by Elaine Nolan
“I’ve no idea what his game is, or why he engineered that coffee meeting with me. He hinted that I was an agent which worries me. Maybe Jake told him who I was…”
“Was Rainey was trying to recruit you? Turn you?”
She shook her head. “He tried flirting, but there was no spark, no chemistry. I got the feeling he was trying to suss me out, get a handle on me, but why me? I’ve no idea.”
Brennan brought the briefing to a close, but held Leigh back as the rest departed.
“Do you need a history lesson on the Troubles?” he asked, and she shook her head.
“Do you consider the colour coral to be red?” she asked in return. The question threw him, so she threw another question at him.
“What does a badger mean to you?”
“A what?”
“A badger.”
“Where are you going with this?”
“Just humour me.”
“It’s thought badgers were filthy animals, farmers blamed them for carrying tuberculosis onto farms. What are you up to?”
“Something for the other leash,” she answered, as her phone vibrated and she checked the number, surprised to recognise Jake’s new one. She excused herself to answer it, curious why he’d contact her.
CHAPTER 20
He grabbed for her as she ran to the taped off site, ensnaring her in his arms, but she fought him, pushed against him to be free. She slipped from his grasp and stood at the edge of the crime scene, trying to take in every detail, but all she focused on was Karl’s body, sprawled, misshapen, and distorted in death.
She stood, unmoving, unyielding as she stared at him. Not even Jake’s hand grasping her arm distracted her. His gentle tugs to pull her away evolved into an iron grip. His fingers tightened, dug into her arm, became a force too strong, too powerful to withstand, and he dragged her away. Her glare remained fixed on Karl.
“Don’t do this,” he begged her, but she ignored him, railed against him. He stood in front of her, intercepting her stare, twisting his body to block her at every attempt to look past him.
He continued to push her back until Karl’s body was no longer visible. Only then did she register Jake. Only then did she raise her eyes to him, and he saw everything in them; the pain, the shock and the unasked questions.
He ushered her to his car, this time without a fight from her, and she sat in the passenger seat, albeit with an unsubtle shove. He took her away from the scene. It was too painful for him, and with the personal connection to the victim, he knew he couldn’t be objective. He caught himself, disgusted he’d started the practice of disassociation by referring to Karl as a victim.
The man was an indelible and significant part of his life. That was as an enemy, a nemesis, but he’d also been a friend, a lover. Now, his death left a void, a painful gaping wound. Jake couldn’t imagine what Leigh was going through. Her continuing silence worried him. She appeared small in the car seat, and he’d never seen her this withdrawn.
He pulled into the subterranean car park for his block, and helped her, held her hand as he guided her to the elevator. And still not a word from her. Doubt, fear, jealousy; they raised their ugly little heads and he wondered how she’d have reacted if it was his body lying there. His fingers interlocked with hers, and she didn’t try to pull away. In fact, the opposite. She moved closer, tightened her grip against his.
He opened the door of his apartment and stepped back to let her in first.
“You want a drink?” he asked, locking the door behind him, and she nodded, sitting at his kitchenette table.
“What happened to him?” she finally spoke.
“I don’t know,” he answered, handing her an opened bottle of beer, and leaned against his breakfast counter, taking a gulp from his own bottle.
“But you were helping him,” she accused him.
“It was minimal. I stitched him up, that was all he needed from me.” He saw the hurt on her face, that Karl had turned to him, and not to her.
“Stitched him up from what?” her tone grew hard.
“Gunshot wounds,” he admitted. Anger replaced the hurt and he forestalled a verbal attack from her. “He didn’t tell me anything, just that it involved your father, but made me promise not to tell you. And then he left again. That’s it Leigh. That’s everything.”
She turned her head and stared out the window, and he recognised it as her dark place. Eager to pull her back from that brink, he went to her, sat with her, his hand brushing stray curls from her forehead. She turned back to him, returned her focus to him, but she was still in that dark place.
She grabbed the ends of his tie in her fist, restraining him somewhat. He’d missed this level of dominance from her. He’d missed her. And damn her, she had trained him too well that he held back on acting on his natural and predatory instincts to take control, take what he wanted. She wound his tie around her hand, pulling him lower, increasing the pressure on the back of his neck.
“Mistress,” he whispered. It was enough to pull her back from that dark abyss, and she kissed him.
Jake reached across the bed, but found it empty. It was still warm, meaning she wasn’t long gone and he sighed, but her clothes lay discarded on the floor, along with his own. Dare he hope? He pulled his boxers on and went in search for her, finding her sitting at the window seat, wearing only his shirt.
The scent in the apartment said she’d brewed coffee, and she held a cup to her chest as she stared out, yet so deep in thought she didn’t register his presence, until he brushed her tousled hair from the back of her neck, and kissed her there. She gave him the barest of smiles, but it seemed haunted.
This expression was new to him, but he had no problem interpreting it. He felt the same. Grief. For Karl. For the manner of his death. And a drop of anger for the manner in which his body was dumped.
