He raised an eyebrow but nodded. The rest of the tour went off without a hitch and the DARPA group left without fanfare. Kendra walked back to her office and stepped out with the tray of cookies. “As promised, my famous gingerbread cookies. You should know that my fiancé decorated them, though.”
Joe laughed and offered to take the tray from her in the doorway. He leaned over and whispered, “Why don’t you let me pass them out while you start wiping the computer?”
“You’re under the mistletoe,” a lab tech pointed out, a wide grin on her face.
Joe rolled his eyes upward, and to his horror, spotted the poisonous green sprig. Kendra raised her hands. “You guys know how much I love Christmas, but this probably isn’t the time.”
Joe placed a hand on her back and faced the group as if they were in solidarity, but the staff eyed Kendra suspiciously. Her words needed to hold more enthusiasm. Audrey had warned him. He needed to help Kendra seem authentic, so he whispered into her ear, “Just a small peck.”
As she turned, wide-eyed, to face him, her eyes drifted to his lips. Joe’s heart jumped into overdrive. He leaned forward and she responded by tilting her chin upward ever so slightly.
The room exploded. The sound of breaking glass accompanied a loud boom. Screams erupted behind them and the lights flickered off. Joe instinctively lifted his arms, flicking away the tray of cookies and covered Kendra, who had also hunched over.
Emergency lighting, dim, flickered to life along the baseboards. A horrible stench filled the room but Joe didn’t risk looking over his shoulder to figure out what exploded. They were in a room filled with chemicals. The fumes alone might have deadly consequences.
SEVEN
That was close. Too close. And Kendra wasn’t even thinking about the almost-kiss—she tucked that little moment away to obsess about later. The emergency lighting reflected off a thick slab of glass from the fluorescent fixtures embedded deep into the drywall beside her head. Another inch and it could’ve...
The lab door swung open, and the extra light illuminated the smoke gathering at the ceiling. “Everyone out. Leave everything!” Shannon yelled.
A hiss sounded as ceiling sprinklers deployed, spitting water on Kendra’s face. She didn’t try to cover her face from the water, though, because the explosion might have contained toxic fumes that could affect her skin later. Hopefully the water would wash away everything.
Kendra kicked open the office door.
“We have to get out of here!” Joe said, then bent over and coughed.
“Go! Make sure everyone gets out. I’ll be right behind you.” Kendra couldn’t let go of the timing of the bomb. It could be a distraction to steal the research. She should’ve followed her instincts and secured the research the moment they’d entered the lab. She jostled the key chain Audrey had given her that included personal car keys, an apartment key and, most important, the keys to the hard drive. The office held no backup light system, though. Kendra held up the keys to her eyes and fumbled with them. She leaned over and tried to make sense of the lock, but she’d never used this type of lock before.
Joe came up behind her. “I have one like this.” His hand clumsily grabbed the keys from her. A moment later he freed the hard drive from the bolt as rivulets of water ran down the sides of his face.
“Now the laptop and all these papers.”
Another boom sounded, this time from a different chemical hood. Joe shook his head. “No time!” He grabbed her hand and tugged.
Kendra pulled back.
“Nothing is worth your life. Try not to breathe until we get out.” His eyes made it clear he wasn’t going to stand for another second. Kendra allowed him to lead this time, as he pulled her through two sets of doors into the hallway. They kept their heads down low, following all the techs out into the fresh air.
Joe slipped the small black hard drive into the deep pocket of her Christmas blazer. At least the outfit had one good use.
Sirens sounded. There had to be a fire station less than a mile away given the reaction time. Techs in lab coats gathered together, wet and shaking with fear. The DARPA team had only made it as far as the parking lot. They looked past the techs with confused expressions, except for the scientist who had asked to stay. Kendra turned to see what they were looking at, but didn’t see any smoke coming out of the main building. “Joe,” she said.
“I noticed. He doesn’t seem surprised. We need to find out more about him, but first I should make sure everyone got out.” Kendra approached Shannon at the outskirts of the main group.
“I already know what you’re going to ask. I counted. All here.”
A few of the techs gave her an odd look but didn’t move to open up the circle or speak to her. Either they were in shock or they knew she wasn’t Audrey. Both options increased the need for expediency. She returned to where Joe waited. “At least we have the hard drive, but we need to get back inside the lab to secure the laptop.”
“Aside from the office still standing, I couldn’t see through the smoke enough to know the extent of the damage.” He placed a hand on her back and pulled her close, as if comforting her the way a fiancé would. “The fire department and police will be all over this place today. And, if we don’t want to be scrutinized by police, I suggest we leave now. With all the chaos, hopefully they don’t notice you’re missing for a little while.”
She exhaled. “The Wyatt situation. Did you notice how everyone had questions in their eyes after he left?”
“Everyone likes drama. Let’s hope that’s all it was.”
The fire truck pulled up front. The staff scattered to make way. Joe put a hand on the back of her shoulder and led her to the corner of the building, as if to just rest for a moment. As soon as all eyes were off them, he gave her elbow a slight tug. They slipped around the corner. “I think it would be wise to assume that everyone thinks something is off about you.” He pointed in the direction he wanted them to go.
