Rory leapt to her feet and stepped in front of me, stopping my momentum. She placed her hands on my elbows and dipped her head when I ducked mine to force me to look into her eyes. “Ryan.”
“Yeah?”
She opened her mouth but then closed it again almost immediately as she shook her head. She hesitated a moment before trying again. “I’m a little cold. Wanna go grab dinner?”
I was about as eager to prolong this experience as I was to retake the SATs. Or go back to FLETC. Or have a sit-down with my boss. All my remaining energy spilled out of me, leaving me feeling as empty and fragile as one of those blown-out eggshells they’d made us carry around in high school to simulate child care. I could probably only handle about five more minutes of this in-depth examination of my emotions before I shattered.
It was my turn to shake my head. I stepped back so Rory’s hands fell from my arms and tried to smile at her. It felt wobbly and insincere, but it was the best I could do. “No, thanks. I’m not really very hungry.”
Rory frowned and took half a step forward but didn’t try to touch me, for which I was grateful. “Then do you want me to come over so I can take out your stitches?”
As tempting as that was, at this point, I’d rather have removed them myself. Besides, now that the tidal wave of my emotions had ebbed somewhat, I was once again reminded that she was in danger just by being near me. She needed to get as far away from me as possible and stay there, at least until I figured out exactly where the threat was coming from. “Can we do it another time? I’m kinda tired. I think maybe I’ll just try to get some sleep.”
“But it’s barely dinnertime.”
“Yeah, well, I have some serious catching up to do.”
Rory’s brow wrinkled, and she tilted her head as she studied me. I chewed on the corner of my lower lip as I held my breath and waited for her inspection to end. Finally, she nodded and dropped a gentle kiss on my cheek. “Of course. I’ll see you soon. Sweet dreams.”
“Thanks, Rory. And thanks for, you know, listening.”
“Any time. You know that.”
I bobbed my head, turned, and left the cemetery without looking back.
CHAPTER EIGHT
If I believed in hell, which I was pretty sure I didn’t, I might’ve been worried that lying to my sister so blatantly would’ve earned me an express ticket. Even as the words were coming out of my mouth, I’d had no intention of going home. Not yet. She’d been right. It was too early for me to go to sleep. For one thing, I’d probably just toss and turn for hours, driving myself crazy by thinking. For another, it’d up the chances of me having more than one nightmare, and you couldn’t pay me enough to sign up for that.
Having completely dismissed the idea of returning to my apartment, I decided to head back to my office. I still had online learning modules to complete. True, I was technically on medical leave and could put them off, but in addition to stalling my going home, doing them lulled me into such a stupor, I was pretty sure I’d be able to fall asleep with no problem when I finally did go to bed. Besides, I felt a whole lot safer in the office than I did in my apartment. A sniper would have no line of sight to my part of the building, and it’d be next to impossible for anyone to get inside and catch me off guard. Sure, it meant one more trip outside to get back home, but I’d deal with that when the time came.
I set up the module about fire extinguishers and propped the hollow of my cheek on the heel of my hand. My eyes glazed over almost immediately as it started to play, and I sighed heavily. This might not have been nearly as bad as the DVDs they used to make us watch before these mandatory modules became digitized—the one for fire extinguishers, for example, looked as though it hadn’t been updated since the 70s—but it was still as boring as all hell, and I wanted to gouge my own eyes out.
After a while, I started doing the long, slow blink that meant I was starting to drift off to sleep, and my thoughts became foggy and jumbled. The corner of 49 and Lex beckoned insistently, and while I wanted to resist, I didn’t have the energy to put up a convincing fight.
“I recognize that look,” a familiar voice said from my doorway, wrenching me back from teetering precariously on the edge of sleep and causing me to sit up quickly and then hiss at the white-hot slash of pain the movement caused. A nod toward my computer monitor. “Bird flu?”
If I were a cartoon character, my eyes would’ve bugged out of my head at the unexpected sight of Allison leaning against my door frame with a tiny smile on her lips. I shook my head, feeling a little dazed. She really was there, right? I hadn’t just fallen asleep and conjured her up in my dreams? “No. Fire extinguishers.”
Allison’s smile widened just a tad, and she stepped fully into my office and closed the door. “I miss the DVDs,” she said as she took a seat in the chair opposite my desk.
“I was just thinking the same thing.” My mind was still churning sluggishly as I attempted to shake off the last hints of slumber.
“They were stupid, but they were at least entertaining.”
“What are you doing here?” I blurted without thinking.
Allison rolled her eyes. “Aren’t you happy to see me?”
“Of course I am. It’s just…don’t you have to work tomorrow?”
Allison nodded and crossed her left knee over her right, then drummed her fingertips on the arms of the chair. “Yeah. I have an SA-1 day, and I’m going to try to go to the POR.”
Ah, paperwork and range. “Nice. What time do you need to report?”
“Oh-nine-hundred. But I plan on being a little late.”
“Won’t that piss off your boss?”
Something dark flickered behind her eyes before her expression became neutral again. “I sure hope so.”
I frowned. “Is that the best idea? Deliberately trying to make him mad? I mean, aren’t you guys already fighting enough as it is?”
