Once off the parking lot, she kept the speed low enough so she wouldn’t be held up with getting a ticket.
At first, she’d been shocked to realize Willow had fled the safe house in order to help Simon—on the other hand, her former location could have been just as dangerous for her as her current one.
Kat wasn’t entirely sure on which team Crystal was playing.
* * * *
Mandy might have seemed frightened, but the way she released the safety on the handgun told Willow she might have underestimated her.
“You know how to use one of those?”
“Yeah,” she said, a little self-conscious. “My Grandpa lived with us. He was a bit of a gun nut, so my Mom decided we should at least have classes if she couldn’t get them out of the house. I wasn’t too bad at it.”
“Okay. Great.” Willow wasn’t the most comfortable around firearms, but she, too, had reluctantly learned to handle one. “For now, we’re under lockdown. We’ll go to the lab, and there I’ll check every possible entry and exit. There’s something with heat sensors too, which is good, so we won’t run into any bad surprises.”
“Wow, it sounds really paranoid when you put it that way.”
Willow sighed. “Simon is a player, always was. It was only a matter of time until he tried to screw with the wrong people.”
“But it’s your alarm system they want…”
“Yeah. The problem is he told them I was going to build it for them, and see where we are. Let’s figure this out.”
“Okay.”
Willow was all right with pretending they weren’t both scared out of their minds. Giving in to the sentiment wouldn’t serve them in any way—they had to find a way out.
In the lab, she went back to her earlier work, poring over every detail, every door she’d previously managed to open and was now locked firmly because they hadn’t been able to make use of the fifteen minutes window. She knew Franklin had built his mansion with bullet-proof glass for windows. Willow wasn’t sure if Simon had the same resources at his disposal. She doubted it. The men would probably soon make it into the house and then search room by room. The algorithm would allow her and Mandy to hide out in the lab, but then they would also be trapped in it.
Mandy flinched at the sound of glass breaking.
“I am so sorry,” she said. “If I’d made up my mind sooner…”
She could be right, but Willow didn’t tell her that. “We might have run right into them, and without any weapons. Don’t worry.”
“Are you finding anything?”
“They have the house surrounded. We could probably get to the roof but that won’t help us much.”
There was more noise, of something breaking, furniture overturned.
She tried to call Kat, but there was no cell phone reception in here. Simon hadn’t lied about the landline—you couldn’t make a call outside the house from it.
“But nobody knows we’re here!”
“Relax. I’m trying, okay?”
She had located all the men and the paths throughout the house with their respective codes. They could technically go anywhere, but would at some point run into one of them. Willow looked at the map again, hoping to find the impossible.
Something on this map didn’t add up. The lab, while huge, was smaller than it should have been according to the plans.
“Damn, Simon,” she muttered. “You did one smart thing after all. Except it was my idea.”
The problem was that they needed to get past at least two of the guards. Willow wasn’t sure how quick they could call the others in case she and Mandy tried—and if it wasn’t safer to stay put.
“What did you say?” Mandy asked.
“Nothing. Give me a moment.”
Chapter Thirteen
Judy’s outfit might have gotten her past Peter, but Kat didn’t feel comfortable taking on Dale and his minions, which might include Agency personnel, in heels. Lucky for her, Judy kept another change of clothes and shoes in her car. Once she’d reached a safe distance from the office, she parked on the side of the rode and quickly changed once more. Then she went back on the road on her way to Simon’s house that he kept off the books. She was focused, chasing all thoughts of the last mission, or what she might find, off her mind.
She could see the vehicles of Dale’s men in the distance, recognizing the brand from the last time they’d clashed. Black vans like that didn’t show up in front of someone’s house for any good reason.
Kat backed up a bit and parked Judy’s car on the lot of a vegetable stand closed for the day, and made the rest towards the house on foot. The many trees on the estate would give her shelter. Closer to the house, she identified two black-clad men, and she saw that some of the windows on the first floor where smashed. If they were still here—did that mean Willow had escaped? More likely, she was still in the house. From Judy’s description, this house was well equipped with an alarm system almost as good as the ones Willow built—which was apparently because he had helped himself to some of her concepts.
The men in front were smoking and chatting. If she was careful, she could probably get past them, through the broken window, and take a look inside.
The last time she’d gotten herself into a situation like this, she almost didn’t make it out, and she had gotten an earful about not calling for backup.
This was different—she had no one to call, no one she could trust, except Judy who was an analyst…It was bad enough Kat had involved her in this in the first place, but she didn’t want her in a situation where bullets might be flying.
She advanced towards the house and then positioned herself flat against the wall, out of the men’s angle of vision. From here, it was about five, six steps towards the broken window. Kat could look inside the spacious living room. It was a mess in here, shards, broken pieces of furniture. Judging from the sound of footsteps and the angry voices, the men were searching the upper floors and hadn’t been successful so far.
She stepped over the sill, careful not to make too much noise, then kept to the wall again. There were plenty of big pieces of furniture to duck behind, should she run into anyone. However, based on her experiences with Dale and his network, it would be smart to draw first.