Jake wrapped his arms around her, kissed the top of her head. She leaned back, softened against him. She moved her hand, rested it atop his, and their fingers intertwined. He held on to her, neither of them speaking, neither wanting to break the silence for fear it broke the spell.
CHAPTER 21
Leigh faced the on-screen image of Walters and told her the news.
“Who’s investigating,” the Director asked.
“DC Metropolitan PD,” Leigh answered, and then clarified. “Washington Police.”
“Not the Secret Service?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“And your friend, Jake?”
“Conflict of interest. He’s stepped out of any investigation.”
“And you? Are you okay?” Leigh heard the concern in Walters’ voice.
“I will be,” she admitted.
“And no idea who killed him? Or what got him killed?”
Leigh shook her head, keeping her answers as short and as non-vocal as possible.
“The police said they’d update the Irish Embassy.”
“Then I’ll await an update from you,” Walters said.
“Director… Any progress on finding my father’s files?”
“There’s been some progress, but we’re still sifting through paper records and trying to put sense to them.”
Leigh caught the variance in her tone. It was one downside to being a trained musician, and a trained agent, she was too aware of the subtle nuances in sound, in tonality. Now she understood her mother’s innate ability to detect when her students were fibbing, and Walters was telling whoppers right now. But why? And to what end? Leigh played along, too emotionally raw to try being a smartarse right now.
“Okay, I’m interested in anything you find.”
“I’ll keep you posted, Leigh,” she said and cut the call short, not giving Leigh a chance to prolong with more awkward questions.
While Leigh didn’t have the emotional strength to contend with the Director, an itch in the back of her brain ignited to a burning flame, and Leigh got to work. Knowing Huntington’s cyber security, she accessed Walter’s directo
ry using an old and unknown backdoor Lantry had set up for himself, back in his time, one Leigh found while trying to delve into secrets about Lee, and she forgot to mention it to the Head of Security. Ah well. She’d make a note to say something the next time.
Walter’s placed too much faith in technology, although the cleverness of her passwords impressed Leigh, and it gave her insight into the Director’s personal life and interests. If Leigh wanted a pressure point to use against Walters, she just found it, but that wasn’t what she wanted though it might prove useful later.
Leigh delved into the Director’s file directories, setting two searches in motion, the first for the most recent uploaded or scanned files, the second for any references to her dad. Neither disappointed her, and there was very little overlap in the results. To avoid the possibility of being caught online on their systems, she copied the files and search results to her own secure server, tucked away 5,500 miles away. She could browse them at her leisure and without the need to watch over her cyber shoulder.
Before leaving Huntington’s server, she set two more searches loose on the files, looking for anything connected to Karl or the codename Green Badger, just in case Walters kept intel from her. Not that she didn’t trust this new director, but, well, she didn’t. While Leigh acknowledged grief clouded her judgement, she still listened to that nagging doubt in her head, and tingling at the back of her neck. Another of her dad’s rules, number four, she thought on it… Trust your gut. That led to number five: Trust no one. Both were apt right now.
She checked the internal directory and messaged Donal, asking about the files he’d promised on her father, proving to be more open and forthcoming than Walters had been. And the Irish files were interesting. At last she started building a clearer picture of the detective he was, and gave her a measure of this side of him.
The files included scanned copies of his handwritten notes, and she recognised his cursive script, felt comforted by it, found his concise reports reassuring and in keeping with the father she remembered.
While the Irish files were more forthcoming, it still contained a considerable amount of redacted and blacked out information, still within the statute of limitations under the Official Secrets Act. It also referenced operations carried out in Northern Ireland during the time of the Troubles, and many of the players of the time were probably still around. Not active, as per the Good Friday Agreement, or at least they shouldn’t be.
Despite the restrictions, she gleaned the outlines of Lee’s operations, enough to understand and appreciate the danger he’d put himself in. Was it all for the greater good? She couldn’t answer that, but based on her own temperament, she guessed for him it was pushing at boundaries, and a bit of a thrill. She wondered how far her particular apple had fallen from the tree or, as one of her trainers in Bundoran had commented; she hadn’t fallen, she remained stuck in the branches.
She pulled up the results of her searches on the Huntington files, used another algorithm to find where the files overlapped, but again they were few, and a quick read through them only produced more questions than answers. A lot of the information remained redacted, and she wondered why with the Huntington files, when she was supposed to be getting to the bottom of why Karl left. They could’ve given her something to work with, but then again, they hadn’t given her these files. She’d snatched them from the servers. There was no overlap between Lee’s early work in the police’s counter terrorism unit and his time with Huntington. And Lee’s time in the North ended before Leigh was born.
To get it straight in her head she accessed one of her software development tools on her own server and started piecing her father’s past together, adding in details from the journals she’d deciphered, and the ones that ensnared her in this world, his world. The more she pieced together, the more she realised just how little she knew of him. His training in Bundoran only slotted in after his appointment to the counter terrorism unit. Whatever timeline she had in mind for him, this now set it in order, but she suspected pieces of the puzzle that was her father, were still missing.
