A Thin Disguise by Catherine Bybee

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Olivia had maps of the area surrounding A Róka, the establishment Charlie had told her about. The Fox, aptly named, sat in the center of District Five with the parliament building a short distance north, the Danube to the west, and Liberty Square to the east. The location offered escape routes in all directions, routes she was choreographing now.

This was uncharted territory. There had never been a time she actively sought out one of her own. She was walking an extremely tight rope. Simply walking into A Róka would expose her. Yes, she would wear a disguise . . . but as the saying goes, you can’t bullshit a bullshitter. It was easy for her to detect who was camouflaged and who was not. And when you see a familiar face and cannot place them, you tend to look longer and harder, and that would cast attention Olivia didn’t want. There was no way around walking into the nightclub. The only information about the place online was that there was a strict dress code, and cell phone use was not allowed inside.

It would take nine hours to drive there. An unavoidable route since there was no way in hell Olivia was going to arrive without a weapon.

She wanted nothing to do with searching out replacements, and getting the weapons past airport security without inside help was too risky.

Olivia’s attention started to wane.

Sure enough, it was two in the morning.

She buttoned up her desk, made sure everything for a quick exit, should she need one, was ready to go before taking care of her nighttime ritual and climbing into the hotel bed.

Winding down had become an obsession.

She took her computer and keystroked her way into the path that would show her Leo.

The man had his computer up and online every night. She watched him as he buzzed around his kitchen going back and forth to his computer. Every once in a while, she’d hear him mumbling her name. “C’mon, Olivia . . . would it kill you to say hi?”

She knew he couldn’t see her.

But seeing him, hearing him . . . was a comfort.

Only this time, his computer wasn’t on. After two attempts, she realized it was useless.

Maybe he was working late?

She closed her laptop and pushed it to the other side of the bed. Leo’s side. And if she opened her eyes in the middle of the night, she’d reconnect and look again.

When exhaustion finally took hold and she drifted off to sleep, she reached a hand out, touching the cold edges of her laptop, envisioning Leo.

Her eyes cracked open exactly four hours later and she moaned. Mornings were cruel at the pace she was maintaining.

She checked Leo’s feed.

Nothing. It was only nine in the evening in LA.

Strange.

It took her an hour to leave her room and slip down to the café across from the hotel and order a coffee and hot cereal. It was still early, but the place was filling up.

She felt a strange connection and peacefulness listening to most of the customers speaking German. For a moment she remembered a time one year after leaving Richter. She’d gotten past the crushing shock of her employment and had started looking for ways out. At twenty-two she’d sat in a café like this one, in Germany, but she could have been anywhere. She’d look around and find the smiling faces of families and friends, all moving about their lives, and she’d ache. Young people her age would sit in a booth beside her, talking about their night at a pub, a party, or a play. They’d see her and strike up a conversation. And at that time Olivia wasn’t worried someone was trying to kill her. So she would talk and even went out with a group on occasion.

Then she’d get a call.

You’re going to Prague. I need you in Moscow. There’s a situation in Costa Rica. Not every case ended up behind the barrel of a gun. Sometimes she needed to get closer. On the rare occasion, the assignment only involved gaining information. In those times, acts she had to perform didn’t kill others, but they did burn away at her soul.

Eventually she’d sit in a café, like the one she was in now, and not engage. She’d put earbuds in and pretend to listen to music so no one would approach her. After an assignment, she’d get as far away from where it took place, find a bar, and use the first man she could to try and drown out the images in her head.

That was until Amelia.

AJ’s sister and Olivia’s ex-roommate at Richter showed up like a ray of goddamn sunshine in South Africa.

Amelia was there on a work assignment . . . legitimate work . . . and they met in a café. Olivia had no choice but to engage. For hours they talked. Amelia told her about her job, her new condo, her lack of a boyfriend. Olivia told her she’d been around the world, sipped that champagne with gorgeous men and slept with them all . . . even the married ones. A gross exaggeration, but it was what Amelia wanted to hear.

The day rolled into drinks until Amelia started asking hard questions.

By morning Amelia knew the truth. At least the CliffsNotes version of all the ugly. Having a friend was not a risk Olivia wanted to take. Not with Amelia’s life on the line.

Olivia had gone to South Africa without Pohl knowing. She sat on a pier daily with the contact phone in her hand, having every desire in the world to throw the thing away.

Amelia was the tipping point.

They stood on the pier together as the cell phone sunk to the bottom of the sea. Next to waking up every day, ripping up Pohl’s contract meant putting a bounty on her head.

It was months later that Olivia felt comfortable reaching out to Amelia. They’d put cameras in her condo and Amelia had been the one to teach Olivia how to ghost a computer and use text messages that disappeared almost as fast as they scrolled onto the page. Still, within six months, Amelia was dead. In fact, all three of Olivia’s roommates at Richter were dead.

All to flush Olivia out.

Any chance of allowing herself to be open to friendships . . . or love . . . died with Amelia.

Until Leo.

Until Neil and the team.

Now Olivia sat in a café, her head down, her body language closed off.

She really had started to believe that the world thought she was dead.

If only she’d turned to her nightmares and looked closer . . . maybe she would have woken up, come out of the amnesia sooner, so she didn’t have to break her heart in order to die again.

“Does Neil own this plane?”

Leo was once again in a private jet, which just boggled his brain, for the third time since he met Neil.

Jax sat on the sofa, feet curled under her with a tablet in her hands. “Technically it belongs to his brother-in-law. He’s big in shipping.”

Leo ran his hands over the leather seat. “Does it ever get old?”

Jax shrugged.

“I take that as a yes.”

“My parents have money. They don’t own a plane, but they were too good for domestic flights.”

