Twenty minutes later, an older female agent in a smart business suit found me crying in the women’s locker room. “Ms. Cooper?” she asked before sitting down next to me.
I wiped my eyes and sniffled. “Yeah?”
“I’m Dr. Sherrod. I’m the staff psychologist here at the agency. Would you like to come to my office and talk?”
Great. Now they were siccing the shrink on me. I sniffled again. “Sure, why not?”
“Come on,” she said kindly, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and helping me up. “It’s not far.”
We went up to the third floor and down to the end. She held the door of the office for me and I headed in, plopping down on the cushy-looking leather couch. She took the suede wing chair opposite me and smiled again. “Tough morning?”
“I don’t like guns. And I don’t mean the dislike you say when you’re talking about liver and onions—I’m talking about the dislike you say when you realize your house is sitting next to a nuclear silo.”
“Who told you that you had to like guns?”
Just like a shrink to turn the question back on me, right? “No one, but I feel like everyone expects me to be okay with all this stuff, and I’m not okay with it! I hate guns. I hate darts. I hate poisonous toxins and allies who are really enemies and . . . and . . .” I took a breath here, trying to figure out exactly how I could sum up what I was feeling. “Dr. Sherrod, three years ago I was a peaceful, animal-loving, junk-food-eating, not-a-care-in-the-world psychic with a small but faithful list of clients, a few good friends, and a pretty mundane but totally predictable life. Since then, do you know who I’ve turned into?”
“Who?”
“Ange-friggin’-lina Jolie!”
Dr. Sherrod laughed, and her laugh was nice: soothing even, just like her voice. “Abigail,” she said, shaking her head and grinning at me, “I know it must feel like you’ve fallen down a rabbit hole, hmm?”
My lower lip began to quiver again and tears pooled in my eyes. I had to swallow hard before I could reply. “How did I get here?” I whispered. “I am so over my head right now, ma’am, it’s making me freak out.”
Dr. Sherrod sighed and leaned back in her chair. “You came highly recommended,” she said. “So highly recommended that all manner of exceptions were made to obtain you for this mission. And I understand that your intuitive input has already been very helpful. Still, Abigail, you should know that as a rule we never send in a civilian, but I understand that this particular operation is so vital to our national security that we simply had to have you.”
I turned my face away and stared out the window as the tears leaked out and ran down my cheeks. “I don’t know if I can do this, Dr. Sherrod.”
“If you truly don’t believe you’re capable, then I will have no choice but to recommend that we not use you.”
I bit my lip. “If I back out, would you still want Agent Rivers to go in on his own?”
“Yes. We have already acquired the perfect cover for him, which matches his credentials and closely resembles his appearance. He has actually become as vital to this mission as you, especially since he speaks fluent Dutch and Russian.”
My heart was pounding in my chest. Suddenly, I wasn’t such a huge fan of the kindly doctor anymore. “If he goes in alone, what are his chances?”
“Without you?”
“Yes.”
“Probably fifty-fifty.”
I swallowed hard again. “And with me?”
“Significantly better, in the sixty to sixty-five percent range. You have a very special gift in being able to read people and pinpoint their hidden agendas. That is exactly the type of person we need on this mission, and exactly the type of person we will need to aid Agent Rivers with his cover. But your participation in the mission depends solely on how the rest of your training proceeds. We only have a few days to prepare you, Abigail. And if you want in on this mission and to keep your partner safe, you’re going to have to step it up.”
I wiped my cheeks and took a calm, steadying breath. “Dr. Sherrod?”
“Yes?”
“Would you please call Agent Rosco for me, and tell him I’m very sorry for my earlier outburst. If it’s all right with him, I would truly love to pick up where we left off and shoot the shit out of that target.”
I arrived back at the hotel after eleven p.m. My wrist, shoulder, and back ached from the three and a half hours of target practice, and my brain was swimming with all the details I had to remember, but for the most part, I’d managed to get my head on straight.
Dutch was asleep when I crawled into the room. He was lying on his side with his back to me, and for the longest time I just sat in a chair by the bed and listened to the sound of his deep breaths.
