The Seduction of Lucy

by Kris Rafferty

  What the hell was she supposed to do now?

  Chapter Six

  Troy went directly to the tech floor after leaving Lucy’s quarters. He needed to see those satellite feeds, and he knew exactly who could get them for him.

  “Charlie. Do you have what I need?” Troy walked up to the tech’s desk and leaned over his shoulder, staring at his computer monitor. It was a feed on an active op. Not what he needed. Troy reined in his impatience. “Where is it?”

  Charlie was a young man, maybe twenty, recruited right from high school after a hack gone wrong. Charlie had thought it would be funny to turn a mile’s worth of streetlights green, in all directions. It resulted in three fatalities. The Agency had snapped him right up and given him a choice—a life in prison with no access to the computers he held near and dear, or behind door number two, he could be king shit on the seventh floor. He never saw daylight, but the guy liked his job.

  “It’s gone.” Charlie pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “It shouldn’t be, but it is. Barrett returned it. See?” He pulled a clipboard from his top drawer and handed it to Troy. “I tried to find it for you, but it’s nowhere. Let me get you a copy off the system.”

  Troy saw Barrett’s signature scrawled on the page. “She physically handed it to you?”

  “No. It was here when I got back from lunch, signed in, but now it’s gone.” He wheeled his chair to a laptop off to the right and logged in. “I looked, couldn’t find it, but then this op went hot so I didn’t have time to get a digital copy while I looked for the hard copy.” He waved his hand, indicating his eight-by-eight-foot office, no windows, recirculated air. “It’s got to be somewhere here.” Manuals, tapes and computers were stacked on various shelves. A bag of Cheetos had overflowed on one of his desks, next to three different dirty coffee mugs, each empty, the coffee dregs dried to the bottom of the cups.

  “And you’ve looked everywhere?” Charlie didn’t look any happier than Troy felt. Scanning the room, it was hard to believe anything could get lost. Nothing was out of place. Even Charlie’s mess on the desk had an order to it. The mugs were all lined up. The Cheetos were on a paper towel.

  “Other than me, only Barrett has keys to get in here. It’s here somewhere. Has to be. Only it’s not.” He peered at his laptop, frowning. “Shit. This can’t be happening.”

  When all else fails, look up. Troy saw the ventilation duct on the ceiling.

  “I can’t find it. This isn’t possible.”

  Using Charlie’s chair as a stepping stool, Troy peered at the two-foot-square white screen covering the duct and dug his nails around the edges. There were no noticeable screws, so he pulled and the screen came off in his hands. Dropping it to the floor, he pulled himself up and peered inside. It was too dark in the vent to see anything.

  “Are you listening to me?” Charlie’s agitation was spiraling out of control.

  “Give me a flashlight.”

  “Troy. Not funny. This is serious. I can’t find my backup. The folder is wiped clean.”

  Troy dropped back on the chair and held his hand out. “Flashlight. You must have done something. Crashed the system, got a virus. Look again. Even I know backups have backups.”

  Charlie turned on a penlight and handed it over. “Thanks for the pep talk, but I would have remembered erasing the satellite feed to Lucy’s last op, and if there was a copy to find on this computer, I’d know where to find it. It’s wiped. All copies.”

  “Don’t get snarky.”

  “Well, stop telling me my job. Do I give you advice on terrorizing people? Or whatever you fill your day with?”

  Troy held the penlight between his teeth and pulled himself back up into the duct. There was a swath of clean duct down the center, and a thin coating of dust on the sides. Someone had broken into Charlie’s office, stolen the feed and erased the backup. It was the only explanation. “I’d be nicer to me if I were you.”

  “Yeah? Why?”

  Troy dropped to the chair and handed Charlie his flashlight back. “Because you need all the friends you can get. It’s not looking good.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Charlie was visibly sweating. “You have to do something.”

  “Someone small enough to fit in that duct, someone who knew there was a tape to steal and a backup to erase climbed through that duct while you were away from your desk. Dereliction of Duty.”

  “That’s nuts. After lunch I was gone no more than five minutes to go to the bathroom.”

  “They must have been waiting in the vent for you to leave.”

