by Lauren Carr
His attractive features had been splashed all over the the television and Internet ever since the President had nominated Daniel Cross to lead the Central Intelligence Agency.
The media portrayed Daniel Cross as Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan character brought to life. After his boss had been murdered in a car bomb with the ambassador in Lithuania, Cross had made it his mission to use his skills as an intelligence analyst to track down the terrorist group responsible.
A young man picked up his backpack and magazine and got up from a table next to the condiment station. He stepped over to the counter and pried the lid off his mug, which was identical to Cross’s. He then tore the corner off a packet of sugar, dumped it into the cup, and replaced the lid. Leaving the mug on the counter, he turned to toss the magazine back onto the table.
In the instant his back was turned, Daniel Cross scooped up the other man’s mug and headed for the main exit behind Francine. Without a second glance, the younger man picked up the other mug and left through the side door.
Francine was still in shock with what she had witnessed when Daniel Cross breezed past her and out the door where he extracted his bike from the rack, slipped the mug into the cup holder, put on his riding helmet, and sped away.
Did I really just see that?
A hand grasped her arm in a firm grip which caused her to cry out.
“It’s me!” Murphy hushed her. He smiled at the patrons looking their way.
She clutched his arm. “You totally aren’t going to believe what I just saw.”
“Tell me over here.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I need to warn you, don’t freak out.”
“Why would I freak out?”
“Tristan’s eccentric.” He led her by the hand to the sitting area. “He’s brought a friend with him.”
As they rounded the loveseat, Francine let out a gasp upon seeing the tarantula on Tristan’s shoulder. “Is that—”
“A tarantula,” Murphy said. “Tristan’s emotional support animal.”
“Her name is Monique,” Tristan said.
Francine was surprised to see how young he appeared. He was younger than Murphy, who she gauged to be barely out of his mid-twenties. Tristan was in his early twenties. She concluded that he appeared that much younger due to his lean build clad in khaki slacks and a baggy striped shirt. Then, she told herself that everyone looked youthful to her.
Francine dropped onto the sofa next to him. “Can I pet her?”
“She loves attention.” Tristan smiled up at Murphy, whose eyes grew wide at the older woman’s fascination with the huge spider.
Francine gingerly placed her hand on Tristan’s shoulder and urged Monique to crawl up her arm. “My grandson named his Thanos. He’s a male. Just a little bit bigger than Monique.” She peered closely at the spider. “She is a beautiful girl. Much calmer than Thanos. If you brought Thanos here, he’d jump into someone’s drink.” She stuck her other hand out to him. “I’m Francine by the way.”
“Tristan Faraday.”
Their hands remained clasped as Francine smiled. “Are you any relation to Mac Faraday? He was a homicide detective here in Washington before he came into an inheritance and became filthy rich.”
Tristan gave her the standard eye roll. “That would be my dad.”
“I worked with him,” she said. “Well, he wouldn’t say we exactly worked together. He’d probably tell you that I hounded him into looking into a murder case. A couple of young men had been convicted of murdering a college girl. The police had a confession. The mother of one of the suspects contacted me for her last hope because her son told her the confession had been coerced. I talked to the young man in prison and I believed him. Mac Faraday was the best detective in D.C., so I went to him. It took some persuading to get him to look into the case. He’d call it nagging. But I convinced him that we were right and then the two of us found the real killer and those young men were let go.”
“Dad doesn’t work with the media,” Tristan said.
“That’s what he told me, too, but I didn’t give him a choice.” She scrunched up her nose while petting Monique. “He pretends to be a mean old dog, but inside he’s really a pussy cat.”
“Funny, I’ve never seen any sign of a pussy cat in him,” Murphy said.
Tristan leaned in to tell her, “Murphy makes it a point to sleep with one eye open when he visits Dad.”
Sensing she was missing something, Francine cocked her head at him.
“Dad is the last person anyone would want for a father-in-law,” Tristan said.
“Father-in-law?” Francine looked over at Murphy. “You’re Jessica’s husband?”
“That would be me.”
“What a small world.” Monique tickled her neck as Francine turned back to Tristan. “So you’re Monique’s dad and Nigel’s guardian?”
“Someone has to keep a leash on Nigel,” Tristan said. “Sometimes, he does have a mind of his own.” He gestured at Murphy, who had taken a seat on the sofa across from them. “How do you know, Murph?”
“We met at my book club meeting last night.”
Tristan’s eyebrows rose. He adjusted his eye glasses while looking at Murphy. “You read?”
“Stop being a smartass.”
“Did I just see Daniel Cross?” Francine pointed in the direction of the condiment station.
“Most likely,” Tristan said. “He comes in every Saturday morning at nine o’clock like clockwork.” He glanced at his watch. “Yep, right on schedule. I don’t know if he lives around here. He comes on his bike.”
“Every Saturday morning?”
“This is Dupont Circle,” Tristan said. “Sit here all day and you’ll see half of the faces on any news cable station.”
