“Ghastly?”
“That’s at least one adjective I wouldn’t turn my nose up at.”
“And you think Sam did?”
“Did what?”
“Know it would be so ghastly? Know they would rip you from that doctor’s office so callously?”
All of this reasoning sucked, but she was teetering nonetheless. “Point. But that doesn’t change what he did to … with … You know what I mean.”
“Your wall-rattling consummation?”
Her eyes fluttered shut. She’d known Sam for only a few days, and she’d been cranking him like he was the last man on earth. It probably looked horrible to a gentleman like Archibald who came from an era that was chaste, to say the least. “Yeah. That. He should never have let me believe he was someone he wasn’t. That he cared about me in any other capacity but a way into that clinical trial.”
“Thus, I must ask you, you don’t think he could have gotten you to agree to his plans minus the rattling of walls? You want this to end as much as he does, don’t you? You want the same answers Samuel seeks. I believe, whether the two of you were intimate or not, you would have, as you young people say, taken the hit anyway.”
Point. Point. Point. Fucking point. Okay? “You just like him better than me because he’s like all your detective show dreams come true and all I can offer is suggestions on what your most flattering color in manservant suits is.”
Archibald chuckled before running his finger down the length of her nose. “I will not deny Master Samuel’s appeal is just a notch above yours in that particular department. But this is what I’m really saying, Miss Phoebe. Sam had secrets he certainly should have revealed to all of you much sooner in this game.”
Phoebe snorted.
“However, I don’t believe he did this with malice or to save his own hide. I believe he did this to keep you all safe while he figured out what to do to keep his colleagues as far from you all as possible until he found what will save the two of you. You do realize, if his agency found out about all of you, they’d find out about him. He’d be locked away somewhere, as is protocol, according to Sam, and then where would you be? It was better he kept this an inside job.”
She rolled her face on the counter so her forehead was at the ready for the head banging she shouldn’t waste a second longer avoiding. Yes. That made perfect sense. Damn perfect in all its sense. “I lost my temper, didn’t I?”
Archibald held two fingers together and grinned. “I would offer the words just a smidge.”
But he could still have been lying about how he felt about her …
“And as an aside, I can’t remember ever hearing a man in such distress as I did your Samuel when he thought he would never lay eyes upon your beauty again. Oh, the phone calls back and forth between himself and Mistress Wanda. Loud, miss. Very abrasive.”
“Really?”
Archibald’s eyebrow rose. “Really, miss. And now, while this chat has been lovely, I believe I’m quite disoriented.”
Phoebe popped up, hopping off the stool and helping Archibald to a standing position. She gave him an impulsive hug, one he returned with an awkward pat on her back.
“I’m off, miss. Kojak awaits!” Archibald rambled off to the guest bedroom, leaving Phoebe to stew in his wise words.
Yes. Sam had lied.
But she’d been lying, too.
Both of them had done it in order to protect someone.
And she had to come clean with Nina and Sam soon in order to keep Penny safe.
Soon.
SAM grabbed one of his disposable phones and punched in the number for Harlan Luftkin. Another of his more questionable contacts, but without a doubt, his most trusted, despite his tawdry past. While he waited for the call to connect, he sifted through some of the DVDs Archibald had left in his room that Nina and Phoebe had missed when they were cleaning up after the apartment was burglarized.
One in particular caught Sam’s attention—a blank one that was mixed in with his movies.
But he forgot all about it when Harlan answered on the first ring. “Sammy?”
“Yeah. I got trouble.”
“Name it.”
Words were something Harlan didn’t do much of. It was what Sam liked most about him. He cut right through the bullshit and went for your throat. “Penny Reynolds. Twenty, in a wheelchair. Highland Hills long-term care facility in New York. Get there. Just watch for now. Keep it on the down low unless shit gets heated. Whatever it takes, make sure she’s safe until you hear from me. Also—I need low-key manpower on a Mark Boyer, Manhattan. Keep your distance. He’s easily freaked out, but not in the direct line of fire for right now.”
