No Strings Attached

by Julie Moffett

  He turned around and nearly ran into two FBI agents in suits who had walked in the café. “Mr. Hsu, will you come with us, please?”

  Charlie whirled around, stared at Slash in astonishment. His eyes were filled with hurt, betrayal and anger. “Tell me I’m reading this wrong, man. You didn’t just turn me in, did you?”

  Slash said nothing.

  Charlie’s eyes narrowed. “That was cold. Really cold. I didn’t expect that from you of all people. I thought I could trust you.”

  “You can.”

  “Yeah, that’s real obvious.”

  He turned around and was escorted by the two agents out the door. Our friendly neighborhood agent remained in his spot, interested by what was going on, but not interfering.

  I shifted in my seat so I faced Slash. “Why did you do that?”

  “It was for his own protection. If he’s innocent, we’ll prove it. He was about to do something really stupid. If he ran, he’d have lost his job even if he was cleared. Charlie is a smart guy, but he’s running scared. Now he’s safe and protected, as is his job, even if he’s pissed at me.”

  “And if he’s guilty?”

  “Then he’s right where he should be. It was a hard choice, cara, but it’s the right one.”

  I felt a twinge of sympathy for him. Making tough decisions was not for the faint of heart. Still, I could see what the perceived betrayal had cost him and wondered how many times a week, day, hour he had to make them.

  He stretched out a hand to help me out of the booth. “Let’s get out of here. We’ve got work to do.”

  Before I could take his hand, his phone rang. Reaching into his pocket, he answered it. He listened. The sudden, violent expression on his face frightened me.

  “Understood,” was all he said before hanging up.

  My anxiety heightened. “Slash, what’s happened now?”

  A muscled ticked at his jaw. He fought for control to answer me calmly. However, when he finally spoke, it wasn’t anger I heard in his voice. It was pain.

  “There’s been another murder.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Another murder?” My stomach took a dive. I was afraid to ask, but not knowing was worse. I steeled myself and asked, “Who?”

  “Trevor.”

  “The deputy director of IAD? Oh, jeez. How?”

  “A sniper. He was shot as he walked out of his house. Despite his considerable FBI detail and high alert, he...or she, got away. The timing, execution—literally—was perfect. Someone is providing inside information at the very top.”

  My stomach lurched. I pressed a hand to my belly, where the coffee now felt like it was burning a hole through the lining. “They’re killing everyone in IAD, starting at the top. That’s the end game. Who’s in line after Trevor?”

  Slash was silent for a moment before he finally spoke. “Me.”

  The breath whooshed out of me. For a moment, I was frozen. The directorship of such a senior position at the NSA was unthinkable for someone barely into his thirties like Slash. Then again, there was no one like Slash at the NSA, so it made perfect sense.

  “You’re...third in command at IAD?” My voice wavered.

  He shook his head. “Not any longer. As of this moment I’m the acting director.”

  I let that sink in and tried not to let anxiety swamp me. A tight knot had formed in my throat, so I had to force the next words out. “What are you going to do?”

  “My job. I’m going to bring down the Red Guest.”

  Now that he was in the crosshairs, I couldn’t argue with him on that. The only contention would be exactly how we did it. Right now our options were a nuclear bomb in the form of a black code and kidnapping and/or assassinating Jiang Shi. I didn’t like any of them. But I liked Slash getting hurt even less, so I would deal.

  I slid out of the booth. “Are we going to check out the murder scene?”

  “No. I’m too high a risk now. The FBI and NSA are meeting at this moment to determine what to do next regarding better protection of the people in that database, starting with me. By extension, that includes you. I’m sorry, cara. We cannot return to our homes. You’re going to have to go on an extended break from X-Corp. Shaughnessy is going to be pissed at me. Again.”

  “Oh, we’re back to Shaughnessy now?”

  “I don’t see our so-called developing friendship on the fast track at the moment.”

  I looked over his shoulder at the FBI agent in the bar watching us. He was talking on his cell. Our eyes met as he hung up and stood. In a few steps, he’d reached us.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” he said to Slash. “I’ve been instructed to bring you and Ms. Carmichael in.”

  Where in was, I didn’t know. Looked like I wouldn’t have any say in the matter anyway.

  Slash removed his wallet and threw a couple of bills on the table. He paused and then held out his hand. Emotion, regret and concern flashed in his eyes. “Are you with me?”

  As if I’d be somewhere else when he needed me most. I put my hand in his. “I’m with you.”

  He gave it a quick squeeze. “We’ll get through this, okay?”

  I managed a smile and squeezed back. “Okay.”

  * * *

  “How long do we have to stay in this safe house?” I unpacked the backpack filled with my clothes into a dresser that wasn’t mine. We’d been moved to a heavily treed residential neighborhood in northwest DC. The house sat at the end of a dead-end street and was fairly private, although two other large homes were a short walk away.

  “Hard to say.” Slash was not comfortable with the situation either. He hadn’t bothered to unpack his duffel. He sat on a corner of the bed working off his laptop. “Long enough for me to write the code and figure out if we have one or multiple assassins.”

