Calculated Risk

by Stephanie Doyle

  Present

  “Got him.” Sabrina pushed open the trunk, but stopped when she felt Quinlan’s hand wrap around her ankle. Their eyes met, but she didn’t want to think about what she saw in his face. “I got him,” she assured him.

  “I’ll go first.”

  Rather than crawl through the space left open by the already flattened seat, he worked at pushing down the one next to it.

  Sabrina shook her head. “You know there was a time when you wouldn’t have minded brushing up against me.”

  He looked at her, but said nothing. The poker face was back. It was a pretty good one, too.

  “I’m glad I never ran up against you at a table in Vegas.”

  Quinlan hopped out of the trunk and immediately dropped into a squat, his gun in hand, ready. No shots were fired.

  “I told you I got him,” Sabrina muttered as she crawled out of the trunk to stand next to him. She lifted a finger and pointed. “He’s over there.”

  She started to walk in the opposite direction, but again Quinlan reached out to stop her, this time grabbing on to her arm.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I wasn’t kidding. I have to pee. And I don’t want an audience.”

  She stared down at where his hand circled her arm and waited. There was no point in struggling. He would let her go on his terms and only then. After a moment, probably once he realized they were stuck in the middle of the woods with nowhere to run, he dropped his hand.

  “This isn’t going to work,” she blurted.

  “What?”

  “You and me.”

  “There is no you and me,” he said coldly.

  There was. And she wanted to call him on it, but decided it wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t about them anymore. It was only about the mission. And he was getting in her way.

  “I meant us working together,” she clarified. “Not if you can’t even trust me to pee, for Pete’s sake.”

  “Trust? You’re thinking about FBI partners. Doesn’t work like that in the CIA. You know that. Go take care of your business. I’ll wait here.”

  Sabrina stomped off into the woods. Not because she was mad, but because she wanted to send any living creature left in the area scurrying. There was no point in being angry with Quinlan. She wasn’t going to sway him. She wasn’t going to be able to reason with him. Only her actions would change his mind. So far she’d run from him, then kneed him in the groin, then lied to him about Kahsan. Not the most conducive behavior for winning someone’s trust.

  She was going to have to work on that.

  When she returned to the car she saw him searching for identification on the body. Predictably, his hands came up empty. Steeling herself against the sight of death, she did what she’d been trained to do in these situations and disassociated herself from the kill.

  Leaning over Quinlan’s shoulder, she saw the mess the ricocheting bullet had made with the man’s face.

  “Ew,” she moaned, trying only to see what she’d done and not feel it. “Messy. But hey, what a shot.”

  Quinlan glanced over and saw a chunk missing from the tree directly to the left of the body and shook his head. “Ridiculous.”

  “But it worked.”

  “You couldn’t have left him alive so we could have questioned him?”

  Sabrina’s jaw dropped as she pointed to the tree then back to the car. “Excuse me, did you see the angle on this shot? I got him. We’re out. Be happy with that.”

  He nodded. “It would have been better if we could have questioned him and ascertained that he was, in fact, working for Kahsan. You know he isn’t the only bad guy out there. Any one of them would want to know the location of terrorists already inside the country.”

  “Yes, but none of them would know about me. And they certainly wouldn’t know how important keeping me alive was.”

  They left the body and walked back to the car only to find that their sudden stop hadn’t been caused by the driver hitting the brakes hard, but rather by a large tree, which the front of the Cadillac was currently wrapped around.

  “That sort of sucks,” Sabrina noted.

  “You mean because we’re going to have to walk out of these woods?”

  “No, I was thinking that it sucks for the driver, who was lucky to have survived this impact only to get it in the face ten minutes later.”

  Quinlan regarded her for a moment.

  “I’m not going soft,” she insisted. Heaven forbid. Softness had been driven out of her a long time ago. “I’m just saying it sucks, that’s all.”

  “From the very beginning your psyche profile indicated an unwillingness to take a life,” he said, as if just recalling that particular fact.

  “Okay, but here is where I’m going to point out that that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

  “It almost kept you out of the program.”

  This was news. She was doing all of this, risking everything really, to be let back in, thinking it was the only place she truly belonged and Quinlan was telling her that she’d almost not gotten into the program in the first place.

  For a moment she tried to imagine what her life would have been like if she’d never started down the CIA path. If she’d never met Quinlan. She didn’t like the idea, which was almost hysterically funny considering the number of times she’d wished that she’d never met Quinlan.

  “I’d still be stuck with the geeks at Harvard,” she muttered, wondering if she had stayed on that course would the past ten years have been more productive? More purposeful? Maybe if she’d stayed there…

  “You never would have lasted with them,” Quinlan said, interrupting her thoughts. “You were ready to bail when we found you, remember?”

  Yes, she remembered. And he was probably right. She wouldn’t have stayed, which meant she probably would have just gotten thrown out of the casinos at a younger age. Quinlan had come at a very pivotal time in her development. He saved her really. Absolutely, she’d needed him back then.

  But she didn’t anymore. What she did need, however, was a new direction. Or, she supposed, an old one.

