by Lauren Carr
In the kitchen, Elliott was dressed and preparing the coffee to brew. “Well, if you aren’t a sweetheart.” She wrapped her arms around him and gave him a tender kiss on the lips.
Perturbed to see her master leave the room without feeding them, Sadie, the Doberman, uttered a noise that was an equal mixture of a whine and a bark while looking back and forth between Doris and the mudroom.
“Don’t be so bossy, Sadie,” Doris said with a shake of her finger.
Elliott took a carton of eggs out of the refrigerator. “How many will we have for breakfast?”
Excited about the prospect of raw eggs on their food, Sadie and Mocha sat at attention. More focused on the birds gathering around the feeders in the backyard, Thor remained curled up in her bed next to the patio doors.
“Just Christopher,” Doris answered Elliott while scooping food into the dog bowls. “Helen went home.”
“Did they have a fight?”
“I suspect it was more of a discussion,” she said. “I’m not surprised. Helen is a woman of principle. If Blair is alive, that means Christopher is still married to her, and Helen will not date a married man—no matter how much she loves him.”
“At this point, I would say Chris and Blair’s marriage is only a technicality,” Elliott said with a scoff.
“Married nonetheless. Helen has a daughter to think about. Sierra’s father was a cheat. He didn’t take his wedding vows seriously, and that’s why they got divorced. If Helen got involved with a married man, then that will send the message to Sierra that marriage is only as valuable as the sheet of paper the certificate is printed on.”
Elliott looked worried. “Then what will become of Helen and Chris?”
“I’m sure the two of them will work that out.”
Doris set the dog bowls on the floor. Sadie and Mocha remained seated until she told them that they could eat, at which point they dove in as if they hadn’t eaten in days. She set Sterling’s bowl on the counter for Chris to give him later.
Clutching Thor’s bowl, she stepped into the kitchen and set the bowl next to the rabbit’s bed. Her snout picking up the scent of the pellets, Thor leisurely stretched across her bed to inspect that morning’s meal. Fully aware of Sadie and Mocha watching, she took her time relishing every bite while watching the sun rise. She had no fear of the big dogs making a move on her food. Their fear of Doris’s chastising finger wagging at them was greater than their hunger.
Behind the kitchen counter, Doris poured coffee into two mugs—one for her and the other for Elliott, who was preparing a pan of home fries from leftover boiled potatoes from their dinner the night before. She set a third mug next to the coffeemaker for Chris.
“Christopher and Helen always belonged together,” she said with a sad shake of her head. “I was almost as upset as he was when they broke up after high school.” She looked up at the ceiling. “I knew Christopher had a thing for her before he did. It was such a blessing when they got together.” She looked at Elliott. “I admit it. I even had names picked out for their children. They were going to have two boys and two girls.”
“Sounds like Blair never stood a chance of getting into your good graces after Helen.” Elliott swept chopped onions into the home fries.
“Blair wasn’t good enough for Christopher. She was incapable of appreciating what a prince she had.” Seeing Elliott’s lips curl, she let out a huff. “Face it. Christopher is the total package. Handsome—especially when he cleans himself up. Courageous. Intelligent. He gets it all from his father. Did I mention handsome?”
“Spoken like a doting mother. I suspect Blair’s biggest fault was that she wasn’t Helen.” He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “She had to have had some good qualities. I can’t see Chris marrying a woman he didn’t love.”
“Oh, yes, he did love her,” Doris said with a heavy sigh. “But not the way he loves Helen.”
“Of course not. Helen was his first love. No one ever gets over their first love. Not really.”
“Frankly,” she said, “I’ve always suspected the real reason Christopher married Blair was because she asked—”
Elliott spun around. “She asked him?”
“Of course. Christopher is a catch,” she said. “And I think he agreed because he was over thirty, tired of working undercover, and ready to settle down and have a family. Problem is—”
“Obviously, Blair wasn’t ready for all of that,” Elliott said. “If she was, she wouldn’t have taken off to Switzerland.”
“Blair threw Christopher and those three beautiful little girls away and traveled halfway across the globe. Now, just when I was thinking that finally Helen was going to be my daughter-in-law, she shows back up—”
“Careful.” Elliott shook a paring knife in her direction. “You’re getting dangerously close to becoming a suspect.”
When Chris opened the door, the wind caught it to blow it wide open. Sterling rose up onto his hind legs and planted his front paws on the counter. He looked from Chris to his bowl to request breakfast.
“I guess you feel like it’s your turn, huh, big guy?” Chris put the bowl down on the floor on his way into the kitchen. Sterling plunged in.
“Looks like everyone’s fed except the humans,” Doris said. “What do you want with your scrambled eggs, Christopher? Bacon or Sausage?”
With a shrug of his shoulders, Chris poured coffee into his mug. “Doesn’t matter. I’m not really hungry.”
She frowned. “Christopher ditched Helen to whack an international assassin instead of buying her dinner.”
“Assassins are known for their notoriously bad timing,” Elliott said with a chuckle.
