A Thin Disguise by Catherine Bybee

CHAPTER THIRTY

“Next time, I’m going with you,” Olivia said the moment she and Leo were alone in the hotel. Listening in on the conversations in the nightclub was not the same as being there.

“I agree.”

“I can’t sit in a van.” Olivia’s arms were crossed over her chest.

“I agree.”

“No one will recognize me.”

“I agree.”

She stopped talking and looked up. “You do?”

“There were a lot of people in there, and not one stopped what they were doing to strike up a conversation. Jax and I didn’t recognize anyone, but that might be different for you.”

Olivia took a deep, fortifying breath. “I’m out of my comfort zone.”

Leo pulled his arms out of his jacket and set it aside. “The fact that you admitted that means your comfort zone has shifted.”

And that felt like a weakness.

Leo’s cell phone rang.

She watched as he looked at his phone and ignored the call.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“Fitz.”

Olivia paused. “You’re going to lose your job.”

“Always a possibility.” Leo smiled and set his phone on one of the bedside tables.

“I thought you liked your job.”

“Love my job. I hate the bureaucracy. I see how much gets done with Neil’s team, and it makes me question what I’m doing with the FBI.”

“You don’t like playing by the rules?” Considering there were many nights she’d dreamt of working for a legitimate organization, it was strange to know Leo would want it differently.

“Most of the rules are in place to keep the bad guys from having a loophole for a get-out-of-jail-free card. When I saw what Neil’s team managed to do for Marie Nickerson, I started to question what I was doing with the feds.”

Olivia leaned against the hotel room desk. “I spent months shadowing Marie. Reported to Neil on who visited her. Names, occupations . . . That girl is so broken.”

Leo offered a soft smile. “You protected her. All of you did.”

“The FBI had a hand in that, too.”

“Yes. But with you . . . it’s personal. It shows in the outcome. When I had time to think about what Sasha told me about you, all of you, I realized you were a victim—”

“I don’t deserve that title.”

“You do,” he insisted. “And as long as you allow me to be in your life, I’m going to remind you of that. If Neil’s team had been around when you were nineteen, this never would have happened. So when you ask me if I’m going to lose my job, I can’t help but feel as if it doesn’t matter. There is obviously a private sector where I can use my skills. Where we can both use our talents.”

Listening to him gave her something she never thought she’d ever feel.

Hope.

Leo started to pull at the skin on his head that gave him the false hairline, and she moved closer to help. “I’m unsure how an FBI agent and a retired assassin are supposed to have a relationship without me getting fired.” He sat in a chair, giving her more room to work.

Her fingers shook as she fiddled with the edges of the wig. “A relationship.”

“That would be that thing we’re doing. The sharing of our time, ideas . . . bodily fluids.” His hands rested on her hips.

Olivia trembled as she cleared the makeup from Leo’s face. “I’ve never had a relationship . . . with a man.”

He grinned. “Is there something about your sexuality you want to share?” he asked, teasing.

“You know what I mean.”

Leo kept her from turning away. “I know you’re scared.”

“I never said I was scared.” Her voice was sharp.

Leo smiled. “You’re scared that you give a shit. Probably beat yourself up every time you slow down enough to think about it.”

He wasn’t wrong.

“I’ve done horrible things.” Her hands stilled, her gaze focused on the back of the room.

“How many of those atrocities have you committed since Pohl’s death?” he asked.

“None.” She paused. “Well, I might have dabbled in a little information gathering and liberating a couple cars . . .”

She found Leo smiling. “What’s a little fraud and grand theft auto among friends?”

“Necessity,” she insisted.

“We’ll figure out how to move forward once we’ve gotten through this. And we’ll do it together,” Leo insisted.

She didn’t know if she could do that . . . the moving forward thing. But there was no shaking Leo at this moment. Not with him and Neil’s team deeply embedded in the outcome.

“Don’t even think about bolting.”

“I’m not.”

He peered closer, seemed satisfied with what he saw. “Let’s get a good night’s sleep and regroup tomorrow.”

Olivia grinned and proceeded to remove the rest of Leo’s disguise.

“It’s disturbing,” Leo said looking through the mirror at Olivia two nights later.

She’d disguised herself as a man.

Her clear complexion was gone. A face riddled with acne scars and a scattering of facial hair was enough to throw many people off.

“Good,” Olivia said to Leo.

Leo was back in his Mr. Anderson attire.

Jax donned another revealing dress as Miss Swan.

