Sabotage
Page 3
Sophie blew out a breath with an expression that clearly said “please.”
Abbie threw her hands up. “Okay, point taken.” She took a moment to think. “There’s no way this is going to stay under wraps if Bringle is after a presidential nomination. Some plucky reporter is going to dig it up.”
“Exactly.”
“Bringle might be making some proactive moves. His PR people could spin this. The American public could look past it. But embezzlement? Not so much. This could be a tactic that allows Bringle to redirect everyone’s attention.”
Abbie crossed her arms tightly. Politics was like a game of dirty chess, each player setting up his moves and waiting to strike. Could this be Bringle’s attempt at checkmate?
“What else can you find?” she asked.
Sophie’s eyes took on that zealous, concentrated look she got whenever she was deep into a digital investigation. Abbie leaned over her shoulder to see what she was doing, but the screen was changing too quickly for Abbie to follow. “What the hell, Sophie? Can you slow down?”
“No,” Sophie said without stopping. “You don’t want me to. In another hour, we’ll know everything there is to know about Bringle, down to his second grade teacher’s cat’s name.”
Chapter 8
Jonathan came home to find Abbie sitting at his dining room table, poring over a file. She didn’t look up when he entered the room, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t aware of his presence. Abbie always had a handle on her surroundings. That just meant she was really engrossed in her work and didn’t want to break focus.
He took a moment to observe her. Her copper hair was in a loose bun held secure by a ballpoint pen. He’d seen her whip her hair up like that multiple times, but he still didn’t understand the physics of it. He liked when her hair was pulled away from her face, though—it accentuated her cheekbones. Not to mention the fact that she had a body that could rival anyone on the runway.
He came behind her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. They hadn’t made arrangements to be together tonight, but he’d had a shit day and having her here when he got home softened the blow.
“You must have had a long day,” he said. “It’s almost midnight.”
He inhaled the scent of her hair as he pressed his lips to her temple. The rigidity in his body went down a degree. Having her close couldn’t take away the shit storm that was his professional life right now, but it sure as hell helped.
How had he managed without her in his life? It had only been a few months, but he couldn’t imagine his life without her, which was why he’d asked her to move in. And like a jackass, he’d totally messed up the question. He hadn’t brought it up since then, and now there was this thing between them. A slight distance. He didn’t like it.
But goddamnit, the move made sense. Surely, the analytical Agent Whitmore would see that. But the person inside needed time to get used to the idea.
“Not as long as yours.” She rose and turned to pull him into her arms. “I’m sorry you’re dealing with all this shit.”
Shit was right. Abbie had a succinct way of putting it.
“Yeah, it wasn’t how I’d planned to spend my day.” He attempted a smile and failed. “Christ.”
“This might make you feel better.” Abbie turned back to the papers on the table. “Ed Bringle.”
Jonathan frowned. Bringle was a representative from New York and a thorn in his side. They were in the same party, but you wouldn’t know it half the time. “Okay. What about him?”
“Back in 2009, he—”
“Wait.” Jonathan put his fingers to his temples and rubbed. God, he was slow on the uptake tonight, but he had a valid excuse. His brain had overloaded several hours ago. “You dug up dirt on Bringle?”
“It’s not dirt.” Abbie’s expression was indignant. “These are facts. As I was saying, in 2009—”
“Stop.”
“What?” She said the word as if he’d slapped her.
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Done what? I just—”
“Goddamnit, Abbie! You shouldn’t be looking into this. You’re my girlfriend, for Christ’s sake! Don’t you think it’s a conflict of interest for you to be involved?”
Abbie crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at him, staying silent for a few moments. He could tell by her rigid posture that she was fighting to keep her temper at bay. “I can’t sit back and do nothing,” she said finally. “You’re not at fault here. Someone framed you.”
“I know.” Jonathan sighed. “Look, I’m sorry. I’ve had a stressful day. I just think it’s best if the authorities handle this.”
“I am the authorities.”
“Goddamnit, Abbie, I don’t want you involved!” He put his hands through his hair and turned his back to her for a moment to collect himself. At the sound of rustling papers, he turned back around to find her shoving the file in her bag.
“Abbie, wait. You know what I mean.” He stepped toward her and took her hand, but she jerked it free.
“No, I don’t.” She slung the bag over her shoulder. “I know you’ve had a terrible day, though, so I’m going to let this go for now. Have a good evening.”
With that final icy comment, she brushed past him.
“Abbie, don’t go.”
Her hand paused on the doorknob, and he held his breath, not knowing if she would heed his plea or walk out on him in his darkest hour.
Not that he didn’t deserve it.
She was trying to help. That’s what she did—she fixed things. Hell, that was the reason they’d met. His life was being threatened, and she fixed it. She caught the bad guy.
He knew it wasn’t in her nature to sit by idly while someone she cared about was threatened. And that’s what she would see this as—a threat to him.
Abbie slowly turned to face him. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
“I don’t want anything but you. I just want you to be here.” He closed the distance between them and reached for her hand. This time she let him take it. “Just be here. That’s all. I know you want to fix this, but you can’t fix this one for me.”
