Reach For The Spy
Book 3 of the NEVER SAY SPY series
By Diane Henders
Published November 2011 by PEBKAC Publishing
Smashwords Edition v.9
ISBN 978-0-9878188-9-8
The town of Silverside and all secret technologies are products of my imagination. If I’m abducted by grim-faced men wearing dark glasses, or if I die in an unexplained fiery car crash, you’ll know I accidentally came a little too close to the truth.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are products of my imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Please respect my hard work by complying with copyright laws. This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. You may not resell this e-book under any circumstances.
Thank you for reading!
Copyright © 2011 Diane Henders
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Books in the NEVER SAY SPY series:
Book 1: Never Say Spy
Book 2: The Spy Is Cast
Book 3: Reach For The Spy
Book 4: Tell Me No Spies
Book 5: How Spy I Am
Book 6: A Spy For A Spy
Book 7: Spy, Spy Away
Book 8: Spy Now, Pay Later
Book 9: Spy High
Book 10: Spy Away Home
Book 11: To be released early 2016
Humour by Diane Henders
Probably Inappropriate
Definitely Inappropriate
Totally Inappropriate
Completely Inappropriate
More books coming! For a current list, please visit www.dianehenders.com
Or sign up for my New Book Notification list at
www.dianehenders.com/books
For Phill
Thank you for being my technical advisor and the most tolerant husband ever. Much love!
To my beta readers/editors, especially Carol H., Judy B., and Phill B., with gratitude: Many thanks for all your time and effort in catching my spelling and grammar errors, telling me when I screwed up the plot or the characters’ motivations, and generally keeping me honest.
To the other Phil, with appreciation: Thanks for telling me about what it’s like to be a volunteer firefighter in a small town. The town is lucky to have guys like you.
To Rick and Sandy H. at Hand Crafted Images: Your talent makes my covers extra-special, and your sense of humour makes photo sessions fun even for a camera-hater like me. Thank you!
To Steve A. and the staff at The Shooting Edge: Thank you for lending us your excellent facilities for our cover photo sessions. You guys rock!
To everyone else, respectfully:
If you find any typographical errors in this book, please send an email to [email protected]. Mistakes drive me nuts, and I’m sorry if any slipped through. Please let me know what the error is, and on which page (or at which position in e-versions). I’ll make sure it gets fixed as soon as possible. Thanks!
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
A Request
About Me
Since You Asked
Bonus Stuff
Chapter 1
A faint noise woke me. My eyes flew open and I held my breath, listening. Had the sound come from outside the open window? I strained my ears, but heard only the usual quiet of a July night in the country.
A tiny metallic click from the doorknob made me change the rhythm of my breathing, slow and deep. I let my eyelids droop so I could watch the door through the fringe of my lashes.
Damn that shaft of moonlight. It fell directly across me in the bed, but the doorway itself was in shadow.
The door swung open slowly and silently. A large, dark figure moved toward my bed.
I emitted a small snore followed by a deep sigh and rolled over, letting the bedsheet fall away as I reached under the opposite pillow and clenched my fist around the crowbar. The moonlight emphasized the curves and hollows of my naked body. The intruder froze, staring.
That’s right, asshole. Take a good look. It’ll be the last thing you ever see. Just come a little closer, now...
He turned away abruptly, and I sprang upright. The crowbar hurtled toward his temple in a flat vicious arc with all my strength behind it.
“Aydan.”
At the sound of his whisper, I let out a yelp of dismay and tried to abort the swing.
Too late. My weapon slammed into his head and he fell.
Heart pounding, I dropped the crowbar and floundered toward the huddled form on the floor. As I reached him, he sat up slowly. I flung myself on him from behind, one arm across his massive chest while my other hand clamped over his mouth.
“We’re bugged,” I breathed urgently in his ear.
His large hand closed around my wrist, and I let him pull my hand away from his mouth.
“I know,” he said in normal tones. “I’m jamming them.”
I collapsed onto the floor behind him, gasping. “Jesus fucking Christ, John! Don’t ever fucking do that! I nearly fucking killed you, for chrissake!”
If frequent use of obscenities indicated one’s level of intellect, I’d apparently dropped about a hundred IQ points in the last couple of seconds.
“I noticed.” He touched his head, and his fingers came away dark in the moonlight.
“Shit!” I started to scramble up, but he grabbed my arm.
“Don’t turn on any lights.”
“I need to look at that,” I argued. “I was going for a home run until the last second. You’re bleeding.”
