Secrets She Kept

by Debra Webb

  She held the elevator door open for him as he dragged his suitcase inside. “I feel so humbled now that I know how easy it is for anyone to fake a new ID.”

  “Spare me.” He nudged her shoulder. “As if you don’t know all about that. Half the time the Agency can’t locate someone, it’s because he or she adopted a new identity.”

  “Just like I’m sure Jeffrey on my phone is not really a Jeffrey.”

  “He must’ve followed us back to my hotel and notified the second shift...if he was in on it.”

  “I’m pretty sure that was no coincidence—passing out and then the attempted abduction this morning. They didn’t expect you to be there, that’s for sure.”

  The elevator settled on their floor, and they exited. Sue got her card out when they reached the room and slid it home. She poked her head inside before widening the door for Hunter and his bag. “Just making sure nobody is here before us.”

  “They were good last night, but not that good.” He wheeled his suitcase into the corner and then bounced on the edge of the king-size bed. “Plenty of room for the two of us—your side and my side.”

  No time to burst his bubble now. She curled her lips into a perfunctory smile. “Should we get to work on the phone now before it’s deactivated?”

  “Do you have any tricks of the trade to find out or bypass the password?” He fished the would-be kidnapper’s phone from his pocket and tossed it onto the bed beside him.

  “I might have a few tricks up my sleeve.” She wedged a knee on the bed and scooped up the phone. “In the meantime, why don’t you have a look at Jeffrey’s picture just in case? We could send it in for facial recognition—if I were still in good standing with the CIA.”

  “Yeah, I was counting on you having all the Agency’s resources at your disposal. Now I’ll just have to do this the sneaky way.”

  She paused as she drew her phone from her purse, holding it in midair. “Are you telling me you have a contact in the CIA? Someone to do your bidding?”

  “Do my bidding? I wouldn’t put it like that, but yeah, I have a little helper.”

  Shaking her head, she said, “That agency has more leaks than a colander.”

  She tapped her photos to bring up Jeffrey’s picture. “Give me your number and I’ll send it to you.”

  “I can just look at it on your phone.” He snapped his fingers.

  “It’s better if we have a copy, anyway.” She held her finger poised above her display. “Number?”

  “Is this your sneaky way of getting my cell? You could just ask, you know.” He rattled off his cell number and she entered it into her phone.

  Actually, it was just her sneaky way of keeping him away from her phone. She didn’t keep pictures on her cell, but she didn’t need Hunter looking at her text messages.

  She tapped her screen with a flourish. “There. The picture is on its way. Now, I’ll get to work on this phone.”

  She dragged a chair to the window and kicked up her feet onto the chair across from it. She powered on the stranger’s cell, which they’d turned off to avoid any tracking, but turning it back on couldn’t be helped.

  “This guy your type?” Hunter held up his phone with Jeffrey’s mug on the display.

  “Tall, dark and handsome?” She snorted. “You could say that.”

  Hunter brought the phone up to his nose and squinted. “How tall was he?”

  “Tall enough.” Sue eyed Hunter’s lanky frame stretched out on the bed, his feet hanging off the edge.

  With a smile curling her lip, she hunched over the cell phone again.

  Sue clicked through the phone to access a few of the backdoor methods she’d learned at the Agency for bypassing a password to get into a phone. These worked especially well for burner phones like this one—and she knew a thing or two about burner phones.

  She glanced up as Hunter swung his legs off the side of the bed, hunching over his phone, his back to her. Seconds later, his cell buzzed and he murmured a few words into his phone.

  He must’ve reached his secret CIA contact—one who hadn’t been suspended from the Agency. She just hoped he knew to keep her name off his lips.

  A few taps later, the gunman’s phone came to life in her hand. She slid another glance toward Hunter’s back and launched the man’s text messages and recent contacts.

  Hunter ended his own call and stood up, stretching his arms to the ceiling. “I’m going to grab a soda from the machine down the hall. Want something?”

  “Something diet, please.” Tucking her hair behind one ear, she glanced up and pasted a smile on her lips.

  When the door closed behind Hunter, Sue began transferring the data from the stranger’s phone to her own—contacts, pictures, texts and call history.

  When she reached the last bit of data, Hunter charged into the room, a can of soda in each hand. “Any luck with that?”

  She slumped in her chair, clutching the phone in her hand. “Not yet.”

  Then she tapped the display one last time to erase everything the man had on his burner phone.

  Chapter 4

  Hunter snapped open Sue’s can of soda and leaned over her shoulder, placing it on the table in front of her. The click of the aluminum against the wood made her jump and flush to the roots of her dark hair as she jerked her head around.

  “Did I scare you?” He dropped his hand to her shoulder briefly.

  “I didn’t realize you were right behind me.”

  “You were too engrossed in that phone.” He opened his own soda and sank to the edge of the bed. “It’s a bummer you can’t get anything from it.”

  She placed the phone facedown on the table and spun it around. “None of my tricks are working. Phones are getting more and more sophisticated now and harder to break into. I think the CIA needs to get its cyber division on this to come up with some methods to bypass the new security measures.”

