“They’re coworkers.”
“We prefer the term work family.” Finn took Jenni’s hand, raising her fingers as if he might kiss them. But the man next to her pried his hand free and shook it, using the motion to tug him a short distance away.
“Bill Lewis. Jenni’s father. Pleased to meet you.”
After he let go, Finn winced and wiggled his fingers as if they’d been crushed.
Tyler’s turn came next. “Hi, Bill. Call me Adam. Think of me as the weird uncle Talia never talks about.”
“Apt.” Bill cast a questioning glance at Talia. “Because she never does. Please, Uncle Adam, won’t you and your friends sit with us?”
Tyler waved Eddie and Darcy into the pew past Wendy and her purse, but he stopped Finn with a backhand to the gut and inclined his head toward the rear of the sanctuary.
“Right,” the thief grunted. “I prefer the back pew . . . It’s an Australian Baptist thing.”
The pastor spoke on Peter and the day he stepped out of the boat. Talia loved the imagery—the wind, the waves, the fear in Peter’s eyes when he began to sink and the calming voice of Christ as he lifted him up again. When the music minister began strumming quiet chords, Talia took the cue and ducked out to change.
Passing Finn, she grabbed his shoulder and dug in with her nails. “While I’m gone, the offering plates will come around.” She bent to whisper in his ear. “If you take so much as a penny, I’ll kill you in your sleep. You know I can.” She started to walk on, then rocked back a step. “Also . . . Jesus loves you.”
When she returned in her Georgetown Crew sweats, she saw Bill, not her pastor, standing in the Mission’s rolling baptismal. He gave her an Is this okay? look as she walked up the steps. Talia answered with a smile.
“Today is—” Bill’s voice caught in his throat. He coughed and started again. “Forgive me. Today is special, but I promise I’ll be brief. The water’s cold.”
The congregation laughed.
Bill squeezed Talia’s arm. “This is Talia. She came into our lives a while ago as a foster child, becoming a sister to Jenni and a daughter to Wendy and I. Since then she’s achieved so much to make us proud—top of her class, captain of the rowing team, a post in the Foreign Service. Today we are proudest of all. Overjoyed. Not for her achievement, but for her choice.”
He laid a hand at the small of her back and asked Talia to proclaim her decision to follow Christ. After doing so, she wrapped a hand over his, letting the strength of his arm support her for what came next.
“Talia Inger, upon your profession of faith, I baptize you my sister in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, buried with him in death—” Gently, he let her fall back.
The water closed above her, turning the spotlights into waves of color. A hundred images passed through Talia’s near-perfect memory. She saw a swimming pool rising to meet her, shards of glass splashing all around. She saw her father at the wheel of an old Ford on a misty road, the world tumbling, a man dragging her clear before the vehicle exploded. She saw her own gun pressed to that man’s head and in the next instant her arms wrapping around him.
Forgiveness given.
Forgiveness accepted.
The water parted as Bill lifted her up into the free air. “—raised with him in newness of life. Our adopted daughter, now adopted by the Father.”
The church cheered, even Darcy, though she looked a little bewildered.
Talia cried as she hugged Bill and let Wendy walk her back to the church’s small kitchen, where the deacons had put up partitions to form a makeshift dressing room.
By the time Talia came out from behind the partitions, a second woman waited for her, chatting in a hushed voice with Wendy. She had her back to Talia, red hair turned inward to a bob below her collar.
For a split second, Talia mistook the woman for Jordan and reached for a Glock that wasn’t there. But the cant of the redhead’s shoulders and the tapping of her foot spoke of someone else.
“Valkyrie?”
The grifter turned, laughing at the shock on Talia’s face. “I’ve got to hand it to you, darling. That was quite a show.”
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
THE MISSION CHURCH
THE HEIGHTS, OXON HILL, MARYLAND
“WENDY, COULD YOU GIVE US A SEC?”
Talia’s foster mother waited for Talia to add a reassuring nod to the request, then started for the door. “I’ll be outside. Your uncle Tyler wanted to talk with me.”
