With those four words, the hot dog settled in my stomach. The two-year age difference fell away in the face of a lifetime of friendship. And I found my voice.
“I love you, too.”
His body shuddered against mine as though I’d just given him the answer to a question that had been eating him inside. And with those four words, I tied a string around my heart and connected it to his.
The nerves disappeared. Everything disappeared. Maybe on paper we’d gone from friends to more in an instant, but I’d always loved him, and that love had changed until now it was this—Matt cupping my face in his palms, his thumbs stroking back and forth across my cheekbones, and then his lips descended on mine and he gave me my first kiss.
Since Blair was two years older than me and had been dating Thom for years, I’d asked her about kissing. She’d shrugged and said it was nice.
She was wrong.
It wasn’t nice. It was indescribable. It was lips, tongue, teeth moving in a dance I didn’t know the moves to yet picked up as naturally as breathing. It was hungry and desperate and soothing. And right then, I knew—I was the luckiest girl in the world to have fallen in love with my best friend and to have him love me back.
We kissed for hours, my back on the blanket, the necklace he’d slipped on my neck warm against my skin, Matt’s body on top of me, showered by fireworks as America and I turned one year older.
Best birthday ever.
Chapter One
D.C.’s political elite is expected to attend this year’s concert at the U.S. Capitol to celebrate the Fourth of July. We can’t wait to see what scandals we uncover …
—Capital Confessions blog
Kate
Six years later
“Why are you still here?”
I looked up from the project I’d been working on—analyzing newspaper articles from Syria to assist with a leadership profile my boss wanted on a Syrian general—my elbow nearly connecting with one of several cups of coffee strewn about my desk. Sometimes intelligence work could be really fucking tedious. When it was completed, the profile would serve as a reference document providing background information on the general. The goal was to use this information to not only get a better sketch of him, but also as a predictive and descriptive tool to understand his motivations and attempt to guess at what he might do next.
My boss, Richard Standler, stood in front of me, staring down at my cluttered desk.
“Just trying to finish up this report,” I answered, hoping I looked like the dutiful employee.
I’d only been working at the Central Intelligence Agency for a couple of weeks. I’d graduated from Georgetown in May with a political science degree, and gotten an entry-level job working as a political analyst in the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence. My job involved country risk analysis—looking at raw data, both classified and open source—things like media, Internet sites, public data, and professional and academic publications—to make assessments on how U.S. interests would be affected by a particular country’s goals and behavior. In my case, I was assigned to the Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis. I’d taken Arabic in college and was pretty much fluent, so that definitely helped.
It wasn’t the glamorous, car chase “spy” job everyone envisioned when they thought of working at the CIA—my greatest health hazard was probably getting carpal tunnel—but for someone who geeked out on international relations and security policy, it was pretty much my dream job.
“You do realize it’s a holiday, right? You didn’t actually need to come in today.”
Ugh. It was. It was also my twenty-second birthday.
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m about to head out. I just wanted to get this finished.”
It was important to me that I made a good impression. I wasn’t great at office politics, but I was a hard worker and I hoped that would take me far.
“Do you have plans to go see some fireworks later?”
“No, I’m just going to head home after this.”
He shifted from side to side as though he was looking for something else to say, but finally he just nodded and gave me an uncomfortable smile.
“Well, don’t work too late.”
I forced a smile. “I won’t.”
I listened to his footsteps walking away, and then I went back to the report, grateful for the silence. Maybe it made me a freak, but I sort of liked working when the office was nearly empty. It saved me from awkward, stilted conversations with my coworkers. I was here to do a job, not to make friends. I was here to learn everything I could about what happened that day in Afghanistan when my fiancé, Matt, had never come home from his Special Forces mission.
We’d dated throughout high school, gotten engaged my freshman year of college after Matt had decided to give up his future at Intech, his father’s private security firm, and instead enlisted in Army. I’d only been eighteen, and my parents had definitely not approved, but I hadn’t worried or questioned my decision for a second. We’d had the kind of relationship that had been solid, and my future had always seemed like it was meant to include him.
Until I woke to a phone call telling me that his unit had been ambushed, and he’d been killed in Afghanistan.
There hadn’t been a body to bury; details had been scarce. Much of it was swept under the “classified” rug, leaving me with a whole lot of questions and a wound that seemed impossible to recover from.
I wasn’t stupid; I knew the odds of me finding out any information on Matt’s death were slim to none. I was at the absolute bottom rung of the CIA food chain, and my access to information was limited at best. Not to mention, I couldn’t exactly advertise what I was looking for. No, I had to hope I got lucky, or that I performed really well and they started increasing my access level.
It wasn’t just the need to know what had happened to him, it was the suspicion that there was more to the story, the mounting evidence that my father, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was somehow linked to what had gone down in Afghanistan nearly four years ago. It was a mission I’d picked up a year ago, a vendetta I wasn’t willing to let die. Even if it meant I was dead girl walking.
If I was going to go out, then I was going to go out in a fucking blaze of glory—
And take everyone down with me.
