by Lauren Carr
“Where are you taking him?” His voice was threatening, which struck Chris as odd.
If they’re both on the same side, what’s with the attitude? The man was so tall that Chris had to cock his head to see his face. The dim light prevented him from getting a clear look. His expression was intense.
The agent who had placed Chris in the SUV showed no intimidation. “Central processing for booking,” he answered in a brisk tone while making his way around the vehicle.
The other agent climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine.
“We need to question him first.” The tall man flashed a badge. “It’s a matter of national security. I need to take him with me.”
Chris held his breath. National security? What did Blair get mixed up in?
To his surprise, the agent chuckled. “Unless my CO tells me personally to hand him over, you’re taking him over my dead body.”
The tall man’s legs were so long that he was able to reach him with one step. He grabbed his arm. “Now you listen to me.”
The federal agent looked from the giant hand squeezing his bicep up into the man’s face—contorted with menace. He then looked around at the mob of law enforcement and spectators around them—each one seemingly armed with a camera of some type. He was almost a head shorter, but he stared him down. Chris could barely hear his response.
“Do you really want to go there? Here? Now? If you want to keep that hand, you’ll let go of my arm.”
The giant released his grip and stepped back. His eyes narrowed as he watched the agent continue around the vehicle to the passenger side and yank open the door. Like a statue, he remained fixed in the spot while the agent climbed into the rear seat.
“Let’s get out of here, Hayes.”
“That was close,” the driver said.
“Too close.”
The SUV eased its way through the horde of investigators and media milling around and turned out onto the street. As they drove past the journalists and cameras, Chris saw them darting and peering around for a glimpse of the shooter who had killed a man “innocently” waiting for a train at the metro. He could only imagine what type of monster they were painting him as being.
“Have your people released my name to the media?” Chris asked.
“I haven’t,” the agent sitting next to him said. “Vaccaro will talk to our CO. She’ll pull in some favors to put a lid on it. Can’t guarantee anything, but we’ll do what we can to keep your children from finding out about this.”
So he had been listening when I was talking to Ripley and Helen.
It struck Chris that the agent’s low smooth voice sounded familiar.
“Are we clear, Hayes?”
The driver chuckled in response to his partner’s question. “It’ll be touchy. As soon as Mr. CIA talks to the lead investigator, they’re gonna realize he’s no longer in police custody.” He turned onto the exit for Interstate 395 heading toward Springfield—away from FBI headquarters.
Not in police custody? Chris turned to the man sitting next to him.
The dimples in his cheeks had deepened. He winked at him with one of those blue eyes. “Mr. CIA isn’t going to talk to anyone because he wasn’t CIA. Real CIA operatives don’t flash their identification like that.”
Chris hadn’t recognized him since he had changed out of the dark blue hoodie and into an FBI jacket and federal agent’s badge.
What a newbie, I’ve become. I was seeing the uniform, not the man. How many times did I do that when I worked undercover? I’d slip on a uniform and walk in and out of a place and no one would see my face because they’d be focused on my clothes.
As charming as his smile was, Chris wanted to punch him. It was bad enough that his date with Helen had been ruined by him being forced to kill an international assassin threatening to kill the wife he had thought was dead. Now he had escaped from police custody without knowing it.
“Who are you?” Chris asked in a shaking voice. “Are you working for the people trying to kill Blair?” He struggled in vain to get out of the handcuffs.
“No, but I’m willing to bet Lurch back there was. Why else was he so anxious to get his hands on you? What’s going on, Matheson?”
“I have no idea. I was minding my own business—going out on a date with my girlfriend and ran into my wife who’s supposed to be dead.”
“Maybe your dead wife didn’t approve of you dating,” the driver said.
The men in the back seat looked at the back of his head.
“Just saying,” Hayes said.
“We had nothing to do with the attempt on your wife,” the man next to Chris said. “I didn’t even know her name until you told Vaccaro.”
“You know Ripley. Are you FBI?”
“No, I work for someone else.”
“Who?”
“I can’t say.”
“You’re CIA.” Chris laughed. “How do you know Ripley?”
“She and I have worked together on some cases that involved multiple federal agencies.”
“Can you at least tell me your name?”
“You can call me Murphy. You’re welcome, by the way.”
“You’re welcome?”
“Helping you escape.”
“I didn’t ask you guys to help me to escape,” Chris said. “I didn’t want to escape. I’d much rather be in jail now than on the run from the police—which never ends well. I’ve been on the other side of police dragnets. It never ends well for the guy on the run. If anything, you got me into deeper trouble than I was already in. So don’t hold your breath for any thanks for getting me killed!”
“Do you want us to take you back?” Murphy asked in an ultra-polite tone. “Maybe we can catch up with Lurch.”
“As big as he is, he should be easy to find,” the driver said.