Once she had gone, Valkyrie pulled a stool over from the kitchen bar and sat down. She locked one spiked heel behind its bottom rung. “Let me get this straight. You get ritualistically dunked, and this buys you a ticket to the pearly gates? Why isn’t everyone signing up?”
“It’s good to see you too, Val.”
The grifter sighed. “What did I teach you about deflection? Use it, but don’t be so obvious.”
“I’m not deflecting.” Talia walked to a standing mirror to adjust her skirt and blouse. “I’m ignoring the question.”
“Why?”
“It’s beneath your intelligence. I’ve seen you cold-read a mark for gullibility, marital status”—Talia pointed at her with a hairbrush—“bank account password. We’ve been friends for months. You know I’d never believe such a thing.”
“Papa had me christened as a baby.”
“Okay . . .” Val had a point to make. Talia could see that. “Go on.”
“Eleven years later, at our summer home in Capri, I heard a noise in the night. I crept down to the wine cellar and saw Papa standing over a bloodied man while our chauffeur beat him senseless.”
The brush Talia had been running through her hair paused and came down to her side. “Why are you telling me this?”
“I assume the man who dedicated me to God was also christened as a child. And yet he became the devil himself. What does that say of me?”
All sense of teasing and sarcasm had fled Val’s features. What remained was a skeptic struggling to face something that cut deep into her soul. “We all make our own choices, Val. You. Your father. This baptism was a symbol of my choice to accept the forgiveness and salvation bought with the blood of Christ.”
“But you are going to heaven.”
A portion of an unavoidable smile tipped up the corner of Talia’s mouth. “Yes.”
The smile did not help Val’s mood. “And I’m not going to heaven, right? I mean, let’s face it. That’s what you and your church friends believe.” Her arms were crossed, shoulders hunched. If Val could see herself, she would tell Talia that she—the mark in the language of thieves—was now seeking a reason to be offended, another defense mechanism.
Talia remembered a passage from 1 Peter she’d learned in the newcomer’s class. For those who refused to believe, Christ the cornerstone would be a stumbling block and a rock of offense. A battle lay ahead. Was Talia up to fighting it? She put the brush in her purse, flattened her skirt, and opened the kitchen door for them both. “We believe heaven is open to everyone. It’s simply a matter of accepting the gift.”
THE REST OF THE CREW waited in the parking lot. As Talia came out with Val, the grifter and Tyler exchanged a glance, and only then did Talia realize Val had entered the changing area at his behest—for Talia’s protection.
He never stopped hovering.
“You can go now,” Talia told him, hurrying up to the Jag before Jenni or Bill came over and made frank conversation impossible. “I’m having lunch with my family. I’ll ride with them.”
Tyler scrunched his nose. “Why wouldn’t you ride with us?”
“Because you’re not having lunch with my family?” The implications of the statement hit her, and her stomach flipped. “Oh, Tyler. No.”
“Wendy invited us. Sweet lady.” He patted the roof of the car. “Hop in. I told her we’d pick up some fish on the way.”
LUNCH STARTED at awkward and went downhill from there.
Wendy had bitte
n off more than she bargained for with Uncle Tyler and his entourage. Talia could see it in her eyes as Mac ducked through the front door. Talia felt like Jack bringing the giant home for dinner.
Tyler caught her at the edge of the living room. “Stop looking so worried. Darcy left her explosives in the car.” He shoved a bag of fresh cod into her hands. “Take these to your foster father. He’s on the deck firing up the grill.”
The dining room table did not fit all nine of them, so Bill set up a folding table at one end. He offered to sit there with Wendy, but Talia wouldn’t have it. “Eddie and Darcy will take those places. Right, Eddie?”
“You’re putting me at the kids’ table?”
Tyler intervened. “Tell me you haven’t read a comic book in the last twenty-four hours and you can sit with the grown-ups.”
Eddie frowned and sat down.