He looked down at the clouds that passed by. “It’s going to make riding in coach really hard.”

“Neil doesn’t always pony up for this.”

“I can’t imagine what it costs.”

“You don’t want to know,” Jax said.

Leo changed the subject. “Why did your parents send you to Richter?”

Jax kept plucking away on the game she was playing. “They didn’t want to be parents.”

“Ouch.”

She put aside the game and looked up. With a perfectly polished British accent, she said, “Of course I have a daughter. Lovely girl. She’s at Richter, you know. Fluent in four languages. She’ll make a rich man a lovely wife.”

“Double ouch.” That didn’t fit the description of any of the women working with Neil.

She stood, moved to the bar. “Yeah. Pissed them all to hell when I moved to the States and got a job. So dirty of me.” She removed a flute and found a bottle of champagne and a small container of orange juice. “Want one?”

He shook his head. “But when we’re done with Richter, you’re going home to visit?”

“I’m not due there until next week. You don’t dare show up early . . . that throws the whole schedule off.”

“Why bother if your parents are such snobs?”

She pulled the cork out of the bottle with a nice pop and filled the glass within an inch of the top. “I don’t hate them. They’re not bad people, just selfish. And sadly, I really don’t know them very well. I was barely in a training bra when they sent me to Richter, and I only went home in the summer and on holidays. And in the summer, my parents would take a month-long something somewhere and leave me and my brother with a nanny.”

Poor little rich girl.“Damn.”

With her mimosa in hand, Jax sat a little taller and smiled. “I never lose sight of the fact that as crappy as all that sounded, I’ve been very blessed.”

“So what will you do before crashing your parents’ house?”

Jax laughed at his description.

Leo envisioned her parents living in some stuffy manor-type home with servants and regal greyhound dogs at the door. The only time something crashed was when the rich drunk uncle dropped his bourbon and everyone blamed the glass.

She pointed up at the plane. “Blake. Gwen’s brother. I’m going to his offices in Amsterdam to do a sweep.”

“A sweep?”

“A couple of days to check out the office, the docs . . . talk to the employees, see if there are any security concerns.”

“So . . . spy on the Dutch?”

“Pretty much. But hey, you have to run a virus check on your computer once in a while to clean out all the clutter.”

“Neil has a broad range of what he does.”

“The man doesn’t sleep. He is always figuring out another way to hire more employees to help out the people he knows. And Neil knows everyone. He’s a good man. He really stepped up for Claire. As her best friend, I will always be thankful for that.”

Leo turned toward the window again. “Like he did for Olivia.”

“Yup. Earning your respect and loyalty without even trying.”

“Maybe he’ll hire me when I lose my job.” He’d told his boss that he got word from Janie and he was going to find her and convince her to turn her husband in.

He wasn’t sure Brackett bought the story, and got a truckload of shit and five days to get his ass back to work.

Fitz had looked at him and said, “I hope she’s worth it.”

“You think you will?” Jax asked.

He really couldn’t read that one.

She tipped her glass back. “Like I said, Neil knows everyone.”

Olivia was leaving for Budapest the next morning. And because she wouldn’t hook up to any form of internet when she was in Hungary, she had her laptop open with Leo dialed in. She needed to see him before she left.

With the outcome unclear, there needed to be one more something to hold her over.

One more something.

When her computer pinged, she dropped the pen in her hand and scrambled to get in front of it.

Leo’s face came into focus.

The scruff of beard on his face was killing her. She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he was growing that for her.

Because of her.

He clicked around on his computer, completely blind to the fact that she was watching him.

She indulged. Something Olivia would never have done preamnesia. It was surprising what a brush with death and finding someone who cared about you did.

She stared at her monitor for what felt like hours. It was only ten minutes . . . but she’d stay there as long as he did . . .

Except . . .

She turned to the window of the hotel room.

When she looked back at the computer, she wasn’t observing Leo.

Her chest rose and fell . . . rose and fell.

Pushing off the chair, she moved to the window and opened the blinds wide.

It was the middle of the night in LA. This time of year . . . it was dark everywhere in the United States.

She fell in the chair and pulled the computer closer.

Leo wasn’t home.

Olivia looked over her shoulder. The generic art on the wall, the small space.

Leo walked away from his computer and pulled his jacket off his shoulders.

She clicked into his audio.

He disappeared from view, and the sound of a television filled her feed.

Someone was trying to sell cars . . . in German. A tilt of her head and she closed her eyes.

Pulling herself from the chair, she found the unused remote control on the bedside table and turned on the TV.

She shifted through the channels, slowly . . . turned up the volume on her computer.

Then it was stereo.

She squeezed her eyes shut. “Son of an ever-loving bitch!”

Leo was not only in Germany . . . he was in Berlin. Or close enough to it to have the local news on his set.

Olivia swiped at the space under her eyes, rubbed her temples, and then pounded both fists on the desk. One deep breath later and she was typing.

You’re going to get yourself killed.

Leo scurried into view, relief in his expression. He took a moment, a deep breath.

One keystroke and Olivia unscrambled the signals to find his exact location.

Call me.

He’d been coached.

One fortifying breath later, You’ve wasted your time.

He smiled as he wrote his reply. Go ahead . . . tell me how much you don’t care what happens to me.

You son of a bitch . . . I don’t!

He was smiling now. The kind of smile he sent her when she was teasing the hell out of him, his sexy I have your number smile.

Then you won’t care when I do this.

Leo’s image disappeared the second he removed the power from his computer.

“Goddamn it!”

Olivia swung out of her chair and paced. “I don’t care.”

I don’t care!

Back at her computer, she found the hotel where Leo was staying.

“A Hilton? Really?”

He had so much to learn if he was ever going to stay alive.