“No.” His expression was priceless.
“Maybe.” She kissed his neck. “We’ll see in a few weeks. Tonight, we’ll just have fun.”
STINGER
CIA HEADQUARTERS
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
Emmett Nelson leaned back in his high-tech desk chair with his hands behind his head and reflected on a mission well done. He’d just gotten word from the Pentagon that RIOT had hit dead air and made quite a splash in clear blue shipless ocean with an expensive new top secret Chinese missile.
Gave the navy a good look at its firepower and what it could do. They recovered a few good bits and pieces, too. Good intel for the Pentagon boys.
The terrorist chatter was saying the U.S.’s Pinpoint Project software was faulty. A scam. Trying to save face, are you, RIOT?
Emmett laughed to himself, pleased as he scanned his happily cluttered office. Organized chaos all around him—stacks of papers, his top-secret historic spy gizmos collection, books—mostly thrillers and an esoteric mix of nonfiction topics—superhero action figures. Not an empty surface in sight. Exactly the office one would expect of a creative mind.
His computer pinged. He had a new e-mail. From Ty. A picture of the happily reunited couple. Emmett ran a quick stego-detect on the picture. It revealed a message, “Mission happily accomplished.”
That’s my boy!
Emmett had known from the beginning Treflee was just the “agent” he needed to thwart Hal. No way Hal could have predicted her.
Emmett’s grin deepened. He hadn’t earned his reputation as the Puppeteer for nothing.
And what a damn good matchmaker he was, too. Ah, really, it was nothing. A little knowledge of the human psyche was all it took. He’d even forgive Ty his insubordination and Treflee the names she’d called him.
He picked up a pen and twirled it. The spying life was damn hard on a marriage. Emmett should know.
He turned his attention to the next firestorm brewing on the radar—a situation in Seattle that involved Russian RIOT operatives and the estranged wife of Agent Drew Fields, alias Greg the Hawaiian beach bum.
Funny thing—Emmett had just the man for the job.
Read on for an excerpt from Gina Robinson’s next book
DIAMONDS AREN’T FOREVER
Coming soon from St. Martin’s Press
Drew Fields pulled to the curb and parked in front of his former home. He hated the bland, midsized sedan the Agency insisted he drive as part of his mind-numbingly dull, assigned cover life. A marketing manager for a microbrewery? Really? At least there’d be free beer. He hoped.
That was the Central Intelligence Agency for you. The government sanitized everything. Even his official title—National Clandestine Services core collector. He was a spy, a secret agent. What kid wanted to grow up to be a core collector? Sounded more like nuclear reactor work.
Which, come to think of it, pretty nearly described his mission to reconcile with his estranged wife. If Staci ever found out what he was up to, she’d explode. In epic proportions. And there would be fallout. Plenty of it.
He shut off the ignition. Next time he was going to insist on an Aston Martin DB5. A sexy car made up for a lot of crap.
He took a deep breath. How was he going to convince Staci he still yearned for her tragically? Especially after he’d agreed to the divorce without a fight. And why now?
They had an anniversary coming up a week from Friday. Maybe he could play off that?
In all modesty, he was something of a phenom when it came to lying, a natural talent. His inborn gift had gotten him out of more than a few scrapes when he was a kid, and even more as an adult. But there were limits to his ability. He wasn’t James Bond.
Drew had tried to convince his boss, NCS Chief and head spook Emmett Nelson, to send some other guy in to infiltrate Staci’s life. But Emmett held firm—Staci’s emotions were too raw. She wasn’t likely to start dating and open up to someone else so soon. It had to be him.
Stalling, and hoping to be clobbered by a stunning blow of inspiration, Drew studied the two-story house he still owned half of, looking for security lapses. Staci kept the bushes in front of the windows well trimmed and away from the house, and the sidewalk, driveway, and front entry clear of any hiding places.
She’d resisted her natural botanical urge to plant flowers and trees over every square inch of property and columns of junipers on each side of the door. Open spaces made for less stealth and more safety.
