The back door opened.
“Whoever’s out there, this is private property. You need to leave right now. I’ve called the police.”
“Margaret, it’s me,” Riley called.
“Riley? Oh, thank goodness!” Margaret stepped out onto the stoop, her slim form backlit by the light spilling from the kitchen. She was still dressed in her funeral clothes, which made Riley wonder if maybe some of the guests had lingered. She was looking in Riley’s direction, but because of the pool of light she was standing in and the darkness that blanketed the yard, she was unlikely to be able to see much—like the fact that Riley wasn’t alone. “Come inside.”
With a salute that might have been somewhat mocking—it was too dark to be sure—Finn gifted her with an infuriating glimmer of a smile and melted away into the shadows.
Riley frowned after him, surprised at how much she hated to see him go. Over and above that blistering kiss, he’d made her feel safe. Without him, she felt . . . vulnerable. Exposed.
In danger.
Like the dark was closing in again.
But with him gone, there was nothing else to do: she turned and walked into the house.
The second she stepped through the back door, Margaret closed and locked it behind her.
Then Margaret’s gaze dropped to her neck, and she started exclaiming over the bruises that even Riley’s high-necked shirt couldn’t cover. Emma, who’d been sitting at the kitchen table, jumped up and ran over to hug her.
Hugging Emma back, Riley registered how thin she felt. At the same time, she was doing her best to thrust all thoughts of that blazing kiss and everything associated with it out of her mind. It shouldn’t have happened, and her response to it had been an aberration, a sign of the extreme stress she was under. Or maybe it had stemmed from the concussion. Or the meds. Whatever the underlying catalyst, she refused to think about it again.
“We were so scared for you,” Emma said as she stepped back. Like Margaret, she was still wearing the black dress she’d worn to the funeral, but her shoes were off and her hair hung straight and sleek down her back instead of being caught up in a ponytail as it had been earlier.
Margaret chimed in with, “A reporter came up and rang the doorbell and when Bill answered the door to order him off the porch, he told Bill someone had tried to kill you! Is that true?”
Bill had walked into the kitchen a moment earlier and now stood frowning at the three of them as they stood in a tight little group near the refrigerator. Riley wasn’t particularly surprised to see that he had stayed with Margaret and Emma until they’d found out whether Riley was safe.
Riley breathed an inward sigh of relief: if Margaret had seen the man she was with, she would have immediately said something—and she didn’t, so Riley knew Finn hadn’t been spotted. “I’m all right,” she assured them, and glanced toward the living room. “Is anyone else here?”
“Brent left about fifteen minutes ago.” Emma’s lips didn’t quiver, but the bruised look in her eyes told Riley that Brent’s visit hadn’t exactly left her with the warm fuzzies. “Right before the reporter came to the door. He was with Julie and Sarah Mason and Andrew Brown.” Julie being one of Emma’s (former) close friends. Sarah Mason and Andrew Brown were schoolmates. “They stopped in on their way to get a pizza. To say, you know, sorry about Jeff. They were the last, I think. I mean, accept for Mr. Stengel.”
Reading between the lines, Riley deduced that Brent and Julie had shown up as a couple. Aching for Emma, she gave the teen a sympathetic pat.
“Sucks.” Riley’s summation was succinct, and Emma grimaced in acknowledgment.
“I’m just glad you’re okay,” Emma replied. “I couldn’t take it if—”
“So tell us everything,” Margaret interrupted before Emma could finish with something on the order of, you died like Jeff. Riley thought it was probably because she didn’t want Emma’s thoughts going any farther down that path than could be helped. “The reporter said you were surprised by a man who was waiting in your apartment.”
Margaret’s normally low-pitched voice was shriller than usual. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and her face looked pale and pinched. Riley would have given pretty much anything not to have to add to her, or Emma’s, distress, but this was something she simply couldn’t keep to herself: the attack constituted a dire development that had to be shared.
“There’s something I have to do first,” Riley said, because she knew she needed to get it over with while she was still feeling strong enough, and while the opportunity was there. “Hang on a minute, and I’ll tell you the whole story.”
With them peppering her with questions even as they followed her, she headed for the front door. After warning Margaret and Emma to stay inside and dismissing with a wave of her hand Bill’s sharp query as to what in the world she was doing, she stepped out onto the front porch and closed the door behind her.
The response she was anticipating took maybe five seconds.
“It’s Riley!” one of the reporters shrieked.
“Look, it’s Riley!” another yelled half a beat later.
With that, they rushed her, pounding through the front yard, focusing their blinding lights and cameras on her, thrusting their microphones toward her, hurling so many questions at her that it was almost impossible to separate them into anything coherent. Before, she’d avoided them like the bloodsuckers they were, ducking from their cameras, ignoring their questions. Now they constituted the ideal way for her to send a message.
The questions came thick and fast.
“Were you the target of the shots that were fired in your building earlier?”
“Did somebody just try to kill you?”
“Were you attacked by a man in your apartment tonight?”
Riley could barely make out the faces behind the barrage of lights.