She almost rolled her eyes at the way he phrased that. “In other words, assume the Pirate already knows Kendra Parker shut down his communication network, compromised his best behavioral analyst and looks like a dead ringer for Audrey Clark.” Her shoes clicked over the red tiles on the path. “If there’s a chance they’re trying to kill me, it’s best if we get away from the campus, away from the students. Best-case scenario, law enforcement will want to talk to us but we won’t know who to trust.”
“For the moment, I think we should avoid going back to Audrey’s apartment, at least for now. I scoped out the area maps last night. There are some places within walking distance where we could lay low for a while.”
“Do you still have Visa gift cards if we need to stay in a hotel?”
“It might be wise to just focus on today.”
“In other words, we’re broke.”
“Not exactly, but I’m also not thrilled with our finances if we find ourselves permanently on the run.”
“We can’t think about anything permanent. Not yet. We need to secure the research before facing that.”
“At least you secured the biggest piece of the puzzle.” Joe eyed her jacket pocket, where the hard drive rested, and led them north. “Audrey made it clear the rest of the research isn’t worth anything without that drive.”
In the light of day, Kendra would’ve wanted to take the time to appreciate much of the Spanish Renaissance theme present in the older parts of the campus. For the most part, they stayed in the shadows, constantly looking over their shoulders and above, in case someone was watching from one of the towering buildings, but the courtyards and reflecting pools beckoned her to stop and rest, to sit in the sunshine.
Still, she pressed on, for ten more minutes, until they reached an open-air mall. The moisture from the sprinklers had soaked through the blazer and she’d started to shiver. Joe suggested they stop in a local clothing store.
/> She grabbed the first normal navy sweater, pair of jeans and jean jacket she could find. Joe picked a green pullover shirt, but claimed his jeans weren’t that wet, and they were out of the shop in dry clothes within ten minutes. They bundled the wet clothes in the shopping bag and Joe took a turn carrying the hard drive in his pocket.
They walked past a coffee shop. Window art wishing them “Happy Holidays” covered the tinted windows. The cartoon drawing reminded her of the mistletoe at Audrey’s office. Her sister would certainly hear from her about that! Although, it was possible one of her staff had hung it up when they’d heard her fiancé was visiting.
Kendra’s heart never fluttered when she’d needed to hold her old partner’s hand on missions. Even when they had to kiss each other, she felt nothing but sisterly affection, although they’d only shared a peck on the cheek. Mistletoe had never made its way into an operation before.
Joe turned around and motioned to the coffee shop. “I think we should wait indoors and figure out our next steps.”
Kendra followed him inside but positioned herself at the entrance, leaning against the faux brick wall, as if waiting for someone, so she could keep a lookout while Joe went to the counter to order. He wandered over to the couple taking the table nearest to the window. She had no idea what they talked about, but within minutes they were thanking him and switching to a table farther inside the store.
He waved her over. “Our drinks are coming. Hope you’re still okay with plain coffee. We have a good vantage point here to see if anyone is coming.”
She took a chair and positioned it diagonally for a better angle. “What did you say to those people?”
He shrugged. “I told them my wife was learning to cope with agoraphobia, but it would be easier to have the window seat. No matter what they decided, I offered to prepay for their order as a way of apologizing for my intrusion.”
This was why Joe had been promoted faster than most in the FBI. He thought out of the box and had a firm grasp of human nature and behavior. “Explains why they thanked you for kicking them out of their seats.”
He shrugged. “Everyone likes to feel like a hero. So maybe you could act a little nervous if they look over.”
“I don’t have to fake that today.”
He frowned. “If it were anyone else, I would expect that what just happened would be traumatic, but you don’t have that reputation. Kendra, sometimes this type of work gets to even seasoned...” He let his voice trail off as a couple of women entered the café. “I’m trying to ask if you’re okay.”
Kendra hesitated to answer even though she’d basically opened the door for him to pry. Joe had a gentle way about him, but she knew for a fact it didn’t stem from weakness. There was a deep strength under his control. She recognized it back at the academy because she’d seen it in herself. But now...
Her hands shook ever so slightly. “I’m weary, like this constant exhaustion deep in my bones that I can’t seem to shake.”
“Well, we did have a sleepless—”
“No. Wyatt, at least, got that part right. I may not be in academia, but Audrey and I apparently have that in common—we’ve had our fair share of sleepless nights and know how to navigate them. This goes deeper.” A young man in an apron rushed over with two plain coffees and left just as fast. Kendra wrapped both hands around the cup, savoring the warmth. “At first I thought it was a normal part of recovering from my gunshot wound in that mission gone wrong I told you about, but I don’t think that’s it.”