Neil, despite telling her that he wasn’t flying to Europe, was going to sit in the surveillance van dressed to scale a wall if he had to.

“We have coverage from the front of the building and the back,” Neil told them.

“We don’t even know if Schmidt is in there,” Olivia said.

Leo called A Róka and received a message that there was some closure to the answers he sought and he needed to come in to obtain it.

Friedrich’s picture circulated between them. “He might look more like Jax and less like this.”

Olivia shook her head. “I doubt he’ll be in drag. Regardless, if he’s there, I will be the one to talk to him. Jax and Leo need to be on the periphery.”

No one argued.

“No risks,” Neil insisted.

Olivia looked around at the faces of the team. “If he wants privacy, I’m giving it to him.”

“He tried to kill you.” Leo’s voice was hard and steady.

“If he wanted me dead, I’d be dead. If he needs me to cooperate with him for some reason, he’ll target one of you.” The thought gutted her. “I’m not the one who needs to look out.”

Neil was nodding. “Olivia is right. If he isn’t there, he’s likely casing the place looking for her. I’m more concerned about a lack of an audience than if he is there and wants privacy. Olivia trusted us with the first round, we will trust her with this one.”

“Let’s get this party started,” Jax said with a little bounce in her shoulders.

“Your enthusiasm is killing me,” Leo announced.

A few of them snickered.

Leo turned to Olivia. “You ready?”

She nodded, lowered her voice. “I am.”

Leo cringed. “I like you better as a woman.”

Neil reached for the door. “We arrive in stages. We’ll do a mic check en route.”

Jax reached her fist out and looked Olivia in the eye.

For a second, she didn’t quite know what to do. Then she pressed her knuckles to Jax, who smiled and stood taller. “C’mon, Sugar Daddy . . . I need a drink.”

Neil lifted his hand. “Five minutes.” He walked out of the hotel room to get a head start.

Five minutes to the second later, Olivia squared her shoulders and left with her driver.

They completed the mic check once Leo and Jax were in motion.

The plan circulated in Olivia’s head. Her breathing became a meditation.

A Róka came into view.

“We’re here with you,” Neil said in her ear.

“Got it.” And she pushed out of the car.

Olivia went in first, following the same route that Leo and Jax had a couple of nights before.

Inside was much how Leo had described. Maybe a bit busier since the weekend was in full swing.

With a perch on one corner of the main bar, Olivia ordered a whiskey and avoided eye contact.

Fifteen minutes later, Leo and Jax walked in, her arm tucked in his.

Jax created a stir, even if she didn’t realize it.

“Welcome back,” the bartender said to Leo.

The earpiece gave Olivia the opportunity to eavesdrop.

“Chardonnay and a whiskey, correct?” the man asked.

As the bartender filled their drink order, Olivia searched the room to determine if anyone was watching the two of them.

The room was heavily dominated by men, most gathered in small numbers of two to four. A couple of larger groups congregated in the center of the room. Mixtures of different languages, Dutch, Slovakian, Hungarian, Russian, German, and plenty of English mixed together in a melody that could only happen in Europe.

Leo tapped his token on the bar and patiently waited.

When Olivia looked at others, she noticed half a dozen tokens of different colors weaving between the fingertips of the patrons in the establishment.

Olivia lifted her drink and left her spot to find another angle.

C’mon, Friedrich . . . where are you?

Half an hour passed with Leo and Jax making small talk with each other. The bartender insisted he would be with them to discuss what he’d learned shortly. But time slowly slid by.

Olivia looked around.

The waiting was a test.

The question was . . . Whose test? The establishment’s? The bartender’s? Or was Friedrich watching and waiting?

Olivia circled the room and realized the vantage point from the floor level wasn’t optimal. Above their heads was a balcony space. “I’m going upstairs,” she whispered to herself and the team on the other end of the microphone.

A single ping in her ear told her someone had heard her.

She found the staircase and started to climb.

The scent of cigars and cigarettes was strong, the lighting dim.

She looked down and saw Leo and Jax more clearly. She stood in the shadows and searched the room again with her eyes. Other than a couple of men admiring the feat it took for Jax to stay in her dress, the two of them went unnoticed.

Olivia was about to give up when she noticed the flicker of flame as someone lit a cigar several yards away.

The light cast by the flame illuminated a face. A face staring at the floor of the ballroom.

The extra senses on the back of her neck began to tingle as she moved closer to get a better look.

Very few people moved around the balcony space of A Róka, allowing those that were there an extra layer of privacy and quiet.