Where was Willow?
She listened for the footsteps on the stairs, now going towards the third floor. Could she risk taking a look? She chose another hallway instead, coming to a halt when she realized the heavy wooden double doors at the end were closed, protected by a code.
“Now that’s…interesting.”
“I agree,” a voice said behind her. Kat spun around to come face to face with the assistant director.
“Sir, I…”
“You should have stayed for that conversation,” he sneered. “It would have been a lot less uncomfortable over at my office.”
“I’m sorry for running away, but you can see what this place looks like. If they find Ms. Garrett before we do, it could be bad.”
She thought it made sense to keep up the pretense, out of pure self-preservation, but he wasn’t playing along.
“For whom, what do you think? I’m really sorry, but you shouldn’t have come here. You shouldn’t have questioned everything we told you.”
“What, so you could cover it up the first time you jeopardized my mission? Or was me getting killed a part of the plan all along?” The pieces fell into place one by one, the unresolved questions she’d been living with for years, her near paranoia regarding the Agency. She hadn’t been so wrong after all.
“You couldn’t leave it alone,” he said. “You left, but then you opened your business right under my nose, and your first notable client is Franklin Garrett. What am I supposed to think?”
Kat almost laughed at that, and she would have, hadn’t the situation been this serious. Who was the paranoid one now?
“You got this all wrong. When I left, I meant it. Franklin all but blackmailed me into this assignment, and I came to believe I was j
ust what you said earlier, a babysitter to a spoiled princess. This had nothing to do with the Agency.”
“Oh, it had. Simon made some stupid moves, there’s no denying that, but I don’t believe you still have no idea about Willow Garrett.”
“That you’re conspiring with Dale to get her killed? I got the general idea.”
He laughed. “Kat, honey, you still don’t get it. All of you, you, Simon, even Franklin, and the cute analyst you changed clothes with, are expendable. Ms. Garrett is the only one who isn’t. She’s working with the government—we need her to share her expertise with us instead. Simon was going to provide her, but then he got cold feet.”
“Hey! I think we know where they are!” one of the black-clad goons shouted.
“I’ll be there in a minute.” He tightened his finger on the trigger. “I’m really sorry. Your former co-workers said you were a good agent. Problem…You should have been better at taking orders. Nothing personal, Kat.”
That moment, the double doors opened, and a shot rang out almost at the same time.
“Sorry,” Willow said. “My services are not available for you…Sir. Now drop that gun.”
He did, but laughed in her face. “What do you think you’re doing? My men have the place surrounded.”
“Well,” Kat said, “then you will show us a way out. Your men, by the way? Not sure how Dale would like that.”
“Come on, Dale is a myth. He’s sitting in a basement somewhere these days, shouting orders that no one follows any longer.”
“That’s all right. You’re coming with us anyway.”
“Let’s hurry up,” Willow said. “I have an idea.”
* * * *
They made it to the secret entry behind the painting just in time. In the lab, Willow had figured out the code, and how to close it. There were other rooms on the way, and they left a flustered assistant director behind one of those doors.
“I’m so glad you came,” she said to Kat. “We could really use some backup.”
“You’re welcome.” Kat looked thoughtful. It occurred to Willow that she probably wasn’t used to be the backup, and that she was a tad embarrassed at getting caught in a predicament. Willow hadn’t lied. She was more than grateful to have someone with her who was more used to this type of situation. She would have shot the assistant director if she had to, but fortunately that wasn’t the case. She could feel her hands shaking.
“Oh, by the way, that’s Mandy. She’s dating Simon.”
“Not anymore, I guess,” Mandy mumbled. “I really don’t like getting shot at.”
“No one does,” Willow assured her. “Okay. If we make it all the way to the other side, we could get to one of the cars, call the police from there. So…You’re not mad at me?”
“I was, for a while,” Kat confirmed. “That was before I became unsure on whose side Crystal is. Getting away from her probably bought you some time.”
“That’s good.”
“It definitely is.”
There was no way she could mistake the look Kat gave her. Once they had sorted out this mess, there was something to fall back on. Willow felt mostly tired and anxious, but she harbored some hope that this could be over soon.
“So it wasn’t Simon they were after. They wanted me to work for them instead for the government.” She shuddered. “I think the environment would have been even less pleasant than at Simon’s.”
“Hey, we did make you some interesting offers,” Mandy said.
Kat raised her eyebrows, and Willow chuckled. “I’ll tell you about it another time. Come to think of it, you probably don’t want to know.”
“Oh, I do.”
“All right. Later.”
They got past the door and a small, hidden entryway.
“Wow,” Kat said, genuinely in awe. “You really got us out—”
* * * *
She had a split second to feel the presence of somebody to her side, hear a gun being cocked.
“Get down,” she yelled. Mandy was quick to duck behind a pillar while Kat tackled Willow to the ground firing a shot at Dale’s goon, and then another.
“Are you hurt? Willow!”
