Two Evils

by Christina Moore

  Thus, the idea to rebuild it had formed, and taken hold so fast that it was only a matter of days before the groundbreaking. Kevin had recovered well enough by then to act as project manager, and the final phase of construction had been completed yesterday. All the furniture had been moved in and the bar stocked earlier this morning, and now she was hosting a private party for the construction crew, two of her brothers (Teddy had managed to get the time off to join them and had helped work on building the bar), the Crabana staff, and a select few of their friends. Proceeds from the sales would be donated to the family of the teenage girl that had died in the shootout at the Coconut Hut, and New Year’s Eve sales were already set to be donated to the other victims of the tragedy.

  Billie stifled a sigh as she passed a tray of drinks to Kevin to take back to his table—the whole crowd was watching a football game on the flatscreen television on the wall. She was going to miss this place, she mused, but it was already time to move on. She told herself that she would come back for a visit here and there—after all, she was part owner of the business. But she was the silent partner, the one who would step in and help out only in a crisis, because day-to-day operations were all in Marty’s hands now. He had been floored by the revelation of who she really was, and even more so by her offer to let him run the bar once it was rebuilt. He would essentially be the boss—no need to consult with her if he wanted to make changes. And although the design and layout of this new Crabana differed from the original, every time she turned her head she half expected to see Sergei standing beside her, a towel in one hand and a glass in the other, his trademark lopsided smirk on his face.

  Yeah, definitely time to move on, she mused. Feeling like she ought to be seeing Sergei every time she turned around was beginning to depress her, and she did not want to get depressed the week before Christmas.

  Actually, she was keeping her feelings about leaving the bar to Marty fairly well in check. It helped tremendously that she had complete faith in his business acumen—no chance of going bankrupt when the guy who would be running it had minored in finance in college. No, what threatened to depress her more than having come back to this one-time refuge to say what might well be her final goodbye was a pervasive sense of emptiness, one that had been plaguing her for weeks. Billie had told herself many times that it was merely the process of getting her life back on track—she’d spent the first few weeks reconnecting with her family and friends, and many of the latter reunions had been awkward to say the least. But she was making headway, even going so far as to purchase a new cell phone so that she could remain in contact with everyone.

  But she knew she was kidding herself. There was a reason she couldn’t shake the feeling of being not quite complete, and it was all wrapped up in 6 feet 1 inch of sexy, with broad shoulders, a killer smile, and gorgeous hazel eyes…all of which she hadn’t seen in nearly thirteen weeks.

  She missed John.

  It had taken time for her to really understand her feelings for him, to fully grasp the why and the how of falling for him. The truth had been startlingly simple: John reminded her of Travis. They both had the same steady head under pressure, the same sense of dedication and determination to see a job through, and they both had such a strong sense of compassion for those in need. When she realized what it was she liked about him so much, she had feared that all she cared about were those subtle reminders—and comparing him to her late fiancé really wasn’t fair. John deserved to be with someone who cared about the person he was, not who he reminded her of.

  As time went on, however, Billie came to realize that she was missing Travis less and missing John more. At night when she lay down to sleep, she would often think of his face as she had last seen him, his eyes so full of hope and hurt. She would think of the last words he had said to her, and as she worked to pick up the pieces of her life, they had given her something to hold on to:

  When you are ready, come find me. I’ll be waiting.

  As she thought them again, staring unseeing at the game on the screen, Billie began to think that maybe it was time she did that—went to find him. Of course, given his employer, that was probably not going to be easy. Chances were excellent that he was undercover somewhere half a world away from her.

  “What the fuck are they doing here?”

  The words, though not spoken loudly, brought her out of her reverie and she looked toward the speaker—it was Teddy. He, in turn, was staring toward the door with a scowl on his face. Billie turned her gaze in that direction and felt her spine stiffen, understanding now what had put the dark look on her brother’s face.

