A Thin Disguise by Catherine Bybee

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Leo placed his report on Brackett’s desk, tapped the file twice, and walked out of his office. The man was off for the day, but had wanted the file on his desk by morning.

So there it was, most of the details one hundred percent true, and a few were drawn a tad outside the lines.

It had been over a week since Olivia had reached out.

A week of leaving his computer on, his cell phone ringer on loud . . . and jumping anytime it rang. Even though he was distracted at work, his mind was never far away from wondering where she was and what she was doing.

Right now, the distraction came in the form of two new human trafficking cases. One that involved women being brought in from Southeast Asia to serve as anything from prostitutes to slave labor in the fashion industry. And the other involved the new management of a gang that had started finding their girls in the local youth centers.

Since Leo was well versed in teenager, he and Fitz were on point to create a relationship with the staff and teens at the Y and the Boys and Girls Club, and see if they could start narrowing down the playing field.

Fitz drove while Leo gave her directions to their first stop. At that moment, they were stuck in the ever-popular LA traffic. A complete stop on the 405 freeway.

“Why do we live here?” Fitz asked the rhetorical question.

“The weather,” he replied, looking up at the gray clouds that would make the day dreary but wouldn’t deliver any rain. It wasn’t until the meteorologists started yelling storm watch that Los Angelenos considered grabbing an umbrella. Twenty percent chance of rain always meant eighty percent chance of nothing.

Heavy on the nothing.

“There’s plenty of sunshine in other places.”

“Florida has bugs.”

The annual struggle of living in Southern California always included a discussion of sunshine versus humidity versus snow.

Although he didn’t mind the snow.

Not when there was someone to share it with.

Damn, he missed her. He dug down into his Catholic roots and prayed to whoever was listening that Olivia was alive and safe. He also asked that she contact him soon. He and Neil’s team needed something more to go on.

Apparently, when you were a retired assassin, the entire world was your office space. And Olivia had told the team nothing about her past. Making it impossible to track her.

Except there was one critical detail she’d told them years ago.

The man who’d hired an innocent girl and made her an assassin had recorded her first kill and held it over her.

Leo wondered what he’d done to make her take that first shot. Maybe he convinced her the head on the other end of the scope was evil in human skin.

Leo didn’t know how it played out. What he did understand is the woman he’d fallen for was nothing like the killer Sasha and the others described.

“Okay, what the hell is going on in your head?” Fitz asked.

“What?”

“It’s that woman, isn’t it? Janie.”

Even he knew to stick as much to the truth as possible. “I spent two months with her. So yeah . . . I’m worried about her.”

“How did you spend those two months?” she asked, her eyes on him and not the stopped car in front of them.

“The house was filled with people.”

“Ah-huh.”

“And cameras and microphones. Seriously, there was no privacy.”

“If teenage kids can figure it out, two grown adults can . . .”

He blew her off. “It’s not what you think.” It was so much more.

“I’m not Brackett, all right. I don’t care who you sleep with.”

“I never said I slept with her.”

Fitz smiled and turned her attention to moving traffic. “You just did.”

He moaned at her conclusion but didn’t deny it.

“I’m sorry it’s complicated and couldn’t work. You deserve someone in your life.”

“I’m sorry, too.”

“Follow me. I’ll show you where we collect the soiled laundry.”

Olivia thanked him and kept her step just behind him. Her disguise added thirty years to her appearance, a longer nose and short salt-and-pepper hair. The glasses were an added distraction.

Checkpoint Charlie was Richter’s version of a butler and hall monitor.

She glanced at him as they walked down the stairs. The man didn’t seem to age. She remembered assuming his age to be in his sixties, but now that she was older, he still looked in his sixties. He spent most of his time at the front entrance to Richter as a literal doorman. Though he always had time to make it to the doors since there was a gate, keeping people out or announcing them when they arrived.

He was kind.