“I’ll live. It just glanced off.”
I blew out an irritated breath and knelt beside him to trace my fingers through his hair, exploring the sticky area near the top of his head. At least there wasn’t any squishiness that would indicate a fracture.
I stepped across him into my ensuite bathroom and came out with a clean washcloth. “Here.”
He accepted it and pressed it against his head. He glanced up at me, and then looked away quickly. “Aydan... Could you please put some clothes on? This is really... distracting.”
“Oh!” I glanced down at my white skin, practically glowing in the moonlight. My forty-six-year-old body was in pretty good shape except for the extra ten pounds or so around the middle. I
’d never been shy about it. And getting naked with John Kane was near the top of my private list of things to do, but I was pretty sure braining him with a crowbar didn’t qualify as foreplay.
Anyway, it didn’t matter. Now was not the time. I stepped quickly to the chair in the corner where I kept my clothes laid out for quick access. I pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt before turning back to him.
“Can you stand up?” I asked.
He rose. “I’m fine. We need to talk.” He sat on the edge of the bed and I perched beside him.
The moonlight made a dramatic study of his strong, square features. His silvered temples gleamed against his short, dark hair as he turned to eye me piercingly in the pale light.
“How did you find the bugs?” he demanded. “Do you have a scanner?”
“No. I found them the good old-fashioned way. Is Stemp monitoring them?”
“Yes. How did you know you were bugged?”
“I smelled them.”
His dark brows snapped together. “What?”
I grinned. “Stemp needs to be more careful choosing his minions. Whoever he sent to install the bugs was a smoker who wore cologne. I smelled him the instant I came in the house. I checked everything over, and when I couldn’t find anything missing, I started to look for things that had been added.”
Kane nodded slowly. “You’re good.”
I peered at him in the moonlight. “What the hell are you doing here? Dammit, Stemp is going to notice the bugs are jammed. I didn’t want him to know I knew about them.”
“He won’t know. I got Webb to generate a circular loop to feed the monitor. We have an hour.”
“You got Spider involved in this, too? What if you get caught?” I demanded. “It was bad enough when Stemp just thought you were sympathetic toward me. If he finds out about this, you’re going to be next on his hit list, right after he whacks me.”
He went still, watching me. “What makes you say that?”
“Come on, John. It’s not rocket science. Stemp needs me right now, but he doesn’t trust me because he can’t manipulate me. The instant he’s got an alternative, I’m going to get a lead suppository.”
I sighed. “In fact, you’ll probably be the one to get the order. That’s what I’d do if I was Stemp. If you carry out the order to kill me, you keep your job. And live. If you refuse, he passes the order down the food chain to get rid of both of us. And on down the line to get rid of anybody else who isn’t willing to follow orders. Get all the housecleaning done at once.”
“That’s the most paranoid, cynical thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
“Yeah. Tell me I’m wrong.”
He blew out a breath. “So that’s what you were trying to tell me when you walked away from me last week. You were warning me to keep my distance. To protect me.”
“Yeah. And here you are. Shit.”
“Will you stop trying to protect everybody else and start looking out for yourself for a change? I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself.”
I sighed inwardly. He sure was a big boy. In every sense of the word, from what I’d had the opportunity to observe. Too bad he had to be permanently off-limits if I wanted him to stay alive.
“I know you can take care of yourself,” I agreed. “But Stemp was watching us, and I wanted to make sure he didn’t see anything that would make him mistrust you. He’s your boss, after all. You’ll still have to work with him long after I’m gone.”
His brows drew together. “What you said last week... About how I’d follow orders no matter what. Do you really believe that? That I’m nothing more than a robot following orders?”
I hesitated, trying to find the right words. “No... But... that’s what Stemp needs you to be. And that’s the safest thing for you to be right now.”
“You really think I’d kill you if he gave me the order.” His voice was even, but I could hear the edge of suppressed hurt and anger.
“John...” I sighed and tugged my fingers through my long hair, yanking out the night’s tangles. “You’re one of our government’s top agents. You’ve spent most of your life in military and law enforcement. That tells me your top priority is doing the right thing for this country. Am I right?”
“Of course.” He frowned at me in the shadows. “Where are you going with this?”
“What if it turns out that it’s the right thing for you to kill me?”
He jerked back. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? Think it through. Right now, I’m both incredibly valuable and incredibly dangerous. I can crack any data encryption, and I’m working for our government. Valuable. But I’m a civilian and Stemp doesn’t trust me. As soon as he finds another way to break the encryption, I’ll stop being valuable, and then all that’s left is the danger that our enemies will scoop me up. He can’t afford the risk.”