I thought about what I’d said to Dr. Sherrod, how three years ago my life had been so relatively ordinary, and then this extraordinary guy had walked into my life and everything had changed. What I couldn’t really admit to myself until I was sitting in her office was that all of it was worth it, if only because at the end of the day I got to come home and listen to the most beautiful man I’d ever met breathe in and out.
Snaking my way into bed, I curled up to him and whispered, “We can do it, cowboy. Together our odds are better than anyone gives us credit for.”
The rhythm of Dutch’s breath never changed cadence, but his hand flopped down off his hip and onto mine. He squeezed my fingers and for the next few hours, all was right with the world.
I barely saw Dutch for the next six days. By the time he made it back to the hotel every night, I was already asleep and my wake-up calls always came at five a.m.—his apparently came later. I made sure to dress in the dark and sneak out of the room so he wouldn’t be disturbed, and when he came in, he did the same for me. On the last day of my training, I woke up to find that Dutch hadn’t come back to the hotel at all.
I wasn’t worried per se—I knew he’d likely pulled an all-nighter—but still, I realized I hadn’t spoken to or seen Dutch in the daylight even once in nearly a week, and I missed that silky baritone and those midnight blues something fierce.
At that moment I was pretty sick of all this prep work and the intense training I’d been put through. And when I say intense, it doesn’t really even come close to the level of concentrated effort being focused on yours truly.
In the mornings there’d been weapons training and target practice, followed by two hours of martial arts defensive maneuvers, followed by more lectures from Steckworth on Intuit’s software and how to deprogram it if our lives were in imminent danger and we couldn’t bring it back safely (oh yeah, they made it really clear that making sure the software didn’t end up in enemy hands was far more important than us coming back alive).
Then, after all that marvelous activity, I’d be “treated” to lunch. Same thing every day: turkey on wheat with mayo, lettuce, and tomato, a bag of chips, and a soda. I will be happy if I never see another turkey sandwich as long as I live.
After lunch the program usually varied; one day I was trained for two hours on the proper way to administer the antidote to the toxins the drone carried. And it wasn’t a happy experience, let me tell you. The syringe carrying the antidote needed to be plunged into the chest cavity so that it would reach a vein close to the heart. Two syringes were required, one on each side of the sternum. I practiced on a dummy for an hour, and then they actually forced me to try the technique on a real person by sending in a big beefy marine. Trust me, that was one soldier who would never “volunteer” for that duty ever again. . . .
Another day I was given a lesson on how to read a person’s body language to detect if he or she was lying.
Now, you would’ve figured the CIA would believe me when I told them I was already an expert on that one—as I’m pretty sure my own body language could attest—but they didn’t take me at my word and insisted I sit through it anyway. (Weren’t they surprised, though, when I passed their test with one hundred percent accuracy?!)
&nbs
p; Throughout all of it I made sure my attitude was superlative. It was “Yes, sir!” and “Yes, ma’am!” with no arguments, eye rolls, or frowny faces. I believe even Rosco was impressed. Especially when I unloaded his SIG Sauer into the heart of the target—all eight rounds with nary the blink of an eye.
On the last day of training, the very day I’d been missing my fiancé so much, I was led into a small conference room and told that the “others” would be joining me shortly. I sat down with a sigh and a small groan, as I was sore to the bone from all the target practice and judo moves. I rubbed my cheek while I eyed the clock, which read six p.m. Earlier in the day I’d caught a foot in the face during the self-defense class, and when I made a comment about it leaving a bruise, I was told that might not be a bad thing. The meaning of which I was still trying to figure out.
Leaning back in the comfy chairs, I laid my head against the back and closed my eyes. Man, I was tired.
My back pressed against something knobby, and I pulled out the small but highly effective stun gun I’d been practicing with that morning. I’d forgotten to put it back after the exercises were over. Eyeing it now with fondness, I decided to keep it, as it might come in handy on the mission. Discreetly I tucked it back into the waistband of my tracksuit, before leaning back again and closing my eyes.
