Out of Sight (Project Athena)

by Trish Milburn

  She had a difficult time squeezing between all the suits guarding the Oval Office, and the effort wasn’t worth it. Someone, somewhere was probably talking about the threats against the president, but the commander-in-chief spent a good portion of the day talking about education spending.

  She came back after hours to see if Harmon and the president saved the sensitive discussions until after most of the staffers had gone home for the day. They discussed a sensitive topic all right, but it didn’t have anything to do with the note writer. Deciding a list of countries enriching uranium on the sly wasn’t going to help her, she decided to pack it in for the evening.

  She eased past the contingent of Secret Service and headed for one of the smaller exits, one used enough that she could sneak out behind someone but not enough that she’d have to fight a crowd.

  But as she rounded a corner into the last corridor, Rennie stepped out in front of her.

  Sure she’d used it as a figure of speech, but this time she meant it when she thought her heart nearly stopped. She stared past him to the door only a few short feet away. So close and yet so far. Risking running for it was way too dangerous, and she wasn’t going to risk discovery when she felt she was getting close to identifying the culprit.

  So she remained still, trying to control her breathing so Rennie couldn’t hear it. Climbing to the top of the Washington Monument would have been easier at the moment.

  The blockhead worked for the agency. What was his problem?

  “I’m still watching you,” he whispered as he glanced down the hallway. “Funny how you’ve got unlimited access and you can’t manage to find this guy.”

  Rennie suddenly looked down the hallway behind her. She glanced that way but saw nothing. When she returned her attention to Rennie, he looked confused. Maybe the spook was spooking himself out.

  He looked in her general direction again. “It’d be so easy for you to do what you want and then disappear for good,” he said.

  The sound of footsteps muted Rennie.

  Another suited agent ambled down the hall. “Hey, Rennie. What are you doing down here?”

  “Giving Herb a break.”

  “Herb requires more bathroom breaks than any man I’ve ever met.”

  “Yep. Maybe he’s actually a woman.”

  Agent Nameless answered his cell phone as he started walking toward the door. Jenna moved to his side as quietly as she could, making sure to put the agent between her and Rennie.

  Rennie might not be able to see her, but he knew she was on the move from the look of contained anger in his eyes.

  She followed the agent closely and hoped he didn’t make an abrupt about-face. She’d be screwed royally then.

  As she made slow progress toward freedom, she wasn’t entirely certain she might not earn the distinction of being the first invisible person tackled by a Secret Service agent in the White House.

  ****

  Jenna spent the entire next day waiting for Rennie to jump out at her from behind a filing cabinet or set of drapes. She passed plenty of Secret Service agents, but Rennie wasn’t among them.

  As she vacuumed and washed windows and polished furniture, she replayed the encounter with Rennie the night before. Perhaps Rennie didn’t trust any outsider the agency brought in or anyone with any type of paranormal ability. If she didn’t have an equal distrust of him, she’d march up to him and ask.

  Patti had her working far away from the East Room all day, so Jenna couldn’t even use glances at Kevin in his painter’s pants and T-shirt to improve her mood. As she mopped yet another hallway, she made the vow that when she got home she wasn’t going to mop for a solid month.

  When her mop brought her outside one of the West Wing conference rooms, half a dozen suits watched her work. Their presence outside the room meant the president was in some sort of meeting on the other side of the door. She was tempted to go transform and sneak inside the next time a staffer went in or came out, but she had to be careful. Patti was still giving her suspicious looks and had come to check on her twice already. Was Rennie encouraging Patti’s extra attention? She had a feeling she and Rennie were going to have a serious face-to-face chat before this whole mission was over.

  Finally, she reached the end of the hall. When she looked back at her handiwork, she saw tracks. She nearly screamed. Why couldn’t she finish a floor and have it dry before some yahoo decided to traipse across it? She’d been so wrapped up in her thoughts that she hadn’t even heard the footsteps, so she couldn’t berate whoever was guilty. And she doubted the Serious Six would deign to tell her.

  For the rest of the day, Patti made herself a periodic nuisance. It was as if she knew Jenna was up to something. Wouldn’t poor Patti be shocked if she really knew what Jenna had done within these walls?

  In order to get anything useful accomplished, Jenna had to come back after the shift change and enter the White House invisible. This was getting old. After the last note left on the president’s desk, she was frankly surprised the assassin hadn’t struck yet. What was he waiting for?

  She headed for familiar ground outside Ken Harmon’s office. By now, she felt like she knew the man better than she did Daniel. Half expecting to have to walk away empty-handed again, she stopped when she heard a familiar voice. Could it be? She had to see his face to be sure, so she eased into the office and around the edge until...her heart leapt. The American who’d met with Tumeri sat across from Harmon.

  “We were told it was aborted because evidence came to light that Tumeri wasn’t involved,” Harmon said.

  “Unfortunately, that intelligence was inaccurate. Our man reported this morning that Tumeri transferred a large sum of cash to a plane at a private airstrip. That plane was unmarked, radar lost it half an hour after takeoff.”

