.

  In disbelief, Shannon watched him walk away. “Hey.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Hey,” she repeated, louder.

  Without a word, he kept walking.

  “You can’t just walk away like that.”

  But he could. He proved it when he did. He kept taking one step after another. His back was straight, militarily erect.

  Shannon was tempted to let him walk away, but she wouldn’t have gotten to know what his story was if she did. Not only that, but she was in a bad part of the city. With no shoes, she lamented.

  Frustrated, she got out of the car and trotted across the parking area asphalt to catch up to him. “You know, for someone who seemed to have come a long way to prevent something bad from happening to me tonight, you sure don’t act all that happy.”

  He looked at her. His gaze behind the wraparound sunglasses was impenetrable.

  “I’m not,” he said flatly. “If I’d known what I know now, I wouldn’t have been here tonight.”

  His anger, so palpable, hit Shannon like a slap in the face. She didn’t know how to respond. There wasn’t enough information to launch an attack of her own that wouldn’t have sounded stupid.

  He swung his attention away from her, and that—apparently—was the end of the conversation.

  Shannon struggled to keep up and ignore the pain in her feet from walking shoeless on the sidewalk. Neither one was easy.

  Chapter 8

  “Y ou could slow down, you know.”

  Rafe did know that, and despite his irritation at being with the woman, he did slow down. From the corner of his eye, he watched her stumble across the pavement in her bare feet.

  “We could take a cab,” Shannon grumbled.

  “We take a cab, we could also get remembered,” he said.

  “Cabdrivers have a real tendency to call the police when they realize they’ve just given fugitives a lift somewhere. I’d rather not start my morning out in jail.”

  And there was no guarantee that the morning would be the end of it. He’d killed three men and fled the scene. If staying wouldn’t have compromised Allison—and, at that time, Shannon—he would have remained on-site and worked things through with the local police.

  “Is that prejudice developed from past experience of starting out mornings in jail?” Shannon asked.

  Despite his dislike for the woman, Rafe couldn’t help but respect her acerbic wit.

  “Yeah,” he said. “But the mornings on Death Row were the loneliest. Still, you can’t buy that kind of quiet anywhere.”

  Shannon glared at him. It was obvious that neither one of them cared very much for the other. He tol
d himself that he was fine with that, but he knew her reaction was based on his sudden change of behavior.

  Then she stumbled and would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her by the arm.

  “Don’t,” she said. “I can do this. Just leave me alone.”

  Rafe released her, but she wobbled and favored her foot.

  She cursed as she tried to walk. Dark smudges stained the pavement. For a moment Rafe was mesmerized by the feel of soft flesh under his callused hands.

  When he realized she was bleeding, Rafe took more of her weight across his shoulders. His knee throbbed in protest.

  “Hold up,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Let me see your foot.”

  “I’m okay,” she protested.

  “You’re bleeding.”

  Shannon glared at him. “Do you really care? Because it seems like you don’t. You acted like you were plenty willing to leave me in the car back there.”

  Allison, you’d better put a damn rush order on my relief.

  “Let me see your foot.” Rafe intentionally spoke more slowly.

  With obvious reluctance, Shannon leaned into him and lifted her foot.

  Rafe was all too aware of the feminine flesh pressed against him. Despite his best intentions, it was having an effect. He tried to focus on her foot. He caught it and turned it up to get a better look. But that contact turned sensuous, too. His response, uncontrollable and understandable though it was, grated on his nerves.

  The streetlight only a short distance away provided enough illumination for Rafe to see the damage that had been done. The cut was small, but the sidewalk had been hard on the bottoms of her feet. Most of the skin was torn and abraded. Going barefoot wasn’t something she often did.

  “You should have said something,” Rafe growled.

  “Why? You haven’t been exactly Mr. Free and Friendly the past twenty minutes.”

  “You can’t keep walking.”

  “Are you just going to shoot me because I’ve pulled up lame?”

  Rafe glared back at her. “I don’t have my gun anymore.”