  “Not possible.” Charlie’s arms were folded across his chest and he had the look of a bulldog guarding a bone.

  “Or you’re full of shit and you’ve destroyed the copy and the feed because you’re colluding with whoever benefits from them going missing.”

  Charlie glared at him for a moment, and then sighed. “Maybe the thief was in the vent like you said. Stranger things have happened.”

  “Only you, me and Barrett knew about it.”

  “And Lucy,” Charlie said.

  “Lucy was with me.”

  “So someone else knew.” Charlie threw his splayed hands in the air. “I’m so screwed.”

  Troy called Janice’s desk directly. “Did you or Barrett remove a satellite feed from Charlie’s office?” Janice said neither she nor Barrett had. “Let’s keep this call between us, Janice, okay?” He dropped the receiver on its cradle. Charlie was staring at him. “You, too. Not a word.”

  Charlie wiped his brow with a shaking hand. “You can’t hide this. She’ll find out.”

  “You let me worry about that.”

  “Oh.” Charlie grimaced. “Yeah. Why don’t I do that?” He turned back to his monitor and began making notation on the incoming feed. “I feel so much better now.” He sounded disgruntled and Troy couldn’t blame him, because Charlie was right. Barrett would discover the feed was gone and she’d point a finger at Charlie, but not before she used it to crucify Lucy and her crew.

  He wasn’t sure who’d stolen the feed, but he knew who couldn’t have, or wouldn’t. He was beginning to agree with Lucy’s assessment. The Agency had a mole.

  An hour later, he’d briefed Lucy on their op and left her to give her crew their portfolios in the tactical room. When he entered, indicating it was time to leave, he saw them hugging, celebrating that Lucy hadn’t been canceled as expected. Their camaraderie was strong. He studied Cat, Phil and Patrice, wondering which of them, if any, had slipped into Charlie’s office via the duct system.

  The crew were geared up, leather uniforms, weapons holstered and sheathed, comms strapped to their necks. Patrice had just finished braiding her auburn hair and was now working on Cat’s while Phil looked on, the image of boredom.

  Lucy wasn’t geared up. She wore a black woolen skirt suit, black heels, a conservative ivory Hermès scarf around her neck and her hair slicked off her face. She was taking lead and had to do what everyone else was doing, but in heels. As they filed out of the tactical room and onto the elevator, a siren screeched for a moment. He winced as the sound echoed off the elevator walls and then fell to silence.

  “Another agent down.” Lucy glared at him as if he were responsible.

  When the elevator doors opened, he hurried to the incoming transport truck already swarming with medics that had nothing to do. Lucy and her crew kept in step with him, irritating him with their chatter.

  Cat clicked her tongue and looked as if she were in pain. “The medics aren’t resuscitating.”

  “Can’t resuscitate a dead guy,” Phil said.

  He shut out the crew’s fears, Lucy’s glares, and sought a connection between this latest death and Lucy. He was her alibi again, but maybe her involvement was less hands-on and more intelligence gathering.

  “Get on the transport.” Lucy barked her order, and her team hustled to obey. Troy stopped their assigned driver, indicating he should hold. He approached the nearest medic, who flinched w
hen he saw who Troy was.

  “Report,” he said.

  “DOA. GSW to the head. Same as the others. Well—” He glanced at Lucy, hanging out of the truck, waiting for Troy. “Other than Raven.” He unzipped the black body bag and revealed a recruit Troy recognized as fresh off the training mat. First op as an agent. This body brought the count to six dead by sniper in the last week.

  “Time of death?”

  “Seven hours ago.” The medic shrugged. “At least that’s what the crew leader told me.”

  “Just one,” Troy said.

  The medic didn’t understand, and Troy didn’t have the inclination to explain. It was only one agent down. Again. If an outside agency wanted to destroy them, killing the whole crew made more sense. He needed to take another look at the dead agents’ personnel files. It was possible he’d missed something that tied them together, but he was beginning to think the only commonality was they had nothing in common but the Agency.

  “Troy!”