  No, no, no! Something wasn’t right here. This guy was perpetuating the Tumeri myth, but why? He had a vested interest in keeping Tumeri alive. Unless he figured he could just deal with whoever came into power after he let Tumeri take the fall for the assassination.

  Who was this guy? CIA? He had to be high up in intelligence to get a private audience with Harmon on this topic.

  “Whoever blew it when we had the chance to take Tumeri out, I want that person gone,” Harmon said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jenna couldn’t breathe. They meant her. Did this guy know who she was?

  She froze when the man stood. As he stepped away from the high-backed leather chair, she strained to take in every detail of his appearance. Sandy brown hair, light eyes, medium build — nothing that marked him as a blackmailer, a liar, an assassin.

  She listened as his muted footsteps moved away on the carpet outside. Was he already on the lookout for her? Out, away, far away. The words banged inside her skull, propelling her out of the office and down the hall. She was so addled that she nearly ran into someone when she entered the Center Hall. Kevin looked her direction as if he’d heard her. Kevin?

  The lights in the East Room blazed. She’d forgotten the painters were working late, trying to finish the restoration project by the end of the week.

  Kevin shrugged like he was imagining things and continued toward the East Room.

  Was her ability not as powerful as it’d once been? Rennie always seemed to know when she was around, and now Kevin had indicated he’d at least thought someone was near him. Of course, she could have been making more noise than usual in her haste. But the thought of the unknown man finding her made her more careful as she found her way outside, hurried several blocks toward where she’d left her car and used an unlighted doorway at the back of an office building to slip back into her visible skin.

  She wasted no time letting the lingering wooziness of the transformation ebb away before diving into the Pinto and heading for Daniel’s.

  Jenna spent as much time staring in her rearview mirror as she did out the windshield. Her common sense told her hordes of government goons weren’t going to race after her in mammoth black SUVs, but
her fear whispered otherwise. Every shadow, every alleyway, every stoplight spelled potential disaster in her imagination.

  When she crossed the river into Virginia, she nearly passed her turn on purpose. She wanted to be as far away from D.C. as she could get.

  The normalcy of the town home complex stood in stark contrast to the scene she’d just fled. But it did little to calm her, to make her mind stop racing over and over the man’s words.

  She swung into a parking space and waited for her heart rate to slow. Fear got her nowhere. What she needed was a cool head. The sooner she untangled the final pieces of the mystery, the sooner all the intrigue and fear would be over.

  She scanned the dark bushes as she made her way to Daniel’s door.

  He opened the door before she even knocked. “You’re not supposed to come here.”

  She pushed her way inside and shut the door behind her. “I just saw the man who met with Tumeri. He was in the White House meeting with Ken Harmon. He’s still insisting Tumeri is behind the threats.”

  “You’re sure it’s the same man?”

  “Positive.”

  “Did he identify himself?”

  “No, but he’s some sort of intelligence guy. I think he’s setting Tumeri up to take the fall.”

  Daniel grabbed his cell phone. “Stay here.” He moved down the hall, leaving her in the middle of his living room.

  Damn him and his secrecy. She paced, but it did nothing to alleviate her anxiety. The minutes ticked away with increasing volume in her head. While Daniel chatted away, the president could be in danger.

  It took a moment for the barking to sink into her consciousness. That sounded like Pegram. She moved to the window but didn’t see him. Not through the peephole either. But that was definitely Pegram. A chill gripped her. There was no way Pegram could have gotten out of her town house alone. Tears popped into her eyes.

  Daniel grabbed her arm as she eyed the door.

  “Don’t even think about it,” he said.

  “But—”

  “There are four men outside waiting for you to open that door.”

  The sound of the door lock being picked drew their attention. One guy was evidently tired of waiting.

  Daniel shoved the deadbolt closed and dragged her toward the back of the town home. He pulled his cell phone off his belt with his free hand. “Code 11. Going to standby.” He said no more, just flipped his phone shut and led her through a back door she didn’t know existed and down to the parking area behind the units. She nearly tripped over her feet trying to match Daniel’s longer strides, ones lengthened by his insistence that they hurry. He spun around and fired three shots from a gun she hadn’t realized he’d grabbed. Curses stung the air. It sounded like the bullets had connected with at least one of the men.

  Daniel jerked the door on a small black SUV open and shoved her in with the care a kidnapper would give his victim. For the briefest moment, she considered fighting and screaming for help. Survival instinct. But Daniel hadn’t been the one lying in wait for her, using her pet as bait.

  Oh, Pegram.

  He hurried to his side of the vehicle and jumped in, started the ignition and shoved the SUV into gear in one fluid motion. Instead of exiting through the main entrance to the complex, he hurtled over speed bumps toward a smaller back entrance. As he sped through the complex and careened out onto the main street, he continued to glance in the rear-view mirror.

  “Are they back there?” she asked.

  “Don’t see anyone, but there’s no such thing as too cautious.” He handed her the gun. “If they catch us, put those marksmanship skills to work.”

  His cell phone rang. “We’re out,” he said when he answered.

  His half of the brief conversation told her nothing.