  Teddy stood, scraping his chair back loudly on the hardwood floor, and walked toward the new arrivals. He stopped about two feet before them and crossed his muscled arms over his chest. “This is a private party,” he said coldly. “I’m afraid you’ll have to come back tomorrow when the bar is open to the public.”

  The female of the pair flicked her eyes in Billie’s direction, before looking back at the younger man before her and saying politely, “I understand that the gathering is private, Mr. Ryan, and I can assure you that my associate and I are not here to drink.”

  The man at her left tugged on the lapels of his navy blue suit. “We’d very much like to speak to your sister—in private—considering a matter of great import.”

  “My sister is not—”

  “It’s all right, Teddy,” Billie said, steeling herself as she stepped out from behind the U-shaped bar.

  Her brother waited until she was standing next to him before relaxing his posture. “If you’re sure,” he said, scowling again and then returning to his beer and the game.

  Billie then smiled lightly, which seemed to confuse the two visitors. “This, I have to say, is eerily familiar,” she said, “although in this case, ‘A federal agent and a Marine colonel walk into a bar’ isn’t the opening line of a joke.”

  “And I should certainly hope you won’t be tying either of us to a chair to interrogate us,” said the man, whom she recognized as Lewis Burns, European Section Chief of the National Clandestine Service—otherwise known as the espionage branch of the CIA.

  He was her former boss.

  The woman was none other than Colonel Cynthia Harmon, whose position with the Defense Clandestine Service (military brother of NCS, as the Defense Intelligence Agency was to the CIA) equaled that of Burns.

  Billie looked to Burns. “The night is young,” she said with a smirk, knowing his comment was a reference to the last time a CIA agent had walked into the Crabana—the night she had met John. After a moment she sobered and gestured for them to follow her. She led them into the office, where she sat behind the desk as though she had not a care in the world, crossed her legs at the knee and held her hands together in her lap.

  “Please, have a seat,” she said, nodding to the two folding chairs before the desk. When they had sat, she looked between them and said, “What is it you want from me this time?”

  The last time a federal agent had walked into her bar, she had been dragged into a cluster-fuck of a mess that had led to nearly a week of hell. She’d been shot at, actually shot, ran off the road into a river, her father had been held hostage, and she had nearly lost her brother to a mobster’s bullet. By their very presence, Billie knew that Harmon and Burns wanted her to get involved in another such scheme, one that must be pretty damn important to somebody higher up than they were.

  Why else would they have bothered to come all the way to St. Thomas to see her?

  Harmon pulled a manila folder stamped with the DCS logo and the word Confidential from the leather briefcase she had been carrying (prompting Billie to wonder briefly where her aide was) and set it on the desk in silence. Billie turned it around and pulled it toward her but didn’t open it.

  “Miss Ryan, you know why we’re here,” Col. Harmon said. “We’d like your help with something.”

  “As you know, DCS and NCS are meant to work together,” Burns added. “Certainly it doesn�
�t always work out that way—I will admit that there are those on both sides who have a preference for taking all the credit.”

  “Yeah, I get it—you kids don’t always play well together,” Billie quipped. “But something tells me that in this instance you have to, or at least are trying to.”

  Burns nodded. “I’m sure you’re aware that ICE followed up on the information contained in Sterling Wainright’s Pleasures database,” he said. “In so doing, they came across links to global terrorism.”

  Billie frowned. “You mean some of the general’s clients were terrorists?”

  “Not directly,” Harmon put in. “But he did apparently have a rather long on-going business relationship with a known arms dealer, who in turn does have clients who are terrorists.”

  The folder in front of her drew her eyes, and Billie found herself curious as to its contents. “I take it the CIA is already looking into the matter?”

  “Yes, we already have a man preparing to make first contact with the dealer.”

  She looked then to Harmon. “Why is DCS getting in on the action?”

  “Because a string of armored car robberies in three major cities were committed using automatic weapons that were traced back to the same dealer,” the colonel replied. “That’s the intel we got from ATF, who turned the case over to us when the guns were discovered to be linked to an arms dealer who has ties to terrorism.”