  “Speaking of the Agency and security measures, my contact thinks he can run Jeffrey’s picture through face recognition. If he’s on the intelligence radar, we should get a hit.”

  “He?” Sue twisted the tab off her can. “Is he stationed here in DC?”

  “Oh no, you don’t. I don’t give up my sources, not even to other sources.” He leveled a finger at her. “And that should give you some sense of comfort.”

  She tucked one long leg beneath her. “Did you ever tell anyone about us? I mean our brief affair in Paris?”

  Brief? Had their affair been brief? He’d been so lost in Sue, lost in Paris that the world had seemed light-years away, and he’d felt suspended in time. Ever since then, he’d measured everything in terms of before Sue and after Sue. And everything before seemed to be a pale imitation of what came after.

  Under her penetrating dark eyes, he felt a flush creep up from his chest. “I did tell a few people—my Delta Force team. That’s all. It’s how Major Denver knew to task me with contacting you.”

  “I see.” She braced one elbow on the table and buried her chin in her palm.

  “Did you?” He held his breath for some reason.

  “No.”

  The word didn’t come out as forceful as the expression on her face. She had told someone.

  “Our affair was a mistake.” She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest.

  Hunter gulped down his soda until it fizzed in his nose and tears came to his eyes. So much for getting Sue into bed tonight.

  He wiped the back of his hand across his tingling nose. “Two people, even someone from Delta Force and someone from the CIA, enjoying some R and R in Paris, off duty. As far as I remember, our pillow talk didn’t include any state or military secrets. Why is that a mistake?”

  She drew her bottom lip between her teeth and hunched her shoulders.

  “Oh.” He crushed his can with one hand. “You w
eren’t off duty, were you?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You need a haircut.”

  “What?” He skimmed the palm of his hand over the top of his short hair. “Where did that come from?”

  “I know just the place.” She sat up ramrod straight and snatched her cell phone from the desk. She tapped her screen and nodded. “It’s called T.J.’s Barbershop, and it’s downtown.”

  “Does this have something to do with what happened this morning?”

  Sue stood up, tilting her head to the side. “Do you trust me, Hunter?”

  Did he? She’d indulged in a fling with him while she was on an assignment in Paris, without telling him, and then left him high and dry in their love nest without a backward glance and disappeared. He never heard from her again. She wouldn’t take him back to her place here in DC. And she’d just been suspended from the Agency.

  Her dark lashes fluttered as the sun from the window set fire to the mahogany highlights in her hair. Her lips parted, waiting for his answer.

  “Yeah, I trust you, Sue.”

  “Good.” She reached across the table and tugged her jacket from the back of the chair. “Haircut at T.J.’s. They take walk-ins and you’re going to ask for Walid.”

  * * *

  Hunter drummed his thumbs against the steering wheel as he waited for Sue outside her townhouse in Georgetown. She neglected to invite him in, claiming she’d be just a few minutes.

  A few minutes later, true to her word, she appeared on her porch, wheeling one bag behind her, another slung over her shoulder. She waved to someone coming up the steps, clutching a small child by the hand, exchanged a few words with this person and then jogged across the street to his rental car.

  He popped the trunk and hopped out of the car.

  “Bad idea to leave the car. Parking enforcement love giving tickets on this block.” She nudged up the trunk.

  “I haven’t gone anywhere.” He collapsed the suitcase handle and hoisted the bag into the car. “This, too?”

  “Got it.” She swung her shoulder bag into the trunk on top of her suitcase.

  When they got back into the car, he glanced at her as he started the engine. “I suppose you’re coming inside with me for the haircut I don’t need.”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you going to tell me what this is about?”

  “I’m pretty sure this barbershop is connected to the group I’ve been tracking, the same one Denver was looking into before he went AWOL, if his intel is correct.”

  Hunter’s pulse ticked up a few notches. Progress. “You’re pretty sure, not positive?”

  “I got a tip about T.J.’s, but apparently it couldn’t be verified.”

  “And now I’m going to try to verify again. Walid?” He made the turn she indicated onto an even busier street than the one they’d left.

  “He’s the key.” She tapped on the window as they crawled through traffic. “You’re going to make a right in a few miles at Sixteenth Street. There won’t be any parking on the street at this time of the day, so we’ll leave the car in a public lot.”

  “Are we doing anything in the barbershop, whether or not Walid is there?”

  “I am.” She dug through her purse and cupped a small black device in her palm.

  Hunter raised his brows. “A camera? A bug?”

  “Both video and sound. I’m leaving it there, regardless of what happens.”

  “Do you need me to do anything?”

  “A little distraction wouldn’t hurt, but don’t go overboard and make them suspicious.” She poked his thigh with her knuckle. “I know you D-boys like to come in with guns blazing, but this is a little subtler than that.”

  He raised two fingers. “I’m the height of discretion. I didn’t even chase after you after you dumped me in Paris.”

  “I didn’t dump you, Hunter.” She folded her hands in her lap. “The affair had run its course. I had somewhere else I needed to be.”

  “There’s nowhere else I wanted to be.” He squinted at the brake lights of the car in front of him.