“You givin’ permission for me and my friends to play with our guns?”
“Balls to the wall, Harlan. Take out any fuck that gets in your way except the staff at Highland. No collateral damage.”
“It’s like fucking Christmas and Charlie Manson’s birthday,” he quipped, his southern twang accenting the word birthday.
“Then merry, merry, happy, happy,” Sam said before clicking the phone off.
Pulling his shirt over his head, Sam shrugged it down over his waist and reached for his gun.
While he’d scanned the files Stinky had sent him, something had occurred to him. Something that should have occurred to him much sooner than four hours after Phoebe’s harrowing entry into that clinical trial. His emotional attachment to Phoebe—the total center she’d become of everything for him—had kept him from looking at the big picture from all angles.
One huge fuck-up on his part? The freaks had Phoebe’s phone and her purse, and every one of them was listed as a contact in there.
Surely she’d called Penny from that phone any number of times, and now they could locate her apartment, too. Thankfully, Mark, after the scare of that first night, had decided to take their cat and go stay with a friend when Phoebe had packed it up and come to his place.
If they wanted to lure Phoebe to them—Penny was a sure bet. Harlan was the best he had to offer. The best candidate for getting the job done swiftly and silently with no remorse for the effort. Harlan would die before he gave Sam up out of some misguided belief he owed Sam his kid’s life.
Sam had never looked at it like that. It was his job to save people. Harlan’s people included. But right now, he was glad Harlan was on his side.
Fuck. He could really use some skilled backup right now.
PHOEBE sat in a ball on the chair, her legs tucked up under her, thinking. Sorting through this mess. When Sam entered the room, his large frame blocking out the dim light they left on for Archibald, he paused in front of the chair she sat on. His face no longer held the handsome, open beauty it had once held. It was set with determination. Hardcore determination.
“Where is everyone?”
“Oh. Look. It’s the FBI guy,” Phoebe poked. Her chat with Archibald had eased most of her anger—not all, but most.
Leaning over her, Sam placed his hands on each arm of the chair and forced her to look at him. “I’m going to say this once, Phoebe, and once only. I tried to explain to you. You didn’t want to hear me. I did this to protect you and everyone else. The less you knew about why I was here, the better. Whether you approved of my judgment call or not. There it is. Deal.” He pushed off the chair with a jolting shove of his hands and a hard set to his jaw.
Her eyes shot upward, meeting his two flecks of black granite. This was not the cute, cuddly Sam of twenty-four hours ago. The one whose eyes she could get so lost in. This was FBI Sam. Hard. Cold. With a plan.
But he was right. So she caved. “You’re right. Our differences aside, we have some real problems to deal with. And there’s something I have to tell you—all of you. Before this goes any further.” The knots in her stomach twisted at what she had to do next.
“You mean about your other sister, Penny?”
Her eyes flew open while her fingers clenched the edges of the sleeves on her sweater. “You know?”<
br />
“I’m the FBI guy. I know everything.” His sarcasm dripped into the air between them and oozed all over her.
Phoebe held up her finger. Why was it okay for everyone else to be angry with him? According to Wanda, Nina had torn into him. “First, lay off the sarcastic, put-upon crap. You caught me totally off guard, and it’s been, in case you missed the part where I almost bought it, a long damn day. Plus, you did lie to me. Second—if you’re going to wander around with a stick up your ass because I called you on this—wander around somewhere else. I’m not going to have you covertly attacking me. Be a man and give me the courtesy of saying it to my face!”
Sam shot her a look of disbelief. “You mean, shoot straight, Phoebe? Like you did with me about your sister?”
Oh, foul. Big foul! “My sister was none of your beeswax, buddy! And she certainly didn’t affect anything that was happening to us. Unlike the fact that you work for the fucking F-B-I!” she shouted between clenched teeth.
“Then why didn’t you tell us about her?” Sam insisted like the skilled interrogator he was.
And it made her cave with the guilt that had been eating her up since this had begun. He might as well have shone a flashlight in her eyes and threatened to make her talk.