She hit the files at Huntington again, not trying to hide her searching this time, well not much. If she didn’t make an effort to dig around, Walters might suspect the backdoor, but if she just knocked on the front door without making an effort to try hacking in, they could think she had something to hide. And sometimes she just over-thought way too much. Still, that trait made her a comfortable income on her private software projects, and came in useful when trying to outwit an opponent in this espionage game. Devious was another word used to describe her, and she’d wondered if that trait was unique to her, or if she inherited it. Karl wouldn’t say either way, which made her suspect the latter. The details in the files she’d read seemed to confirm the inherited theory.
So engrossed in mapping out Lee’s timeline she lost track of her own time in the here and now that her phone, vibrating on the desk, startled her and it took her a moment to snap back. The screen read private number and she hesitated answering it, surprised find Swayne on the other end.
“Senator?” she asked.
“I’m having a fundraiser tomorrow night for one of the Urban Renewal Projects,” Swayne answered.
“Unfortunately Senator, I’m now on a civil servant wage, I could only offer a paltry level of investment.”
“I’m not inviting you as an investor.”
“Security detail?”
“No.” Leigh heard the effort the Senator exerted at keeping her exasperation at bay. “I’m inviting you as a guest, and as a friend of Jake’s.”
“Jake’s going?” Leigh asked, surprised he hadn’t mentioned it.
“He’ll be there, but he’ll be working.” Swayne’s answer sent Leigh’s mind spinning again at the myriad of reasons the Senator could want her at this party.
“Dress code?” Leigh asked instead.
“A cocktail dress should suffice,” Swayne answered and Leigh scrunched her face in a grimace, sorry she asked and wondering where the hell she would get one. “I’ll send the invitation to your Embassy.”
“Thank you.”
“And…” Swayne paused and Leigh waited. “Jake told me what happened to Karl. I wanted to offer my condolences.” It was enough to make the past twenty-four hours come flooding back, and the realisation she’d used her father to distract from her grief.
“Thank you.”
“Any idea who’s responsible, or why?”
“None,” Leigh answered, guessing Jake filled her in, but just how much had he said? Had he told her they’d spent the night together? Was that the real reason for the Senator’s invitation? Only one way to find out, and she searched online for a dress hire shop still operating in the city.
CHAPTER 22
Her invitation was news to Jake, judging by his surprise and he grabbed her elbow, pulling her to a quiet corner to interrogate her. His confusion only deepened when she produced the official invitation, and to her amusement, he scrutinised it, even more confused when realising it wasn’t a forgery.
“She called me last night and invited me,” Leigh explained.
“But why?”
“You tell me. How much did you tell her?”
“If you’re referring to the other night, nothing. She already thinks you’ve corrupted me with your evil BDSM ways.” She smirked at his growing smile.
“I didn’t corrupt you; I just unlocked the door and you let your own deviancy out. And you pulling me aside for a ‘quiet word’ has confirmed any suspicions she may have about the two of us being together in the same city. Not like you to make this rookie mistake.”
“She’s still in a meeting. And if she wasn’t, I’d have waited until this thing was over, brought you home, and spanked an answer out of you.”
Leigh laughed. “You slap like a small boy,” she threw back, teasing him, but sidestepped him at seeing the Senator enter. Jake’s demeanour changed back to agent and protection mode, and he let Leigh go, wondering what th
e Senator was up to bringing her here. He knew if he wasn’t careful, the figure-hugging black dress Leigh wore would distract him all night, even though it covered the essentials and most of her extensive body art, some of that artwork, such as the wing of her dragon tattoo, spread out beyond the seams, and only added to her allure. It would be a long night, he thought to himself, wondering if he’d still get to bring her home when it ended. He caught the Senator frowning at him. It snapped him back to the job at hand, and demanded an update from the rest of the security team.
Nathan Rainey entered with his usual rock-star fanfare, and again Jake wondered what the Senator was up to. She was usually more open with him regarding her plans, but on this she’d remained quiet. Even her greeting of Rainey was pleasant. Perhaps she embraced the entrepreneur now that he sat on the advisory panel of her Great American Rebuild Plan. Swayne led him around the room, introducing him to various financial contributors, most of whom Rainey knew, but Jake’s instincts screamed at him as he watched the Senator introduce Rainey to Leigh, then she stood back to observe their interaction, surprised at Leigh’s frosty reaction towards the man. Jake found her reaction reassuring, despite the other man’s unsubtle flirting with her.
Swayne moved on to her other guests, leaving the pair together, but monitored Jake’s reaction to them.
“So what exactly is it you do, Mr Rainey?” she asked.
“Why Ms Harte, you almost sound interested,” he shot back. He took hold of her arm and guided her towards the bar, going so far as to ordering for the both of them. From the look on her face Jake knew it pissed her off, that Rainey pushed every button on her control-freak settings. Just to spite Rainey, she ordered a different drink, making it obvious he wasn’t getting the upper hand, or taking charge. Undaunted, he selected and prepared a small plate from the buffet, and offered it to her, and again she refused it, making her own choice.