Mud Run Murder

by Leslie Langtry

  No, that wasn't me. I couldn't stand not knowing how this ended. Yes, I now knew who'd made the movie, but not why. Had Dewey just been hired to follow me? Had Pinter tried to set me up?

  Maybe Pinter had stolen the manuscript from Riley. That would mean he had been working for the Russians. I hated that. Double agents were the worst kind of traitors. It's all about the money with them. Politics aren't important.

  Ideas swirled in my head. Could it really be that simple? The Russians make a movie based on a real spy's cases in order to…what? It was hardly enough to topple the US government. It might embarrass them, but I was too awesome for that.

  Gruff and Ferret were worried about something in the script. So worried that they kidnapped Philby and me to get it back. The script was proof that someone knew about Riley.

  Even the Russians weren't this simple, and their plans didn't usually go awry.

  Dewey, Pinter, Gruff and Ferret. Who were they, and how were they involved?

  Just then, Riley's car pulled back into my driveway. From the way he walked into the house, I guessed that he hadn't found what he was looking for. My heart fluttered a little as the door shut behind him.

  No time like the present. I had to go over there and tell him what I'd found out. The problem was, I didn't want to. Now that I knew that I might still have feelings for him, he was the last person I wanted to see.

  My cell buzzed. I'll bring home dinner. We need to talk. It was Rex.

  Before I could deal with that, I'd need to face Riley. And I only had a few hours to do it.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I never walked across the street so slowly. He could probably see me. In which case, walking very slowly was going to look weird. It was like I was making my way to the gallows. And yet, I couldn't seem to walk any faster. On the other side of the street…on the other side of the door…was Riley. And I was supposedly in love with him.

  He answered the door before I put my foot on the first step. I moved a little faster because there was no point now. I felt the irony of Riley closing the door behind me—as if he lived here and I didn't.

  My heart beat a little faster. Was I imagining that? It could be that I was anxious about telling him about the Russians. On the other hand, maybe that would be enough intel for him to move on.

  "Flying Bicycle Productions is…" I would've finished my sentence, but Riley's mouth was on mine, and from experience, it is harder to talk with your mouth full of…someone else's mouth.

  I'd be lying if I said it didn't cause some tingling. It did. Riley's arms encircled me, and his hands ran down the length of my back. By this time, I was kissing him back. It felt good. Too good.

  "I can't." I pushed away. "I can't deal with this right now."

  The truth was that I couldn't deal with it at any time. Because I didn't want it to even be something to deal with.

  Riley nodded and sat down on the couch. I cursed myself for not having the foresight to buy another chair for the living room. I sat on the armrest. It was weak, I knew, but if I sat on the floor, I'd feel like an idiot. Besides, having the high ground was better psychologically.

  "Shoot," he said.

  And for a second, I considered it. That would be one way to end my problems.

  "It's the Russians. They created Flying Bicycle Productions and made the movie." I said it so quickly that the words practically spilled out of my mouth. A mouth that, just a few seconds ago, had touched his mouth. I suppressed a shudder.

  He frowned. "The Russians? Are you sure?" From his reaction I gathered that he was surprised by this information.

  "That's what Zeke said."

  Riley nodded. "Then it must be legit. So they stole my book and made it into a movie? Why?"

  I threw my hands up. "Maybe they thought it would discredit us. Or maybe they wanted to show that they had access to covert activities?"

  "That might be something. They wanted the CIA to know they were up on our cases."

  "It seems like a long way to go to prove that. Why not just publish your book and mass-market it?"

  Riley flinched. He was still smarting about the missing manuscript.

  A question popped into my head. "How did you realize it was missing?"

  "I kept it in a safe in my bedroom."

  His saying bedroom made me weak in the knees. Maybe Kelly was right.

  "Well, if they've had it long enough to make the actual film, it's been out of your safe for a while. Maybe even a year."

  Riley rubbed his face. "I swear, I had no idea it was gone."

  I changed the subject. "Did you find Gruff and Ferret?" From the look on his face, I realized he wasn't familiar with my nicknames for my captors. I explained.

  "No. They're laying low."

  I shifted uncomfortably. "What was in the script that they wanted so badly?"

  A cloud descended over his face. He didn't want to tell me.

  "How does the book end, Riley?" I grumbled.

  Nothing.

  "You know what they were looking for."

  He nodded. "I know what they are looking for."

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  "Why didn't you tell Rex? Why didn't you tell me?"

  Riley buried his face in his hands.

  I got up and gave him a shove. "Answer me! What's in the book that's so bad?"

  He shook his head. "I just can't believe they'd include that in the script."

  My patience was running out. "What? What did they include?"

  "I'm going to end up in prison. Or assigned to Antarctica." He was muttering now, completely ignoring me.

  All feelings I might have been feeling were now gone. In their place was a rising fury that I hadn't seen in a while.

  "Dammit, Riley! Tell me what the hell is going on, or I'm going to shoot you!"

  I was looming over him. Riley's expression cleared…as if he were seeing me for the first time. Which would kind of piss me off because of the kiss and all.