It took a few seconds, forever in Kat’s mind, before Willow took a deep breath.
“I’m okay,” she gasped.
“Come on.” Kat got to her feet, pulling Willow up with her. “Mandy! We’ve got to go.”
There were cars in the back. While it wasn’t beyond Kat’s skills to hotwire one of them, they had to get inside one first, and there was no time to even try.
They made it all the way to Judy’s car and onto the road, to relative safety. It wasn’t until then Kat realized how close a call this had been, and her vision turned slightly blurry.
“I know,” Willow said softly. “It’s okay now.”
Ironically, those words rang true, more than anything in the past few years. Maybe Kat could start right here and now to trust somebody again.
“Yes, it is.”
Chapter Fourteen
When there was no more danger, Simon emerged as well. He didn’t turn himself in, but was conveniently caught speeding and arrested by Highway Patrol. Together, they could finally unravel the spider’s web, Dale, the assistant director, and sadly…Crystal. She hadn’t been privy to his exact involvement with Dale, but she had given him information for which she would face consequences.
A wave of arrests swept through the country and Europe, and the Agency as well. Peter, as it turned out, was still one of the good guys, and so was Franklin Garrett who was, given the circumstances, called back.
Kat was reluctant to see him—after all, this meant the whole truth would finally come out. Whatever she’d thought or hoped to be true, might be a myth after all.
Willow stayed by her side the whole time.
The night before Franklin was expected to be back at headquarters and meeting there with Kat, Willow had the idea to invite Mandy and Judy for dinner. Which made a lot of sense—they’d all been in this adventure together. They were all lucky to be alive.
“I won’t complain about the fact I was hiding in the restroom for most of the time.” Judy raised her glass. “You are all badass. I would have been so scared.”
“I was,” Willow admitted. “This is not my thing—I work to keep people like that out, not invite them in. I still don’t know if I should be mad at Simon, or be glad he made such stupid business decisions. At least, they’re cleaning out the Agency now. If that hadn’t happened, Kat and my Dad would still be in danger.”
“Not to mention you,” Kat said, not even trying to keep the emotion out of her voice.
“I have to thank you,” Mandy added. “Without you, I would have never left…and who knows what would have happened.”
“I love you all,” Willow, tipsy from a few sips of wine, said. “I hope you don’t mind, but I love her the most.”
Mandy and Judy laughed, and Kat realized she was blushing after all.
“I don’t mind, and that’s all that counts, right?” More serious, she added, “I look forward to seeing Franklin tomorrow, hear what he has to say. Then we can finally put all of this behind us.”
She caught Willow’s gaze, and, for the first time, realized that she might be anxious for those same answers.
The plan had been to end dinner early and seek some intimate distraction. Instead, they fell asleep in each other’s arms, too tired to for any physical activities.
The next day came early.
* * * *
Willow drove Kat to headquarters in the morning. They only had a quick cup of coffee, hoping to have breakfast afterwards.
“Is it naïve to think we could wrap this up in an hour or so?” Willow asked hopefully as she parked the car in the lot for visitors.
“Probably.” Kat wasn’t sure how to feel. She had thought she’d cut all ties to the Agency, not realizing how desperately she needed this closure, to know what had really gone wrong the last time they’d gone after Dale
. “I’ll treat you to breakfast or lunch, whatever comes next.”
“That’s good…Kat…wait a minute.” Kat turned back to Willow who kissed her deeply.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes…no…I mean yes. I just wanted to thank you, for sticking with me through all of this. Some parts have been pretty horrible.”
“Not all of them,” Kat said softly, taking her hand. “I’d like to stick with you, whatever comes out of this today.”
“I’m glad.”
Finally, they left the car and walked through the doors of the same place where Kat had pulled that charade with Judy, unsure whom she could trust. Could she be sure now?
Peter greeted them in the lobby.
“I’m really sorry about all of this,” he said. “Kat, the new assistant director would like to meet with you, and of course you can see Franklin. Ms. Garrett, if you could wait here?”
“Of course.”
“Before we start, let me first say hello to my daughter.” They all turned around to see Franklin coming down the stairs to the first floor. “Willow. I heard you had quite the adventure.”
“If you want to call it that,” she said, letting herself be embraced. “Kat helped me…a lot.”
“So they told me. All right. Shall we begin? Peter, why don’t you get my daughter a coffee while she waits?”
“Dad!” Willow protested. “I can do that myself.”
Kat smiled, thinking that Franklin couldn’t stop himself from bossing people around. She followed the two men to the assistant director’s office, where the name plaque now said Madelyn Garner.
Garner opened the door to them after Peter knocked, greeting all of them with a handshake.
“Kat, it’s good to see you. You and Franklin helped us a lot in cleaning up this place. Now, I want to cut to the chase. Franklin has something to say to you. Mr. Garrett?”
“Yes.” He held her gaze as he spoke. “I’m very sorry, Kat. You were right to ask those questions. You didn’t screw up the mission. I did.”
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