“I’m talking about the director of the intelligence directorate at the CIA,” Francine said in a hushed tone, “passing Lord knows what to Lord knows who.”
Tristan and Murphy exchanged long silent glances.
Wordlessly, Tristan left it up to Murphy to respond. “Are you—”
“Hey, I was an investigative journalist back before you two were being potty trained,” she said. “I know all about how to covertly hand off information, pay offs, whatever, and I just saw him either handing off information or collecting it from some guy.”
“Maybe he was collecting information about an adversary from an informant,” Tristan said.
“Isn’t he kind of high up the ladder in the agency to be collecting information?” Murphy asked.
“You should know, being with the CIA and all.” Francine put her hand under Monique for her to climb onto.
Tristan opened his mouth to ask what she was talking about but stopped when he caught Murphy’s eye and a toss of his head for him to remain silent. Instead, Tristan picked up his tablet and opened an application. “What did this guy that Cross supposedly passed government secrets to look like?”
“I didn’t say they were government secrets,” Francine said.
“What else would Cross have been slipping to him?” Murphy asked.
“His phone number?” Tristan arched an eyebrow at them. “He’s not married. I hear he’s a womanizer.”
“Why would he have given his phone number in such a clandestine manner?” Francine asked. “The guy he gave it to was medium build. Khaki slacks. Blue button-down shirt. Untucked. Loafers.”
“You just described half of the people in the room.” With a grin, Tristan handed his tablet to Murphy and Francine.
A video was displayed on the screen. The paused image was a downward angle from the corner of the café. Daniel Cross was at the condiment counter. The man with the magazine was seated at the table next to it.
“How?” Francine looked up to the ceiling and spotted the hidden security camera. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “You hacked into their security s
ystem?”
“Hacked is such a dirty word.”
Murphy pressed the screen to play the security video. It happened exactly as Francine had recalled. Leaving his mug behind, Daniel Cross took the other man’s. There was no moment of distraction, eliminating any possibility of him taking the other mug by mistake.
“Most likely he’s a journalist,” Tristan said. “Cross has been on the news a lot lately.”
“He’s on the brink of becoming a member of the President’s cabinet. He didn’t get where he is by being stupid. To suddenly leak information to the media now would be idiocy.” Murphy handed the tablet back to him. “Can Nigel run facial recognition to identify the other guy?”
“Facial recognition?” Francine’s eyes widened before narrowing as she turned to Murphy. “What exactly do you—”
Murphy shushed her. “Write anything about what you see and hear, and I’ll tell your children what you’ve been doing at the library after dark.”
Her lip pursed together. “You wouldn’t.”
His eyes locked on hers. “Try me.”
“That must be some library.” Tristan’s fingers flew across the screen of the tablet while eying them from over the top of it. “The other guy is a regular here. I see him practically every day. This facial recognition will take some time. I’ll probably have better luck identifying him the old-fashioned way.” He peered at them over the top of his glasses. “Asking one of the servers. Even so, we can’t just assume Cross was doing anything illegal.”
“If it was on the up and up, then he would have just handed whatever it was to him.” Francine slipped Monique onto his shoulder and stroked her back.
“True.” Tristan stroked the spider who returned to her favorite spot against his neck.
“In the meantime,” Murphy said, “what have you and Nigel been able to figure out about Blair Matheson and the state department? Did they help her fake her death or make a mistake?”
Tristan cast a tentative glance in Francine’s direction. He didn’t feel comfortable revealing Nigel’s capability to extract highly sensitive information from the most secure government systems to outsiders.
“I’ll take responsibility for her discretion,” Murphy said.
Hesitant, Tristan remained silent.
“Seriously, Tristan,” Murphy said. “I’m not going to let you get into trouble. A death squad came after Blair Matheson’s husband and me last night. I lost two teammates.”
“I know,” Tristan said with a sigh.
“You didn’t tell Jessie, did you?”
Tristan shook his head. “The last thing she needs right now is to worry about you.” He sat up. “Here’s what Nigel and I figured out. Based on what we were able to find out in the Office of Personnel Management records, Blair Matheson was killed in a terrorist attack in France and declared dead. They paid out death benefits, the whole nine yards. Her records were sealed and closed. The federal government doesn’t do that if you’re not dead.”
“But if they faked her death,” Murphy asked, “wouldn’t they still do that to make it look like she was dead?”
“If they knew she was still alive, they’d have her on some sort of payroll, wouldn’t they?” Tristan asked.
“Years ago, I did an expose on the federal witness protection program,” Francine said. “The government pays out an average of $60,000 a year to witnesses in the program until they are able to get jobs and support themselves. So, if Chris’s wife, who was not a criminal, was still working for the federal government, she’d have to collect a paycheck and there’d have to be a record of it somewhere.”
“As we were saying,” Murphy said, “if the federal government knew Blair was still alive and she faked her death for a mission—”
“Somewhere in the federal records, there would be a cross-reference connecting Blair’s new identity to the one who had passed away,” Tristan said. “For retirement records—whatever. Nigel found no cross-reference. We think it was an honest mistake. Blair was identified based on her identification being found in a bag among the debris from the terrorist attack. The bag was in the possession of a woman generally matching Blair’s description. Unfortunately, this woman was hit head on by the truck that plowed through the crowd. Her body was badly mangled, and the bag’s strap was in her hand.”
