“Funny,” Max said, “you don’t look like you’re not here. Who exactly are you hiding from, Locke?” He leaned over the receptionist’s desk to get a look at the rows of monitors showing the downstairs lobby. He pointed to Dwayne, who was standing there looking like Mr. Perfect in his Dockers, his shirt sleeves rolled boyishly up to his elbows. “This guy? What’s wrong with him?”
He wasn’t Sam Starrett.
“He’s arrogant, egotistical and insincere, he thinks he’s God’s gift to women, and he doesn’t understand that no means no.” On the other hand, when she put it that way, Dwayne sounded an awful lot like Sam. “Dwayne’s a school teacher, but he can’t seem to learn that I’m not interested in dating,” Alyssa explained. “I’ve told him, many times, that I’m focusing on my career right now.”
“Which thrills me to no end,” Max shot back at her. “But I’m a little concerned when one of my top agents runs and hides from a teacher. What’s going to happen when you come face to face with an AK-47-toting terrorist?”
“I shoot him,” Alyssa said flatly. “I didn’t think that that was the correct response in dealing with Dwayne, sir, and since talking to him hasn’t seemed to work, I was going with plan B. Become invisible in the hopes that he’ll get tired of chasing someone who’s never there.”
Laronda was watching and listening with unabashed interest. It was no secret that the receptionist had a crush on Max. He may not have been extremely tall—not as tall as Sam, anyway—but he had the dark and handsome part down pat, with deep brown eyes to die for. A lot of people in the bureau had crushes on Max. Including Alyssa’s own partner, Jules.
“Please tell him I’m not here,” Alyssa told Laronda again.
“Hold on,” Max ordered. He turned to Alyssa. “You really want to lose old Dwayne once and for all? Because I can help you get rid of him.”
Oh, God. “No, thank you, sir. I’d prefer to do this myself—”
“By going back into your office for another thirty minutes until you’re sure he’s gone? Look at you. You were ready to go home, weren’t you?”
There was no denying it—she was standing there holding her briefcase. “Yes, but I have plenty of work to—”
“Laronda, tell our pal Dwayne that you’re not sure, but you think Special Agent Locke may have just headed down to the lobby,” Max said as he took Alyssa’s arm and pulled her toward the elevators.
“Max.”
He pushed the call button, but there was already an elevator right there, waiting. The doors slid open, and he pulled her inside.
“Max.”
He smiled at her, a picture of innocence. “Yes?”
“Don’t you dare do what I think you’re going to do.”
“Well, I have no intention of shooting poor Dwayne if that’s what you mean.”
The bell rang, the doors slid open, and Max slipped his arm around Alyssa’s shoulders as they went out into the main lobby.
Alyssa knew it looked as if he were holding her casually, but his grip was like a vise. She couldn’t get free without creating a giant scene. And it was possible, even with a scene, that she still wouldn’t have been able to get free. She kicked him in the ankle, hard, but to his credit he didn’t even flinch.
“I just bought an entire case of Alligrini Amorone, 1996,” Max was saying loudly enough for everyone in the lobby—in both this building and the next—to hear. Both Dwayne and Lenny, the security guard, were watching them from the other side of the room. “It’s supposed to be magnificent and I’m thinking it’ll taste twice as good if we have a glass or two in the hot tub.” He laughed and lowered his voice to a perfectly projected stage whisper. “Of course, Bud Light tastes amazing in the hot tub with you.”
And then he kissed her.
His mouth was warm, his lips were soft, and he tasted like coffee and cinnamon. As far as kisses went, it wasn’t awful, the way kissing Dwayne had been. It was actually nice. Sweet.
Safe.
And when he stopped kissing her, she saw that, just like magic, Dwayne had finally vanished.
But oh my God! She’d just kissed her team leader—her boss—in the lobby of the Washington, D.C. FBI Headquarters.
She pulled away from Max, punching him hard in the arm, and this time he let her go. “Don’t you ever do that again.”
“I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean for it to be more than just a quick—”
“I can take care of my own problems myself,” she told him hotly. Lenny was still watching them. “That wasn’t real,” she told the guard.
Max followed her out of the building and into the steamy early evening heat. “You have to admit it did the trick. So long, Dwayne.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Perfect. Now Dwayne thinks I was lying when I told him I didn’t want to date him, that I didn’t want to date anyone. Thank you very much.”
“Some guys have such big egos, they’d never believe a woman would prefer to be alone instead of with them. Some guys just never give up. Unless you wanted him following you around—”
“Don’t be a dickhead.” Alyssa stopped walking and turned to face him, giving him her widest eyes and most innocent face. “Oh, excuse me. Did I just call you a dickhead? I probably shouldn’t do that, considering you’re my boss. But wait. You kissed me. In front of Lenny. Talk about inappropriate and actionable behavior, Mr. Bhagat.”
Max laughed. “You know, I really like you, Locke.”
Alyssa felt her glare falter.