I heard someone come in a moment later and I opened one eye. It was a man with no visible badge, dressed in a sharp black suit, a metallic maroon tie, and gold cuff links.
He had very dark brown hair and a somewhat lighter-colored goatee and mustache. His eyes were brown, his complexion was olive and tanned, and he was really striking in a way I should hardly be ogling, now that I’m all engaged and stuff.
I gave him a half smile, and he looked at me with a smoldering grin. I’m embarrassed to say I may have blushed a weeeeeee bit.
“Hello,” I said.
“Good evening,” he said, a beautiful Eastern-bloc accent lightly coloring the words. He had a deep seductive voice, not unlike Dutch’s, and I squirmed slightly in my chair, reminding myself that I was engaged for crying out loud.
I cleared my throat and discreetly pivoted my chair away from him. “Have you been here long?” he asked.
“No,” I said, focusing my attention on the door. Jesus, were my palms sweating? “I’m waiting for my fiancé. He’s probably going to be joining this last briefing.”
“Your fiancé?”
I nodded curtly. Could he please stop talking? I go weak in the knees when I hear a man with a sexy accent.
“He nice guy, this fiancé?”
I cleared my throat again. “He’s the best,” I said, and that warm gushy feeling flooded my heart. “In fact, he’s the best person I know.”
“Sounds like good guy.”
Was it me, or was this guy being a little nosy? “I’m Abigail Cooper,” I said, finally deciding I might be acting rudely, and turned to extend my hand.
“I am Richard Des Vries,” he said with a bright white smile that could melt butter.
I pumped his hand just once and let go, feeling little beads of sweat form on my head and the small of my back grow moist. Okay, and maybe someplace else too, but that’s personal.
His name sounded familiar, but I am notoriously terrible with names, so I figured somewhere along the line he’d been pointed out to me by someone and I’d been too preoccupied to remember who he was and what his job was here at the agency.
I laid my head back again and closed my eyes. Where was everybody?
Des Vries’s cologne wafted under my nostrils. God, I love a great-smelling guy.
Wait. No, I don’t! I love my guy.
My guy. Love. My. Guy.
My guy, who wasn’t here yet. I was alone with a great-smelling dude in a gorgeous suit with a really sexy accent and hot smokin’ smile. . . . “Maybe I’ll just go see where everyone is,” I said, getting up with a nervous laugh and preparing to bolt for the door.
Just as I was attempting to make my getaway, a team of agents and bigwigs came marching in, including the MIB aka Agent Frostbite . . . er . . . Frost, CIA director Tanner, Dr. Sherrod, FBI director Gaston, the air force team of Walrus and Penguin, and my weapons-training BFF, Agent Rosco.
“Did you need something?” Director Tanner asked me, obviously noticing my hedge toward the door. “No,” I said quickly, and plastered a smile on my face. “Just thought I’d get a drink of water.”
Tanner punched a button on the intercom in the center of the table. “Dawn, could you please bring in some refreshments before we get started?”
I smiled even brighter and took my seat. Of course, I didn’t take the actual seat I’d been sitting in earlier. This time I moved a little farther away from Richard Des Sexpot.
When we were all seated and refreshments had been served, Director Tanner got down to business. “Welcome to your last briefing,” she began.
I looked nervously at the door and raised my hand.
“Yes?” she asked me.
“Uh . . . ,” I said, feeling a bit foolish, but I had to ask, “aren’t we going to wait for Dutch—I mean Agent Rivers?”
Director Tanner’s forehead creased. “Excuse me?”
Okay, so now I was really feeling foolish. “I thought he would want to be included in the final briefing.”
“He is,” she said to me.
I looked around at all the other faces save Sexpot’s, but I could feel his eyes on me. I knew I was turning a big ol’ shade of red, but there was nothing I could do about that. “Is he on the other end of the intercom?” I asked, looking at the small star-shaped object in the center of the table.
“Abigail,” said Sexpot.
“Hold on,” I told him, still trying to figure out where my fiancé was.
“Edgar,” Sexpot said next, and just like that, I realized who Richard Des Vries actually was.