Allison’s eyes narrowed. “Who told you we were fighting?”
Oops. I shouldn’t have said that. “Uh…no one. I just assumed. You told me he was giving you a hard time.”
“How does that translate into us fighting?”
“It doesn’t. Like I said, I assumed. You know me. I like to make an ass out of myself.”
The look on her face told me she didn’t believe me. “It was Jamie, wasn’t it?”
“Who?” Somehow I thought playing dumb was the way to go. Not one of my better plans.
She averted her eyes, shook her head, and muttered under her breath, “I should’ve known.”
“Known what?”
I could see a proverbial lightbulb illuminate inside her as her gaze snapped back to me. “She was on the phone with you earlier today, wasn’t she?”
I cleared my throat to buy myself a couple extra seconds to try to think of a way to pull Jamie out from under the metaphorical bus I’d just driven over her at top speed. Unfortunately, it didn’t help. “What?”
Allison took a long, deep breath. “She and I will be having a talk about that when I see her again.”
I stood up and walked around to Allison’s side of the desk and perched on the edge in front of her. As a shift whip, Allison was sort of a peer supervisor and therefore fell into Jamie’s chain of command. This could get very bad for Jamie very quickly if Allison decided she wanted to be petty. “Allison, let it go.”
“No. She needs to learn to keep her nose out of other people’s business.”
“She was just worried about you.”
“So she called you?”
“Well, we’re friends.”
Allison mumbled something to herself that I didn’t catch and glared at nothing in the corner of the room.
“What?”
“This is why I don’t like to date people I work with. Everybody gets involved.”
The room suddenly became a vacuum, and breathing like a normal person was no longer an option. I forced myself to think past the ringing in my ears, to pay no attention to the flush burning beneath my skin
. Dozens of comebacks started clamoring for attention, begging for permission to trip off the tip of my tongue. But I held off for a moment. I wasn’t about to ruin this with my typical mouth-off-first, cringe-later behavior.
“Why did you really come here tonight, Allison?” I asked after a long moment, taking great care to make my voice as soft and gentle as I could under the circumstances.
Allison’s head shot up, and for a millisecond, I’d have sworn she’d forgotten I was there at all. Her brow had crinkled adorably, and her eyes were brimming with confusion. But the moment was short lived, and she was back to herself in the time it took me to cock my head. “I thought you wanted to talk. Be all adult and whatnot. Isn’t that what you said?”
“Oh.” I hadn’t been expecting that. “I do. I just thought we’d do it over the phone. I didn’t expect you to hop a train immediately after your shift to race up here. Especially not when you have to work tomorrow.”
“I needed to get away from DC anyway.”
“Because of your boss?”
She regarded me for a long moment before she nodded slowly. “Yes. I know in my head he can just call me or email me, and he probably will, but something about the physical distance is comforting.”
“I can understand that. I wish he hadn’t forced you to go back so soon. Not because of me, although I do like spending time with you, but cutting your annual leave short was a shitty thing to do.”
“Yeah, well, as it turns out, he’s a pretty shitty guy.”
“I’m sorry. It sucks having a tool for a boss. Believe me, I know.”
“You haven’t hit the lottery yet, have you?”
“What?”
“Your plan to win the jackpot, buy a private island, quit, and spend your days lounging naked on your own private beach sipping mai tais.”
“I don’t recall saying anything about being naked or sipping mai tais.”
“Maybe that was just in my fantasy then.”
Her words alone made me dizzy. The mental pictures that accompanied them completely stole my breath and robbed me of the ability to think clearly. When I was finally able to form words again, I licked my lips and said, “Uh, no. Sorry to say I haven’t won the lottery yet. But you’ll be the first to know if I do.”
“I’d better be.”
“So, are you ready to talk about why you’re not-mad at me?”
Allison’s expression was suddenly dark, her mouth set in a grim line. “Oh. That.”
“Well, you did come up here to talk. We may as well get right down to it, don’t cha think?”
“Yes, I suppose we should.”
“Unless you’re partly upset because I haven’t figured out for myself why you’re upset.”
“That doesn’t help.”
“Well, I could start guessing if you’d like,” I said as I stood and then strode back around my desk to resume my seat, “but somehow I suspect you’d tire of that game quickly.”
“You’re right.”
“Let me take one stab at it.”
Allison nodded once, an almost imperceptible lowering of her head that I wouldn’t have caught if I hadn’t been watching for it. She laced her fingers together and rested her clasped hands on her stomach.
“You’re upset that I won’t talk to you about what happened.”
Allison’s smirk was bitter, and her eyes remained flat and hard. “You got it. And who says all blondes are dumb?”
I wrinkled my nose. “Cute.”
“I try.”
I hesitated, not certain I wanted to get into all this now, not feeling as prepared as I’d have liked, but knowing I needed to wade through it sooner rather than later. “I get why you’re upset. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
Allison’s eyes narrowed for an instant, and then she shook her head. “I’m more frustrated and hurt than I am angry.”
“I get that, too.”
She appeared to be considering her words before uttering them. “I just wish you’d talk to me.”