  I sat next to him on the bed, putting my chin on his shoulder. “You do realize this safe house thing is totally going to put a crimp in my bachelorette party planning.”

  “I’m sorry.” He didn’t look up from the monitor. “Can you outsource?”

  “I’ve been working on that without success. I think I’m going to have to take it to a new level.”

  “Don’t worry. We won’t miss the parties even if it takes the entire damn FBI surrounding the clubs.”

  “That’s good to know.” I had no idea how the rest of the week would play out, but it was clear it wouldn’t be the norm. “So, what did Finn say when the FBI agents told him I’d be out of commission for at least a few additional days?” I was a bit worried that Finn might be reaching the end of his patience with the government pulling me away for missions, but since it was out of my hands, there wasn’t much I could do about it.

  Slash paused his typing, flexed his wrist. “What could he say? He’s just beginning to fully understand that you are on a perpetual standby loan to the US government. They have only to play the national security card and he’s between a rock and a hard place. Knowing Shaughnessy, however, I’m sure he’ll be in negotiations to figure out a way to get the government to compensate him for your time spent away, which I fully support.” He paused, stretched his arms above his head. “I’m sorry. I know you didn’t ask for this.”

  “This isn’t on you, Slash. It’s on me. I’m the one who sat down at that reserved table, not you.”

  “That wasn’t coincidence. It was fate. There’s a reason you sat in that chair.”

  “I don’t believe in fate.” I rolled my neck, working out the kinks.

  “Really? Why not?”

  “Because I believe in random occurrences and conscious choices.”

  He glanced up from the keyboard. “Why not include fate with those? Quantum physics offers plenty of evidence for the existence of both fate and choice. There’s the theory that our conscious
choice is already determined and shaped in advance by parameters of the known universe, contradicting the popular definition of free will. Therefore, it’s actually grounded in science to say that fate—or if you are religious, a higher authority—is what guides us as we make our personal choices within predetermined parameters.”

  I thought it over. It was an intriguing concept. Were fate and choice intertwined?

  “That’s pretty interesting, Slash. It’s hard to argue against a quantum physic understanding of existence in a deterministic and time-symmetric universe.”

  “Exactly. Consider it. If we want to take our understanding of reality to a new level, it will require us to seek out a balance in our own conscious understanding of the universe. Why must you believe in one or the other when it’s perfectly logical to believe in both?”

  “I have to think about that.”

  “You do that and we’ll talk again. I look forward to it, and many more interesting conversations with you.” He leaned over and kissed my cheek before he started typing again. I liked that he often kissed me for no other reason than the sake of showing affection. It was incredibly comforting.

  His fingers tapped steadily on the keyboard. I squinted at the screen. I had assumed he was working on the dark code, but after watching him for a minute, I realized that wasn’t what he was doing.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “I’m in the NSA rewriting an encryption code.”

  “What? Why?”

  His fingers flew across the keyboard. “I have an internal chip that monitors my whereabouts and life signs. There’s a good chance the mole knows that, too. Requesting the proper authorities at the NSA to turn it off will take too much time. So, I’m shutting it off myself.”

  “That’s really going to make a lot of people mad.”

  “Only if they know I did it.” He gave me a mischievous grin. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

  “That’s pretty naughty.” I shook my finger at him. “Pulling one over on your employer isn’t ordinary operating procedure.”

  “These aren’t ordinary times.” Slash pulled up another window and typed something in. “No one will get hurt, and, in fact, we’ll be better protected.”

  “They wouldn’t agree.”

  “They wouldn’t understand.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. I let out a breath. “Still, changing the encryption code won’t last for long. This is the NSA after all. Someone will break it.”

  “I don’t need long. A few days will be enough.”

  I wiggled my legs in front of me. My knee was sore, but still feeling a bit better. “Okay. Your call. Give me something to do. Can I help you finish it up?”

  “You could. But I need assistance elsewhere.”

  “You do? Where?”

  He pointed at a spot on the back of his neck. “Here.”

  “Your neck?” I stared at the skin on the back of his neck. “Are we still talking about the chip?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Is that where you have your chip implanted?” When he didn’t answer, I crawled onto the bed and examined the back of his neck with my fingers. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Try harder.”

  I pressed and kneaded, but still felt nothing. “Nope. I got nothing.”

  “Use your mouth.”

  “What? Are you kidding me?”

  “I would never kid about matters of national security.” He kept typing, his fingers never slowing. He had about six windows open and was hopping back and forth between them. I was torn between watching him work and looking for the chip.

  “The lips and mouth are among the areas on the human body with the highest concentrations of receptor cells,” he said after a series of dazzling moves. “Since there are a multitude of receptors on your lips, there is a greater chance you’ll find it. Give it a shot. You might come up lucky.”

  Carefully, I pressed my lips to his neck. I nibbled around the back of his neck, up behind his ear and even down beneath his shirt across the tips of his shoulders. I came up empty.