“Holy freakballs!” I squealed, whipping my head around to really look at him now.
“You didn’t know it was me?” he asked, his voice losing any hint of the former accent.
“No!” I said, my eyes all big and goggly. “I mean, I thought your voice sounded familiar, honey, but I was trying to avoid really looking at you, and the whole accent and dark hair really threw me off.” I squinted at him and studied the person that Dutch’s voice was coming out of. He did indeed look totally different; the olive tone to his skin was much darker with the tan, his cobalt blues had been turned to dark brown, and his eyebrows were either thicker or just darker so they looked thicker. All that with the goatee had totally transformed him. “Did you bleach your teeth?” I asked him, squinting some more.
It was Dutch’s turn to blush and I suddenly remembered who else was in the room. I coughed and quickly scooted my chair closer to the table. “Sorry ’bout that,” I said. “I wasn’t aware you guys had done such a good job turning Agent Rivers into someone else.”
To my relief, Director Tanner appeared immensely pleased by my reaction, and she and Gaston exchanged a knowing look. “Yes,” she said. “He does resemble Mr. Des Vries to a remarkable degree.”
“You mean there’s a real Richard Des Vries?” I asked. There was that name again. . . . Where had I heard it before? And I looked at Dutch again. . . . I swore I’d seen someone who looked exactly like him, but where and when?
In answer, Director Tanner clicked her remote control and on the screen behind me flashed a picture that brought it all back to me. “That’s the guy in the lineup of photos I sorted through last week,” I said aloud.
Tanner nodded. “It is.”
“So, is the real Des Vries locked up?” I asked. I was already getting hits off his energy, which told me the man was currently behind bars.
Director Gaston smiled. “He is, although he’s not being held by us. He’s currently in an Israeli prison awaiting trial for illegal weapons dealing. We’re trying to get him extradited to the U.S. for a round of interrogation with us, but that’s highly unlikely. The Israelis have wanted hi
m for years and they’re not about to let him go.”
“How’d they get him?” I asked.
Gaston said, “Des Vries was on a flight from Jordan to Bucharest when he began suffering an acute case of food poisoning. His commercial plane had to make an emergency medical landing in Israel. The minute the Mossad heard about who’d just landed at their Tel Aviv airport, they were all over him.”
“Why did the Israelis want him so bad?” I asked him next.
“He’s earned a reputation for selling arms to the Palestinians and Iranians to use against the Israelis. He’s also been known to work a deal or two with Hamas and the Taliban. He’s unscrupulous and notorious, not to mention a murderer, smuggler, and thief, but in the world of weapons dealing, he’s still fairly small-time. Word is that he’s been looking for a big weapons deal to put himself on the map, and the Israelis have taken him out of the game before he had a chance to do that.”
“Ah,” I said, noting again the uncanny resemblance between the real Des Vries and Dutch, which was probably why Gaston had smiled like a crocodile when I’d told him to look at Des Vries for the missing drone. That reminded me of the mission and I asked, “Did you ask the Israelis if Des Vries stole the drone?”
Gaston nodded to Tanner, who answered me. “Yes, and as a favor to us during their interrogation of him, they got him to admit that he knew the drone existed, but he claims he had nothing to do with its disappearance. He pulled something similar with the British several years ago, when he managed to hack into a drone carrying facial recognition software and steal it away from them to resell it to the North Koreans, so you showed great skill in pulling his photo out of the pile. Still, we don’t think he’s responsible for the theft of our drone because Des Vries was captured a full five days before the drone went missing and the Israelis can be particularly persuasive during their interrogations, I’m inclined to believe him.”
“But what if he was working with someone else who went ahead with the plan after his capture?” I pressed.
Tanner shook her head. “Every piece of intelligence we’ve obtained from both our sources and the Israelis suggests that Des Vries works alone, and nothing in his recent history points to him orchestrating the theft. Still, his capture by the Mossad, his uncanny facial resemblance to Agent Rivers, and his ties to Toronto have provided us with the perfect cover to go after the real thief.”
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