When students didn’t have a family to celebrate a milestone with, he was always the one who offered something as a gift. Sometimes that gift was turning the other way when he saw something that would have gotten them in trouble with the headmistress. On Olivia’s eighteenth birthday, he accidentally left his locker open, where he occasionally put a bottle of liquor or wine and made sure she knew it. He did that for a lot of students. Especially those that were truly stuck there.

Charlie opened the laundry room door and stood aside as she walked by.

“Danke,”she said and looked around.

“It appears your colleagues beat you to it.” Charlie spoke in English and closed the door with the two of them inside.

Olivia turned and found him staring.

She knew her jig was up.

If there was anyone who had the finger on the pulse of a home or business, it was the maid or the butler. And Charlie was bright.

“Why are you back?” he asked, his eyes searching her face as if trying to place her.

Olivia stood taller. “Do you know who I am?”

He moved his head from one side to the other. “It’s a good disguise, but a bit thin, if you ask me. A man who watches you grow up always pictures what you will look like when you grow old.”

Well, damn.

He sighed. “The world thinks you’re dead.”

Words she always liked to hear.

She pushed aside the uniform top and exposed the scar on her chest. “Not everyone.”

He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry for that.”

“I survived.”

He shook his head. “Not the bullet. The resurrection,” he clarified.

She was bummed about that, too. “I want the information from the lower levels.”

Charlie chuckled. “Ahh, the lost treasures of the bowels of Richter. They do not exist.”

“They do. I know people who have touched them.”

He paused. “If there was, at any time, this information, it is now gone.”

Bullshit. Richter had too many secrets to maintain.

“How many have come before me looking?”

“A few,” he said.

“And were they like me? Did they have the same employment?”

“Some.” He swallowed. “I did not know of the extent of Lodovica’s crimes.”

She wanted to believe him. “You know everything that happens on this campus.”

“Eventually, yes. By then it was too late for many of you.”

“But not all.”

Charlie lowered his eyes. “A cross I bear every day.”

“Then why did you stay? Why are you still here?” She removed the glasses that were no longer needed to shield her face.

“For you. And all like you. Those who come back deserve answers, and I do what I can to provide them.”

“Then show me the files.”

“What are you searching for?”

Again, Olivia exposed her scar and pointed to it.

Charlie caught on. His expression sobered. “The shooter was one of ours.” It wasn’t a question.

She gave one quick nod. “I need to know where—”

Charlie’s hand shot up, stopping her.

“Don’t tell me a name. Please. Just as I will never utter yours, do not tell me theirs.” Pure distress crossed Charlie’s face. That’s when the man looked as if he might have aged . . . just a little.

She constructed her words as carefully as she could. “If I’m to have a life—any life—I must remain six feet underground. I need some direction to find the person that put a hole in me. There is no reason for the bullet to have been personal. I must find who hired them. I need to know who else knows I’m breathing.”

At first, she didn’t think Charlie was going to offer anything. And then he opened his mouth. “There is a place in Hungary. Budapest. A sanctuary for a night. A place where one might have a conversation without risk of another hole in their body.”

She liked the sound of that. “Honor among thieves,” she clarified.

“I doubt anyone there looks like themselves. I have mentioned this location many times in my tenure at Richter, and no one has called me a liar. So I must assume it exists and is useful. And since only a select few graduates of this institution are privy to such information, I must assume you would know people who partake in the occasional libation without risk of being shot.”

This was perfect.

He told her the name of the pub and stood back.

She smiled at him for the first time. “Thank you.”

“I do not deserve your thanks.”

For whatever reason, she pictured Leo saying the same thing. “That may be true, but thank you anyway.”

He stepped away from the door.

She paused at his side, placed her hand on his arm. “And you’re lying about the lost treasure.”

He looked her dead in the eye. “In order to protect the innocent, you must sometimes protect the guilty.”

Again, Leo’s image jumped in her head.

She leaned forward without thought and kissed Charlie’s cheek before walking out the door.

The team was on point, working every angle they could to bring Olivia in.

How had this become his life? How had caring for others consumed so many hours of his day?

Neil sat in his home office watching his headquarters as his staff changed shifts.