  “I can’t find it.”

  He closed the laptop and stood.

  “What are you doing?” I asked in surprise, sitting back on the bed.

  “I’m done.”

  “That was fast. You broke and rewrote the encryption already?”

  “I did.” He set the laptop on the dresser, pulled off his boots and socks, and then removed his sweater. He wore only a tight black T-shirt and jeans. “I found myself motivated to finish quickly.”

  “But I didn’t find your tracker yet.”

  He held up his left hand and pointed to his wrist. “That’s because it’s here.”

  “Oh, really. Then why was I looking on your neck?”

  He grinned and pushed on my shoulders, gently pushing me so that I lay on the bed on my back looking up at him. “Why do you think? You didn’t really buy that whole it’s-hidden-in-my-neck thing, did you?”

  “Of course, not. I knew you wanted a bit of necking...pun intended. It was fun playing along. After all, as you know, I’m in full support of activities that support our national security.”

  He laughed and brought my hand to his lips before kissing it. “And this is why I adore you.”

  I rested my hands on his shoulders. “So, does this mean no one can track you as of this moment?”

  “It does.”

  “How much time do we have before someone notices the chip is off?”

  “Oh, they’ve already noticed. But it will take them fifteen minutes to run the diagnostics to make sure it’s not a software glitch and another fifteen to let the appropriate persons know it’s not a glitch. After that I’d give them another twenty to inform the FBI and five minutes after that to inform our personal detail here. That makes a grand total of fifty-five minutes. Plenty of time.”

  “For what?”

  He smiled as he lowered his mouth to mine. “More necking.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Forty-six minutes later there was a knock on the bedroom door.

  I was in the bathroom combing my hair. I peeked out the door. “You were off by nine minutes,” I said to Slash.

  He shot me an amused look as he pulled on his sweater and opened the door. He was still barefoot.

  Agent Daryl Knott, a big burly guy with a beard and gruff voice, stood there. He and FBI agents Cindy Clark and Jasper Mott had been assigned to us on the inside, as well as three roving agents who were stationed outside the house. They were pretty nice and tried their best to be quiet and nonintrusive. But there was no way around it. If I thought the fishbowl that was Slash’s life was bad before—having six agents watch our every move was a hundred times worse. On the upside, seeing as how two NSA executives had been just been murdered by one or more clever assassins, being well protected sounded pretty good to me.

  I stepped out with the hairbrush still in my hand and went to stand beside him.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, sir,” Knott said. “We’ve just been notified your tracking implant is malfunctioning.”

  “Really?” Slash said with remarkable calm. “Is it serious?”

  “Ah...well, I’ll be honest. Hell, if I know. All I know is that it isn’t working, so headquarters let me know I’m supposed to make sure you’re okay.” Knott shifted on his feet. I got the impression talking about technology made him uncomfortable.

  Slash spread his hands. “I’m okay and she’s okay.” He slipped an arm around my waist. “See?”

  “Roger that.” Knott cleared his throat. “Well, let me know if you need anything. I’ll keep you updated on the implant chip—you know, if they get it turned on or something.”

  “Thank you. I’d appreciate that.”

  After he
closed the door, I whacked Slash on the shoulder with my brush. “Wow. Stellar acting. If this whole genius at technology thing doesn’t work out, the theater may be the profession for you.”

  He chuckled and sat down on the bed, sliding his laptop onto his knees. “Knott doesn’t have a clue. In ten minutes he’ll be back in here with someone on the phone from the NSA who has a lot more knowledge about the chip. Then the fancy footwork will begin.”

  “They’ll want to put a new one in you.”

  “Of course,” Slash started typing. I admired his seemingly effortless ability to multitask despite everything that was going on. “But that takes time. This is the federal government. There are forms to be written, signatures required and budgets to be considered. In this case, that process works in our favor. Even if they sped it up, they wouldn’t be able to locate, program and implant a new chip inside of seventy-two hours. We’re good.”

  I sat down and started work on gathering as much information as I could find on Feng Mei.

  Seven minutes later Agent Knott returned with his cell. “Um, sir, it’s Sam Nelson from IAD. He needs to talk to you about the chip. By the way, keep the phone. It’s a loaner for the time being. They want to be able to reach you quickly.”

  Slash took the phone and clicked it on speaker so I could hear. “Hello, Sam.”

  “Slash. What are you doing?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your implant is disabled.”

  Slash exchanged a glance with me. “So, I hear.”

  “You can stop playing innocent.” Sam’s tone was anger mixed with exasperation. “What you’re doing is dangerous. We need to keep track of you.”

  “If I’m not mistaken, I’m surrounded by six FBI agents. My every move is being closely monitored. I think I’m sufficiently protected.”

  “You know what I mean. It was a stupid move. You’re safe now. We’ve caught the mole.”

  Slash raised an eyebrow. “You have?”

  “Yes. Charlie is being held and questioned right now. They found a bunch of offshore accounts in his name. Looks like it was all about the money.”