“Yes, I was attacked tonight in my apartment—possibly by the same man who murdered my ex-husband,” she said directly into the lens of the closest camera, her hand curling around one of the wrought iron roof supports. Using the media to tell the public the truth about what had happened to Jeff felt good. She desperately wanted whoever had killed him to be caught, and since she’d already been targeted, she no longer had to fear making herself one. “The man who attacked me demanded that I give him Jeff’s cell phone, which was in my possession. I was able to get away, alive and reasonably well as you can see, and have since turned Jeff’s cell phone over to the FBI. It’s with them now.” She raised her free hand to shield her eyes from the glare, and added, “That’s all I have to say. The cell phone’s with the FBI. Good night.”
There was a collective wail of protest.
“Riley, no! Come back!”
“Why was he after Jeff’s phone?”
“Was he trying to kill you?”
“Is it true he’s in police custody?”
Steadfastly ignoring the increasingly frantic tenor of the shouted questions, she waved, stepped back inside the house, and shut and locked the door.
Whew.
For the briefest of moments, she allowed herself to lean against the door. Her head spun. Her knees felt weak. She felt like every last bit of strength she had remaining to her had just been spent. But she’d done what she needed to do. Now anyone else out there who thought there might be some kind of answer on Jeff’s phone would know that, whether that was true or not, she no longer had it. She’d just made herself and Margaret and Emma at least a little bit safer.
“You talked to the media,” Bill said in a dumbstruck tone as Riley pushed off from the door, took the few steps needed to reach the dark brown, floral couch and sank bonelessly down on it.
Since their lives had come crashing down around them, one of the things Bill had told all of them so often that they were sick of hearing it was, “Don’t talk to the media.”
“I had to.” Feeling inordinately tired, Riley fought to clear her head. There was a fine line to walk here, between what to tell and w
hat not to tell, and at the moment her thinking wasn’t the sharpest it had ever been. She needed to be careful. “I wanted to get the word out that I don’t have Jeff’s cell phone. That’s what the man who was in my apartment was after. The sooner everybody knows it’s in the hands of the FBI, the better off we’ll all be.”
“Why would someone attack you for Jeff’s phone?” Bill asked. He stood in the middle of the living room frowning at her. “What in the world could be on it?”
Riley shook her head wearily. “I don’t know. I guess the FBI will find out. I think—”
She was interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell.
Bill turned and snatched open the door before anyone else could make a move, snapped at whoever was on the other side of it, “I’m Mrs. Cowan’s lawyer. You’re on private property. If you don’t leave immediately I’ll have you arrested for trespassing,” and banged the door shut again.
As he locked it, he sent a reproachful look at Riley, which she ignored. Whatever Bill thought about what she’d just done, she knew that getting the news that she no longer had Jeff’s phone out there in the public arena was the smartest thing she could do.
“Tell us what happened,” Margaret ordered. She perched on the edge of the tan corduroy recliner beside the couch, her hands clasped tightly in her lap.
Emma, meanwhile, had flung herself down on the cushions next to Riley and was looking at her wide-eyed. She said, “Those bruises on your neck—did he, like, try to choke you or something?”
Riley gingerly touched the tender area. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was give Emma more disturbing images to carry around in her head. But there was no denying the already-purpling bruises.
“He grabbed me by the neck,” Riley replied, ignoring the shiver that ran down her spine at the memory. Then, downplaying everything she could for Emma’s sake, she gave them a judiciously edited version of the attack, fudging such details as the fact that she had run for her life while naked—in her revised version she’d managed to snatch up a towel—and almost everything about the time she’d spent with Finn, with the exception of the fact that she’d broken down in tears, or the kiss that she now shied away from even thinking about.
“Dear God,” Margaret said when she was finished. “I shudder to think what might have happened if you hadn’t gotten away, or those FBI agents hadn’t been there.”
“He would have shot her.” Emma’s tone was stark. She huddled in a corner of the couch with her knees drawn up tightly beside her. The ends of her long blond hair swung over her shoulder, almost brushing her pink-manicured toenails. “You have to face it, Mom. We’re all at risk.”
“No,” Margaret protested as her eyes met Riley’s. At the expression on Emma’s and Margaret’s faces, Riley felt her insides contract. Both, in their different ways, looked afraid.
The worst thing about it was, they were right to be afraid. She was right to be afraid.
“I can try to get some private security—” Bill began, only to be interrupted by another peal of the doorbell.
Muttering something under his breath, Bill strode to the door and yanked it open.
The bristling belligerence of his stance changed almost instantly.
“What can I do for you, officers?”
Officers?
Alarmed, the women looked at each other and then toward the door, but the way they were situated precluded them from seeing whoever was on the porch. Tensing in instinctive anticipation of more bad news, too exhausted to get up and check out what was going on for herself, Riley could hear a man’s voice, although not distinctly enough to make out the words. Bill listened, nodded, then stepped back. As he closed the door, Riley saw that he held a white plastic grocery-type bag in his hand.
“What—?” Margaret began, her hands pressed to her heart, speaking for all of them.