Phoebe let her head fall to her heavy chest, the misery welling up in her like a dam ready to burst. “I kept it from Nina because it was enough that I had diagnosis death hanging over my head. I wasn’t sure she could handle that and a brain-damaged twenty-year-old who needs constant care. Nina didn’t handle me very well. So I figured after this was all over, we’d part ways and she never had to be the wiser. I love Penny like nothing and no one on the planet. She’s my heart, and she’s my responsibility for as long as I’m still here. She’s one of the very reasons I get up in the morning, and I won’t allow anyone to shun her the way Nina shunned me. She’s sweet and unassuming, and loves everyone with no judgment. Sometimes to her detriment. She doesn’t have the ability to understand when she’s being mocked. Nina would do nothing but frighten her. And aside from that, everything got so crazy, I didn’t know where to begin. I’m sorry.”
“She’s taken care of,” was his terse and still cold response.
Phoebe nearly swooned with such relief, she had to grab the edges of the chair she sat in. “Meaning?”
His chiseled jaw lifted. “Meaning I’ve got someone watching her day and night until this thing breaks.”
“Oh, God. No, Sam. You didn’t call the FBI in, did you? To send someone in to protect her? They’ll crucify you!”
“They’d crucify us. And no. It’s not FBI, but it’s someone I trust implicitly, and no one you need to know anything more about. Just know I’ve covered Penny and Mark’s safety.”
Fear crept back up her spine, and the image of that poor man flashed behind her closed eyes. Penny’s sweet, sweet face floated in front of her eyes, too. Gentle, unassuming Penny, with eyes just like Nina’s and the thwarted mental capacity of a ten-year-old. “You don’t think they’ll go after Penny, do you? How could they even know about her? I’ve kept her existence very quiet.” She jammed her knuckle in her mouth to keep from screaming.
Sam’s eyes flashed a streak of concern like the old Sam would. “They have your phone, Phoebe. I’d bet you’ve called her a hundred times from it. It wouldn’t be hard to find her—and no doubt, you’re on their most-wanted list. If you talk, let’s just say, they’re not gonna want that to happen. So they’ll do everything in their power to find you and eliminate you.”
Oh, good. More death. If they didn’t get her one way, they were sure to get her another. Overwhelmed, especially at the thought that Penny could possibly be hurt, she pleaded with Sam. “Why don’t we just go to the police, Sam? We need more help. You can’t have this all on your shoulders. It’s too much.”
Nina strode back into Sam’s apartment, her phone in hand, her mouth twisted into a snarl. “Because if we fucking do that, the tables will turn, and those douche bags’ll give us up just like we’re giving them up. So while we might save that poor guy’s life in the middle of all that shit, we’re fucking an entire community no one knows anything about—and not just our own community. That’s why. Besides, we’ve handled shit like this before. It might not have been as fucked up, but we’ve taken on plenty of assholes since the freaky-deaky began. We can take on more.”
Sam held up a hand to thwart Nina. “We have a lot to consider, Nina. A lot more than just us at this point. First up, we need to figure out where the hell this is going on.”
Phoebe pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. “Because I transported out to, of all places, Bed Bath and Beyond before I could figure it out, right?” God. She could just kick herself for panicking like that. Massage oil. How, in all that dire, she’d conjured up the idea of a massage instead of the training ground for a team of skilled ninja assassins would haunt her forever.
Nina gave her head a gentle shove. “You shouldn’t have been there to begin with, nitwit. We told you—anything suspicious, get the fuck out. I think a pillowcase over your head is a little on the suspicious side, don’t you, Brainy Barbie?”
Phoebe fought to keep the anger out of her voice. Okay. She’d made a bad choice. “I just wanted to help. And if I hadn’t taken that pill, Dr. Hornstein would have become suspicious.”
Nina tugged a strand of her hair. “No. He would have thought you chickened the fuck out and then he probably would have tried to kidnap you later. You know—the kind of later where we would have been there to beat his ass bloody?”
