John relayed the information from Rex that their flight plan had changed and she nodded, conceding that switching airlines was probably for the best if they wanted to keep Andre Sardetsky from following them. He would have to be dealt with eventually, she said, and John had agreed.
“Right now, however, we have more important matters to deal with,” he’d added as the plane was beginning its descent.
“That reminds me,” she began, looking at him finally. “Do you have any way to contact General Wainright?”
“Contact information’s back at my desk in Langley,” he told her.
Billie rolled her eyes. “Of course it is. I should have known nothing about this would be straightforward—I’m dealing with the CIA, after all. But it would have been nice of you to bring it with you, so I could get the proverbial ball rolling tonight. I want to get this fuck-up of Wainright’s taken care of as quickly as possible.”
John raised an eyebrow. “You’re really going with that? Planning on telling that one-star BG that he fucked up to his face?”
“You’re damn right I am,” she replied, her expression clearly showing that she meant it. “Because he did. He treated my team like fucking lab rats for his own ends, and because of that monumental lapse in judgment, one of them is dead. I mean to see to it that he gives Eddie the hero’s burial he deserves.”
At that moment the plane’s phone rang. John rose and went to the small desk where it sat and picked it up; Rex was letting him know that he’d managed to get them a couple of seats on an American Airlines flight.
“Unfortunately, they’re in Economy… and the flight’s not scheduled to depart Miami-Dade until 5:00 p.m.”
“Shit,” John muttered. “Just what I don’t need: a two hour delay, in a crowded airport, with a woman who apparently has a bounty on her head. Just fuckin’ perfect.”
After hanging up, he turned around to find Billie staring up at him, a dangerously innocent expression on her face.
“What’s the matter, Agent Courtney? Afraid I might attract unwanted attention?” she asked, her voice sugary and child-like. He would have laughed if the situation weren’t so screwed up.
Her countenance changed into a smile as they felt the plane touching down on the tarmac. After the initial bounce, Billie rose and stepped into the small aisle, moving to stand directly in front of him, at which time she raised a hand and patted his cheek. One, two, three times—with the each successive pat a little sharper than the one before.
“Find your balls, Johnny B. Goode, and remember that you work for the CIA,” she told him, then moved past him and headed for the closet where their gear was stowed.
The two hours she and John had spent waiting at the gate for American Airlines Flight 239 passed without incident, though she was not remiss to the breath of relief he expelled as soon as the “Now boarding” announcement was made. Though in truth she had been half expecting another attack herself, at least she hadn’t spent the entire wait with her shoulders bunched up with tension. Worrying about what could be had never been her style—her brothers had taught her to roll with the punches.
Because they had entered the airport through a secure gate, there’d been no need, thankfully, to pass through Customs. That she had been able to retain possession of her firearms had been a welcome relief, and had relaxed her immeasurably. The sudden thought that without them the wait might have been harder for her made Billie smile, and she shook her head as they joined the queue of passengers waiting to board.
John apparently noticed, and he raised a curious eyebrow. “What is it?” he asked.
“I’ve just been wondering what it says about me that I would have been as wound up as you if we’d have had to check our gear,” she told him.
For a moment he only stared, and then when the understanding hit him, he smiled. “I’m sure the company shrinks would have a few suggestions, such as you’ve equated safety with possession of weaponry, or some other BS psychobabble.”
Billie considered that. “Sounds about right.”
“And for your information, I was not wound up,” John added.
She scoffed. “Please! You turned your head every time someone got up from their seat, and you’ve checked out every man that approached the ticket counter as if you were looking for a gun.”
“I did not!” he exclaimed.
Billie faced him with her “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter” expression, and John laughed. “All right, fine. I was maybe a little tense,” he admitted. “But can you blame me? Given we were shot at twice in less than 12 hours?”
Punching him in the shoulder she said, “Having a point is becoming a bad habit of yours.”
He caught her hand as she dropped it and laced their fingers together. Billie frowned and tried to pull away but he tightened his grip. John leaned down and whispered into her ear, “We’re supposed to be married, remember?”
It was all she could do not to shiver at the heat of his breath on her skin. Swallowing hard, Billie reminded herself that her body’s reaction to this man was unwanted and unwelcome. There were more pressing matters on her mind, not the least of which was the fact that one of the most powerful families in the Russian mafia wanted her dead. She had to find out what about the experimental drugs in Wainright’s program had flipped Eddie’s switch, and she needed to find the rest of her team before the same thing happened to them.
Sexual attraction to a man she had threatened to kill more than once and couldn’t even say she liked was fast becoming a pain in the ass.
She decided to play along, however, and returned the squeeze—though of course she added a little more pressure than was necessary (okay, a lot more). Out of the corner of her eye she noticed John flexing his jaw and smiled.
“Only for three more hours, darling,” she murmured as the line finally moved into the gangway.
It was after 8:00 p.m. before the plane touched down at Dulles International. After disembarking, John led her out of the building and toward a shuttle bus that would take them to the short-term lot where he’d parked his car. Although he’d used the lateness of the hour as an excuse to put off seeing Wainright until morning, on the flight Billie had insisted on seeing him right away.