Before their marriage went sour, he’d picked this gated neighborhood for Staci because of its low crime rate and excellent security measures. A spy’s family was never one-hundred-percent safe.
The Redmond Chief of Police lived here, a senator made her home away from the nation’s capital here, and at least two state legislators, and several high-profile entrepreneurs lived in the higher end, pricier part of the development.
Drew hated what he was about to do to Staci. The sooner he completed this mission and found an assignment overseas, disappearing deep undercover, the better. In the meantime, his Farsi was getting rusty.
He never should have married Staci in the first place. What had possessed him to think a girl who couldn’t lie to save her life would make a good wife for a spy like him? She had a tell as obvious as Alaska. The woman couldn’t even keep from giving herself away when she played Clue.
Worse, she had no interest in learning. Lying went against her highly tuned scruples. In her worldview, it was wrong. Period.
Ironically, that’s what he’d loved about her—she was the one person he could believe, the one honest thing in his life. A little slice of black and white shining through an otherwise gray gloom. When she said she loved him, he knew she absolutely did. With all her heart. When she said she wanted a divorce, she broke his.
And now here he was, at her insistence, stopping by the old homestead to pick up a box of odds and ends from their former life. A box Emmett had planted to give him an excuse to see her.
Drew glanced at his watch. Ten thirty. Right on time. He got out of the car, wondering exactly how he was going to convince Staci to give him another chance. Somehow he’d handle it. He always did. His best inspiration and lies tended to be organic, springing from the moment. But this was his toughest assignment ever.
He still couldn’t believe he was undercover as himself, dressed in Staci’s favorite shirt, wearing his good guy, boy-next-door persona on his sleeve. He’d rather be back in Hawaii, living as a tour guide as he had last fall, the invisible sidekick rather than the main man, the hero. He’d spent the last month back in Hawaii, a minor follow-on assignment to last year’s big operation. He hoped Staci didn’t notice his tan. But how could she miss it? In May, most Seattleites, and that included the residents of Redmond, were still a pasty shade of pale. She’d give him hell over it.
He slammed the car door shut to give her fair warning he’d arrived. The weather was pleasant—clear skies, temperatures in the low sixties. He left his jacket in the car. As he approached the door, he half-expected her to throw his stuff at him. He resisted the urge to shield himself with his arm. The woman had laser-beam aim. Instead, she made him ring the doorbell.
“Coming!”
Her voice didn’t sound like hell’s fury, but he didn’t drop his guard. He never dropped his guard. He wondered if she’d decided they were going to be one of those couples, the ones who seemed so cordial you wondered why they ever got divorced in the first place or how they even got up the gumption to file.
She opened the door partway and stood before him, just slightly breathless.
The sight of her gave him an unexpected jolt of desire. Old habits die hard, he told himself. This was just an automatic reaction to a beautiful woman with snapping brown eyes and slightly parted, highly kissable lips. Lips he was used to possessing. He dubbed it the JBR, the James Bond Response. Bond couldn’t resist any woman under forty. A hazard of the spy’s life.
The smell of freshly baked cookies drifte
d out from the house, diverting his thoughts. Chocolate chip. He hoped his stomach didn’t growl. He hadn’t had a home-baked cookie in a good six months.
Staci’s hands were empty. He’d expected her to thrust a box in his arms and shove him on his way.
Evidently, whatever had possessed him to fix up had also gotten hold of her. She looked like great sex on a rainy day. Her dark-brown hair was recently highlighted with streaks of auburn and flat-ironed shiny and straight. She wore skinny jeans, black pumps with three-inch heels, and a tight, low-cut, ruffled magenta blouse, belted with a wide black belt just below her eye-catching breasts. The belt made her waist look about two inches wide, her hips curvy, and her breasts double-D.
The heels might have been her idea of a power trip. She’d never liked being so much shorter than he was. Maybe she was hoping the heels would make them see eye to eye. Personally, he was having a hard time seeing anything above her breasts. He forced himself.
