by Miley Maine
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Owen
“I’m glad you don’t want to cover up crimes. Not for me, or not for anyone,” I said.
A year of planning a covert operation, and I ended up here – in love with a woman who was going to hate me when she found out the truth. I was a little surprised that she’d gotten suspicious enough to snoop, but I didn’t blame her.
“Start explaining please,” she said, standing in front of me. She had on a sundress that must have belonged to Mrs. Laurent. Kate looked beautiful wearing it, but I knew she didn’t want to hear that from me right now.
“Laurent is involved in a series of crimes. Serious crimes,” I said.
“What kind? White-collar? Drugs? Trafficking? Because it makes a big difference.”
“I can’t say what kind. But I will say they aren't white-collar. Look, I can get you on a plane out of here tonight. You never have to see Laurent again.”
“I’ve already told you, I’m not leaving Gabriel. Why do you want me to leave so badly?”
“Did you miss the carnage tonight? That was a game to Laurent. It was nothing. He’s scum, and I don’t want you around him.”
“You don’t get to make that call,” she said, raising her voice. “Who are you? What do you do?”
“I can’t say.”
“You’re not an accountant.”
“No.”
“FBI? CIA? Military?” she asked.
“I can’t say. You’re perceptive. I can say that much.”
“So if I call the police, there’s no problem. They know you’re here?”
“Some,” I said. “I’m undercover. So it’s really important that I not blow my cover right now.”
“How can I believe that?”
“I can call my supervisor,” I said. “You can talk to him.”
“No. I believe you.”
I felt my eyebrows go up. “That easy?”
“Not easy. Not at all. But you seem different. Like you’re telling the truth.”
“You’d have been a good agent,”
“Unruly teenagers are enough for me,” she said. “What’s going to happen next?”
“There’s a sting operation coming soon. I’m not sure when, because we might delay it after tonight. But I’ve already arranged for you and Mrs. Laurent and Gabriel to be picked up by agents and taken back to the States. When that happens, make sure you get on the plane.”
She nodded. “So where are you going to be during the arrest?”
“Here in Santiago.”
She crossed her arms. Her pretty face began to turn red. “And you were just going to ship me out, without saying a word?”
“I’m not allowed to tell you. That’s the job.”
“So the job comes first.”
“Yes,” I said, although I was beginning to wonder.
“I see.”
“Listen, Kate. Let me get you back to the States. You can see your sister. Your friends.”
“I’m not leaving yet.”
“In that case, I’m going to need you to keep an eye out.” I would have asked any other person this close to the Laurents to act as a CIA asset; Kate couldn’t be an exception. If Kate was staying until the bust, then I could document any observations she had.
“Like an extra spy?” she asked.
“Yes. But do not write anything down. You are absolutely not to put yourself in danger. Do not do anything you wouldn’t normally do. But if you see something, or hear something, then you call me, and I can put it in the file. I can also get you out of there. But don’t try to interfere. You have no idea how vicious Laurent is.”
“If I get some information, can you use it against him?”
“We already have quite a bit. But more always helps. And if you see something, we could use it to track his other associates.”
“I”ll agree, on one condition. What kind of agent are you? Tell me.”
“CIA,” I said.
Kate sat down in the armchair across the room. “Thank you for telling me,” she said. The red had receded from her cheeks, but she was far from happy with me.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Kate
So far I’d held it together pretty well, considering what happened. But I was slipping. I could feel myself sliding closer to the chasm, and I was close to falling in.
Owen was still sitting in his towel on the bed in one of the many rooms in the beach house, but I wasn’t ready to stop talking.
“How long have you really been here?” I asked.
“A year.”
“Is this why you won’t let me go to your apartment?”
“Yes. Laurent pays for it. As demonstrated tonight, he has spies everywhere.”
“Everything we had was a lie,” I said.
“No. It wasn’t a lie. It was real.”
“How exactly was it real?”
“The way I feel is real,” he told me.
I grabbed onto the sides of the chair. The brocade was rough under my hands.
“And how is that?” I asked. “Because from here it looks a whole lot like I was a convenience. If this was a book, or a movie, the plot would be that a CIA agent needs more access to his suspect. So the CIA agent starts dating the naïve nanny who works for the big crime boss! And the CIA agent comes over every night. And he goes on vacation with them. To Paris! I’ve seen this fucking movie, Owen. And I’m just a dope who fell for all of it.”
“It isn’t like that, Kate. I never wanted to take advantage of you.”
“You didn’t want to take advantage? Then you damn well could have stopped!” I was yelling now, but I had no interest in lowering my voice. “I gave you my virginity, Owen. Do you know what that meant to me?”
“Kate.” Owen stood up, and started walking toward me. “My feelings for you have nothing to do with Laurent.”
I held both arms out. “Stay over there. And do not tell me that it didn’t cross your mind that dating me would make your job easier.”
Owen sank back onto the bed. “It’s more complicated than that.”