I left Langley and drove home, searching for a parking spot in my neighborhood. The city was even busier with the crowds celebrating the Fourth, and I had to park several blocks away from my apartment building.
I walked down the sidewalk, pushing through the crowded streets. It was dusk and the fireworks had yet to start, but the sidewalks teemed with people enjoying the warm D.C. summer. I lengthened my strides, hating the crowds, ready to collapse on my couch, watch TV, and finish off the Lebanese food I’d bought last night.
Suddenly, a chill slid down my spine. Again.
I froze. My head whipped around as my gaze swept my surroundings.
Groups of people walked down the street behind me, laughing and chatting as though they hadn’t a care in the world. How long had it been since I’d felt like that? Since I’d felt normal?
A body collided with mine.
“Hey, watch where you’re going.”
I mumbled an apology to the man, ducking my head and picking up the pace, my street nearly in sight.
It was stupid, and I’d probably become paranoid, but I swore it felt like someone was following me. I’d had the feeling for weeks now. I couldn’t pinpoint why, had never seen anyone behind me; it was just a feeling. One that had me looking over my shoulder, wondering when I’d pay for the shots I’d taken against my father’s reputation.
All it’s going to do is get you killed.
My sister Blair’s words when she’d learned that I’d been selling information about our father, Senator Edward Reynolds, to Capital Confessions hit me again. Okay, yeah, maybe I knew why I felt the way I did. Why I had trouble sleeping. Why I kept a safe-deposit box full of information in case o
f my death.
I wasn’t sure when my life had become a Greek tragedy, but I didn’t doubt my father would kill me if I got too close to the truth of what had happened to Matt in Afghanistan—if it were true and my father had really been involved.
I couldn’t resist the urge to peer over my shoulder again, not sure if I was relieved or annoyed to come up empty. After weeks of this, I was ready to face whoever was after me. Maybe I was crazy. I at least consoled myself with the thought that even my father wasn’t likely to have me killed on my own birthday.
Probably.
Although, if he were going to do it in a way that minimized the scandal to the family and presented him with the perfect political opportunity, having me mugged on my way home would be the optimal cover.
I still lived in the same tiny one-bedroom apartment I’d lived in during college. It wasn’t in the best part of D.C., but it was cheap, and since I’d cut off ties with my parents after Matt’s death, I’d paid for my own college education and living expenses. I had some money in trust from my grandparents, but four years at Georgetown had been expensive, as had my apartment, shitty though it might be. The CIA paid okay, but it wasn’t anything crazy, so I tried to live pretty frugally.
It was a testament to twenty-two years of being a Reynolds that I could easily envision the speeches and the piece of legislation my father would sponsor decrying the high crime level on the streets. Yeah, if I were going to have me killed, I’d go with a mugging.
Fuck.
My heart raced as I walked up to my building, unlocking the front door and slipping inside, the door shutting behind me immediately.
I released a breath, my body sagging. I steadied myself for a moment and then I made the trek up six flights of stairs until I reached the front door of my apartment, unlocking it and heading inside.
I got comfortable, changing into a pair of cotton shorts and a tank top. My apartment didn’t have the luxury of central air—nothing like the seven-thousand-square-foot home I grew up in—and it was boiling today. I threw on an episode of an old nineties sitcom and feasted on the last of my chicken shawarma from last night’s dinner. As far as birthdays went, I’d had worse.
I read through texts from my sisters, Blair and Jackie, responding with promises to call later. Jackie and her fiancé, Will, had plans to attend the big concert at the Capitol this year. Will was newly elected to a state senate seat in Virginia so it helped for them to be rubbing elbows with D.C.’s movers and shakers. They’d invited me to join them, but I’d spent more of my childhood than I cared to remember being dragged to things like that, and it wasn’t an experience I wanted to repeat.
Blair had moved to Boston with her boyfriend, Gray, and had decided to spend the holiday up there, working an event her nonprofit had put on for the families they served. Even if she had been here, I wasn’t sure we would have spent the day together. Things had been tense between us ever since she found out I had been working with Capital Confessions last year—and was responsible for the blog outing her relationship with her then–law professor. We’d mended fences for the most part, but our relationship remained strained.
I missed my sister. Our personalities couldn’t have been more different—Blair was poised and polite and I was more of a bull in a china shop—but we’d still been pretty close. Growing up the way we had, we’d banded together out of both love and necessity. Besides, living our lives in the public eye had made it difficult to let a lot of people in. Trust was the ultimate commodity, and you learned pretty quickly that this town ran on power and everyone wanted to get close to the people who held it. As the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, my father was the ultimate power broker. He was also an asshole.
It wasn’t just the affairs, or the way he’d treated my sister Jackie, the illegitimate daughter he’d fathered and abandoned, or how we butted heads at every turn. He wasn’t just an asshole; he was the kind of guy who would take anyone down if their interests threatened his—including me. And he was definitely involved in some dark shit.