  "I was going to edit it out if I ever sold the book." He licked his lips. "I swear I only included it to ramp up the ending."

  I considered punching him. The shotgun behind the couch was another option. But I decided to give him one more chance.

  "Tell me what it is, and I'll help you."

  There. I'd said it. Even though a little while earlier I'd sworn off the whole mess. Now I was back in it.

  "Okay." He paused for a moment and got to his feet. "You have to realize that I wrote this, but didn't really think it was ever going to see the light of day. You have to believe that before I tell you."

  If I agreed, then I was taking on more responsibility for this case than I wanted. And I was pretty sure that when I heard what it was, I was going to punch Riley hard.

  "Fine. I believe you."

  "You might want to sit down for this," Riley said.

  "I'll stay standing, thank you." I didn't have time for this crap.

  "It's the Yaro Plans."

  I sat down.

  "You," I uttered as I pointed at him just to be clear. "You wrote about the Yaro Plans?"

  He nodded. He didn't look too good. For a moment, I thought he was sweating. Riley never sweated.

  "Why on earth would you have done that?" To be honest, I was sweating too.

  "It just fit into the story so well—the whole plot would've fallen apart without it. I was going to replace it with something else…only I never got around to doing that."

  "Who are you?" I asked.

  "What?"

  "Who are you? The Riley Andrews I know would never ever have mentioned the Yaro Plans."

  Once again, he buried his face in his hands. "I never would've guessed that they'd take the book. My safe was booby-trapped for crying out loud. And no one knew where I lived!"

  "Obviously someone not only knew where you lived but also knew what you'd been writing and where you'd put it!"

  The Yaro Plans! It was hard to even think about, let alone say out loud. This was a document that outlined a
new technology that allowed us to enter into other computers anywhere, anytime. A kind of back door built into the software of the two biggest companies—Yaro allowed the CIA to remotely enter into encrypted computers. We could pull data in any format in seconds. The secret was a special satellite we'd launched into space.

  There wasn't another country in the world who knew we had the ability to do it. Not even our allies knew. As far as I knew, it hadn't been activated yet, but when I had left they were very, very close.

  And the worst part, besides scaring our enemies and infuriating our allies, was the fact that these two software giants had no idea we'd even done it. The programmers who made it happen were actually CIA plants. They'd worked in these companies for years.

  Riley's screw-up wouldn't just make the entire world want to destroy us, it would also create major problems between the Agency and US corporations. And since none of this was even legal, lawsuits and investigations would soon follow. It might even be the death knell for the CIA.

  "How much detail did you include in the book?"

  Not that I completely understood it. I wasn't a computer expert. But I knew it was there and what it meant for my country should that intelligence find its way into the wrong hands…which at this point…would be just about everybody's.

  "Does it matter?" Riley groaned.

  "Probably not, but I'd like to know." I could barely keep an edge out of my voice.

  "I barely mentioned it. Well, I gave it a different name, but described it and what it does. But that's it."

  Closing my eyes, I leaned back against the couch. I ran through various possible reactions in my head, exploring every possible outcome. My training kicked in as I assessed the damage and thought about damage control.

  "So both the book and the script have the information. Both are missing?"

  Riley nodded. "I think so. I never finished reading the script."

  The Russians had taken the book and made it into a film. Why? To let the world know about the Yaro Plans. To humiliate and possibly bring down our government. To stir unrest between corporate and national interests.

  "The Agency must know about it. Why else would they shut the movie down all across the country the moment it aired for the first time?"

  "I think so," Riley said. "Which means someone on the Russian side told the feds about it."

  "Thank God they did," I murmured.

  I thought about yelling at him again. But I couldn't do it. I'd made some really stupid mistakes in the field too. And no, I'd never talk about them. Ever.

  This was huge. But this was something Riley had kept private. He never thought anyone would see it before he could change the manuscript. A flood of empathy washed over me, and I was exhausted. I wasn't mad at Riley anymore, but I was overwhelmed by the fact that this would be nearly impossible to track down. The book and the script could be anywhere. And there could be copies.

  "Why did they take the script back?" I asked out loud. "Surely they made copies. So why did they need that one? And why did Tim Pinter have it in his car?"

  "There's another possibility." Riley rubbed his chin. "Pinter could've been coming to you to hide it. Maybe he wasn't ex-CIA after all?"

  "Why me? Out of the millions of people in the country, why me?"

  "Because you are retired. Because you are still loyal." Riley ticked off explanations on his fingers. "And because you live in the middle of nowhere."

  "But that's just it! No one should be able to find me! When I left Langley, I left my old life behind. And yet the CIA drops by to mess up my life every other month!"

  I'd come back to Who's There, Iowa to hide out. To get away from it all. I'd changed my identity, which was good because my real name was Finnoughla Merrygold Czrygy. Wrath was Mom's maiden name. And that still hadn't stopped people from finding me over the past two years.

  "I think it might be worse than we thought," I said slowly. "I think there's a mole in the Agency."

  Riley groaned. "That's bad. Really bad."

  I agreed with him. "I'm going to blame Abed."