“Maybe I can’t physically do anything tonight,” she’d said, “but once I have all the information I need about this damn training program, I’ll be able to use the rest of the night to come up with a plan for finding the guys.”
John had been unable to argue with her logic, and so he’d reluctantly agreed to drive her. “You realize, of course, that given the time, Wainright’s probably gone home for the evening?” he said again as the shuttle dropped them off.
“He’s a brigadier general in the United States Marine Corps, and any BG worth his salt all but sleeps at the Pentagon,” Billie threw back. “If he’s not there, then we knock on his door.”
“Billie, be reasonable. It’ll be almost nine o’clock before we even get close to the Pentagon.”
“Agent Courtney, the more you argue with me, the more time you waste,” she said succinctly. “Let’s just find your car and get going.”
He’d only shook his head at her, but she imagined he was also cussing her out in his head, calling her all kinds of impatient and other choice words.
Damn right she was impatient. She had been comfortable in her life down in St. Thomas with Sergei. They had a solid friendship and ran a profiting business. Being with someone who understood the pain she felt had somehow made it easier to bear. It had taken nearly the entire year, but dreams of Travis had begun to come fewer and far between. As much as it hurt to say goodbye to him, she was thankful she’d been dreaming of him less lately—it hurt too much to look on that face in her sleep only to wake up alone.
And then John Courtney just had to walk into her bar to suck her back into the life she’d left behind. Andre Sardetsky just had to choose that night to exact punishment on her and his uncle. It had been painstaking work p
icking up the shattered pieces of her heart and moving on with her life, and now the new one she’d built for herself had been destroyed, just as thoroughly as the one she’d had before Travis had been killed. Billie felt directionless, unsure of where she was going to go from here. Who she was going to be.
She hated that feeling so much it made her blood boil. So she was grasping onto the one thing she found herself able to focus on: getting the information she needed to do the job she was here to do. After that…? Well, she’d see when this was over.
Billie was not altogether surprised to see that John owned a late-model Dodge Charger, a powerful American vehicle that had become popular with law enforcement agencies across the country in recent years. She’d owned a Ford Escape before heading down to the Virgin Islands, though she’d sold it in order to help pay for her trip. John opened the trunk and they both dropped their bags into it, then he hit a button on his key fob and the door locks clicked open. Billie settled into the passenger bucket seat and found it more comfortable than she’d expected. She was fastening her seatbelt when John slid into the driver’s seat and slipped the key into the ignition.
His face lit up with a satisfactory smile when the engine roared to life, and he turned to grin in her direction as it idled into a quiet rumble. “Gotta love the sound of good ol’ American muscle.”
Billie tried and failed to stifle a laugh. “Boys and their toys,” she said with a shake of her head. “Come on, Agent Courtney, let’s drive.”
Just over half an hour later, they were pulling up to the North Parking Visitor Screening Facility at the Pentagon. When the guard on duty asked for their identification, Billie nonchalantly pulled the Virgin Islands driver’s license identifying her as Georgia Ross from her wallet and handed it to John. He only lifted an eyebrow as he glanced at it, before passing it over with his own.
The guard scrutinized the IDs closely, leaning down to peer into the car at each of them in order to compare them with the pictures on the plastic in his hand. It occurred to her then that John’s CIA credentials would have come in handy at this point. Official identification always made things go smoother, unless you were dealing with an operative from another agency—none of the federal agencies liked sharing information or credit.
The guard handed their IDs back. “What’s the nature of your business Mr. Courtney? I’m certain you’re aware of the time—and the last tour ended a good six hours ago.”
“Sergeant, my associate and I have urgent business with Brigadier General Sterling Wainright,” John said. “Could you please see if he’s still on the premises?”
The staff sergeant looked as though he wanted to refuse the request, but nevertheless he stepped back into the guard booth and picked up a phone, while his partner, although standing casually, held his M-16 ready.
They watched the sergeant speak to someone briefly, then he hung up and returned. “I’m afraid the general is no longer on site, Mr. Courtney.”
“Can you tell us why?” Billie leaned forward to ask before John could speak.
The staff sergeant looked at her. “I do not know the general’s itinerary, Ms. Ross.”
“Shit,” she muttered as John thanked the man.
A moment later John was backing out of the drive and turning around. “This is great,” Billie grumbled. “We’ve got no clue where the man is—‘no longer on site’ could mean anything.”
“Don’t get your panties in a bunch, Billie,” John said. “Let me find a phone and I’ll get a hold of Rex. He can call the Brigadier’s house and see if he’s there. If he’s not home, you’re just going to have to wait until tomorrow to throw his monumental mistake in his face.”
Fifteen minutes later, they had confirmation that Wainright was not home—he was at Georgetown University Hospital with his family, where his daughter was in labor with his first grandchild.
“And no, I will not take you there,” John added as he’d relayed the information from Rex.