“Drew.” She smiled and opened the door wide to let him in.
Right away his defenses went up. He couldn’t act too eager and happy to see her. She’d never buy that. “Where’s my stuff?”
“On the kitchen table.”
To his surprise, she remained pleasant despite his gruffness. What was up with her?
“It’s heavy. You’ll have to get it yourself.” She stood aside to let him in.
He surveyed her outfit again. “Going out?”
She stared straight into his eyes, still smiling. “No. Why?”
He looked her up and down. “No reason.”
Just that she usually wore jeans, T-shirts, and Converse tennis shoes around the house. No way she’d dressed up for him, had she? Maybe there was hope for this mission yet.
* * *
Staci kept her smile plastered on, thinking positive thoughts and going to her happy place so the smile would reach her eyes. She couldn’t believe she’d missed this last box of Drew’s junk. His stuff seemed to be multiplying like the hairs that appeared when she cleaned the tub. But she was determined to be civil now that their marriage was almost over. It was just unfortunate the divorce would be final so close to their anniversary. Drew probably didn’t even remember it.
He walked past her so closely he brushed against her pushed-up-and-out biofit breasts. She got a whiff of his delectable cologne. Her breath caught. Involuntary reaction on her part. Intentional foul on his, she was sure.
He wore the navy-blue shirt she so loved on him, the one that made his eyes look even bluer than normal. It hugged and showed off his broad shoulders and every biceply muscle he owned. The man looked hot enough to eat. And tan for this time of year. His sandy-blond hair was light and sun-bleached. Should a woman be so physically attracted to her husband mere weeks before their divorce became final? Shouldn’t her hurt feelings take him down a peg or two on the attractiveness meter?
Maybe not. She reminded herself Drew was exactly like his boss Emmett. He could throw on the invisibility cloak or devastate you with charm and good looks. All without the aid of makeup or stage paint.
Just why Drew was putting on this persona confounded her. Last time she’d seen him, at her lawyer’s office, he’d been impassive and quiet, a study in calmly ignoring her.
She’d wounded his pride. She knew that. Andrew Collin Fields never failed at anything. Losing her was a slap at his James Bond spy machismo.
She took a deep breath, subtly. Already, she had doubts about the outfit she’d chosen to wear. Judging from the way Drew gawked at her, it screamed “woman on the make” instead of her intended “look what you gave up.”
Weighed down by hurt feelings, she wanted to spark jealousy and regret that he’d chosen his career over her. In the name of her pride, she was also determined to be pleasant. But she didn’t want him getting any other ideas, something crazy like she was regretting her decision to divorce. Life apart was safer. For both of them.
“You look tan,” she said to make conversation. “Been on a mission someplace sunny?”
He hesitated, looking as if he didn’t want to answer. “I was back in Hawaii this past month. Following up.” He had the good grace to appear sheepish and almost apologetic.
He’d been promising to take her to Hawaii for a second honeymoon for years. Well, up until this latest unpleasant divorce business. Soon she’d be free to take herself. When she found another job and got a little cash ahead. She forced herself to smile. “Tough life.”
He cleared his throat. “In the kitchen? Something smells good in there.”
She nodded, surprised he was being so pleasant. “After you.”
She followed him in, nearly colliding with his backside as he abruptly stopped just inside the kitchen door.
“Whoa! Give me a little warning before you brake,” she snapped, without thinking. He hated it when she used that irritated tone on him.
Fortunately, he didn’t seem to notice. He was too busy scanning the racks of cooling cookies that lined the counters and the island.
“Why, Scarlett, you’ve been baking!” He pointed to the racks as if counting. “There must be ten dozen cookies, at least.” He turned and stared into her eyes.
Her heart did an involuntary little flip. “Baking calms me. You know that.”
Oops! She’d slipped up again. Now he’d think she was nervous about seeing him. Which, of course, she was.
“What are you going to do with all these cookies?” His gaze flicked to her midsection.
