Reluctantly, Kelsey nodded and forced herself to ask the dreaded question. “When?”
“We’ll leak the information tomorrow morning. Hopefully they’ll bite within a day or two. We’re running out of time.” Lewis handed her a piece of paper. “We have a room set up for you at this hotel. You need to check in first thing tomorrow.”
She willed herself to reach out her hand to take the information she had hoped to never need. Emotions clogged her throat, and she didn’t dare try to speak. She turned and reached for the door, pausing when Lewis spoke once more.
“You know we’ll do whatever we can to protect you.”
Kelsey swallowed hard. She blinked several times before forcing herself to face him once more. “But no guarantees.”
Regret sounded in his voice. “No. There are no guarantees.”
Wordlessly, she nodded and left the room.
Chapter 33
She was in love with him. Kelsey couldn’t find any other explanation for the way she was feeling right now. She wished she had realized it sooner, before she had been forced to face the possible end to their relationship. She should have known, but she’d missed all of the signs.
For weeks, her heart had beat a little faster every time Noah walked into the room. A simple touch of his hand was all it took to ease away the stress of the day. And any doubts should have been squelched the moment Noah had come outside looking for her on Justin’s front porch.
Noah hadn’t just said the right things, the words she had so desperately needed to hear, but he had actually meant them. Now that she recognized what all of these feelings meant, she was faced with an overwhelming sense of delight and terror. Delight that she had finally found someone she wanted a future with and terror that she wouldn’t survive long enough to explore that possibility.
The timing simply couldn’t have been worse.
She stood by the front window, watching the hot breeze rustling through the trees, waiting for him to come. She could drive now, but she and Noah had continued to carpool to and from work even after the doctor had cleared her. She supposed it was as much out of habit as it was to spend time together, but that would change soon. Everything was about to change.
She hadn’t told him yet that she wouldn’t be driving in to work with him today. She wanted to push that reality off as long as possible. And she wanted to see him before she disappeared from his life. Today she would once again cease to be Kelsey Weber or even Kelly Park. Today she had to be Taja.
Too many questions still remained about where the attacks would occur and how Salman and Medrano planned to use the weapons they had acquired. Despite all of their efforts, all of their technology, they only had one option left to try to stop them: good old-fashioned human intelligence.
She had to tell Noah about her part in the director’s plan and how she was destined to be the key player in their last-ditch intelligence-gathering efforts. After all, it was only fair to prepare him for what was to come. Words rattled around in her mind as she considered how she might explain her real mission here in the United States.
Then she saw him, and her mind went blank.
He was wearing what she considered his undercover clothes: a plain, collared shirt and a pair of casual slacks. She was so focused on the words she needed to say that her curiosity about why he wasn’t wearing his normal office attire shuffled to the back of her mind.
She opened the door to him before he had the chance to knock.
“Hey there.” Noah reached for her hand and leaned closer to give her a quick kiss. “Are you okay to drive yourself to the office today? I just got a call from Ted. He wants me to go with him down to Norfolk.”
“Why are you going to Norfolk?”
Excitement lit his face. “Coast Guard intercepted a boat this morning down near Virginia Beach. It was taking on water.”
“And?”
“And it had explosives on board. We think it could be some of the missing weapons from Norfolk.”
“It sounds like they’re planning on using boats the way others have used cars to set off bombs.”
“Exactly. Only with the strength of the weapons they have, it would be more like 9/11 when they used airplanes as weapons,” Noah said.
Emotion seeped into her voice. “So they’ll drive the boats into some heavily populated area and see how many Americans they can kill.”
“That’s exactly what I think they’re going to do.”
“We can’t let that happen.”
“We won’t let it happen,” Noah said. He bent down and gave her another quick kiss. “I have to go. I’ll call you later.”
Kelsey watched him turn to leave, and her heart ached. She didn’t want to consider that this could be the last time she saw him, but she had to be realistic. Today very well might be the day she would disappear forever into her identity as Taja. Of course, that was assuming she even survived her next encounter with Salman. If things didn’t go the way she hoped, she wanted to make sure that his last memory of her was a good one.
Even though she was afraid to say the words burning in her heart, she was even more afraid to leave them unsaid. “Noah?”
He turned back to face her. “Yeah?”
Her words sounded surprisingly calm, as though she had already spoken them hundreds of times. “I love you.”
Surprise reflected in his eyes for a brief moment. Then something in his expression seemed to soften, and he closed the distance between them once more. His eyes on hers, he cupped one hand around the back of her neck and lowered his lips to hers. The kiss simmered with emotion, warmth wrapped in promise, and made her heart ache.
His fingers tangled in her hair, sending shivers down her spine, and her stomach leaped into her throat. Kelsey let herself fall into the depths of the love she felt for him, allowing herself to cherish this moment. When he pulled back, his eyes were intense.
He framed her face in his hands, and his voice was low when he offered her the words she craved. “I love you too.”
Kelsey lifted her hands to his wrists. “Be careful today.”