“This is me being here. This is who I am. I’m wired to attack. I can’t step aside and let someone ruin you.”
“I’m not asking—”
“The fuck you are!” She wrenched her hand away. “Don’t ask me to melt into the background like some meek society wife.”
He stared at her. Where the hell had that come from? “Is that what this is about? You don’t want to be my wife?” He laughed bitterly. “Because if you are serious about us, our relationship, you know that’s where I’m headed. You know the demands of my life and my career. We’ll need to be a legitimate couple in the public eye.” He paused, letting a moment of silence linger between them.
“You know,” he continued, “I found your jokes about the other wives amusing. I thought it was partially in good fun. But now I see that it’s not like that. You think you’re too good for them.”
“That’s not—”
“Well, guess what, sweetheart, there’s no ring on the table, so you don’t have to worry.”
Abbie recoiled in a way he’d never seen before, and he’d seen her in hand-to-hand combat. Goddamnit, maybe his words had been too harsh. Because yeah, the ring wasn’t literally on the table, but it’d been in his pocket for the last month.
But she wouldn’t even address the topic of moving in with him.
He didn’t need this shit. Not now. Not with everything else he was dealing with.
“I wasn’t worried,” she snarled. “Don’t get your panties in a twist.”
A bleak feeling settled in his heart. Did she ever worry about him?
Chapter 9
The TSA agent leaned her head back to squirt some Visine in her eyes. She’d been reading the damn scanner for the past hour and her eyes felt like they were going to bleed. In only ten more minutes she’d be relieved. And then two more hours until she could go home.
She watched another suitcase go through the scanner, peering closer at the screen at a straight metal object. Oh, knitting needles. Those were fine.
The next bag came through and it was definitely not fine. There looked to be two—no, three—handguns and several knives. What rock was this person living under? Everyone should know by now that weapons weren’t allowed in carry-on baggage.
She stood and addressed a tall strawberry-blond woman waiting on the other side of the scanner. “Ma’am, is this your bag?”
Without missing a beat, the woman quickly grabbed the bag and pushed the TSA agent standing on her side of the scanner, surprising him and knocking him back into the belt.
“Stop her!” the fallen security agent yelled.
The woman barreled over another TSA agent before a third finally tackled her and held her facedown on the ground. By then, air marshals swarmed in and took her into custody, cuffing her and patting her down.
The TSA agent’s hands were shaking. Guns had come through her line before, but it was always because the passenger was a dumbass and “forgot” the rules. She’d never had an actual terrorist come through, but what else could this woman be?
A fallen passport on the floor caught her eye, and she leaned down to retrieve it. She opened it and read the name aloud. “Abigail Whitmore.”
Chapter 10
Abbie’s phone rang where it sat on the nightstand on her side of the bed. Jonathan groggily opened his eyes and peered at the clock. 3:47 a.m.
This wasn’t the first time Abbie had received a phone call in the middle of the night. Never once had one brought good news. Jonathan stifled a groan. Their lives were about to get even more complicated. Shit.
He’d apologized after their fight, but things still weren’t right between them. Their bodies didn’t touch in his queen-size bed. There might as well be a concrete wall between them.
And shit, she hadn’t apologized at all. But he honestly didn’t have time to deal with this shit. So he’d let it go for now, give her some time and work on figuring out what was happening with his life. Once he had his campaign straightened out, then he’d work on straightening things out with Abbie.
If they even could be a couple. After her comments, he wasn’t sure where he stood with her. Would she even want to make things right between them?
Abbie groped at the nightstand for her phone with her eyes closed, but when she answered, she sounded fully alert. “Agent Whitmore.”
Jonathan dozed off, listening to Abbie’s murmurs and sounds of affirmation. Good thing he rarely got middle-of-the-night phone calls. When he first woke up, he was barely coherent. But it was a good thing one of them was able to function. That would be helpful if they were to ever have a baby.
Jonathan’s eyes flew open. Where the hell had that thought come from? Yeah, he wanted kids someday. A family living in a house with a white picket fence and a golden retriever who’d greet him at the door when he got home at night.
The White House’s fence wasn’t exactly made of pickets. Or white, for that matter.
But hell, he was thirty-six. He wasn’t getting any younger, and he didn’t want to be one of those geriatric dads who couldn’t even throw a football around.
Goddamnit. He was like a damn spinster whose biological clock was ticking. And Abbie was the damn man in this relationship, unwilling to commit.
Abbie ended the call and tossed her cell phone back onto the end table. Jonathan tucked his thoughts away for another time.
“My identity has been compromised,” she said curtly. Yeah, she was definitely still pissed, but like any good agent, she’d perfectly compartmentalized her personal feelings so she could focus on the job.
And he would do the same.
“What do you mean?”
“At LAX, a woman tried to break through airport security with weapons. And her passport identified her as me.” Abbie got out of bed and started pacing in the dark. Jonathan clicked on a light.