  She turned her head to look out the window, her dark hair creating a silky veil over her face. “It was...nice.”

  Nice? Not exactly the word he’d use for the passion they’d shared, but he’d take it for now.

  Rapping on the window, she said, “Next right.”

  He maneuvered the car around the corner into a bustling business district missing the genteel leafiness of Georgetown but making up for it in sheer energy.

  “Is that it?” He pointed to a revolving barbershop pole on the next corner.

  “Yeah. Look for a lot.”

  Almost two blocks away, Hunter pulled the car in to a public parking lot and paid the attendant. As he and Sue trooped up the sidewalk back toward the barbershop, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket, against the chill in the air. Spring had sprung, but nobody had told the DC weatherman yet.

  Sue’s low-heeled boots clicked beside him. She’d done a quick change of clothes at her place, replacing her black slacks with a pair of black jeans that hugged her in all the right places. Every place on Sue’s body was the right place, as far as he was concerned.

  When they reached T.J.’s, Hunter swung open the door, causing a little bell to jingle wildly. Three barbers turned their heads toward the new customers.

  The one on the end paused, clippers in the air. “Can I help you? Cut?”

  “Just a cleanup.” Hunter ran a hand over his head, the short ends tickling the palm of his hand. “Edge the neck.”

  “Sure, have a seat.”

  As he perched on the edge of a worn love seat, Sue remained standing, facing a rack of magazines, her hand clenched lightly at her side.

  Hunter cleared his throat. “Is Walid around? My friend recommended Walid.”

  Did two of the barbers stop clipping at the same time?

  “Walid?” The man on the end who’d welcomed him shook his head. “He doesn’t work here anymore. Hasn’t been here for a while.”

  “No problem. Thought I’d check.”

  “I hope this doesn’t take too long, James.” Sue grabbed a sports magazine and leafed through it.

  “You’re the one who wanted me to get the cut, honey. We can leave right now if you want.”

  The barber in the middle chuckled as he handed a mirror to his customer. “I’m ready for you. Shouldn’t take long. Step over to the sink.”

  The last thing he wanted was some dude washing his hair. He held up his hands and took a step back—right into Sue.

  She drilled a knuckle into the center of his spine. “Go ahead, James. I saw a drugstore down the block and I have a few things to pick up. Take your time.”

  “You’re not in a hurry anymore?” He shuffled toward the barber holding out a white towel.

  “You might as well get the full treatment.” She tapped him with the rolled-up magazine in her hand, and it slipped out of her hand and fell to the floor at the feet of the barber at the first station.

  Hunter followed his guy toward the row of sinks, leaving the magazine on the floor.

  The first barber set down the hairdryer he’d just picked up and bent over to retrieve the magazine.

  Sue reached out, wedging one hand against the magazine rack as she reached with the other. “Oh, thank you.”

  Hunter figured she’d just placed her device and got confirmation a minute later when she called from the door. “Meet me at the coffeehouse next to the drugstore when you’re done.”

  He lifted his hand before he went under the warm spray.

  Thirty minutes later, he managed to get out of T.J.’s with a little off the sides and a cleaned-up neckline. He loped down the street and ducked into the coffeehouse.

  Sue looked up from her phone and wiggled her fingers.

  He
ordered a coffee on the way, when what he really wanted was lunch, and pulled out the chair across from her. “I’m guessing you did what you went to T.J.’s to do.”

  “Nice cut.” She peered at him over the top of her cell phone and then turned it around to face him, showing him a video of the barbershop in real time. “But then I already knew that.”

  “What did you make of Walid’s absence? Do you believe them?”

  “I’m not sure, but the fact that they knew Walid was a plus. I know that’s the barbershop that featured in my intel.” She tapped her phone on the tabletop. “And now I’ll have an eye on what goes on there.”

  “Is that why you dropped by your place—to pick up spy gadgets?”

  “That and to change clothes and pack a bag. I meant it when I said I was going to stay with you at the hotel.”

  “Déjà vu all over again.”

  She opened her mouth, probably to correct him, but the barista saved him by calling his name.

  “My coffee.” He pushed back from the table and picked up his drink.

  When he returned, she was hunched over her phone again. “Any activity?”

  “Plenty, but not the kind I’m interested in.” She swirled her cup and took a sip.

  “What about the other phone?”

  “The other phone?” Her paper cup slipped from her hand and rolled on the table.

  He picked it up and shook it. “Lucky it’s empty. The phone I took off the intruder.”

  “I turned that off for now. I’m afraid it can be tracked or pinged.” She folded a napkin into a small square. “I wasn’t having any luck with the password, anyway.”

  “We still have his fingerprints on that gun. I’m hoping to get some help with that.”

  “Yeah, that gun.” She dropped her phone into her purse. “Sounds like you have more contacts at the Agency than I do. Maybe your contacts can get me my job back.”

  “You weren’t fired.”

  “Not yet.” She twisted up her mouth on one side. “Now I know how Denver feels.”

  “You think you’re being set up?”

  “I don’t know what to think.” She stuffed her napkin inside her cup. “Are you ready?”