“Kiss my ass, Courtney. Do you really think I’m so inconsiderate as to interrupt a family waiting on a baby?” Billie asked with a sneer. “Give me some fucking credit for having common decency.”
“I’m almost surprised you even know what that is,” he countered, his voice laced with sarcasm. “I already tried to tell you this could wait until tomorrow.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him pointedly over the top of his car. “Oh really? Eddie Lamacek had a bad reaction to the experimental drugs—”
“You say that as if you already know what happened,” John broke in.
“—killed two people, and injured a third before he was taken down,” she went on as if he hadn’t interrupted. “When the rest of the team went into the wind in the aftermath of that goat fuck, the first thing Wainright did was try to find me, the only person on the planet even remotely qualified to track these men down. That tells me he’s afraid the same thing will happen to them—which also tells me that if there is even a remote possibility of there being a repeat of what happened with Eddie, you’re going to want me to find them and find them fast, preferably before the bodies start piling up. You have three men who are already trained to kill who might potentially have a psychotic break, and you don’t know where they are.
“Now you think on that, Agent Courtney, and then you tell me this can wait.”
FIVE
Sighing heavily and shaking her head, Billie stepped back toward the trunk.
“Pop it,” she said.
John frowned. “What for?”
“So I can get one of my guns out and shoot you, of course. What else?” she replied snarkily.
He scoffed. “Well, if that’s the case, the trunk is decidedly staying closed. I rather like having a heartbeat.”
Stifling a growl, Billie gestured toward the trunk. “Open it so I can get my bag out.”
“I repeat: What for?” John pressed.
“Because quite frankly I’m tired of your attitude. I’d like to get away from it so that it doesn’t spoil my mood,” she told him.
He came to stand across from her at the back of the car. “Billie, I can take you wherever you want to go.”
She shook her head. “No thank you, Agent Courtney. Look, you did your job—you got me here, and in spite of the mediocre efforts of a certain gangster, I’m in one piece. Believe it or not, I rather like having a heartbeat too. But since my part in this twisted tale is on hold until the next chapter, I’d really like some time to myself to think. Preferably without you brooding next to me.”
“Where are you going? How do you propose to get there?” John asked.
“None of your concern, and there are these things called taxis that I can use to get from place to place. I’ll get one of those,” she replied.
As if on cue, the car coming at them from the left turned out to be a cab, and its roof light was on. Billie raised her arm and waved to flag it down. The cab slowed and pulled to a stop at the curb several feet behind John’s Charger. Looking at him, she lifted her eyebrow and nodded toward the trunk. John sighed and pressed the button on the key ring remote, popping it open. He lifted the lid and reached in for her bag himself, holding onto it when he handed it over.
“How will I find you tomorrow?” he asked.
She pulled the bag from his hand. “You’re in the CIA—you figure it out.”
With that she turned toward the cab, walking briskly to the back door on the passenger side. She opened it sharply, tossed her duffel bag across the seat, and got in. The driver, a woman, immediately switched on the fare counter and turned off the roof light, then put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb. Though she didn’t look back to confirm it, she could feel John’s eyes following them as they drove away from him.
After a moment, the driver asked, “Where ya goin’, hon?”
Billie rattled off her father’s address—thankfully, he and two of her four brothers lived in Langley (her father was the city engineer), so at least she had somepla
ce to crash for the night, given she technically had no home of her own anymore.
The cabbie nodded, and Billie settled in for the ride. She noticed that the driver kept looking at her in the rearview—probably wondering if she’d just had a fight with her boyfriend. But in an attempt to lighten her darkening mood, she looked forward and said, “You’re not recording me for Taxicab Confessions, are you?”
The driver laughed. “Nah, hon, nothin’ like that—though I think that show’s hilarious. Just wonderin’ if you’re all right.”
Billie offered her a tired smile. “I’m fine, thank you.”
“That was a mighty fine man you had back there. You guys have a fight or somethin’?”
She had to grin at her accurate assessment of the driver’s thoughts. “Something like that,” she replied. “But he’s not my man. Just someone I’m going to be working with—temporarily, thank goodness.”
“Ooh, can I have him then? He was pretty tasty-lookin’,” the driver said with a wide smile.
Billie laughed…and ignored the twinge of—whatever—in her chest at the thought of John with another woman.
“He’s all yours,” she said, then turned to look out the window once more.
They pulled up to Thomas Ryan’s Cape Cod-style house, the house she and her brothers had grown up in, about fifteen minutes later. Billie noticed right away that her father’s Impala was not alone in the driveway, and there was another car sitting in front of the house at the curb. Part of her was ecstatic, knowing who was inside the house, and part of her was more nervous than she’d been in years.
After all, what did you say to the family that you’d basically shut out of your life?
With a sigh, she pulled her wallet from her pocket to pay the cab fare with some of the cash she’d appropriated from John, then grabbed her bag. She stood on the curb watching the cab drive away, and didn’t move forward until it had turned the corner at the end of the block and disappeared. Drawing a breath to shore up her nerve, she expelled it slowly and started up the front walk.
Two Evils Page 6