  Billie shook her head. “Forgive me, Colonel, but that sounds like something that would be turned over to NCS, not DCS. Why are you really involved?”

  Harmon regarded her with an expression of renewed appreciation. “Two reasons, Miss Ryan. One: We are involved because the driver of one of the armored vehicles was a sergeant major in the National Guard, and he died as a result of the attack. Two: We are involved because mine and Deputy Director Burns’ superiors are apparently keen to actually start working together on matters related to terrorism, and it was agreed that approaching the matter from both an intelligence and military point of view would give us a greater advantage.”

  “I ask again: What is it you want from me this time?” Billie said.

  “Miss Ryan, we would like for you and your team to provide any and all necessary assistance to our man in the field,” Burns replied.

  Billie held up her hand. “Hold it right there,” she said. “First of all, I don’t have a team anymore. If you’re talking about my former Force Recon unit, you can forget it—it no longer exists. Col. Scofield has taken a training officer assignment stateside, and Majors Lincoln and Peck have both been reassigned to other units.”

  Harmon smiled. “You are only partially correct, Miss Ryan. While Col. Scofield is, in fact, at MCB Quantico, Maj. Lincoln and Maj. Peck were reassigned not to other Recon units but to DCS. They’ve been undergoing intensive training in the art of international espionage.”

  She didn’t bother to hide her surprise. It had been a few weeks since she had spoken to Gabe or Darren, but neither had mentioned being redirected to DCS—they’d only told her the unit had basically been disbanded and that they’d been reassigned elsewhere.

  “Well, I guess this was just one of those things that if they’d told me they’d have had to kill me,” she joked with a shake of her head.

  “I wouldn’t take it personally, Miss Ryan—having overseen their training myself, I believe Lincoln and Peck were waiting to tell you about their career change,” Harmon said then.

  Billie scoffed. “Waiting for what?” she wondered aloud.

  “Waiting for you, of course,” Burns pointed out. “Don’t you see, Miss Ryan? You have what NCS and DCS have probably needed all along—dual experience. You’ve served in the military and you’ve served in the intelligence community, so you know how both of them work. You are the perfect candidate to take part in a joint venture between the two agencies.”

  “So what, you want me to be some sort of liaison?” she asked.

  “In a sense,” Burns replied with a nod. “You would still be doing field work, of course, but your unique perspective, based on both military and intelligence training, would be invaluable.”

  Billie scratched her head. “But you have that already in every field operative who works for DCS. Hell, there are CIA agents who are former military.”

  “But none of them are the She-Devil,” Harmon said succinctly. “No one is Billie Ryan but Billie Ryan. And you’re that damn good, obviously, or my friend Burns and I wouldn’t be here. The bottom line is—we want you. We need people like you, with your unique skill set, in the service, Miss Ryan.”

  She turned to give the other woman a pointed stare. “And just which service would I be a member of? Would my employer be the CIA or the DIA?”

  Harmon and Burns looked at one another. “Naturally, both agencies would like to call you one of their own, but perhaps we’ll leave the choice to you,” Burns answered.

  Billie looked at the folder again, then back up at the two across from her. “Suppose I do agree to stick my toe back into the murky waters of the espionage pool… Would I be given the opportunity to work with Majors Lincoln and Peck again?”

  Harmon grinned as she told her, “You seem to do your best work when you have the support of a team, so they are yours for as long as you need them.”

  The colonel glanced at Burns again, and by mute agreement the two of them stood.

  “Review the file, Miss Ryan,” Burns said. “Think about it. Sleep on it. And at risk of sounding terribly cliché, keep in mind what a service you would be doing for your country by saying yes.”

  Billie stared at the office door for a long moment after Burns and Harmon had gone. Then she looked down at the folder, a confidential case file that had been left in the hands of a civilian in the hope that she wouldn’t remain a civilian much longer. Awfully damn sure of themselves, aren’t they? she mused, reaching for the file with a sigh.