by Cat Connor
I gathered the keys from the table and dumped them into my purse before following Lee. We stopped a few feet from the table.
“Problem?”
“He hasn’t taken his eyes off you for longer than a few seconds since you two arrived,” Lee said.
“Really?” There was genuine amazement in my voice and a smile on my face.
“Yes. Really. Best friend, huh?”
“Talked to Kurt, I see.”
“You’re just as bad as Mitch …”
When Lee spoke, I realized I was looking at Mitch.
Yeah, I’m just as bad. Friends.
Back at the table, Kurt said, “That old factory today was a damn creepy place. Would make a good horror movie set.”
Lee and Sam agreed. I gave a warning shake of my head but it was too late. Lee launched into a rundown of our day. I wished he hadn’t.
“Ellie pulled out another of her famous head shots,” Lee said raising his glass. “Thanks for keeping us safe, Chicky.”
Mitch tapped my foot with his. I looked at him. A puzzled expression greeted me.
“Head shot?”
Kurt interjected, his voice brimming with amusement, “Conway doesn’t like the idea of zombies. One too many horror movies.” He chuckled quietly and slammed another shot of Sambuca. “Head shot or no shot, right, Conway?”
I wondered how many Sambuca shooters he’d had. Not like Kurt to make light of a death.
“Something like that,” I replied. I really didn’t want to talk about the day. I sipped my margarita and let the tequila swaddle my insides in warmth.
The expression on Mitch’s face told me this was not going well.
A song came from nowhere but the lyrics morphed. “It’s worse than that. She’s dead, Ellie.” I fell head first into the Star Trekkin’ music video. “We come in peace. Shoot to kill.” I shook the images from my head. Mitch’s eyes locked onto mine.
“You never mentioned your day,” he said. “No wonder you’re quiet. Sure you’re all right?”
“Uh huh. It was a day.”
A parade of death floated past my eyes. I swished the images with my internal window wipers and watched as they dripped from the edge of the blade. Live by the sword … expect to get shot.
Two hours later Delta had settled in, telling stories that became wilder with every drink. I leaned back in my chair. Mitch sat across the table from me. My ankles rested on his. He smiled at me and I smiled back.
“Other plans, huh?” I whispered.
“Absolutely,” he replied, his eyes never leaving mine. “You ready?”
Subtle.
“Yep, let me make sure this tab is on my card and we’ll escape.”
I slipped away and returned before the team noticed. Mitch stood and said goodbye. We walked away together. Side by side, not touching. Eyes followed us to the door as I knew they would. Mitch opened the door, which drew a collective cheer from my team. I waved as we left.
He opened the car door too but no one witnessed his chivalry, just me.
“Home?” Mitch asked.
“Please.”
He smiled. I’d seen that smile before. Only this time it felt completely different.
He pulled the car into the entrance of the driveway, and the gates swung open. Before we reached the front door, the gates closed.
“You’re trapped now, you know that right?” I said.
“I can live with that.”
Me too. Lines blurred right in front of me. Why were there lines? Mom’s voice filled my head, “Because friends don’t sleep together.” Advice from Mom on that subject I did not need. I snarled inwardly, you never managed to heed your own advice and expect me to do so? I pressed my key code into the panel by the front door. Mitch’s car alarm beeped as he followed me inside. Mom’s voice disappeared.
Maybe there is a God?
“Drink?” I asked, flicking lights on as I walked down the hallway to the kitchen.
“Tequila,” he replied.
My heart pounded. Butterflies wearing boots stomped around in my stomach; my hands shook. Deep breath. I reached into the cabinet and pulled out a bottle of tequila.
“Fruit bowl in the dining room, Mitch. Limes, please.”
Gone a few seconds, he returned to two shots sitting on the counter and a knife waiting for the limes. I set a saltshaker next to the knife.
Mitch quartered the limes.
Two shots later, I was less nervous and more relaxed, leaning across the counter between us.
“Okay?” Mitch asked.
“Yep,” I replied.
“You could be closer …”
“Dangerous.”
“Wrong?”
“Didn’t say it was wrong.” I smiled. “We could go into the living room,” I suggested, which wasn’t what I wanted to say at all.
“All right,” Mitch replied, picking up the bottle. I took the glasses and led the way.
“Computer. Listen.” I said from the doorway. “Music. Adele.”
“Good choice,” Mitch replied and set the bottle on the coffee table next to the pack of condoms and prescription, obviously left by Kurt. He’d called in for a chat after work. My heart sank.
Not funny, Kurt. Not funny at all.
A few hours ago, I’d pointed out to Kurt that the table was a coffee table, not a tea table, and now it was a party table.
Jeez.
He paused then picked up the pack. “Forethought?” A smile filled his voice then faded. “Something I should know? Someone I should know about?”
Words eluded me for a moment. “Ah, no, Kurt’s idea of a joke?” I pushed the pack aside.
Mitch’s smile returned. “You’d tell me?”
“Of course.”
I couldn’t think of a thing I didn’t or wouldn’t tell him. Sometimes I neglected the details of my day but with good reason. My day isn’t always the sort of conversation people want to have. Sometimes it’s me that doesn’t want to have it.