Doris directed Chris to sit at the table to drink his coffee while she cooked the bacon and made toast. “Tell us about the spy who gave you the clothes off his back.” She went on to point out the change in Chris’s clothes.
“Spy?” Elliott’s eyebrow arched. He caught Chris’s eye behind Doris’s back.
“I think he’s military on loan to the CIA,” Chris said as he took his seat. “Name’s Murphy. I’m not completely clear on his connection to all this. He was there at the metro when the assassin intercepted Blair while she was trying to make contact with the investigator from the senator’s office. He says his orders were to back up the investigator and tail Blair, who they had thought was a CIA operative who had gone missing about the same time Blair was supposed to have been killed.”
“That answers my question then,” Doris said as she buttered the toast that popped out of the toaster.
“What question?” Chris asked.
Doris carried two slices of toast to his place at the table. “Whose ashes did you scatter off the hillside in Shenandoah National Park? They must have been the missing CIA operative.”
Chris let out a groan. “I actually didn’t think about that.” He took a bite from the end of the toast. “You’re right. If the CIA is missing an operative, who disappeared the night before Blair was supposed to have been killed, then it only makes sense that she was the one killed at the terrorist attack and Blair escaped.”
“Blair took over her identity,” Elliott said.
“Was Blair smart enough to assume the identity of a CIA agent and fly under the radar?” Doris looked down at Chris. “Why would she do that?”
“Blair happened onto something.” Chris took the cell phone from his pocket. “She had sent a letter to Senator Keaton claiming there is a threat to our national security.” He went to the contacts, which contained only one number. “The CIA agent must have been working on that case and pulled Blair in on it. I’m going to find out what this operative was working on when she disappeared.” He pressed the number and put the phone to his ear.
“Then it was the CIA agent who was with the Australian when she got killed.” Doris sighed. “Maybe Blair wasn’t cheating on you aft
er all.”
The phone rang once before connecting with a woman on the other end. “Good morning, Mr. Matheson.” Her voice was so low and sensuous that Chris wondered if there had been a mistake. A quick glance at the clock revealed that it was not yet eight o’clock in the morning.
Maybe it was Murphy’s wife. Jessie. But then, how did she know his name?
“I’m looking for Murphy,” Chris said.
“I’m his commanding officer,” she said. “I will take a message and have him contact you. What do you need, Mr. Matheson?”
She sounded more like a sensuous seductress than a military commanding officer. Chris fought the urge to visualize a face and body to go with her voice. “Ma’am, what do you know about—”
“Lieutenant Thornton has been keeping me informed,” she said. “Have there been any developments? Has your wife been in contact with you?”
“No,” Chris said. “I’ve realized that if she is alive, then the state department cremated and sent someone else’s ashes back to me after the attack in France. I’m wondering if that someone was the missing CIA operative that Murphy—uh, Lieutenant Thornton—was supposed to tail last night.”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“Where are those ashes now?” she asked.
Chris rubbed his face with his hand. “I scattered them off the top of a mountain. It was a favorite place we liked to go hiking.”
“That is unfortunate,” she said. “If there was a tooth or something that had remained, we’d be able to identify her with DNA.”
“I was told at the time that my wife was with another man, an Australian, at the time of the attack,” Chris said. “If it was not my wife, then that means the agent was with him.”
“If it was indeed the operative who was killed,” she said. “Since the ashes are gone, now we may never know.”
“The Australian—”
“He was also killed,” she said. “To answer your next question, I wish I could tell you that he was a member of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, but I can’t because that information is classified.”
Chris was still deciphering her message when she told him that she would have Lieutenant Thornton return his call.
“Did you find out anything?” Elliott asked as he set a plate filled with scrambled eggs, home fries, and bacon in front of Chris.
“Since the ashes are gone, we can’t prove it was the CIA operative killed in the attack,” Chris said. “Apparently, it’s a good bet because the man she was with was an agent with the Australian Secret Intelligence Service.”
“They told you that?” Elliott sat at the table next to Doris.
“They told me that they wished they could tell me that, but they couldn’t.”
Elliott nodded his head. “He was.”
Deep in thought, Chris poked at the food on his plate. “The night before Blair was supposedly killed, her boss was murdered.”
“After which, Blair goes on the run,” Doris said.
“Was she running with the CIA agent or running from the CIA agent?” Elliott asked.
“That is the question,” Chris said. “According to Murphy, they don’t know if the agent went rogue or why she disappeared. Most likely, though now it can’t be proven, she died while meeting with this Australian agent.”
“How did the state department identify Blair’s body?” Doris asked. “Was it on purpose or an accident?”
“They found Blair’s passport in a handbag. The bag was with a badly mangled body that the truck had run over.”
“Surely they went by more than passports,” Doris said. “How were they to know that the passport hadn’t been stolen?”
“Or switched,” Chris said. “How did Blair get back into the country without her passport? She had to have been living under a different identity these last few years.”
“A CIA agent would know how to get everything she needed to create a whole new identity and get back into the country,” Elliott said. “My bet is on the agent getting Blair another passport.”