“You’re damn lucky I’m cuffed.” Chris narrowed his eyes. “You were there. Why didn’t you stop Mancini?”
“I didn’t see him until it was too late,” Murphy said. “I was on the lookout for the investigator who was supposed to connect with an anonymous source. I believe Anonymous was your wife.”
“But you screwed up and a hitman connected with her instead!”
“I did not screw up!” Murphy’s blue eyes were flashing.
“Then why didn’t you and your guy protect Blair? If I hadn’t run into her and saw Mancini, she’d be really dead now! Where was your man?”
“Dead! That’s where he was!”
Silence dropped over the inside of the SUV.
Chris stared at Murphy, whose face was filled with anguish.
“Stephens was a good man.” Murphy swallowed. “I got the call seconds before you shot Mancini.”
Chris tore his eyes away and sat back in his seat. He saw that the SUV was racing along the interstate out of the city.
Next to him, Murphy was rubbing his eyes. “I guess it had to be your wife …” his voice trailed off.
“Blair. Her name was Blair.”
“Blair set up the meeting with Stephens. She was going to give him crucial evidence for him to get to the right people. She told him to wear a red ball cap and to carry a copy of the Washington Times. She had warned him that people had died because of this. I guess most of us thought she was being overly dramatic.”
“Crucial evidence of what?”
“I have no idea,” Murphy said. “All I was supposed to do was back them up during their meeting. Keep them safe.”
“A lot of good that did.”
“I had no idea what Blair looked like. Neither did Stephens. None of us even knew her name. She was going to find him. The last I spoke to him was ninety minutes before the meeting—that was right after your wife called and told him to wear the ball cap and carry the newspaper. Mancini must have killed him right after I spoke t
o him and taken his place.”
“Which meant Mancini or whoever hired him knew about the meeting,” Chris said. “How did Blair get Stephens’s name and contact information?”
“I have no idea. She claimed to have crucial information that was important to national security. Whatever she told him must have convinced him that she was legit because he set up a meeting.”
“You don’t know much, do you?”
“I may not know much,” Murphy said, “but I do know this. Someone had one of my teammates killed to keep whatever it is your wife knows from seeing the light of day. That tells me that she must know something important enough to kill to keep hidden. That means these people will stop at nothing—including abducting you or your children as leverage to bring her out into the open.”
“That must be why she has been in hiding all these years.”
“What was she doing in Europe when she was reported dead?”
“She was a communications officer at the embassy in Switzerland. What could she possibly have stumbled onto?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Murphy said. “Why do you think we snatched you?”
“Because you’re crazy.”
Chapter Three
On the interstate, they traveled past Springfield, Virginia, before exiting the freeway and turning onto a side road that traveled deep into a dark rural area far away from the city. They rode in silence for much of the drive.
Murphy would often check messages on his phone and, occasionally, glance in Chris’s direction.
Chris spent most of the drive remembering the conversation in which Blair had announced that she had been offered a promotion.
Was it really only five years ago?
Chris had arrived at their upper middle-class home tucked in the corner of a small lake after eighteen hours of working on a triple homicide. “I can’t go to Switzerland.”
Sensing a fight, Blair glanced upstairs to where their daughters were doing their homework. “Yes, you can.”
“The FBI doesn’t have field offices overseas.” After returning a greeting from Winston, his German shepherd, Chris went into the kitchen to get a cold beer. He suspected he would be wanting something stronger.
She followed him. “You can take a leave of absence.”
He stopped with the refrigerator door open. Slowly, he turned to her. “And live on what?”
“We have some savings. The state department will pay a cost of living allowance and we could get government housing. We’ll rent this house out.” The displeasure on his face made her rattle on. “The experience will be good for the girls.”
“I’m not spending the next two years being a house husband.” He grabbed the bottle of beer from the fridge and slammed the door shut.
“So I should flush my goals down the drain, huh? Because you’re too important to stay home with the kids while I pursue my dreams.”
Chris wrested the cap off the bottle. “I’m not important.”
“Says the great Chris Matheson,” she said with a roll of her eyes.
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, you are so good at pretending you don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?”
“Your reputation at the bureau,” she said. “At the Christmas party, one agent after another, telling me how proud I had to be being married to one of the bureau’s top investigators. Your undercover work brought down the Yurievich crime family and empire.” Her tone grew mocking. “The department’s most valuable agent. We can always count on Chris Matheson.”
“They talk like that to all of the agents’ spouses,” he said. “If I was such a hot shot, Nikki would have her own horse instead of leasing one.”
“This isn’t about the money.”
“Obviously it’s not because you have to be aware that our income would be cut in half if I took a leave of absence. That would push my retirement out another two years.”
Blair clenched her fists. “I want people at the state department to talk to you like that about me!”
Chris stared at her. Slowly, he shook his head. “Like what?”