Mitch poured me another drink. “You didn’t tell me about the shooting today,” he said, looking at me sideways.
“I didn’t want to talk about it.”
It wasn’t that big a deal: I still lie to myself.
“You’d tell me if you were seeing someone?”
Insecure? Mitch? Really?
“Yes. I would. It’s not going to happen.”
“It might,” he replied.
‘Rolling in the Deep’ flowed from the stereo, filling all the crevices of the room.
I sat on the couch next to Mitch. We were angled toward each other, comfortable, smiling, one arm resting on the back of the couch, the fingertips of his hand touching mine for a moment before our fingers entwined. Warmth flowed from his fingers up my arm.
Breathe.
Breathe.
“Mitch?”
“Yes.”
“You know …”
He nodded. His smile was back. “Your eyes are addictive. They sparkle when you smile.”
Self-control.
Masses of it.
On tap.
If I kept telling myself that, nothing would screw this up.
Three
Rumor Has It
Sunlight slithered through a gap in the curtains. Silence filled the house. My phone rang. Rang was a misnomer. My phone blared Bon Jovi’s “Have a Nice Day” as it vibrated on the nightstand. I rolled over and picked it up.
Work. Welcome to Monday. Already? Didn’t seem fair. Could’ve sworn it was drinks at TGI Friday’s yesterday.
Crap.
I tapped on the green icon on the screen. “SSA Conway.”
“Agent Troy is in your office, ma’am. He insists it’s important.”
I groaned. I stood Delta A down for the weekend and now it was over. Agent Troy. Mentoring was never going to be a good thing for me.
“I’m coming in. Might take an hour or so,” I said. Sounds of life came from the guest bedroom across the hall. “Tell Troy to wait.”
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I hung up and dropped my phone on the floor. It thudded onto the carpet. Rolling onto my back, I lay still and listened. My phone must’ve woken Mitch. Or maybe he’d set his phone alarm. It was Monday, the weekend now just a memory, and he had work too. Two minutes later, I threw the covers back and hurried into my bathroom. The day waited. The smile on my face disappeared in the steam that fogged the mirror.
The hot water helped wash away the tiredness. I didn’t sleep longer than an hour all night, too aware that Mitch was in the next room. It took a lot of self-control to stay in my bed. If being determined not to screw up what we had meant no sleep, then so be it. I yawned. Extra strong coffee was imperative.
I sat at my desk five minutes before Justin Troy stood in front of me, desperate to share the cause of the phone call with me. I did my best to hold on to my great weekend as I listened.
“Hang on a minute. What are you telling me?” I looked up at the young agent standing in front of my desk.
“Ma’am, I don’t know, ma’am.” For a split second, I thought he might salute me. “But something feels wrong.”
God, he was young. I wondered if I was ever that young as I looked into his solemn brown eyes.
“Okay. Walk me through this.” I flapped a hand at him. “Pull up a chair.”
He dragged a chair closer to my desk and sat in it.
“Five days ago I came across images on a surveillance feed. Since then I’ve been seeing the same three women on various feeds from all over Washington.”
“Show me.” He opened a file on his tablet and handed the device to me. I flicked through the images, noting date stamps and locations. A few minutes later, I handed the device back. “Who are they?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Learning curve coming up.
“You should know who you are dealing with by now. You’ve been watching these women for five days.”
“Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.”
Sharp bend ahead.
“Could be tourists minding their own business.”
His eyes flashed at me. Whoa. He didn’t think so.
“Do you think that?”
I smiled. “You know what … follow this. Let me know where it goes. Keep me informed. Don’t piss anyone off.”
“Ma’am.”
I sighed. “Enough with the ma’am already. SSA is better.”
“Hey, you” was better than ma’am.
He nodded. “SSA.”
“First, find out who they are and where they hail from. Then follow that until you know why they’re visiting places like The Department of Energy. And while you’re at it, I want to know how the hell they got past the barriers and into the structure.”
“Yes, SSA.”
“Away you go. If you need anything that you can’t find, ask Sandra. She has magic fingers and ways of finding information that we can only dream of.” I smiled at the nervous-looking young man. “Agent Troy, you have twenty-four hours to bring me a reason for these women to be in a high-security area and on your radar.”
He pushed the chair back as he stood, nodded and hurried away.
I summoned Sam. He lurched through the doorway with a grin on his face.
“You wanted me?”
“Not really. It’s just … this mentor program is great but goddamn, they’re young.”
Sam rocked on his heels. “I hear you, Chicky, I hear you.”
“Agent Troy is looking into some suspicious behavior by three women in various places around Washington.”
“Anything to it?”
“Could be. They’ve been photographed in places they shouldn’t have been, over the course of five days. I’ll let him run with it for twenty-four hours. If he finds something worth a closer look, then we’ll help him.”
“Okay.”
I reached across my desk and picked up my cell phone just as it rang.
Picking up the phone before it rang was now a habit. Without looking, I tapped the screen and answered the call.
“Caine,” I said.
“Ellie,” he replied.