  Sabrina glanced back at the body. “If you’re worried that I’m not up to handling the job-”

  “What makes you think it’s going to be any easier to kill Kahsan?”

  “Because Kahsan is a bad guy. I don’t have a problem taking out the bad guys. The driver was just a stooge. Some grunt taking orders to keep us occupied and out of commission until he got word from his boss. I did what I had to do to ensure our escape, I don’t have to be happy about it.”

  He didn’t respond, but instead took the phone off his belt and dialed a number.

  Sabrina walked away and tried to get a sense of where they were. She contemplated the drive from the time they left the house. Then she glanced up and saw the position of the sun coming up over the trees.

  “This is Quinlan. I need a location.”

  While he was talking to someone back at headquarters, who was probably using a GPS to figure out where they were, Sabrina made her way back to him.

  “The highway is about two miles south of us. Once we get back there, there’s a motel about ten miles east. We can probably get to it before your people get to us.”

  Quinlan pulled the phone away from his ear, and Sabrina could hear someone on the other end giving him the exact same information. For whatever reason he seemed annoyed that she’d been able to determine their position without the satellite.

  She just shrugged her shoulders. “What can I say? I know the area.”

  “Get me Krueger,” Quinlan said into the phone, and then frowned as he listened to the other person give his response. He seemed to hesitate for a moment before he said, “No. No need to pull him out of a meeting. Let him know our situation and tell him to contact me as soon as possible. And you’ll need to send a cleanup team to Stansfield.”

  Sabrina jumped on that. “Hey, tell them while they’re picking up bodies that if they want to go ahead and put on a
new porch that would be okay by me. And remind them that if they fix the door, I had stained glass…”

  He didn’t bother to roll his eyes, just snapped the phone shut and replaced it on his belt, then holstered his gun, certain now that there was no one else in the woods waiting for them. “Let’s go.”

  “Maybe once we get to the highway we can hitch,” she suggested.

  “No, we’ll keep to just inside the woods and parallel the highway. I’m not taking any chances.”

  “You think Kahsan is going to drive by on Route 15?” She was being sarcastic, but Quinlan wasn’t laughing.

  “We both agree there is a real possibility that he’s in the country. If that’s the case, then yes, I think he might be able to drive by on Route 15.”

  There was something in his tone, Sabrina concluded. Something that suggested he wasn’t happy and she didn’t think it had anything to do with the fact that they had a long walk in front of them. She figured now was as good a time as any to lay more of the groundwork for what was to come.

  “I thought you would approve of my plan,” she told him. “You can’t tell me, me of all people, that you’re not chomping at the bit right now because you believe Kahsan is close and you have a chance to take him down.”

  “It’s a chance. I’ll give you that. But not one you had to take.”

  “I don’t mind being the bait,” she offered and realized that she meant it. “I had nothing else to do.”

  He released a breath and followed with his eyes the puff of icy air that escaped his mouth. In an efficient motion he removed his overcoat and handed it to her.

  “I told you I didn’t want it,” she protested.

  “Take the coat. Give me the gloves. And don’t argue.”

  Sabrina considered being stubborn, but the truth was she was cold and it was going to be a long walk. He was wearing a heavier sweater and, given his weight over hers, wouldn’t be as susceptible to the cold. Plus, she planned on pressing him on the first question she’d asked so there was no point putting up a fight over the coat.

  Pulling it around her as she pushed her arms into the too long sleeves, she tried to ignore the scent of him that immediately infiltrated her senses. It was so familiar to her. It seemed strange that it should be that way after ten years, but it was. Mentally, she sighed and moved on to practical matters. She found the gloves, one in each pocket, and tossed them to him.

  “Let’s go,” he ordered and started heading south, his legs eating up the distance, so that she had to almost jog to keep up.

  “So tell me what you thought when they told you to come get me,” she urged. “I can’t imagine you were thrilled.”

  He didn’t turn around, but he did answer her. “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Were you really that freaked out about seeing me again?”

  He stopped then, so abruptly she almost ran into his back. He spun around and she waited for his reply.

  “You’ve always got to push,” he muttered.

  But she heard him. “I know. I want to know. Tell me what’s got you all riled up. I can’t believe this is about seeing me again.”

  “You think this is about you? You think I would let a bad scene from ten years ago affect me?”

  No, she didn’t, but now he was even more worked up.

  “That’s incredibly arrogant.”

  “Maybe. But I think about how the last person I wanted to pick me up for this job was you, and then I can’t help but think that the last person you would have ever wanted to deal with again was me. But I didn’t have a choice. You did. You could have told them to send someone else. What are you doing here?”

  “I told you why I was here.”

  “Because you don’t trust me,” she reiterated. “That’s right. You already knew about the contact with Kahsan. So you thought you were coming to save the day. Only now you realize that I’m the one running this show. Is that it? Don’t tell me you’re jealous? Jealous that I got to him first?”

  Quinlan ran a hand through his short-cropped hair, his agitation, something he rarely displayed, was evident.

  “I was in Pakistan when I got his call,” he began. “Krueger telling me to get back ASAP because they wanted to give an ex-agent a crack at breaking an unbreakable code. Then I hear about some woman making contact with… I thought, shit, it’s finally happened. Sabrina’s finally been turned to the dark side. Hell, we knew it was just a matter of time.”