Sam placed a hand on Nina’s shoulder and squeezed, though his face was still all business. “Ease off, Nina. It’s done. Here’s the second part of this. The part that worries me. I know who the woman was that showed up at Phoebe and Mark’s that night.”
“Who?” everyone said in unison, including Darnell and Wanda, who’d joined them.
“Her name’s Meredith Villanueva. Stinky couldn’t find anything on her at first, but he did a little digging and he came up with some things we need to be concerned about. I knew her name the second he said it, but I’ve never seen her before. Not many have. She works alone, and her identity is one of the most protected in my field. It was a standing watercooler joke with us whether that was even her real name. She’s a legend at the agency. She’s a legend for a reason. Meredith’s undercover skills are, bar none, some of the best in the world.”
“But wait a second, Sam,” Wanda said, her brow furrowed. “If all of you at the FBI know of her, why didn’t they tell you she was in the middle of this mess doing undercover work?”
Sam’s face was dark and cloudy. “Because she’s not FBI. She’s CIA.”
FBI. CIA. And Meredith had been almost DOA.
So many acronyms.
So, OMG, and BTW, enough already with the madness, and just as an FYI, this was not a ROFLMAO kind of fun.
CHAPTER
16
Phoebe finally found the words to speak. “So your one-night stand was a CIA agent? Don’t all you acronyms ever talk to each other? You know, communicate so everyone’s on the same page?”
Sam clenched his jaw, but he still didn’t directly address her. Instead he spoke to the entire group. “I don’t know what happened. If you know anything about our agencies, you know, while we respect each other’s work, we don’t always love when someone else treads on our turf. My purpose at O-Tech was innocuous. I wasn’t there to necessarily find anything at all that was of the magnitude this is. I was just burnt out from the job and needed a break from the crazy.” He gave Phoebe a pointed look before saying, “And according to Stinky, O-Tech’s clean. Which is exactly what I reported just a week ago. But that Meredith was there means there really was something big. I suspect she found that something big in the same way you did, Phoebe. What happened after that is all just speculation.”
Nina cracked her knuckles. “Does this mean we’re gonna have more letters of the alphabet breathin’ down our necks, Sammy? You
know, like the CIA?”
“If Meredith was in deep cover on a long-term assignment—that might be what buys us some time. You have specific contact times—usually weekly—and if you don’t send out a distress signal, you’re on your own to get the job done. It’s only been a week since Meredith disappeared—that wouldn’t draw a whole lot of attention, but I make no promises. She was pretty far gone by the time she got to us—if she didn’t contact someone, it was only because she was half out of her mind in pain. It looks like it would take all reason away. Even CIA reasoning.”
The panic Phoebe kept forcing down rose again, and this time, she couldn’t stop her fear for Penny from spewing from her mouth. A fear that almost immobilized her. She’d promised her mother she’d take care of Penny at all costs. If it were the last thing she did, Penny would be safe.
Her hands gripped the chair’s arms when she jumped up, her legs shaking. “We have to go back in there, Sam! It isn’t just about that man in there anymore. None of us are safe until we catch those bastards. Oh, my God! What if they find Penny? She can’t defend herself—she’s still like a child! She trusts everyone!”
The room went silent, all eyes trained on her.
If gulping were still a verb in her world, it would’ve been audible.
Nina was the first to cross the room with furious feet. She stood in front of Phoebe with narrowed eyes. “This Penny? Bet she’s not your pet gator. She’s gonna be one of those big surprises, right?”
Phoebe shot Nina a guilty look, but she remained silent.
“Answer me, Phoebe,” Nina roared, her face a mask of yet another level of angry. She whipped up a hand in her sister’s face. “Wait. Lemme ask in a way you can relate to. So, is this gonna be one of those surprises, Phoebe? You know, like on fucking As the Days of Our Bold and Beautiful Loving Hope Turns—or whatever the fuck you call that crazy shit you watch. This is where the suspenseful music plays and some chick named after something stupid like a town in Georgia does the big secret reveal, right? One of those secret reveals that pisses her sister with the very cool name right the fuck off?”
Accidentally Dead, Again Page 27