I grabbed the old, worn file folder sitting on my coffee table, flipping through the pages I practically knew from memory. A year ago, the first packet had arrived in the mail addressed to me with a preprinted label and an Arlington postmark. Every few months or so, more came. Each packet came from a different city in the metro area. Each packet had a little more information about the security firm Intech’s operations in Afghanistan.
The first packet had contained two important pieces of information:
My father’s name and Matt’s father’s name. And then came the documents with Matt’s name, surrounded by a whole lot of blacked-out bits.
Matt’s father, James Ryan, owned Intech, one of the world’s largest private security firms. He was also one of my father’s largest campaign contributors.
I didn’t even know what I had exactly—a lot of it was redacted—but the fact that someone had sent me this was enough to make me think there was more there. The conversation I’d accidentally overheard days after Matt’s funeral filled in the other missing piece, shattering any ties I had to my parents.
Blair had accused me of being obsessed with what happened to Matt, and she was probably right. She’d told me I needed to move on, needed to find a life for myself. I just didn’t know how. We’d been a couple ever since my sixteenth birthday; before that we’d grown up together as best friends. I’d loved him forever. I hadn’t just lost my fiancé; Matt’s death created a hole in my life that I couldn’t fill. And more than that, it created a hole inside of me.
You didn’t bounce back from that.
I jerked up in bed, a loud crash coming from the direction of my living room.
My heart pounded, my gaze darting to the nightstand and the alarm clock next to my bed. Instead of the neon numbers I expected to see staring back at me, the screen was dark. I fumbled with the lamp, reaching for the switch. I flicked it on. Nothing happened.
Fuck.
A chill slid down my spine, my limbs filling with ice. Maybe there’d been a storm. Maybe it was just a normal power outage. Maybe someone had come to kill me.
Another crash—the sound of breaking glass—the noise once again in the direction of the living room.
It wasn’t a dream; someone was definitely in my apartment.
Fuck.
I reached for my cell, only to come up empty.
Fuck.
I’d left it in my purse, which was not-so-conveniently sitting on the coffee table in the living room.
I got out of bed, heading to the closet. I fumbled around in the dark for a moment, until finally my hand connected with the wooden handle of a baseball bat. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. If I were lucky, maybe I could catch the intruder off guard. I definitely wasn’t going to stay here like a sitting duck, waiting to be killed. If I could get a good swing in, then maybe I could make it to the front door. I had a few neighbors—surely someone would hear me. Hopefully, they weren’t all gone for the holiday. Not to mention, since this wasn’t the best area, fights weren’t exactly something new. The hope that someone would overhear and call the cops was probably in vain.
My hands tightened around the bat, sliding over to the bedroom door, cursing the old construction and the fact that none of the interior doors had locks on them.
Adrenaline slammed through me, my body tense and poised for a fight as I waited, my gaze locked on the handle of the door, waiting to see it turn.
Dreading it.
A shout came from the other side of the door.
My breath caught.
Another shout.
Oh god, there’s more than one of them.
A loud thud, followed by a series of grunts, filled the night air. Then another thud—like the sound of bone connecting with bone. More grunts. A shout. Popping sounds.
Someone was fighting in my living room. The realization surprised me enough that the bat slipped through my fingers and dropped to the ground. Judging from
when I’d gone to bed and the sliver of moonlight in the inky sky shining through my sixth-floor window, it was two or three a.m. And there were strange men fighting in my apartment.
All it’s going to do is get you killed.
Maybe I should have listened to Blair. Maybe I should have just let everything with Matt go. He was dead; why did I need to go dredging up old ghosts? What would it accomplish, really? And after a year of trying to research what had really happened to him, all I had to show for my efforts were a few cryptic pieces of paper, men fighting in my living room, and my imminent death.
But why were they fighting? If my father—or someone connected to him—had sent someone to kill me, why hadn’t they done it already? Why were they fighting each other? Assassin’s quarrel?
I picked up the baseball bat, my knuckles white. Silence filled the apartment.
I stayed in the corner, directly behind the bedroom door, my gaze trained on the doorknob, struggling to control my breathing, trying so hard not to make a sound. My limbs felt frozen, pulled down by fifty-pound weights. I was afraid to move, afraid to breathe too loudly, afraid to do anything except grip the baseball bat as though it were an extension of my body.
Minutes passed.
No one came to kill me.
Were they gone?
Indecision filled me as I struggled with what to do next. Part of me wanted to go into the living room and try to grab my phone so I could call the police. It was so quiet—maybe they really were gone. At the same time, it seemed crazy to run toward danger. And part of me couldn’t have moved if I wanted to—my body plastered against the wall, my legs frozen with fear.
And then the doorknob made the decision for me.
Horror filled me as I watched the knob turn, heard the creak of the hinges as it opened, and then I swung with all of my might, the bat connecting with muscle and bone with a sickening thwack.
The intruder crumpled to the ground with an oath and I leapt over the body, the bat dangling from my hand, running toward the living room, panic clawing at my throat. I grabbed my bag off of the coffee table, running toward the front door, my heart pounding as I prayed that I’d hit him hard enough to keep him down for a while.
Falling For Danger Page 2