“Why didn’t they run a DNA test?” Francine asked.
“DNA tests are expensive. They only run them if they have to,” Tristan said. “Blair Matheson was on annual leave. Granted, she took it at the last minute, but she was. It was Bastille Day. A holiday. Blair wasn’t home. Her passport was found in a bag with a woman matching her description. Circumstantial evidence suggested the woman was Blair Matheson.”
Francine crossed her arms. “If the state department is so innocent, why did they cremate her body so that Chris couldn’t see that it wasn’t her?”
“Mistakes do happen,” Tristan said. “I found news report of a family here in the States complaining that the state department did not cremate their grandmother who had been killed in the same attack. Their last name was Mahadev. They were Hindu and they had requested immediate cremation on religious grounds.”
“Matheson,” Murphy said. “Mahadev. The names aren’t exactly the same, but close enough that it could have been an honest mix-up.”
“Not everything is always a grand conspiracy,” Tristan said.
“Okay,” Murphy said. “The state department made a mistake. They thought Blair was dead.”
“But Blair had to know she was still alive,” Francine said, “but she told no one.”
“And she was overseas,” Murphy said. “She needed money and a passport to enter back into the United States.”
“Didn’t you say you were missing an operative about that same time period?” Tristan asked with a cryptic tone.
Murphy’s eyes met his.
“The missing agent was close to an Australian agent, who was killed in the same terrorist attack that Blair Matheson was supposed to have died in,” Tristan said. “Now, Nigel’s access to Australian intelligence records is very limited. However, less than a week after the terrorist attack, a woman flew into Dulles International Airport from France with an Australian diplomatic passport.” He handed the tablet to Murphy. “Her name was Charlotte Nesbitt. According to immigration records, she’s still in the country.”
“How did this woman come to your attention?” Francine asked while studying the state department data on Charlotte Nesbitt, which included a picture of a pretty woman with blond hair. Francine wished she knew what Blair looked like.
Tristan took the tablet and swept his finger across the screen. He handed it back to them. “Her picture is the same one that was on Blair’s passport.”
Indeed, the image on both passports was the same.
“Once Nigel and I concluded that the Australian agent was connected to our missing operative, we jump to the conclusion that the American agent went through her Australian friend to get Blair a new identity.”
“Via a new ID to come home,” Murphy said. “Blair survived the terrorist attack, went off the grid, and came home under the radar. Whatever got her boss killed was so dangerous that she’s stayed off the grid.” He extracted his vibrating phone from its case.
“But recently she decided to come back on the grid,” Francine said. “What happened to make her take such a risk?”
“We’ll have to ask her.” Tristan peeled Monique off his shoulder, set her on his chest, and stroked her fur. “There’s no address for Charlotte Nesbitt in the database, which is suspicious. Not uncommon, but suspicious. We put a flag on her passport. If she so much as gets pulled over for a speeding ticket, we’ll find her.”
Murphy answered the phone. “Lieutenant Thornton here.”
The sultry voice of his commanding officer said, “Lieutenant Thornton, there’s been a deve
lopment.”
At first, Chris was uncertain if he had heard Ivy correctly. “Where’s Blair? What did you do to her?”
He looked at the phone in his hand and shook his head. He’d been right. Blair went to Ivy after being declared dead. Ivy knew all along. That’s why she had never returned his calls or attempts to get their daughters together for playdates. She couldn’t risk him finding out.
He wanted to reach through the phone and throttle Ivy for the deception. Deciding it was best to walk off his mad, he paced the length of his bedroom. He placed the phone to his ear.
“You tell me where she is, Ivy. You wouldn’t be asking me that if you thought Blair was dead—like the girls and I have. Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Like you don’t know.”
“No, I don’t know. Tell me.”
“Oh, your devoted husband and father act won’t work with me, Chris. Blair told me—everything.”
“Told you everything about what?”
“She had to fake her death to stay alive! Yes, she’d been staying here because she was scared to death of you. She’d been afraid to leave the house. But yesterday, she sucked up enough courage to go out to spend the day downtown—only to run into you. She was terrified when she called me. I tried to tell her to call the police—as much good as it would have done since you have half of the cops in your pocket.”
“What are you talking about?”
She hissed through the phone at him. “So help me—if you tracked her down and killed her—Stu will do everything in his power to have you locked up for good.”
Click.
Chris went numb. Ivy sounded sincere in her fury. He pieced together her accusations. Blair was afraid of him. More than afraid of him. She thought he was going to kill her. He was the one she had been hiding from.
Where was that coming from? I’ve never touched her or any woman in anything other than a loving manner. Well, there had been a couple of women during my career in law enforcement who I have had to slap around—but that was only when they tried to kill me first. And there were a couple who I killed—but none of that counts. Does it?