Joe leaned forward, his kind eyes set on hers. “Don’t discount the trauma. Like you said, you were shot and woke up to find you’d been operated on. Add the double blow of remembering you’d just met a twin, who you found out took your place. That’s a lot to deal with. Fast-forward to today. Your partner is transferring so you won’t be working with him anymore. You’ve found your biological mother only to—”
“Yes.” Her eyes burned. “I know.” It was a mistake to bring it up, after all. Hearing him summarize the past few months stirred up emotions she needed to bury, not have resurface. The overriding feeling of utter failure crashed over her. It was as if she were trapped between a rock and high tide, as massive waves kept coming, relentlessly, preventing her from catching her breath before sinking down into the water again.
She’d lost her focus, her motivation to be the best agent. She used to be the one calling the shots on missions, the one her handler relied on the most. Ever since she’d met Audrey, other people were making arrests that should’ve been hers. “I think I’m just off my game.”
Joe’s hand inched forward toward hers, then he apparently changed his mind. He straightened slightly. “I’d like to pray for you.”
At any other point in her life, if someone had asked her when she felt closest to God, she’d have pointed to time alone. Solitude had been hers for the taking for the past six weeks during her leave of absence, yet she felt farther from Him than ever. There was no way Joe, the poster boy of being close to God lately, would understand that. “You don’t need my permission to pray for me. Do it on your own time, though. I need you to stay in analysis mode instead of pastor mode if we’re going to survive this mission.”
* * *
Joe blinked rapidly but didn’t reply. Kendra seemed to bristle every time he mentioned transitioning to a pastoral role soon, but he didn’t understand why. She had claimed to be a believer on day one of the academy. The FBI had welcomed them to training by showing them the badges and leftover gear of agents who had died on the clock. It was one thing to be mentally prepared for the potential sacrifice in serving your country, but to see and touch the items left behind while the speakers played the voice of an agent dying, calling for backup...
The moment had served its purpose. Many dropped training that day to return to their normal lives. Kendra and Joe, though, had shared a hot cocoa in the lounge that night, and shared their faith. He wondered now if her time in the field had hardened her heart. She wouldn’t be the first.
“Does the scientist we noticed on the DARPA review team match your profile of the Pirate?” she asked.
He took a sip of the hot coffee to regain focus. “I didn’t really have enough interaction with him to know for sure.”
“What do you know about the Pirate? What is he motivated by?”
“Money—”
“Of course, but don’t you think it has to be more than that?”
“The impression Beverly gave me was a man who discovered he was excellent at manipulating people to get what he wanted, someone who had a great deal of pride that he could run an entire criminal organization within law enforcement without risk of being identified. My biggest fear is he or she has learned more from Beverly than the other way around.”
“You’re saying the Pirate got even better at manipulating people because of Beverly?”
He shrugged. “A possible, though unintentional, side effect of her deep cover. Our line of work seems to be a never-ending balancing act of justification. We violate privacy because it helps stop terrorist attacks. We deceive others about our true identities because if we don’t, we put a target on ourselves and loved ones. Everything we do is for security and justice, in the hopes that we are making the world a better place.”
“When I was making arrests I knew I was making a difference.” She said it bitterly, as if it would never happen again.
He nodded. “I might not have done the physical arrests, but I felt pride in my work.”
“Is that the real reason you’re leaving the FBI? You can’t justify it anymore?”
A hiss of bus brakes sounded nearby. Joe stood as if saved by the bell. He didn’t think that played a part in his decisions, but if he was honest, he wasn’t entirely sure. Either way, it sounded like a topic to think on when he wasn’t worried about being killed. “I think we should catch that bus.”
Kendra
hustled after him out the door. They boarded the bus in silence and found a seat away from prying ears.
“Beverly hypothesized that he got into government work with the intention of recruiting other agents for his own goals from the very start.”
“You would think a recruiter would’ve picked up on that.”
Joe shook his head. “It’s not the job of a recruiter to worry about motivation or loyalties. They don’t need to be concerned about whether or not they’re hiring a double agent.”
“Beyond their pay grade?”
“I’m not sure that’s why, but in any case, it’s the office of security who gets to tackle those possibilities.” Darkness seemed to settle on her face, perhaps because his statement made her think of her double-agent father. “Obviously, there are flaws in our system.”
“Obviously.” She stared off into space.
Joe sat in silence for a moment, trying to think of anything else that might help. “Beverly once mentioned the Pirate likes the idea of making the world a level playing field.”
“So there’s a twisted philosophical reason driving him? Great. I’d much rather go after someone motivated by the money.”
“A level playing field...” He looked out the window. “Maybe that’s what the explosion in the lab was about... Perhaps it wasn’t so much about taking us out, but more about making it easier for someone to get in.”
She crossed her arms and leaned back. “I didn’t get a look at the extent of the damage, but if the goal was to kill me, it was a pretty sloppy attempt.”
“Well, we don’t know what kind of toxins resulted from the fumes—”
“Joe, we were drenched in water within seconds, and we both seem to be breathing fine.” She frowned and looked out the window. “I’m giving you a lot of latitude. How about you tell me where this bus is taking us?”
Covert Christmas Twin Page 7