I sank my fingernails into the chair fabric. “That’s just great. I waited for years to choose the right person to sleep with. Four years of college, and I held out, waiting for the right guy to sleep with.” My stomach spun, turning over and over as I yelled at Owen. “And I chose you, and it turns out, you’re not a chivalrous gentleman with a romantic streak who wanted to show me the world.”
“I did want that-”
“No.” I couldn’t stay seated anymore. I stood and paced in front of Owen. “You don’t get to have it both ways. You were using me. Using me. So yes, I’m staying here and I’m going to keep my eyes out for anything weird that might be going on. Like bodyguards being shot right in front of me. Because that’s what I do. I help people. I’m going to keep living there, knowing Mr. Laurent is a sadistic monster, because he was willing to traumatize Amelia, and the rest of the staff when he knew they were innocent.”
I was done with Owen. I didn’t trust him.
But I trusted Laurent less, and knowing that his wife – and his baby, who I adored – weren’t truly safe because he had enemies was enough to motivate me to stay until Mr. Laurent was caught.
“Get out,” I said to Owen. We would not be sharing a room tonight. We certainly wouldn’t be sharing a bed.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Owen
“Kate.” I refused to let her go this easily. It might not help, but I had to let her know how I felt.
I loved her. Enough to tell her. Enough to tell her the truth, even though I shouldn’t.
“Please forgive me. I shouldn’t have taken your virginity. You’re right about that.”
“If we weren’t stuck in this together, I’d never speak to you again,” she said.
“I love you.” I stood up. I took a step toward her. I needed to hold her.
“That’s not good enough.” She swiped at her eyes. “And why would I believe you?”
>
“Because it’s true,” I said.
“I don’t believe you. And I don’t trust you.”
“Okay. I can understand that. Just don’t leave the beach house,” I told her. “It’s not safe.”
“Where exactly would I go?” she asked. “You dragged me down here, an hour and a half away from the only town I know in this entire country. I have no money, no wallet, no phone.” She leaned her forehead against the wall. All of the fight seemed to drain from her. “So tell me. How exactly would I leave?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. She had a good point. I had taken her to my car, with no explanation, and all of her belongings were back at Laurent’s house. And now she’d found out I’d been lying to her. I’d be pissed too. I was lucky she hadn’t punched me.
“Please go away.”
“I need to call my supervisor anyway. I’ll be in the kitchen.” Tonight’s dust-up wasn’t my fault, but it was crucial that I let him know we’d had a massive complication.
“Are you going to be in trouble?” she asked.
“No. I did what I was supposed to. I could have interfered, but I’d have set off too many alarm bells for his people.”
“What if you had done that? What happens if you screw up an assignment?” she asked.
That question was out of the blue, especially considering how mad she was at me. “I’ll get skipped over for the best assignments later on. I probably wouldn’t get to be undercover. I’ll have to prove myself again. Why do you ask?”
“Because I thought that’s the way it worked. Because that’s the way all jobs work. So you need to keep me happy. You need to keep me from telling Mr. Laurent that you’re an undercover agent.”
“You wouldn’t do that.” If she did, I was dead. And so was she.
“How do you know?”
“Because of who you are. You know he’d kill me. And you wouldn’t want to jeopardize anyone else’s life either.”
Her cheeks turned white as her face drained of color. “You’re right. He would kill you,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that. I won’t tell him.”
If I doubted Kate, I could have her picked up now by the Santiago Police, and sent to a military facility until my supervisor could arrange to have her detained in the States. But I didn’t doubt her.
“What was his crime?” she asked.
“I can’t tell you.”
“But it’s bad, right? she asked. “It’s violent. It’s not embezzling from a bank?”
“On a morality scale, if ten was the highest number, it’s a twelve,” I said.
Her pretty mouth turned down at the corners. I longed to comfort her, but that wasn’t possible.
“I misread him so badly,” Kate said.
“It happens to all of us.”
“What if he turns on you?” she asked.
“He won’t.”
“And what if he turns on me?”
“I won’t let that happen,” I said.
“You can’t blow your cover.”
“I will do whatever it takes to get you out of that house,” I stated, looking right into her eyes. “Please reconsider leaving now.”
“I’m staying.”
“Fine. If you change your mind, the offer stands.”
She pointed at the door. “Get out.”
“There’s one more thing.”
She pressed her hands to her eyes. “What now?”
“My name’s not really Owen Baxley.”
She sniffled. “Of course it’s not.”
“Do you want to know what it is?”
“No. I do not. I don’t need to know your name. I will not be speaking to you any more than necessary. Get out.”
What a night. And I still had to call my supervisor.
Chapter Thirty
Kate
That night, after kicking “Owen” out of the room, I went to bed alone. I knew he wouldn’t come in if I didn’t want him to, but I still locked the door.
Through all of this, I hadn’t cried, not really. My eyes had watered, and I’d teared up, but that was it. Now, alone in a room in a spectacular beach house in Viña del Mar, I couldn’t control the tears. What was I doing? I was over four thousand miles from home, in a house with an undercover CIA agent who was trying to arrest my boss. The same boss who’d threatened his entire staff, and then shot one of his bodyguards.