“There’ll be a patrol car with two officers in it parked out in your driveway every night starting now until they tell us otherwise,” Bill said, sounding as relieved as he did surprised. “That will certainly make us all feel better, won’t it?” His gaze took in Emma as well as Margaret, then shifted to Riley. “The officer also said he was told to give you this.”
He handed her the bag. Mystified, Riley looked inside.
The two pints of ice cream were clearly labeled: one was strawberry; the other was chocolate peanut butter crunch.
— CHAPTER —
ELEVEN
“The problem’s been taken care of.” That was how the conversation started. No greeting, no self-identification from the speaker. But Finn knew who it was, and what he was talking about. Because Riley’s attacker had seen Finn and could potentially—with sufficient digging and the right facial recognition software—identify him, he’d been eliminated before he could escape the country.
“It’s looking like the surviving family members are in the clear.” Finn spoke into the pay phone that in this world of ubiquitous electronic eavesdropping was, ironically, the most secure means of communication with his superior. His words were as to-the-point as the other man’s. “I’m going to move on.”
What he was moving on to were the chairmen of the investment firms that had been most heavily involved with George Cowan’s company, referring clients to him, funneling a substantial amount of dollars from their own investment funds for him to manage along with those of his own clients. Two of those men, both longtime close associates and personal friends of George Cowan, were currently at the top of Finn’s getting-to-know-you list. With all the high-tech searching that was going on in every possible money repository throughout the world still drawing a blank, human intelligence was looking like their best shot at finding the missing money.
Human intelligence, in this case, meaning Finn.
Always assuming, of course, that the money was there to be found. And people way above his pay grade were convinced it was.
“We’re getting down to the wire on this thing,” Eagle warned.
Eagle was not, of course, his real name. Having worked for him for twelve years, since being recruited right out of college until he’d “retired” not quite three years before, and having almost died protecting him in the giant screwup that had led to his leaving the life supposedly forever, Finn was well aware of Eagle’s true identity: CIA Assistant Director William Loring. But security dictated that operatives be referred to at all times by their code names, and like the rest of them, Finn subscribed to that. Finn referred to Loring as Eagle just as Loring referred to him as Kestrel. The cell of operatives, of which Finn was one of a number of loosely connected parts, also used code names Falcon, Hawk, Harrier, Osprey, Shrike, and the big dog, the director himself, was code-named Condor. The code name for the suite of offices in D.C. that was their unit’s headquarters? The nest.
Never let it be said that the CIA was not cute.
Highly elite, highly compartmentalized, his unit was the Agency’s troubleshooters: they went wherever the Agency needed them to go, and did whatever the Agency needed them to do, no questions asked. Only the highest echelon of Agency leadership even knew that they existed, which added to the ease with which they could be cut loose if an operation went south. Finn had no illusions as to why he had been tapped for this particular job: aside from his long association with Eagle, during which he had earned as much of the man’s trust as anyone ever did, he no longer had any affiliation with the government, and if the shit hit the fan he’d be easy to disavow.
Or worse.
Unlike the Marines, the Agency left men behind as was deemed necessary. Every operative knew that going in.
Finn was outside at the moment, leaning a shoulder against the brick wall of a nondescript building on the edge of downtown Houston after having been picked up by Bax at the Cowans’ house. The building had once housed medical offices and a pharmacy. Now its lowest level was a payday loan operation, currently closed for the night. But it had one of the few surviving pay phones in the area still affixed to the wall, and
that plus its location made it ideal for Finn’s purpose of checking in with Eagle and updating him on his progress so far. The time was just past 11 p.m., dark except for the dim glow of security lights in a parking garage a couple of buildings down the block. The only other people he could see were a homeless man pushing a rattling grocery cart in the opposite direction and a guy in a sport jacket heading toward his pickup, which was parked curbside across the street. Finn kept an eye on both of them—he didn’t expect any problems, but experience had taught him to be wary and that wariness was more natural to him than breathing now.
“I’m aware of the time constraints,” Finn answered. “If it’s anywhere to be found, I’ll find it.”
It referring to the money, of course.
“Make sure you get to it before our friends do,” Eagle said, and disconnected.
Listening to the sudden buzz of dead air in his ear, Finn frowned. The friends Eagle had referred to were other countries plus all the non-government-sanctioned players in the game, all of which were hunting the missing money with as much zeal as his own government. Technically, the money belonged in the custody of the United States, to deal with as it saw fit; realistically, it was finders keepers. Whoever got there first got the money, and if it was anyone besides the United States they were going to make that money disappear.
It was sort of like The Amazing Race, only with billions of dollars as a prize and every single contestant prepared to kill or die or do whatever it took to win. Finn included.
That was how he served his country. Bring on the brass band.
The thing was, over the last few years he’d gotten a taste of how good a normal life could be. Waking up in the same place every day, working hard at something with a future, talking to people when their paths crossed in town or in a store, having neighbors. He’d even made a few tentative steps toward starting a relationship with a woman that was more than a night or two of no-strings-attached sex. He’d taken the female vet who’d come out to treat one of his steers to dinner, he’d gone to the movies with a pretty hostess from the local IHOP, he’d been to a party with an elementary school teacher who’d bumped his car in traffic.
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