Knowing who was calling without looking was the new normal.
“Up for some traveling?”
“Sure, reason?”
I saw it hovering in the middle of the room. A head. Just a head. No body. Gruesome.
“Dismembered heads,” Caine said. I imagined the corner of his mouth twitching in time with a stress twitch in his left eye.
“How many?” I could only see one, seemed smart to ask. Knowing I shouldn’t be able to see any at all wasn’t helping.
“Twenty,” Caine replied.
“That’s a lot of heads.”
“And they’re waiting for you in Wellington, New Zealand.”
An American flag fell over the head I saw suspended in the air.
“Why?”
“Because that’s where they are.”
I smiled and rephrased the question. “Why us?”
“They’re American. Or at least the ones identified so far are.”
“We’re packing,” I replied.
“Sandra is making travel arrangements.”
“Talk before we leave,” I said and ended the call.
Sam waited.
“What’s up?”
“We’re going back to New Zealand.”
“I’m up for it.”
Not sure I am.
The country held too many memories and they all ended in screaming and pain; not me screaming but definitely my pain. Although my most recent trip was a lot more fun than the previous two, but there was still the whole dead-body-on-the-beach thing. A sigh dropped from my lips.
Cursed? Maybe.
“Can you get the team in here for a briefing? Caine should have sent the file through by now.”
“Yes.” He walked toward the door then stopped, turned to face me and said, “And the other thing?”
“I’m sure I’ll cope. Me mentoring a young agent, what could go wrong?”
“Chicky Babe …” he replied with a subtle shake of his head.
“Work,” I replied and shooed him away.
I checked for the case notes from Caine and shoved the mentoring thing away. Not an issue. We were leaving the country.
Can’t mentor from New Zealand.
I knew that wasn’t right. Mentoring didn’t have to be in person – we could FaceTime or Skype for that matter, or we could implement good ol’ fashioned phone calls.
Linking the waiting file to the team, I started reading. Not much to go on.
I noted Faye’s name, the detective attached to the case in Wellington. My eyes flicked to the clocks on the wall as I picked up the phone receiver and pressed buttons. Almost a minute later, I heard Faye’s voice.
“Faye, it’s Ellie Conway. You got something for me?”
“I do, Ellie. Not the best of presents, mind you.”
“Fill me in?” I scrolled through the notes on the computer hoping Faye had some insight not included.
“With pleasure.” She paused for a moment and I heard a door close. “Last night I got a call from customs. They were doing a routine search of a container ship in the harbor and a customs dog indicated a large box in the ship’s hold. No one seemed to know anything about it.”
“Manifest?”
“Not listed.”
“Well, that’s quite the oversight. And the heads are in it?”
“Yes, twenty heads. Male and female.” She swallowed audibly. “Some things you can never unsee or unsmell.”
“Not frozen then?”
“They may have been once but not when we found them. They were sealed in heavy opaque plastic and some bright spark cut one of the bags open.”
Ewww.
“The ship came from?”
“Indonesia.”
“Nationality of the heads?”
“We’ve identified nine so far, using facial recognition software. They are American citizens. We still need DNA confirmation.”
&nbs
p; “Last known whereabouts?”
“So far, of the nine people we’ve identified, two were last known to be living in Algeria, one in Saudi Arabia. The others were last known to live in various European countries. France, Italy, England, Spain, and a few in Germany.”
“That’s quite a scattering.”
Americans, but not living in America. Curious.
“You’re telling me.”
“Do you know how or when they died?” I asked, swinging in my chair.
“Another oddity,” Faye replied. “I can’t find any death certificates.”
“That’s not good.”
“Similar to what I said, but I used expletives,” Faye said.
“Estimation of how long they’ve been dead.”
“The ship took three weeks to get here and they were possibly frozen at some point. Could be a month, could be longer.”
“If these aren’t natural deaths then some people somewhere are missing family and friends ...” I couldn’t imagine how they’d be natural deaths. People tend to die with their heads attached. Well, mostly.
“Twenty is a lot of missing people,” Faye said. “You’d think someone would notice.”
“Why were they on the ship? Where were they going?”
“No idea. The box wasn’t listed on the manifest at all. I’ll let you know what our forensics people pull off it by way of evidence.” Faye cleared her throat. “The label on the box said basketballs.”
“Someone had a sense of humor,” I replied and smiled as Kurt walked into my office.
“We’ll be on our way as soon as we get a flight. Looking forward to seeing you again.”
“Send me flight details. I’ll pick you up.”
“Will do,” and hung up.
Kurt sat in a chair reading his tablet. His eyebrows rose as he looked at me.
“What’s with you and dismembered bodies?”
I shrugged. “The box wasn’t addressed to me. Caine just said we were investigating it. That makes a nice change.”
“Yes, it does.”
Sam and Lee entered one at a time.
“Interesting case,” Lee mumbled, taking a seat. “Heads. Makes a nice change from hands, feet and ass.”
“Not addressed to me, not me being photographed holding body parts,” I replied. “Let’s not forget that.”
Sam grinned. “We’re never going to forget.”