  He glanced at the transport truck and saw Lucy making hand gestures at him. He dismissed the medic and headed to the truck. Grown men cringed and quivered when he spoke to them. Lucy? She talked to him like a fishwife, barking orders and pulling attitudes. He suppressed a sigh as he hopped in the truck and settled into a chair in back. Her crew stared at him as if they expected him to do something—pontificate or threaten. He was tempted to flash jazz hands, but they were looking puzzled enough, so he just sat alongside them.

  “Phil. Go.” Lucy had her gear bag open, inventorying its contents. She created a bizarre tableau, heels and hosiery against the backdrop of the truck’s grinding gears and the stink of gun lubricant.

  Phil stopped rummaging through her duffel and rattled off her assignment. “Disable entry security and hustle to the systems room. Monitor until go time, then get the hell out, unnoticed.”

  “Cat.”

  “Cut the main electrical, but leave the security backup intact.”

  Lucy frowned at her. “Invisible. Got it? Of all of us, you’re most likely to encounter fire. If we have to wait, we’ll wait, but no interaction with the natives. Stay safe.”

  “Roger that.” Cat tucked her thick braid into her uniform and then pressed a finger to a muscle tic that had developed over her right eyelid.

  “Patrice.” Lucy zipped her gear bag closed and gave her full attention to the newest member of her crew. Two years with Lucy, she was still the noob, though with Raven gone, not for long.

  “Monitor satellite feed.” Patrice futzed with a small handheld device. “Scout the perimeter, report possible hostile location.”

  “Since when?” Troy knew that couldn’t be right. “Agency techs do that off-site.” He reached into his gear bag and pulled out a small smartphone-size device. He turned it on and satellite feeds showed heat signatures at their op site. “It’s working. What’s going on?” Patrice kept her eyes on her gear bag and wrapped her finger around an auburn curl. Though he’d directed his question to her, his eyes were on Lucy.

  “It was working when Raven was hit, too,” she said.

  “You don’t trust the techs?”

  “Oh, I trust them fine. I just want to cover all bases.”

  “You think your shooter was on the satellite feed, and Barrett is lying about it.” A case of she said, she said. Interesting, he thought. He glanced at the crew and saw their confusion but wasn’t ready to buy into it just yet. It made him nervous to think he might be wrong about them. At least if they’d stolen the feed, he still had a chance of seeing it for himself. If they hadn’t, there was another player and he had no way to know who it could be.

  Patrice spoke up, though didn’t meet Troy’s gaze. “Raven died because we relied on the Agency’s satellite feed. The shooter got within range. We don’t want to take any chances, so I suggested we use our own devices, piggybacking on different satellite feeds.” She glanced at Lucy, who nodded her approval.

  “Belt and suspenders,” he said. Lucy and her crew blamed Raven’s death on Agency incompetence. More finger-pointing with no proof. Unfortunately, as it stood now, there was more evidence of Lucy and her crew’s culpability than of Agency incompetence.

  “What’s my assignment?” The op came directly from Barrett, and though he was also privy to its details, he’d briefed Lucy in time to divvy up the portfolio assignments to the crew. They were used to that chain of command, and he didn’t want to mess with their mojo.

  Lucy flashed an unpleasant smile. “You’re my bodyguard. You get to keep me alive while I do the heavy lifting.”

  She acted as if it were a throwaway job. Keeping Lucy out of trouble had been his greatest challenge for years now, and it was never ending. But admitting that would reveal too much to too many, so he scanned the curious faces of the crew and settled back in his seat, refusing to argue.

  Lucy also relaxed, crossing her legs, showed an expanse of skin he couldn’t help but appreciate. Troy allowed his eyes to linger as she spoke to her crew.

  “Tell me you’re all secure in your roles.” She looked at each of them, not even trying to hide her nerves. “It should take me five minutes to gain access to the office, five to copy the files off the mainframe. Cat, at the six-minute mark—I’ll let you know by comm—kill the electric to the building. That should hide my activity on their computers. When we go dark, Phil, you keep us apprised of security’s activities only if it crosses our purposes. We need to keep comm chatter to a minimum. Once I’m out of the building, Patrice will give the clear signal and everyone hustle to the pickup. Does everyone have the coordinates memorized?”

  They did.