Staff . . . Who was he kidding?

Claire and Cooper were on their way out the door, hand in hand. Neil was still getting used to the idea of his adopted daughter having an emotional connection with someone. Someone Neil had personally known longer than her . . . but that didn’t weigh in. Claire was an innocent teen when they’d met. Too goddamn smart for her own good. A prime pick for Pohl, or anyone to come along and turn her into what Olivia was now.

The shift changed and Jax lingered.

In a half an hour, the alarms at the Tarzana home where Claire, Cooper, and Jax lived would indicate someone had come in . . . and that alarm wouldn’t be set again until after Jax was home and everyone was safe. Jax staying behind at the office on a weekday meant she was letting Claire and Cooper have some private time.

Neil really needed to get over the fact that Cooper was having sex with Claire.

A noise behind him had him turning in his chair.

“Please tell me you’re not spying on Claire.”

Gwen walked into his office, a knowing smile on her face.

“I’m not spying on Claire.”

Her laughter filled the room as she sat in his lap and blocked his view of his computer. “You’re a bad liar.”

He grinned. “I used to be really good at it.”

The love of his life, his wife, the mother of his children, placed her lips to his forehead. “Why are you worried?”

He removed the glasses he only wore at home and tossed them on his desk. “She was on the case. A key element to how Mykonos went down. Olivia was shot while talking to Leo. I pulled Claire as soon as I realized there was a bigger threat.”

“But you still worry . . .”

Neil squeezed his fingers resting on Gwen’s thigh. “I do.”

“Are you doing everything you can?”

“Yes.”

“Then breathe.”

As if Gwen had the power to flip his switch, Neil found a deep breath and pushed his head into her shoulder.

Every day he was thankful for this woman . . .

The landline on his desk rang.

He ignored it.

Gwen twisted in his arms. “It’s a German number.”

Neil’s hand shot out, put the receiver to his ear. “Hello.”

“A woman matching your description visited today.”

Neil leaned in closer to Gwen. Something, anything, in the form of a lead made him smile.

“What was she looking for?”

The line clicked several times.

“Files that very few know exist. And information about a former classmate she may have had a recent encounter with. Perhaps to thank them for giving her something to remember them by.”

The line went dead.

Olivia is in Germany.

“What is it?” Gwen asked as she took the phone from his fingertips and set it back on the charger.

“That was Charlie at Richter. We have a break.”

“Brilliant.”

He reached for the phone. “I need Claire back in the office . . .”

Gwen snatched the phone out of his hands. “Leave those kids alone. Calling Claire back to the office every time you assume they’re having sex isn’t going to stop them.”

“That is not—”

“What did Charlie tell you?”

“Olivia was at Richter. She wanted access to the files we acquired. To find the person who shot her.”

“Then she knows who did it.”

Neil gently removed the phone from Gwen’s hand. “And since the majority of the files are in German . . . and Claire reads German . . .”

Gwen’s long fingers wrapped around the phone again, slid it away. “Jax reads German. Sasha reads German.”

It was his turn to take the phone.

Gwen held on to it this time.

“But Claire—”

“Is going home after a long day and can help look in the morning.”

A ping on his computer told him that Claire and Cooper had arrived in Tarzana. A quick glance showed him that Jax was still at the office.

Neil loved his smart wife but was sometimes annoyed at how well she knew him. “Fine, I’ll call Sasha.”

Gwen always smiled and sat taller when she got her way. She released the phone. “And Jax . . . I’m sure she won’t mind putting in a few extra hours to start the search.” Gwen removed herself from his lap and rubbed the nonexistent wrinkles from her pants. “Jax is leaving to visit her family soon, right?”

“Next week.”

Gwen leaned down, her lips requesting his. Her kiss was brief, but promising. “Then you might want to start getting used to the idea that Claire and Cooper will have the house all to themselves for a spell.”

She turned to walk away, and Neil delivered a playful pat to her butt.

Gwen jumped, looked over her shoulder. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

Twenty years with the woman, and she could still make him hard with just her words.