“She had a driver’s license and several credit cards with my name on them,” Abbie said. Her phone chimed, signaling an incoming e-mail. She picked it up and scanned through it. “Shit. She even resembles me a little. That’s a horrible dye job, though.”
She showed the phone to Jonathan. He had to agree about the dye job, but even more about the resemblance. It was creepy.
“She didn’t make it very far,” Abbie continued. “There was no way she was ever going to be successful with getting that many weapons through security. So why?”
“Have they questioned her?”
“Of course. She’s not talking. She’s an amateur, but those forged documents are top notch. And with my information on them? They couldn’t have been cheap. So why waste them on someone who is ill-equipped to get the job done? What was the point?” Abbie tapped her chin thoughtfully. “This can’t be a coincidence.”
Jonathan scrubbed a hand over his face. “What?”
“Both you and I had personal security breaches in the last twenty-four hours. What are the odds of that?”
“Well, in our lines of work, we both rack up enemies.” Even as he said the words, he knew they were a cop-out. He was looking for the easy explanation for this new and troubling turn of events.
She shook her head. “I don’t buy that. I mean, yes, we have lots of enemies, but this is too much of a coincidence.”
They were targets. He closed his eyes for a moment, letting that sink in. Shit. This could be the Hak Tanir attack all over again. Only this time, he wasn’t the only mark.
Abbie was in danger, too. So far, the threats weren’t physical, but that did little to ease his fear.
Maybe that was one of the problems. As long as she was an agent, Abbie would always be in danger. It was the nature of the job.
And it scared the hell out of him.
She yanked open a dresser drawer where she kept her extra clothes. “I’m going in to the office. I won’t be able to sleep now, anyway.”
“Why don’t you work here for a while? I can help.”
She shook her head. “I need Sophie. I’ll call her on my way in. She’ll get the info I need in a fraction of the time.”
Damn. Abbie’s words were a sucker punch to the gut.
But it wasn’t about him.
She’d gotten less than two hours of sleep, but Jonathan knew it was pointless to argue with her. She wouldn’t rest until she’d figured this out. He sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. “I’ll make you some coffee.”
He might not be able to keep her safe, but he’d make damn sure she was awake enough to attack the situation with a clear mind.
Abbie put her hand on his chest and pushed him back down. “No. You need rest so you can deal with the shit storm that’s waiting for you in the office in a few hours.” She turned to leave and paused. Slowly, she turned back around and pressed her lips to his, but the gesture felt unnatural. Forced.
“Sleep,” she said. “I’ll be in touch.”
She left before he could respond, before he could right the situation. And he prayed to God that mockery of a kiss wouldn’t be the last they shared.
Chapter 11
Abbie popped a pod into the Keurig right when she heard the office door slam open, followed by Sophie’s clomping footsteps. Sophie didn’t bother greeting her, and instead, went straight to her computer and turned it on.
Abbie pressed the steaming mug of coffee into Sophie’s hand. The other woman held it under her nose with her eyes closed for a few seconds before taking a sip.
“Okay,” she said. “I can function now. Let’s start with the DMV.”
“I can do that,” Abbie said. “That’s basic. Where else?”
“It can be anything, really. Credit cards. Someone could have snapped a picture of your ID and used that info. Did you get any calls asking you to verify personal information? Throw away anything recently that might hav
e your personal information on it? Identity theft is not that hard.”
Abbie narrowed her eyes at Sophie. “You’re lucky it’s so early. I never shoot before”—she checked her watch—“six a.m.” Actually, now that she thought about it, that wasn’t true. There was that one time. “The breach wasn’t on my end.”
Sophie grinned. “I figured, but I had to ask.” She turned to her computer and cracked her knuckles before diving in.
Abbie started the tedious work of combing through DMV records for signs of tampering. Though she wasn’t the cyber expert Sophie was, she’d be able to spot any unusual activity there.
An hour later, she scrubbed her hand over her face. As far as she could tell, the DMV records were secure. Damn it. That would normally be a good thing, but right now, it meant she didn’t know how this asshole—whoever he was—managed to violate her identity.
Her phone rang, and she was grateful for the interruption. “Whitmore.”
“The woman’s name is Melinda Carew. We got that from her prints. She’s still not talking.”
Abbie didn’t need to ask who the woman was. And she didn’t need to ask who the caller was either—it was Homeland Security Agent George Talty. She’d dealt with him before and liked his efficiency, even if he was a bit abrupt.
The focus of her search shifted immediately. “Okay, Melinda,” she said under her breath, “let’s see who you are.”
She was a low-level criminal, popping in and out of the system for petty theft and minor drug use. She’d dropped out of high school and was estranged from her parents, who had custody of her son.
Her boyfriend was currently being held at FCI Petersburg. Abbie knew more than a handful of inmates there.
“I found something,” Sophie said.
Abbie looked up sharply, her eyes falling on the clock. It was about time. She was surprised it had taken Sophie this long. She rose and went to stand behind Sophie.
“What is it?”
“Your information was accessed directly from the U.S. Passport Database. So we’re definitely looking for a skilled hacker.”