  The transport truck came to a stop and the sound of rotors made further conversation impossible. The truck’s door opened with a screech of metal, and Lucy was the first to hop out. Ducking low, her gear bag clutched in her right hand, she ran to the AW101 transport helicopter, not hobbled in the least by her three-inch heels. If that wasn’t impressive enough, she climbed in without splitting her skirt and caught each bag thrown at her, tossing it deeper into the belly of the helicopter. The crew hopped inside, their smooth actions a reflection of their training. They were a well-oiled machine, their leader undisputed.

  Troy pulled up the rear, more and more troubled by Lucy’s possible role in the attacks on the Agency. He still found it impossible to believe, and that was dangerous. Treason worked because your opponent was someone you trusted. Lucy could have turned, and it was his job to find out the truth no matter his personal wants or opinions. He was failing miserably.

  He threw his gear on the platform and stepped into the helicopter. They had a four-hour flight to Ukraine and Lucy’s crew had buckled in, eyes closed, getting rest while they could. They were seasoned. They knew this might be their last chance for shut-eye if things went bad.

  He noticed Lucy wasn’t sleeping, and from the looks of her, hadn’t slept well in days. He knew for a fact she’d only gotten five hours last night. Dodging the bullet of cancellation had taken its toll and losing Raven was dragging her down. All eyes were on her, more than she knew, so he understood she was trying to bring her A game, but enough was enough. She needed sleep.

  He unbuckled, stepped in front of her seat and unbuckled her. She slapped at his hands but stayed silent. Her glances at the crew told him she wanted their interaction to go unnoticed. He decided to use that to his advantage and indicated she needed to shut up and come with him. She glared but followed when he tugged her to her feet. He pulled her toward the tail of the helicopter before she broke his hold on her wrist. She looked ready to fight, her eyes flashing with a clear intent toward violence. Instead of confronting her, he propped the gear bags into a pile, sat and leaned on them. She watched as if waiting for some big pronouncement. He saw her distrust, her fear, but he held out his hand anyway. Reluctantly, she took it.

  Troy guided her down to lie on his chest. She resisted. He insisted. She swatted him, wriggling. He pulled her tighter to his chest. She kept checking her crew
to see if they noticed her struggles. He could tell when she gave up the fight. With a sharp elbow to his belly, she wiggled a bit, kicked off her heels and rested her head on his chest. Then her hand rested on the knife sheath on his uniform. He visualized her planting it between his ribs and tensed. She curled her fingers around his uniform’s lapel and buried her face against his neck. Her heat seared him, and after a minute or two, her breathing regulated and she slept. Only then did his body ratchet down from high alert to standby.

  He settled in for the long trip. He caressed her back, her arm, covering her delicate hand with his much larger one. She was such a badass in such a tiny body. She refused to allow weakness its due. She needed to sleep, and he would take care of her whether she wanted him to or not. He told himself it was habit, his duty, but time had tempered those excuses. He wanted to take care of her.

  He rubbed his lips against her forehead and kissed her brow.

  Four hours until touchdown. Five until they reached their target. He pulled Lucy closer. They’d find who was behind these agent killings. If it was Lucy, he’d deal with it. If not, he and Lucy would neutralize the threat and put this behind them. Worrying wasn’t going to make a shooter come out of hiding any sooner, and he wasn’t in the business of flinching.

  Odds were Barrett knew his mind before he did. Maybe that’s why she continued to keep him out of the loop. He couldn’t wait to get back to base and see what was recorded on the bug. Retrieving it would be a bitch, but between them, he and Lucy would get it done.

  * * *

  The change of rotor speed woke Lucy, fully alert, eyes closed. She was still in Troy’s arms, and it felt as if she belonged there. It made her envision a different life where she could wake in his arms to find her world prosaic. She’d walk the dog, go to work; they’d have dinner at her mum’s place, maybe dance—whatever normal people did. As fantasies went, it was more potent for its impossibility. He smelled good, she thought, and buried her face in the folds of his uniform. The heat of their bodies mingled their scents, reminding her of last night, of how amazing it felt to touch him again even with the added weight of self-disgust tickling at her conscience. She shouldn’t want him. She shouldn’t want to love him.