Would I eventually end up in one of those lines, while Mr. Laurent waved a gun in my face? Would Owen? Owen had assured me he’d protect me, but would he protect himself? Would he sacrifice himself to catch Laurent?
I had a feeling he would.
I knew very little about law enforcement work, beyond the police detectives, the parole officers, and the prosecutors I’d encountered during my internships.
I sat down on the floor and just let go. I pressed a pillow to my mouth, trying to hold the sobs in, but that didn’t work very well.
About two minutes into my breakdown, Owen knocked on the door. “Kate? Are you okay?”
‘I’m fine,” I said. I never dreamed he’d be standing right outside the door. I couldn’t even lose my mind in peace.
“I can hear you crying,” he said. “Can I come in?”
“Absolutely not.” I lowered the pillow from my face. “Stop being creepy. This house is massive. There’s no way you could have heard me unless you were standing right outside the door.”
“I hate it that you’re upset. I want to help.”
“You can’t.” I inhaled, trying to coax my voice into something that sounded like the normal me, instead of a quivering, shaky mess. “Go away.”
“I only came to stand here because I was worried.”
“I’m sure you were.” What did he think I was going to do? Jump out the window? It was only two feet off the ground. “Are you trying to make sure I don’t run away?”
“No. I told you, you’re free to go. The offer stands – I’ll help you get home.”
Yeah, on your terms. “Are you spying on me to make sure I’m not one of Mr. Laurent’s criminals?”
“No, I know you’re not involved.”
“How?” I asked. “Because I’m a poor, naïve virgin from Alabama? And I’m not cosmopolitan enough to work with a crime boss?”
“No, of course not,” he said.
“Wait a minute, did you spy on me too?”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because I’m not stupid, Owen. To graduate in my program, I had to do a background check which included fingerprinting, and I had to have several references. That was to work with disadvantaged teens. I’m assuming if a CIA agent is giving me information, he’s going to be pretty damn certain that I’m not going to report back to Mr. Laurent and give him every detail of the conversation.”
Owen said a few swear words and pounded his hand against the door once. “You’re so young. I keep forgetting how much you’ve seen.”
“I’m sure you’d seen much more at twenty-two.”
“Not really,” he said. “I was just about to start training. My college years were pretty typical.”
How much of my past did Owen know? Had he seen the information about my family? The frequent visits from the caseworkers when our teachers called the Department of Human Services to report neglect? The long list of arrests from both of my parents? The debts and bad credit? I’d been so careful to only tell him a little bit about my life in Alabama, but he probably already knew it all. As if he’d heard my thoughts, he said through the door:
“I just checked you didn’t have a criminal record. I didn’t look for anything else.”
“That’s great. Now go away.”
My face felt swollen and hot. I wet one of the many washcloths with cold water and pressed it to my face. I stared at the bed, and then at the door, where I was sure Owen waited on the other side. I wasn’t willing to open it and check, but I couldn’t sleep in this bed with him standing right there in the hallway.
I grabbed all the bedding fr
om the bed and stuffed it into the bathtub. It was a whole lot nicer than places I’d slept in as a young kid, before we finally settled in Brooksville and had a permanent home. Or the nights when my sister and I had to escape the house – we’d spend nights in sheds, abandoned houses, and even in the woods more than once.
The tub in the beach house was longer than I was. And it was so very clean. Among the down pillows and the sheets with a high thread count, I was comfortable. But comfort didn’t help. I laid awake all night.
The next morning my eyes were still just as puffy as they’d been the night before.
In the kitchen, Owen was making coffee. “Would you like some?” he asked.
“No, thank you.” I found a bottle of juice in the refrigerator and pulled it out, hoping it would give me a boost of energy. “So what now?” I asked.
“Let’s step outside,” Owen said.
Right. Surveillance cameras. Bugs. Spies. Not things I usually thought about before talking to someone.
“We’re going back to the Laurents’ house. We’re both going to act like everything’s fine. The second something feels off, you call me. Don’t text. Just call until I answer.”
“When you say act like everything’s fine, what do you mean?” I asked as we both walked slowly, drawn toward the surf again, even though we didn’t touch this time.
“I’m glad you asked, because I was going to talk to you about this anyway. I mean act as if you never saw the incident with John. You don’t bring it up, for any reason. You don’t talk to Amelia. You don’t talk to Mateo. You don’t mention it to Mrs. Laurent. If Laurent asks, you can say you were scared, but that’s it.”
“I’m supposed to just ignore it.”
“Yes. Absolutely. I can guarantee you that Amelia won’t bring it up to you. I’m sure that wasn’t the first time she’s seen a scene like that, and it won’t be the last.”
Poor Amelia. I couldn’t imagine living like that. I’d lived through enough as a kid, but at least my parents had never pointed a gun at my face. “You think he’s done this before?”