“And she has been living under this new identity for the last three years,” Chris said. “But then, something happened, and she resurfaced. Why?”
His mind swimming, Chris looked down at Sterling, who was sitting next to his chair with a look of expectation on his face. After eating his breakfast, the German shepherd had gone into his basket and traded in his deerstalker hat for a black one with a gold buckle, which he had clutched in his teeth.
Thor was perched between Sterling’s front paws. The rabbit was dressed in a black and white Pilgrim’s costume in anticipation of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday.
Emma loved to dress the pair up in costumes. Thor seemed to love it. Sterling, not so much. However, they discovered, he did take to wearing hats, when he could keep them on. His tall ears were a challenge.
One day, when Emma was struggling to get a Western hat to stay on him, Katelyn used her sewing skills to cut out holes for the ears and added a Velcro strap for the chin. A picture of her creation modeled by Sterling became an Internet sensation. The next thing they knew, Katelyn had a growing business in designing dog hats and vests. Katelyn’s top model, Sterling had his own Instagram account where she posted pictures and videos of him in her designs.
Sterling had a basket in the mudroom for his hats. He would pick out what he felt like wearing that day. This day, he felt like a Pilgrim.
Across from him, the dignified Doberman peered at Sterling with wide eyes as if to say, “Seriously? That dog—the card-playing, hat-wearing German is the alpha of our pack?” Licking her chops, she backed away and went to her bed next to the windows.
“You two are no help,” Chris told Sterling and Thor while placing the hat onto the German shepherd’s head.
“Eat, dear.” Doris tapped the edge of Chris’s plate. “It will help you think.”
“I’m not hungry.” Chris tossed his napkin onto the table and went to his bedroom on the top floor of the farm house.
Chapter Nine
After leaving the library, Murphy drove the BMW to a brownstone on Capitol Hill to freshen up and change his clothes. While Murphy was confident that he and Chris had managed to shake off the death squad, he wasn’t taking any chances by returning to the home he shared with his wife.
Jessica was too precious to him.
On the outside, the brownstone looked like an average residence. Those who lived on the upscale block would never have guessed that the quiet looking townhome was a safe house for an ultra-secret team of agents to gather, rest, or use as need be while on assignments. Equipped with a multi-million-dollar security system and computer equipment, not only was Murphy able to freshen up, but he could also check his emails for messages. In addition, the safe house kept a complete inventory of weaponry and ammunition for him to replenish his weapons.
He jogged around the Capitol Building.
The blue sky was so clear that it seemed to go on forever. The morning sun cast a golden glow across the mall. The sunlight reflected off the remaining crystals from the thick frost that had blanketed the landscape that morning.
First frost of the season.
With a shiver against the cold, Murphy blew out a gentle breath. Grinning, he watched the cloud of condensation float away. That was always fun to watch.
A white stretch limousine was parked at the bottom of the Capitol’s steps. Murphy trotted down the steps to the huge chauffeur slash security guard waiting motionless next to the rear door. Behind the sunglasses, his eyes bounced around the mall in search of possible threats. Murphy recognized the unmistakable bulge of a weapon under his black jacket.
Even when Murphy walked up to him, the mountain of a man did not move. “Good morning, Lieutenant. You’re right on time.” He opened the door. Murphy climbed into the back seat and Bernie closed the door.
Her long slender legs seemed to stretch the length of the limousine’s rear compartment. They appeared even longer with her black stilettos. Her hair was pulled up into a twist covered by a black hat with netting pulled down over the top half of her face. The black matched the trim on her white fitted dress and jacket.
Murphy heard the driver’s door shut and felt the limousine engine turn on.
“I heard things went sideways last night, Lieutenant,” she said after Murphy sat across from her. “You were given a very simple assignment. Back up Keaton’s investigator while he met with a missing agent. Tail the agent to find out if she’d defected to a hostile government or, worse, has joined parties within our own government working to undermine our democracy.”
He couldn’t see her eyes behind the netting, but he could feel her glare demanding an explanation.
“Stephens is dead,” she said. “He didn’t even make it out of his house.”
“Hayes is dead, too,” he said in a soft voice.
“So our cleanup team reported after finding several bodies at the Springfield safehouse. What happened?”
“Death squad. Did the cleanup team tell you that one of the assassins had a yellow dragon on his neck?”
“The body they pulled out of the pond.” She did not appear surprised—at least, as far as Murphy could tell. Nothing fazed CO.
“Was he a Yellow Dragon?”
“No,” she said. “He was a Yellow Dragon wannabe. There’s no ex-Yellow Dragons, only dead ones. This guy was a psychopath. He had his fingerprints removed with acid. His body was shaved all over. There wasn’t a hair on him. He had no identification. Nigel ran a facial recognition and got a match. A security camera in Germany had captured his image in the vicinity of a murder. This wannabe Yellow Dragon had been lurking around the home of a medical examiner working for the state department.”
“Did this medical examiner do an autopsy on the chief of communications in Switzerland?”