“I will.” He edged back and smiled. “Knowing I have you to come home to is definitely a huge incentive to stay out of trouble.”
Kelsey’s eyes darted to the left before she forced herself to look at him. “I’ll see you later.”
* * *
She loved him. Noah let Kelsey’s words replay through his mind. For weeks now, he had been afraid of letting himself fall in love with a woman who so clearly put her career before everything else. He knew now that her career came first because she knew how vital her role was to national security. He also acknowledged that he had been falling for her since that first moment he met her.
He couldn’t say it was love at first sight. After all, he had only caught a brief glimpse of what she really looked like before she had been covered in flour, and he had been biased against her because of the stories her siblings had told over the years. Still, he couldn’t remember a time since that first meeting that he hadn’t looked forward to being with her.
She was like a drug, one he couldn’t get enough of. Now that she had spoken those three little words, he knew there was no use trying to fight this addiction.
He didn’t know if she would ever want to share the dream he had always hoped for of a traditional life of the husband bringing home the bacon, so to speak. He hoped that someday she might be willing to give up the high-stress life of the CIA and consider staying home with whatever family they might be able to have together. The fact that he was willing to accept whatever choice she made only proved that he truly did love her.
A smile crossed his face when he thought of the moment she had professed her love and the sweet kiss that had followed. He indulged himself, letting the memory continue. Then, slowly, his smile faded when he played through the moment before he headed for his car.
She had looked to the left. In the instant before she had said she would see him later, she had looked to the lef
t just as a suspect might when he was lying.
An uneasy feeling started working through him. Never since meeting her had he seen a single tell. Not once had she let her body language reveal what she was thinking.
He pulled up in the parking lot at the office where he was supposed to meet Ted and turned off the car. Instead of getting out, he picked up his cell phone and called Kelsey.
The call went straight to voice mail.
He knew she always turned off her phone when she was at the office, but he doubted she could have already arrived since he was the first to leave her house. The uneasy feeling bloomed deep inside him, and he hurried into the building and down the hall to their shared office. Her desk was empty, her computer off.
“Hey, Noah. Are you ready to go?” Ted asked as soon as Noah entered.
“You haven’t heard from Kelly, have you?”
“No, but I didn’t think there was any reason for her to come with us.”
“I think something might be wrong.”
“I was thinking the same thing but not about Kelly. No one has seen or heard from Cullen either,” Ted told him. “Maybe they had to go into CIA headquarters or something.”
Noah didn’t say anything about his and Kelsey’s suspicions about Cullen. Instead, he tried Kelsey’s phone number again, his concern hiking up a notch when once more it went straight to voice mail. A little reluctantly, he pulled out his wallet and retrieved Lewis Tate’s card. He then moved to his desk and picked up his secure phone.
When he dialed Lewis’s number, he expected to be greeted by the director’s secretary and was surprised to hear Lewis’s voice after the second ring. “Tate.”
“Sir, I’m sorry to bother you, but this is Noah Cabbott with the joint taskforce.”
“Yes, Noah. What can I do for you?”
“I wanted to find out if you had tracked down Cullen yet. No one here has heard from him.”
“He’s dropped off of the grid. If Kelly is right, he’s involved, and somehow, he found out we were on to him.”
“Or he has all of the information he needs,” Noah added. Feeling very much like the overly protective boyfriend, he forced himself to continue with the real reason he had called. “I’m also having trouble getting in touch with Kelly this morning. Any chance she was coming into your headquarters today?”
“I wouldn’t worry about Kelly,” Lewis said after the briefest of hesitations. His voice was stiff when he added, “She can take care of herself. Let me know if you find any new information about Cullen.”
“Yeah, I will.” Noah hung up the phone, even more uneasy now than he was before he had made the call.
“Is everything okay, Noah?” Ted asked.
“I don’t think so.” He couldn’t ignore the pressure building up in his chest or the sensation that something was wrong. “Do you think you can handle Norfolk on your own?”
“Yeah, not a problem.” Ted’s eyebrows drew together. “What are you going to do?”
“I have a couple of leads I want to follow from here,” Noah told him. “Let me know what you find down in Norfolk.”
“I will.” Ted jangled the keys in his pocket and headed for the door. As soon as he left, Noah tried calling Kelsey again on both her cell phone and her home phone. Convinced something was wrong, he pulled his own keys free of his pocket and headed for the parking lot.
Chapter 34
Kelsey closed her eyes and tried to complete her transformation into Taja Al-Kazaz. She had already donned her burqa and niqāb, her body now completely hidden by fabric except for her hands and eyes. Her knife was strapped to her calf, her gun secured in the hidden pocket of her robe.
She looked around the house where she had grown up, suddenly uneasy that she was bringing any part of her life inside these walls. She had deliberately ignored the house phone when Noah had called a few minutes ago. Seeing his name on the caller ID made her yearn to talk to him, but she couldn’t right now. She couldn’t take the chance that he would realize she was keeping secrets from him, and she didn’t want to lie.