“No,” he said, quickly. “I don’t mean like that. Although to be honest, that kiss was a little more than I bargained for. It was a little too nice, you know—considering we’re both in love with other people?”
Alyssa turned away. The evening was so humid, the sidewalk was actually damp. “I don’t know what you’re talking a—”
“I know about you and Sam Starrett.”
She went for a major bluff, turning back to face him dead on, eye to eye. “I don’t know what you think you know, because there’s nothing going on between me and Lieutenant Starrett. He’s married now. He’s got a daughter.” Little Haley. Sam had sent Jules, her partner, a picture of Sam and his wife, Mary Lou, holding a scrawny little, red-faced, yowling newborn. Alyssa had taken only very slight satisfaction from the fact that the baby was ugly, that Mary Lou had gained about seventy extra pounds from her pregnancy, and that Sam looked weary.
“I didn’t say there was something going on between you,” Max said gently. “I said, you’re in love with him.”
“Well, I’m not,” she lied. “I spent some time with him last year, yes. But that ended.”
When he found out he’d knocked up his old girlfriend. When he went back to California to do the right thing. Damn him for being so honorable. Damn her for loving him for the fact that he was so honorable.
Max nodded. “Okay. But you should know that I make a point to know what’s going on with the members of my team, and I happen to believe that you’re in love with not just a married man, but a married Navy SEAL. That’s got to suck.”
“As long as you believe I’m a good agent, capable of getting my job done, I don’t care what else you believe,” Alyssa told him. “If we’re done here, sir, I’m going home.”
Max shifted so that he was standing directly in front of her, blocking her way to the parking garage. “What? And miss secret sharing time? It’s my turn. Don’t you want to hear that I’m hung up on this girl—and I’m not being politically incorrect by calling her that. She’s really a girl—she’s almost half my age; she’s not even out of college. And if that weren’t bad enough, she’s a former hostage from that hijacked plane we helped take down last year in Kazbekistan.”
Alyssa remembered the plane, remembered the girl. “Gina.”
He nodded. “Gina Vitagliano.”
Alyssa was completely surprised, both about the relationship and the fact that Max was telling her about it. “You’ve been . . . seeing her?”
Max correctly read he
r hesitation, her use of the words “seeing her” to imply a sexual relationship. His smile was rueful. “I’ve met her for coffee, even dinner, gone to visit her at her parent’s house—that was weirder than hell. Her father’s my age—but no, I haven’t been seeing her. Not the way you mean. She was . . . assaulted on the plane.”
It was his turn to speak euphemistically. Gina had, in fact, been violently gang-raped by the hijackers as part of a power play. And Max had listened via the microphones the SEALs in the counterterrorist team had planted on the aircraft, unable to do a goddamned thing to stop her from being attacked.
“Do you really love this girl?” Alyssa asked him now. “Or do you just feel guilty because she was raped on your watch?”
That was one hell of a harsh question to answer, but he didn’t turn away. “Honestly? I don’t know. The shrinks all say that her feelings for me aren’t real. It’s all transference, and that she’s still fixated on the fact that I was her lifeline throughout her ordeal. They say that I’m doing her more harm than good by seeing her. So I stay far away from her, and what does she do? She calls me on the phone.
“I try not to be home at any regular times, but somehow she always knows when to call. And I end up talking to her, two, three hours a night, a couple times a week. This past week, I’ve stopped answering my phone, and I’m going crazy, missing her.”
Alyssa knew all about what that was like. “I’m sorry.”
He cleared his throat, forced a smile. “Yeah, well, I didn’t mean to get all pathetic and maudlin. I just wanted you to know you’re not the only one in this unit who has a secret.”
She nodded. His was one hell of a secret, too. Continued involvement with a former hostage. Despite the fact that he was careful to avoid sexual contact, there had to be rules against that. If the wrong people found out . . . “Your secret is safe with me, sir.”
“As yours is with me.” He started walking with her. “So since my life really sucks, and your life really sucks, you want to go get some dinner?”
She looked at him sharply. “No. And I also don’t want to have sex with you, thanks, despite the fact that we’re both so dreadfully lonely. Isn’t that the line that comes next?”
He laughed. “Honest to God, I’m really just hungry. And if you’re hungry, too—”
“Max, what is this really about?” It was Alyssa’s turn to stand in front of him, to keep from going anywhere. “You know damn well if I have dinner with you, someone’s going to see us, and word’s going to get out. The assumption’s going to be that if we’re eating together, we’re sleeping together.” And there it was. She’d answered her own question. Max didn’t move a muscle, his expression didn’t change, but Alyssa knew. “You want the word to get out, don’t you? Because you think that somehow it’ll get back to Gina. You want her to stop calling you.”
“Yes. In fact, it would help me enormously if you could come to New York with me in a few weeks, so we could ‘accidentally’ run into her . . . Then she’ll make some discreet calls, find out that yes, indeed, I have been seeing you . . .”
“What about me?” Alyssa asked. “Didn’t it occur to you that the entire bureau will think I’m getting ahead in my career only because I’m getting with the boss?”