“Okay,” I said quietly, not positive I’d spoken loud enough for her to have heard me. I took a long moment choosing random items from the top of my desk to pick up and fiddle with one at a time before discarding them for something else that’d caught my eye. How to even begin? And where? I sucked on my bottom lip and twirled a few stray locks of hair around my finger as I deliberated, keeping my eyes carefully averted from Allison until I was ready to start sharing.
“Okay,” I said again, taking one last deep breath and laying both palms flat on the desk on either side of my keyboard. “So you know how I haven’t really been—”
A new email notification popped up on my computer screen just as my BlackBerry buzzed to announce the same thing. Initially, I glanced at it absently because it was kind of in the way of the fire-extinguisher video that was still running silently, and I fully intended to click it away, but when my eyes snagged on the sender, my heart leapt. I stared at it for a long moment, trying to convince myself it really was the phone company with my subpoena results. Wow, a turnaround time this short was unheard of. Greg must really have some pull over there.
Allison prompted me. “How you haven’t really been…?”
I kept my eyes glued to the screen as I reviewed the decryption instructions embedded in the body of the email. “Um…How I haven’t really been…” Would I be able to open these from this computer with the firewalls we had set up? Would I have to wait until normal business hours to set up my decryption password, or could I do it now? I frowned as I reread the directions, absently rubbing my forehead as I tried to figure it out.
“You’re checking email in the middle of our talk?” Allison asked, sounding torn between incredulity and exasperation.
“I’m sorry. What?” I snapped my head up to look at her, and her obvious aggravation made something inside me shrivel.
Allison uncrossed her legs and leaned forward in her chair. “It’d better be important.”
“Oh. Just some subpoena results for a case that I wasn’t expecting yet. That’s all.”
Her brows pulled down as she looked at me for a long moment. “Do you really need to deal with this now?”
“Um…no?” I reined in my disappointed sigh and sat back in my chair, forcing myself to close the email window before taking my hand completely off the mouse and putting it in my lap so as not to be tempted.
Allison ran one hand through her hair and stared at the ceiling for a bit before shifting her attention back to me. “Ten minutes.”
“Huh?”
“You have ten minutes to deal with whatever that is. Then I’m turning your computer off, and we’re getting the hell out of here.”
“No, Allison. You’re right. I’m sorry. This can wait. Nothing is more important to me than you.” And while that wasn’t necessarily a lie—while she was more important to me than anything and anyone and whatever these results showed could wait until tomorrow because I probably couldn’t do anything with them tonight anyway—waiting to take a look at them would slowly gnaw away at my insides.
The corners of her lips turned up in a small smile, and she shook her head. “As sweet as that is, we both know only half your focus will be on our talk. And I want your attention undivided when we do this.”
“Are you sure?”
Allison retrieved her personal phone from the holster on her belt and made a series of swipes and presses on the screen. When she was done, she held it up so I could see that she’d set a timer that was now counting down the interval she’d allotted. She wiggled it for emphasis. “When this goes off, you’re mine.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
CHAPTER NINE
My mind was running like a squirrel on crack as I flew through the email decryption procedures, eager to see what the subpoena results had to say. I prayed they’d give me something other than a prepaid cell phone that was no longer active. With my newly acquired suspicions regarding the assassination plot, I doubted I’d be able to handle th
e disappointment and frustration that’d accompany that sort of blow.
The ringing of the main squad phone line broke though the haze of self-absorption, and I glanced at my watch. Who’d be calling the squad at this time of night? The phone rang again, and my eyebrows went up as my attention drifted around, searching for other signs of life. Pangs of sympathy echoed loudly within me. A call to the main line at this hour was never a good thing. It normally meant someone’s shift was about to get extended whether they liked it or not.
The phone rang a fourth time, and since it appeared the response guys were either unable or unwilling to answer it, I mouthed “I’m so sorry” to Allison as I grabbed the receiver on my desk. Allison rolled her eyes and huffed, obviously annoyed, but she didn’t try to stop me from answering or storm out, which I took as a win.
“Secret Service.” My eye wandered to the caller ID display as I spoke. The words weren’t even completely out of my mouth, yet when the realization of exactly who was on the other end of the phone hit me, I cringed.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath. It was the Protective Intelligence Division in DC. Shit, shit, shit. Allison looked up from the report she’d been reading and raised her eyebrows at me. “It’s PID,” I mouthed. She winced and shifted in her chair, her irritation replaced by sympathy.
“Uh…Hello?” the voice on the other end said, sounding uncertain.
I closed my eyes and massaged my forehead, where I could feel one hell of a killer headache gathering. “Secret Service,” I said again. My eyes popped open, and I glared around, trying to catch sight of the guys who were supposed to answer the phones. They were grinning like idiots at me from my doorway. I scowled at them and flipped them off as they laughed and ran away.
“Hi, this is Agent Phelps from PID. Who’s this?”
“Hey, Scotty. It’s Ryan.”
“Hey, Ryan.” His tone was bright and a little too enthusiastic for my taste. “Even when injured, you just can’t stay away from work, can you?”
Worthy of Trust and Confidence Page 9