Her eyes narrowed when she heard a car pull up in her driveway. Kelsey peeked out the front window to see the sedan, wondering if plans had changed without her knowledge. The car the Agency was sending for her wasn’t supposed to arrive for another twenty minutes and was supposed to be outfitted to look like a taxicab.
To her surprise, she saw James climb out of the car and head for her front door. She understood the need to have a driver take her to the hotel. After all, no one wanted to take the risk that her personal vehicle would be seen anywhere near a location where she was undercover. Still, she would have thought that someone would have told her they had switched both the time and the vehicle taking her.
Out of habit rather than necessity, she grabbed her cane. She reached the bottom of the stairs just as the doorbell rang.
She straightened her shoulders and pulled open the door. “You’re early.”
“You didn’t hear? The director moved up the time.”
Kelsey shook her head. “I already turned off my cell phone. He probably didn’t think to call the house phone.”
The words were barely out of her mouth when she heard the phone ring. “That’s probably him.”
Her cane in hand, she took a step toward her father’s office. She glanced back when she heard the door close. Her mouth dropped open when she saw James standing in the foyer, the gun in his hand aimed at her.
“You can just let that ring.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Where’s your weapon?”
Kelsey kept her eyes on his and lied, “I’m not carrying a weapon.”
Fury erupted on his face. He moved forward and pushed her face-first against the wall, sending her cane flying. “Don’t lie to me!”
Instinctively, Kelsey tried to throw her weight back against him in an attempt to struggle free, but James just leaned into her, using his weight and size to quell her efforts.
With more speed than she would have expected from him, he patted down her robe, checking the pockets first and then running his hands over the folds of the material until he discovered the bulge where her gun was hidden. He spun her around, jamming his gun beneath her chin. “Let’s have it. Nice and slow.”
She stared at him, her mind racing even faster than her heart. Had he really been assigned as her driver, or was he here for personal reasons? And what could she have done to cause him to come here and pull a gun on her? Since her return to headquarters, he had been nothing but cordial.
A new thought worked into her brain, poking through her confusion and fear. James had been one of the many people who’d had access to Gregory Bealton’s identity. Because she knew him, she hadn’t seriously considered him a suspect. They had gone to school together. They had gone to church together. She had once dreamed of kneeling across the altar from him. Had she been too blind to see what this man was capable of?
Clearly, as evidenced by the gun currently pressed into the soft skin beneath her jaw, he was a completely different person from the one she had once thought she loved. He was also not the calm, young professional he had made himself out to be. Somewhere along the line, he had snapped.
She forced herself to voice the question, “What happened to you?”
“I finally realized that to get what I want in life, I have to take it.”
“I don’t understand. I thought you were doing well at the Agency. You’re obviously trusted.”
“Yeah, they trust me,” he said derisively. “They trust me to carry their important papers back and forth and babysit diplomats who have too much ego to do anything for themselves.”
She spoke her fears before she could censor her thoughts. “It was you, wasn’t it? Cullen wasn’t the other mole. It was you.”
“All I asked for was a chance. I went through all of the training, learned how to handle assets and forge documents. Yet every year I applied for an overseas post, and every year I was turned down. I
was told I was too valuable as an analyst.” He sneered at her. “Everyone’s going to see just how valuable I am.”
“What are you planning to do?” Kelsey asked, forcing herself to ask the question even as fear pounded in her chest and ears.
“First, we’re going for a little ride.” He pressed the gun more firmly against her chin. “Now give me your gun.”
When she didn’t make a move to retrieve her weapon, he reached into the hidden pocket himself, the fabric tearing as he pulled her gun free. Once he had her weapon in his hand, he lowered his gun slightly.
Kelsey’s training took over before she could stop it. Her left elbow swept out and away from her body, connecting with James’s windpipe. He gasped in pain, and Kelsey reached down beneath her burqa to where her knife was strapped to her calf. She came up with it and, in one fluid motion, swiped at James. The knife grazed his left hand, and the gun he had taken from her fell to the floor.
He cried out and stumbled back several steps. Before she could attack or retreat, he lifted his right hand and aimed his weapon once more. “Drop the knife.” His voice vibrated with unleashed fury. “Don’t think I won’t kill you right now. I can adjust my plans if I need to.”
She could see the truth of his words in his expression. Dread filled her, but she slowly opened her fingers and let the knife drop. As soon as the metal clattered against the hardwood floor, James reached out and gripped her arm. “That was very stupid.”
Her chin jutted up, but she didn’t respond. When he tugged her toward the door, she deliberately stumbled. “I need my cane.”
“I don’t think so.” He shook his head. “I’m not stupid enough to hand you something you can use as a weapon.”
Kelsey’s eyes darted around the entryway. She desperately searched for any avenue of escape but found none. James’s weapon was now aimed at her ribs, and she knew that if she tried to fight her way free, she would likely end up with a bullet in her. The twinge in her leg reminded her that she didn’t want to experience that again, especially when the bullet was likely to hit at least one vital organ.
Deep Cover Page 21