A cat burglar in the kitchen and a grifter at the grill turned out to be the least of Talia’s worries. Once everyone had gathered at the table, with platters of blackened cod and corn on the cob between them, Bill rang his glass with a spoon. “Excuse me, everyone.”
They all looked up. Tyler swatted a roll out of Mac’s hand.
“I didn’t expect such a large audience, but I’m going to do this anyway. I have an announcement, or better yet, a presentation.”
He was looking at Talia as he spoke. What presentation? she wanted to ask but couldn’t find her tongue.
Her foster father produced a flat red box, wrapped with a silk ribbon. “Wendy and I prepared this a couple of weeks ago, but you can’t imagine how hard it is to get Talia over for a meal.”
Finn raised a fork. “Sure we can. Right, princess?”
Talia kicked him under the table.
Before she knew it, Bill was at her side, laying the box on her empty plate. “During the baptism, I referred to Talia as our adopted daughter, not our foster daughter.” He squeezed her shoulder. “She may have noticed.”
She had. For a foster kid, it was a sharp distinction.
“I should have remedied this disparity long ago. Go ahead, Talia. Open it.”
Tingles shot through her arms, so strong that she struggled with the bow. When she finally pulled the top away, she found a short stack of papers inside. “These are . . . legal documents.”
“They’re adoption papers,” Wendy said, hope in her voice.
“But I’m not a minor anymore.”
“It doesn’t matter to us.”
“This is expensive.”
Bill took his wife’s hand, and they both smiled at Talia. “It’s what we want.”
Eddie sniffled, which might have been the cold, but Talia heard Mac sniffle too.
Bill kneeled beside her chair. “We understand. This is a big step. It’s okay if you want to think about it. Right, Wendy?”
“Right.” Wendy’s hand slipped out of his, quivering a little. “You don’t have to take our name, if that helps.”
Everyone at the table watched her, none more intently than Bill and Wendy. Talia could feel their disappointment. They had expected a different reaction. But how could they have sprung this on her today, in front of people they hardly knew?
“I . . .” The truth rolled through her mind. I have to check with the CIA first because legally tying myself to you puts you in danger. Oh, and by the way, the boss I have to ask is trying to have me killed. “I do need a little time.” She replaced the lid and set the box under her chair, out of sight. “Don’t get me wrong. This is so generous. But like you said, it’s a big step.”
That was that. The numbness didn’t go away for the rest of the meal.
Talia hardly ate and hardly spoke. Bill and Wendy went on with the meal, trying to act as if nothing had changed, playing gracious and unwitting hosts to a reformed assassin, a mad bomber and her CIA hacker boyfriend, a wheelman with questionable loyalties, a cat burglar, and a con woman.
Through the fog, Talia heard snippets of conversation from all sides.
Tyler growled at Mac for taking too many helpings of fish.
Val, playing a role as ever, swapped cooking secrets with Wendy as if she had stepped off the pages of Better Homes and Gardens.
Eddie recounted his endangering-the-mission joke for Finn and received a pity laugh. “Heaps funny, mate. A real ripper.”
Darcy clapped her hands. “Excellent, Eddie. You never tell jokes.”
He pursed his lips. “I tell jokes all the time. You just never get them.”
During the meal, Jenni spoke as little as Talia, and ate even less. After a while she excused herself, mumbling that she didn’t feel well.
Talia pushed her chair back, glad for an excuse to leave the table. “I’ll go see if she’s okay.”
She found Jenni in the room they had shared through high school and college.
Jenni sat cross-legged in the middle of her old bed, hugging a teddy bear dating back to the Build-a-Bear craze. “I’m okay, Talia. You didn’t have to come up.”
“Oh yes I did. I used you as an excuse to escape.” She closed the door behind her, kicked off her shoes, and took up her old spot on the other bed, laying her box of legal papers on a conglomeration of pillows. “Is this about the adoption, because—”
“It’s not the adoption.”
“Okay . . .” Talia waited for her to clarify.
Jenni took the cue. “Remember I told you about the missing kids?”
“Sure. The refugee camps on the borders of Myanmar. You’re still upset about that?”