“Eat them all myself,” she said, deadpan. No, she wasn’t going to eat herself into oblivion and a spot at Weight Watchers over him, if that’s what he thought. He could just dash any fantasies about her being an old, fat broad he was lucky to have ditched. She stared back at him, trying to keep her lips from twitching at the thought of disappointing him.
He must have seen her trying hard not to laugh. He broke into a smile himself. “Seriously, who are they for?”
“Little Jessica next door. Her class is having a bake sale. Her mom’s out of town and her dad can’t bake. I offered to help her out.” She shrugged as if to say “no big deal.”
“Uh-huh.”
In front of her, he was almost salivating. Oh, yeah, he loved her baking. One more thing he should have thought of before putting NCS, the spying arm of the CIA, before her.
She took pity on him anyway. Though she’d purposefully made the cookies so the house would smell of tempting vanilla and chocolate, in the end, no one could call her a hard woman. “How about taking a few off my hands? I think I overdid it.”
She headed to the pantry for a plastic Baggie without waiting for an answer. “Your box is on the table if you want to take a look. Are you staying with your parents for the rest of your furlough? I imagine your mom won’t be happy about fitting another box into the garage—”
An explosion cut her off mid-sentence as she reached for the pantry door. Behind her, she heard the tinkling rain of shattering glass. Something whizzed past her head, buzzing like a bee about to sting. She reached instinctively to swat it away.
“Get down!” Drew tackled her from behind with all the finesse of a quarterback sack.
Her breath left her body with an unflattering oomph as her ribs hit unyielding ash. Her cheek smacked the cold floor and throbbed on impact. Wood flooring wasn’t exactly cuddly and soft like her microfleece sheets.
Neither was Drew as he covered her with his hard body. Her heart pounded wildly in her ears over the hum of a lawnmower somewhere outside. She couldn’t catch her breath.
Another gunshot sliced through the door above her.
Much as she wanted to blame her difficulty breathing on the wide, tight belt she wore, it accounted for only a small part of her problem. Fear and the weight of the man on top of her, and her physical attraction to that particular one hundred and eighty pounds of maleness, accounted for the rest. She needed a nice, safe boyfriend. One with no enemies.
As the nerve-wracking silence stretched out, Drew remained i
n place longer than strictly necessary.
“Off!” she finally managed to mutter, fighting off panic and unable to stand the intimacy of their position another minute.
He rolled off, next to her. “You okay?” His voice rang with tender concern, making it even harder for her to catch her breath.
Somehow she managed and inhaled deeply. Her cheek began to throb again, along with her ribs, wrists, and elbows. She’d be bruised, but she’d live. “I’m fine. Thanks for making me a part of this.” She was trying to be brave and make light, but inside, she was trembling.
“You’re welcome.”
She started to push up on all fours, feeling as wobbly as a partially filled water balloon.
Drew shoved her back down, none too gently. “Stay down.”
She glanced up at the pantry and the newly splintered bullet holes at head height. Not the conversation piece she dreamed of for her kitchen. Too Bonnie and Clyde for her taste.
Still stunned, she looked at Drew. “Two to the head. Someone wants you dead, execution style.” She used her “what else is new” tone because it was better than screaming like a panicked maniac. “You owe me a new door and a new window.”
Drew peered back at her and shook his head, obviously thinking she was deranged. He pointed up at the holes. “Me? You’re crazy. I wasn’t standing next to the pantry.”
She went cold and her spit dried up. He’s right. The men he played with wouldn’t make a dumb mistake like that.
Drew pulled his cell phone from his pocket. She couldn’t believe it—he was actually dialing for help. In the spy world, that was practically like asking for directions. Taboo even in the spur-of-the-moment danger situation.
“Who are you calling? Spook central or the cops?” she asked.
“Neither.” He showed her the screen of his phone.
She watched, feeling her anger rise, as a security feed of her house, inside and out, and the surrounding area scrolled past.
The Spy Who Left Me: An Agent Ex Novel Page 30