  Abed was an employee of the CIA who loved Girl Scout cookies to a point where he didn't think clearly. And he still owed me money. And I didn't particularly like him.

  "He doesn't have anywhere close to the right security clearance."

  Damn.

  "So what do we do now?" I asked.

  We sat in silence together on my couch, each puzzling the situation out. From the endless lack of talking, I guessed that we'd both hit a wall.

  "So…" I finally broke the silence. "We know why the movie was made and why the script is so important. We think that Gruff and Ferret were Russian spies and that's why the script was taken. We are guessing that Tim Pinter might have stolen the script back and tried to bring it to me for safekeeping.

  "What we don't know is who took the book in the first place or where it is now. We don't know for sure that Pinter was on our side, but even if he was, we don't know who killed him or how."

  Saying it out loud didn't make things any easier to understand.

  "And I have a couple of other questions," I said. "Why haven't the feds interrogated me yet? Who told them about the movie? And do they even know that you had the Yaro Plans out for everyone to see?"

  Riley cocked his head to one side. "I hadn't thought of that. It's possible that the Agency doesn't know what was in the book. They might not even know about its existence. And we don't know for sure that the Yaro Plans are mentioned in the movie."

  "I think it's safe to say they are," I said. "That's the only thing that could explain the Russian involvement."

  "We have to find Gruff and Ferret," Riley said at last.

  I nodded. "We have to find Gruff and Ferret."

  * * *

  We drove around town for an hour, inspecting every road, alley, and driveway, but found nothing. It was time to move to the secondary tier and hit all the barns, storage facilities, and warehouses on the perimeter. I'd suggested we do that first, since I knew the men had kept me in a place like that, but Riley was taking no chances. He'd hoped we'd get lucky and find a little ranch house with the car in the driveway.

  But no such luck, so now we were following the perimeter. Every two minutes we'd stop and get out of the car to inspect a huge building. But after half an hour, we'd turned up nothing. Most people might have given up and gone home. But then we weren't most people. We were spies. And spies go through every single possibility until they've all been spent.

  "This is not working out," Riley said as we got back into the car.

  We'd just searched the last possible place—the school administration's warehouse. It was full of books and chairs. No surprise there. What we didn't find was a large man with a deep voice or a small man with a high-pitched voice.

  It was getting late. Rex would be wondering what had happened to me. I dropped Riley back at my house and parked in the garage on the alley.

  "Where have you been?" Rex asked the minute I walked in the door.

  He looked me over, noticing the dirt and grime that was all over me. Warehouses are very dirty places.

  I slumped into the kitchen chair and leaned my head back against the wall.

  "Out looking for those guys," I said. There was no way I was telling him about Yaro. That way he wouldn't get pulled into the mess that was bound to come next.

  "You're telling me that you went out to find the men who kidnapped you?"

  "When you say it that way, it sounds stupid," I muttered.

  "That's because it is stupid." Rex didn't raise his voice—he lowered it. That was all he needed to do to show the gravity of the situation. Most people raised their voices as they got angry. Not my boyfriend.

  I was too tired to argue. "I know. You're right. It was a stupid thing to do."

  But Rex was still angry. He pulled a bottle of beer out of the fridge and went into the living room. I heard the TV turn on. I took that as my opportunity to go upstairs and take a shower.

&nbs
p; You might think a gun is a spy's best friend. But it isn't. It's a shower. I'd been in enough hellholes around the world to know that mud, camo face paint, and blood could be washed away under a piping hot shower nozzle.

  That doesn't mean it's easy to find one. I'd been in places where a shower consisted of a bucket outside. The CIA rarely put agents up at The Ritz. The word shower has a loose meaning in my former world.

  But here, in Rex's house, it meant a hot, steamy shower where the hot water never runs out. It meant soft, fluffy towels and shampoo that smelled good. I took my time and enjoyed it. If Riley got busted, I might get busted too. And I wasn't too sure about showers in prison.

  I'd just gotten into my bedroom when my cell buzzed. I answered. It was more dangerous not to.

  "Where have you been?" Kelly chastised me. "You do know that the mud run is tomorrow!"

  Oh right. That. "Of course! Wait, aren't you supposed to be in Omaha?"

  "I am in Omaha. Soo Jin said she's been trying to get hold of you. So I called."

  Right. Soo Jin. Kelly's new best friend. Maybe that was okay, considering I might be spending the rest of my life at Leavenworth.

  "I'm here. I'm just getting ready for bed. Calm down."

  "I left my minivan for you, and Soo Jin is renting one. You'll meet at the school at ten in the morning."

  "I know. I've got it all." I didn't. Not really. The news about the minivan was a surprise, but I couldn't let Kelly know that.

  "Good luck. Do you think Riley could film it? I'd love to see that."

  I rolled my eyes, but she didn't need to know that. "I don't see how he can. The course is a couple of miles long, and unless he wants to run beside us, which I don't think he'll want to do, he can't film it."

  That wasn't the real reason. The real reason was that I needed a break from Riley, the CIA, mad Russians, and secret plans. The mud run would be perfect. I could clear my head and possibly die from lack of exercise. That was one way of getting out of prison.