Jenni shot her a frown.
Talia held up her hands. “You know what I meant. It’s work. You can’t bring it home with you.”
“I can’t help it. There was a fire at a camp in Thailand. More kids went missing—thirty-four in one night.” Still clutching the bear with one arm, Jenni handed a folder to Talia. “This time we have names and faces.”
An organization called Compassion International had put together a brief for the State Department. Talia flipped through the pages. Each child had a full profile: name, birthdate, parent information. There were handwriting samples for the older ones. “This is a lot of detail.”
“Compassion is detail-oriented, especially when it comes to their kids. They helped the local pastor create a school and care program for the camp—something called a Child Development Center—and they were working to get these children registered in Thailand. Now they’re putting pressure on State to find them.”
“Pressure applied through you.”
Jenni shrugged. “My boss gave me the same answer as always. State can only do so much. We’re restricted by diplomatic barriers. But, Talia, you—”
Talia held up a hand. “Whoa. Hang on.”
Too late. The request came flooding out. “I know about your work. You think I don’t, but I do. Your posting reads Foreign Service, but you’re never in the Foreign Service wing. And you’re gone all the time.”
Talia didn’t answer.
Jenni seemed to take that as confirmation. “Find me some answers. Anything. Compassion’s man on the ground, Ewan Ferguson, is worried the kids were taken by traffickers working out of Myanmar. He’s heading up to the camp to investigate.”
“Myanmar.” Talia said the name for her own benefit, not Jenni’s. A knot began unraveling in her brain. “Rangoon is in Myanmar.”
“Yeah, sure. They call it Yangon these days, their commercial capital. So?”
Tyler had mentioned Rangoon right after Volgograd. Boyd has his fingers in criminal operations in every major city, from London pickpockets to human traffickers in Rangoon to forgers in Volgograd. Talia echoed his words out loud. “Human traffickers in Rangoon.”
“It’s Yangon. Talia, are you listening?”
Boyd had a human trafficking operation in Myanmar. He was about to hold his annual black-market deal-making extravaganza in Thailand’s capital. And children from a camp on the Thai/Myanmar border had gone missing.
Too many coincidences.
Talia
focused on the file in her hands. A little girl named Hla Meh looked up at her from the top page with an expression more grave than sad, as if she knew more of the world than a little girl should. Talia had worn a similar expression at that age.
“I’ve seen that look before. You know something about this. Can you talk to someone for me?”
She closed the folder, stealing a phrase from Tyler. “I think I’m experiencing what a colleague of mine calls operational overlap. And if I am, I’ll do way more than talk.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY
WOLF MANOR
WOLF TRAP, VIRGINIA
TALIA LINGERED at Bill and Wendy’s house after the others left. As she opened the front door with the box of adoption papers tucked under her arm, the evening sun poured into the family room. She clasped Wendy’s hands. “I’ll give you an answer soon. I want you to know this means the world to me.”
Then why not go through with it? She could see the unspoken question on Bill’s lips.
What could Talia say? Two of the people she cared for most in the world had thrown her a miracle curveball, and she had no idea how to swing.
As she reached the sidewalk, an Audi R8 rolled up, passenger window down. Finn revved the engine. “Need a ride, princess?”
“What if I say no?”
“You’re the boss, but it’s a long walk. And I’ll be idling at your heels the whole way. Tyler’s orders.”
The walk was tempting, if only to put him through the long, slow drive. But her frustration was with Tyler more than Finn. “I’ll save you the pain.” She dropped into the bucket seat. “But only if you stop calling me ‘princess.’”
He pressed the gas and let the acceleration close her door. “No problem, your highness.”
“Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
Talia wanted to smack him. “Your highness. Princess. What’s it all supposed to mean?”
He gave her a one-shouldered shrug, and that was all she got for a couple of blocks. Then, when her mind had jumped back to the kids in Myanmar, he said, “I dunno. Maybe I’m pulling your pigtails.”
Chasing the White Lion Page 8