  The verbal assault was supposed to hurt her, but she let it go. Mostly because she didn’t believe it. Smugly, she challenged him.

  “That’s not true. If you were really worried about me turning traitor, you would have called in the cops and had me taken out. Picked up to be interrogated by some FBI or CIA goons at the very least. No, you waited because you wanted to make contact with me first to find out what I was up to. Don’t think you can mess with my head, Q. Once upon a time, you used to be able to do that. Not anymore. You knew damn well what I was doing. Tell me the truth. You wanted in.”

  “In?” His tone was pure astonishment. “In on this great plot you have to use yourself as a human lure? It’s laughable. Kahsan is like the fucking tide. He can’t be controlled or contained. But you think you’re going to manipulate him? With what? A carrot?” He laughed out loud, a short, harsh sound, then pinned her with his gaze.

  “This plan was poorly thought out. And now, because of you, because of your recklessness, which by the way wasn’t entirely unexpected, this man is loose inside this country and after you. Which means I don’t get to fail, Bri. I don’t have the luxury of missing him this time to try again. Three times I’ve come close with nothing to show for it but some dead assets and dead agents. Good people. People with families. I’ve got to get this done now, and the only person who can help me is you. You, who I still don’t know if I can trust.”

  “Wow,” she breathed softly. “That is, like, the most words I’ve ever heard you say at once.” His face turned a splotchy red and she feared he might literally explode. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make a joke… But Q, you’ve got to understand something. I want this guy, too.”

  “No, you want back in,” he corrected her. “Isn’t that what you said? And for some reason you’ve decided you need to be a hero to make that happen.”

  “You don’t think I can do it? You don’t think I can be a hero?” She wanted to know, even as she choked around the word hero.

  “It’s not a matter of what you can do. It’s why you’re doing it. You want back in?” he questioned again, his tone incredulous. “Hell, you’ve spent most of your life trying to get out. Away from your father, away from me and away from the CIA. Don’t try to deny it. There is only one person in this world that I know better than I know Kahsan and that’s you.”

  This time she shook her head fiercely. “No. That’s not fair. You knew a girl named Sabrina Masters. A girl genius with a chip on her shoulder and a bad attitude. You took that girl and you made her believe in something. Then you took it all away.

  “Ten years, Q. Ten years of trying to forget and get back on my feet. Ten years of trying to figure out who I am and what the hell I’m supposed to be doing. You think you’ve got a monopoly on wanting to take out the bad guys? Well, you’re wrong. You told me I could have been the best. I know that. And I know that I have to live with the ten years I’ve lost. Maybe it was reckless contacting him, but you have to believe that I can do this. I can make this happen, I can take Kahsan out and-”

  “And what?” he asked when she stopped abruptly.

  And make it all right again. That’s what she’d been about to say. Sabrina dropped down on a heavy log and put her face in her hands. She’d returned Arnold’s first e-mail, called Krueger, accepted his deal to play this role and made contact with Kahsan, all of it, because she’d wanted to make up for those ten years.

  Why?

  Because it would make her feel better? Because it would erase the guilt?

  None of the answers were nobl
e. More, they were selfish. She hadn’t stopped to think of the consequences, but in her defense it was only because she hadn’t considered that she might fail. She had always believed that she was that good.

  Failure was exactly what Quinlan was considering.

  Kahsan was “in-country.” A horrible and frightening reality. The devil had come knocking and someone had left the door unlocked.

  Maybe he would have come anyway. Or Krueger could have moved on to Plan B. Or maybe not. Maybe if she’d said no, she could have stopped it. But it was too late. He was coming. Because of her. It was only now that she understood how serious the risk she’d been taking and how dangerous the game she’d been playing were.

  But the payoff… Would it be worth it? Only a clairvoyant would know.

  “You didn’t like my plan because you know if I miss him the cost could be catastrophic,” Sabrina stated for the record.

  Quinlan walked over and sat next to her on the log, his thigh pushed up against hers. “I’ve missed him three times. Three fucking times. And I’m pretty good.”

  His humility was a joke, but she couldn’t laugh, not when the pressure of what she’d done was weighing on her chest like a fallen set of dumbbells. “For someone so smart I can be pretty slow sometimes. I always think I have all the answers.”

  Quinlan chortled briefly. “It was always hard training you because you believed so much in your abilities. And your abilities were remarkable. Are remarkable. I was constantly caught between trying to push you to go further while at the same time trying to show you that you couldn’t do it all.”

  For a moment they let silence reign. The echo of a memory they both knew well, lingering, but being left unspoken. Only the sound of the wind rustling against dead leaves interrupted.

  Then Sabrina stood in a rush of forward motion and brushed off the dirt and debris from his coat where it covered her bottom. “Here’s the thing. It’s too late to stop any of this now. Even if we wanted to.”

  “I know.”

  Apparently his tirade, while somewhat uncharacteristic, had been necessary for him to get what he needed to say off his chest. There was a lot of stuff between them, stuff that could get in the way. She guessed that the more they put out in the open to be dealt with, the better it would be for both of them.