  “Where are we going?” She hoped it wasn’t the agency’s headquarters. She’d had quite enough of that tomb-like structure to last more than one lifetime.

  “A safe house.”

  “Where?”

  “Outside the city.”

  “That narrows it down.” She muttered it under her breath as she turned her attention to the passenger side mirror. A car’s lights followed them, but there was no way to know who it was unless he made an aggressive move.

  How had her life take such a surreal turn? Even for someone with a supernatural ability, things had been a bit unbelievable lately. She had dozens of questions zipping through her mind, but asking them took too much effort considering she probably wouldn’t get answers. She’d ask them later, when they reached the safe house. Until then, she’d help Daniel watch for any potential dangers, ones he might miss while paying attention to the road in front of them.

  By the time forty-five minutes had passed, however, Jenna wished she’d not postponed her interrogation. She wanted answers, but now she was having to suppress the questions in an effort to keep their path in her mind. Daniel had made so many turns and switchbacks that she was now certain they’d covered some of the roads more than once in an effort to confuse her about where she was. The cop part of her understoond the need to keep the locations of safe houses secret, but she was in this up to her eyelashes and resented being kept in the dark on every single issue.

  “You can stop with the twisting and turning. You’ve gotten me sufficiently lost, and anyone following us is dizzy by now.” She thought she saw a slight tick at the corner of Daniel’s mouth, like he was suppressing a grin. How she wanted to clock him one right upside the head!

  Heeding her words, he turned down one last road. He took it to a bend where a small farmhouse that reminded her of the one her grandmother used to live in sat shrouded in the darkness. When Daniel shut off the headlights, the night enveloped them. They were farther away from D.C. than she thought. No city lights, not even a faint glow, relieved the blackness of the moonless night.

  “So this is ‘going to standby’?”

  “Yep.” He took his weapon back from her and glanced in the rearview mirror as if he could actually see anything. “Stay in here until I come back for you.”

  “Like hell.”

  “Do it or I shoot you now.”

  She started to laugh, but she caught the glint in his eyes and froze. Dear God, was this all a trap? Was Daniel really working for the other side? Should she have struggled and screamed when she had the chance? Now it wouldn’t do her a bit of good. No one would hear her, just some cows and perhaps a few tree frogs.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  He slid out of his door and headed for the little house. She considered making a run for it, but common sense told her it was too risky. He hadn’t harmed her thus far. She just had to bide her time and figure out what was going on and resist the urge to accept that she was simply losing her mind.

  The night sounds magnified the longer she sat. Crickets, frogs, other insects she couldn’t name, even the distant mooing of a cow. But no hum of traffic, no sounds of human life beyond Daniel and herself.

  She didn’t even see Daniel when he came back outside. She jumped when he opened her door and said, “Come on.”

  Fighting the urge to dig her fingers into the upholstery and resist going into the house, she followed without a word. Part of her feared that she’d find Elliott and his grisly tools inside. Instead, once the door was closed behind them, Daniel turned on the light to reveal a simple but comfortable looking living room. Knitted throws were draped over the back of the couch, and the hint of a canary yellow kitchen showed through a doorway at the other side of the room.

  She expected a farmer in bibbed overalls and his Aunt Bea-ish wife to come strolling out with home-cooked vittles. Or maybe that was wishful thinking, something normal to prove that normal still existed.

  “You can have the bedroom on the right,” Daniel said, indicating the two doorways on the side of the room. She never thought she’d wish for her place in the town home complex, but at least there she’d had some semblance of privacy — if she didn’t say anything that could be picked up by the bu
gs or Daniel didn’t decide to make himself at home. At least back in Arlington, she could get in her heap of a car and leave or go for a walk, maybe even invite Kevin out for a cup of coffee. But here, she had no idea which way to go if she did want to seek civilization and how long it would take her to get there.

  She started toward her designated quarters, poking her head into the kitchen for a quick peek. Wow, that was a lot of yellow. “I think Big Bird decorated the kitchen.”

  “Not quite.”

  He didn’t elaborate — no surprise there — so she continued on to her room. “How long are we staying here?”

  “As long as necessary. You’ll find what you need in the dresser and closet.”

  Thinking she was going to find the clothes of a grandmotherly type, she pulled open the closet door to find T-shirts, jeans, slacks and blouses. A quick survey of the tags revealed they were all her size. Her heart rate increased as she jerked open dresser drawers to find socks, shorts, pajamas and even underwear, again all in her size. She left the drawers hanging open as she stormed back into the living room.

  “Where did all this stuff come from? And how did you know I’d need it? Did you arrange for those guys back there?”

  “Kept those questions bottled up since we left Arlington, did you?”

  Fueled by anger, she stalked toward him, got in his face. “Enough with the smart-ass remarks, the evasion, the silence. I want answers and I want them yesterday!”

  “You ought to know by now—”

  She cut him off by shoving him against the wall and jabbing her forefinger between his eyes. “I don’t think you heard me properly. Answers, Webster — if that’s your real name — answers to every single question I have or I walk out of this house and you’ll never find me. I’ll find a way to protect my family and find my father without your help.”