“I didn’t think you cared what other people thought. I know you’re very private with your personal life, but as far as conventional behavior . . . I mean, come on, your partner—whom you chose over any other partner, and you had your pick—is gay.”
Alyssa gasped. “Oh, my God, he is? Jules? Really?”
“Think about what happens when word gets out that we’ve been spotted together, wiseass. Spec Ops is a very tightknit community.”
She knew what he was saying. It wouldn’t take long for SEAL Team Sixteen—Sam’s team—to hear that Max and Alyssa had hooked up.
“You don’t want Starrett to think that you’re out here pining away for him, do you?” Max asked.
She couldn’t answer that.
“Okay,” Max said. “No pressure. Just . . . think about it, all right? I mean, you have dinner all the time with Jules, right?”
“Jules is gay.”
“Yeah, well, you’re just as safe with me. I’m a pedophile.”
Alyssa had to laugh at that. “Max, I know for a fact Gina’s over twenty-one.”
“Yeah, well, back when I was thirty, she was only twelve. Hey, before I forget . . .” Max dug into his briefcase and pulled out a book. He tossed it to her. “I want you to read this.”
Double Agent: From Brooklyn to Berlin
It was an autobiography of a woman named Ingerose Rainer von Hopf. Alyssa quickly skimmed the front cover flap. Apparently Ingerose—or Rose as she was called by her friends—was a German American who was recruited by the Nazis to provide information on American aircraft manufacturers in the early days of World War II. Apparently, they targeted a large number of first-generation German Americans, especially those who, like Rose, worked for companies like Grumman. Pretending to be eager to help the Fatherland, she signed up to be a Nazi spy during a trip to Berlin. But upon her return to New York, before she even stopped at home to kiss her mother and father hello, she went to the FBI. At age eighteen, she became America’s first female double agent.
“Hey, I just heard an interview she did for NPR,” Alyssa said. “She sounded amazing.”
“She’s even more amazing in person.”
“You’ve met her?”
Max nodded. “You’re going to have a chance to meet her, too. Rose doesn’t know it yet, but Alex von Hopf, one of her sons—she’s got twins—just went missing in Indonesia.”
“Oh, no.”
“Once she gets the news, I’d give her twenty-four hours before she charters a flight to Jakarta, straps on an automatic weapon, and marches into the jungle to look for him.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Alyssa looked at the photo of the woman on the back of the book. It was from the 1940s, showing a girl in her early twenties with the devil in her smile. There was an inset of an elderly woman with the same smile. “She’s got to be, what? Seventy-five years old?”
“Eighty,” Max said. “And no, I’m not kidding. Don’t get into a fight with Rose von Hopf. Eighty or not, she’ll kick your ass.”
He pointed the opposite way down the sidewalk. “I’m parked this way. Unless you changed your mind about—”
“I haven’t.”
“Then see you later, Locke.”
“Good night, sir.”
“Hey,” he called back to her. “You might want to start packing. The team’s going to Indonesia. Maybe not tomorrow, but definitely by the end of the week.”
Savannah came out of the bathroom wearing one of Ken’s bathing suits and a T-shirt, feeling a little shell-shocked.
This was surreal. She was here in Ken Karmody’s house, wearing Ken Karmody’s clothes, about to sit down across from Ken Karmody himself and eat his food for dinner.
She hadn’t planned to meet him this way. Now how was she going to tell him about Alex, and ask him to go to Jakarta with her without having to confess she’d been in his neighborhood because she wanted to see where he lived?
No matter how she worded it in her head, it came out sounding as if she were just short of stalking him.
There had been several little windows of opportunity when he’d first approached her, the first when she’d looked up and realized it was, in fact, Kenny Karmody standing there outside her car. Another had opened after he’d asked her why she was in his neighborhood, but she’d frozen, again unable to tell him why she was there without sounding like some complete and total freak.
The inside of Ken’s house verified the fact that he did, indeed, live by himself. There was a package of clean socks and underwear from a laundry service in the living room, in a prime position on the coffee table. The art on his walls tended to be mostly movie posters from science fiction and action films. His home entertainment system was enormous and state of the art
. And in the kitchen, he was clearly on the once-a-week plan in terms of loading his dishwasher.
The bathroom bore all the telltale signs of a recent visit from a cleaning service. While in there, Savannah scrubbed the grease from her hands and face—how had she gotten so much on her forehead and nose?—succeeding in washing off most of her makeup as well.
Still, as she emerged, Kenny gave her a smile that was lit with appreciation. You are so fucking pretty. She actually believed it when she looked into his eyes. Even dressed the way she was.
He’d already put away the groceries, cleaned up the dirty dishes, and had filled a bowl with salad.
“Can I help?” she asked.
“Nope.” He put a glass of wine in her hand, and carrying the raw steak and the salad, led the way through a set of sliders into the backyard.
Troubleshooters 04 Out of Control Page 4