“You’d never turn traitor,” he said with certainty. “I’ve seen the sacrifices you’ve made.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. But I know what groups like Fuzzy Bunny will do to get what they want. As long as I’m alive, there’s the risk that I’ll be captured.” I looked him square in the eyes. “I’m no hero. I don’t have any illusions about how long I’d withstand torture. So killing me might be the right thing for everybody, including me. Would you refuse that order?”
He sat silently, frowning. Finally, he said, “That’s what you meant. When you said Stemp would be doing you a favour if he killed you.”
“Yeah, something like that.” I changed the subject. “So is Stemp actually evil, or is he just an asshole?”
“He’s a ruthless bastard,” Kane said slowly. “I can’t always agree with his methods, but nobody can argue with his results. Since he took over as civilian director two years ago, we’ve had major improvements in our operations. You shouldn’t have threatened him.”
“That wasn’t a threat. It was a sincere promise. If he does anything to harm anybody I care about, I will utterly destroy him. Or die trying.”
He laughed suddenly. “Aydan, you’re crazy.”
I grinned at him. “You’re just discovering that now? What made you come to that conclusion after all this time?”
“Even when you can’t possibly win, you fight anyway. Stemp has people and resources you can’t even imagine. And you’re relying on your nose to sniff out bugs.”
I raised a shoulder and gave him a half-smile. “I learned long ago that being willing to fight is sometimes enough to prevent the fight in the first place. Sometimes you win, just because anybody in their right mind would know that you can’t possibly win.”
He sobered. “Aydan, you can’t possibly win this one.”
“Ah. Victory will be mine, then. So why are you here? You thought it’d be nice to pop by and get your brains bashed in? You know damn well I keep a crowbar under my pillow. What the hell were you thinking?”
His lips twisted wryly. “Yes, I knew about the crowbar. But I thought you were asleep. No woman would intentionally throw off the sheets and lie there naked if she thought there was an intruder in the house.”
“It worked, didn’t it?” I smirked at him. “Someday that ‘most women’ stereotype is going to jump up and bite you. Or crush your skull with a crowbar. You knew I was armed and dangerous, and you still turned your back on me because of your preconceptions.”
“I was trying to be a gentleman.”
“And it nearly got you killed.”
“What if I’d been a murderer or a rapist? What if I hadn’t turned my back? Where’s your clever strategy then?”
I shrugged. “Tell me you noticed when I reached under the pillow. You didn’t, did you? Because you weren’t looking at my hand.”
He shifted on the bed. “True,” he admitted reluctantly.
“So it didn’t really matter to me whether you turned away or not. Either way, I got a weapon into my hand without you noticing. I might not have won the fight, but at least I had a chance.”
“And you’
d fight even if you couldn’t win.”
I patted him on the shoulder. “Now you’re getting it. So why are you here? We’re wasting our hour.”
Chapter 2
Kane blew out a breath of frustration, or maybe resignation. “I wanted to make sure you knew about the bugs and cameras. And I didn’t want to leave things the way we left them last week.”
“Cameras? Shit! Please tell me he’s set up a perimeter outside.”
“Yes.”
“But not inside anywhere?”
“No.”
I let out the breath I’d been holding. “Good. I’ve been kind of creeped out about getting naked ever since I found the bugs. I figured cameras wouldn’t be far behind. I went over this place with a fine-toothed comb, but I was afraid I’d missed something.”
“Don’t worry. So far, the only cameras are outside. If that changes, I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks. Where are they?”
“There’s complete coverage of the exterior of your house, and about a twenty-five foot radius around it. One camera in the eaves of your garage, one in the tree at the back, one on the shed, and another on the back fence.”
“Any blind spots?”
“No.”
“So how did you get in?”
“Webb looped a thirty-second segment for the front door camera, one segment at the beginning of the hour, and one at the end so I can get out again.”
I sighed. “I really wish you hadn’t involved Spider. You know Stemp intimidates him. And he’s just a kid. He’s just starting his career. I’d hate to see that jeopardized because of me.”
“Aydan,” Kane said. “He’s twenty-six. He’s old enough to make his own decisions. And he’s the one who came up with the idea of looping the cameras and audio. He was furious that Stemp treated you that way after all you’d done for us.”
“Oh.” I thought about that for a moment. “Did I mention I really appreciate you risking your life and your career to come here and warn me?”
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