“Someone everyone can always count on.” Her eyes filled with tears. “At work, no one even knows who I am.”
“You’re valuable to us,” he said. “That’s where it counts.”
“That’s not enough. Not for me.”
Chris felt a pang in his heart. It hurt like a bullet to the chest. “You’ve already made up your mind.”
Her voice was soft. “You’ve done it, Chris. You don’t know what it’s like to be just another face in the crowd.”
“Nothing I’ve done has been because I wanted people to notice me,” he said. “I get up every morning and strap on my shield for the victims. The Yurievich family made a fortune conning vulnerable women to come to the States to force into prostitution. Families lost their homes because they were experts in identity theft. They were all lucky compared to the dozens of people who the Yuriviechs had killed on their way to the top. That’s what I work for. Whether anyone knows my name or thinks I’m a hero means nothing to me.”
“Easy for you to say,” she said miserably.
“I can say that because I’ve seen the misery that surrounds those who put their own pride first.”
“Is that what you think this is about?”
“Where have you been during this conversation?” he asked. “You want me to take a leave of absence. You want to uproot our daughters. What about Winston?” He pointed at his ten-year-old German shepherd who had been watching the conversation from his dog bed. “Do you think he’s going to survive being shipped halfway around the world?”
“I was thinking we could ask some friends—”
“It’ll be a cold day in hell before I abandon Winston to follow you just because your ego needs some stroking.”
“Is that what you think this is all about?” Blair scoffed. “The little woman feels unappreciated.”
Chris dropped into a chair next to the dog bed and stroked the top of Winston’s head. Eying her, he took a long drink from the beer bottle. “More like a grown adult who’s let her priorities get out of whack.”
The cruiser hit a pothole hard. Chris woke up when he knocked his head against the SUV’s passenger window.
“We’re here,” the driver of the SUV announced as he made a sharp turn onto a dirt road.
The road curved around a steep hill before leveling off at a single-story house that was so dark, it looked abandoned.
“How long are you going to keep me here?” Chris studied the rural area. He couldn’t see lights from any other houses or buildings.
“Until we can locate Blair and figure out what she has that is important enough to kill for,” Murphy said while checking a message on his phone. “Stephens’s house was bugged. That’s how they knew the details about the meeting.”
“How did they know to bug his house?” Chris said. “What’s to keep them from tracking your phone or this vehicle.”
Murphy shook his head in response to his concern. “My phone has the most up-to-date encryption invented, and this SUV was swept for trackers before we picked you up. You’re safe.”
Hayes opened the rear door and unbuckled Chris’s seat belt. He removed the handcuffs after helping him out of the vehicle.
Murphy took a duffel bag from the back compartment. “We don’t have much but it should be enough to keep you semi-comfortable until we can find a more secure place.” He handed it to Chris. “It’s my go-to bag. There’s a change of clothes in there. I imagine that suit isn’t too comfortable.”
Together, they walked up the darkened sidewalk to the front door. Hayes went around to the back of the house to make sure the area was secure. In contrast to the rundown condition of the house, the door was secured with an up-to-date keycode lock worthy of a secu
re government facility. Murphy unlocked it with a code, opened the door, and ushered Chris into the foyer.
“Who’s taking care of my family while you have me in protective custody?” Chris followed Murphy down a hallway to a master bedroom. They both turned on the lights and checked inside each room along the way.
“Vaccaro will keep your oldest daughter with her and arrange for a couple of people from our team to check on your family,” Murphy said while closing the curtains. “I think you and I are about the same size. Those clothes should fit you. If not, I’ll pick up some that will.”
Chris tossed the duffel bag onto the bed and opened it. A cell phone and wallet rested on top of the clothes. It contained a toiletry bag and other items, including two handguns, four boxes of bullets, and an assault knife.
“That’s a burner phone,” Murphy said. “The number at the top of the contact list will take you to my boss. She can pass any messages on to me.”
“I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t feel very safe.” Chris shrugged out of the suit coat and tossed it onto the bed. He picked up the assault knife and removed it from the sheath.
“I assume you know how to use a knife,” Murphy said. “You did serve with the army rangers before going with the FBI.”
Chris tucked the knife back into its sheath. “That’s what you’ve been reading on your phone on the way here. You were running a background check.”
“I’d be stupid to let you have those guns without doing one.”
Chris checked the wallet, which was filled with a fistful of hundred-dollar bills. “How big of a file does the CIA have on me?”
“Big enough,” Murphy said while checking out the window. “Your mother’s file was more entertaining.”
“The CIA has a file on my mother?”
“Don’t ask.”
Chris examined the clothes. The waist on the jeans was almost the same as his. The shirt was one size bigger. Murphy was more muscular than he was. The work boots were only one size too big. Even so, they were more comfortable than his dress shoes, which were starting to hurt his feet.