The man was tall and lanky. Long fingers stretched over the cigar as he sucked the smoke down deep into his lungs.

“Take your shoes off, Olivia. We’re gonna get caught.” Friedrich held his shoes up in one spindly hand to show her the way to the stacks.

Olivia’s pulse caught in a rapid fire, brought her to stand just outside of his view.

She waited.

“Hello, Friedrich.”

The man froze, took a deep breath, and then pulled the stogie from his lips. “I knew it had to be you.”

Olivia cast herself into his light.

It was then he turned to look at her. “You look better than the last time I saw you.”

“That’s not hard to do. All I have to be is vertical.”

Friedrich’s face was drawn, the kind of exhaustion Olivia knew all too well.

“I have questions,” she told him.

“Nothing I’m obligated to answer,” he said.

“I took your bullet. That deserves some kind of payment.”

He narrowed his eyes, then looked down at the floor of the nightclub.

Leo and Jax were on the move.

“Get rid of the mic,” Friedrich told her.

She hesitated with the sound of a beep in her ear.

She looked at the man and saw the boy within. Nothing about him said he wanted to pounce or escape. Olivia took a chance and pulled the tiny microphone from a button on her jacket.

She dropped the device in her drink and set it aside. “Why?” she asked.

He nodded toward his right and started to walk.

She followed.

“Damn it, Olivia.” Leo looked at Jax at the same time the team in the van told them Olivia’s microphone was dead.

“No one panic,” Neil said through their earpieces. “She hasn’t left the building.”He gave them her location, and Leo and Jax split up once they were in the balcony space.

Leo saw her silhouette as she moved deeper into an alcove. “I see her,” he announced.

That’s when he noticed her hand reach out, palm flat, as if telling Leo to keep his distance.

“Hold up. Give her space,” he told the others.

Jax stopped her forward motion from the opposite side of the balcony.

For now, Olivia was flanked.

All Leo could do was wait.

“You may not believe this, but it’s good to see you.”

Olivia sat opposite Friedrich. While he sat with his back against the chair, arms stretched out with his cigar hanging from his long fingers, she kept herself upright, both feet on the ground, ready for anything.

“Considering you tried to kill me . . .”

“I’m told you have people poking around in my life,” he said.

Olivia thought of Neil’s team asking questions throughout Europe, looking for Louis Schmidt.

“A waste of time so long as you provide the answers I need.”

“My parents are already dead to me.”

“There is always someone that means something . . . eventually.”

Friedrich’s cold stare told her there was someone. Maybe more than one.

“You had a chance to finish the job and didn’t. Why?”

He shook his head. “You weren’t the target.”

Olivia did all she could to hide her surprise.

“Everything I learned about you said you’d been tossed in an ocean half a decade ago. No one was more surprised to see you alive than I was.”

“Grant,” she muttered.

Friedrich tilted his head in confirmation.

The knowledge made her sick to her stomach. “Why is he still breathing?”

“You,” he said simply. “He’s one of yours. I didn’t know. Didn’t see you until that night. Made my driver circle twice. I had a choice. Take him, or take you. Or both, I suppose. I researched the people you associate with. Learned that Budanov was part of that team. Stacking up powerful enemies for a low-paying job wasn’t how I wanted to end my summer.”

“So you shot me.”

Another tilt to the head. “Made it look good.”

“A little too good, thank you.”

“You’re still alive,” he countered. “If someone didn’t go down, the resource order on Grant would have remained. You took the hit and his bounty dissipated.”

“How does that happen?” In her experience, once a hit was out, it didn’t go away.

“He was a warning, not an enemy. Pissed off the wrong man.”

“Navi?”

Friedrich shrugged.

“Mykonos?”

A tilt to the head. “You don’t stand up to these people and survive.”

Olivia’s head started to put the pieces together. If Leo was the warning, the person they wanted to shut up could only be Marie Nickerson.

“The trial is over. Mykonos is already in prison.”

Friedrich pulled a drag off his cigar . . . blew it out slowly. “I owe them a hit.”

Olivia held her breath. “Marie.”

Friedrich’s silence was his confirmation.

“You can’t do this. She’s just a kid who was forced into this life . . .”

“I don’t care. You know how this works. You take a job, you finish the job. I spared you. Kept your man alive to avoid your chase . . . avoid Budanov. The girl means nothing to you. Let it go.”

“Don’t—”

“Walk away,” he told her. “Our world thinks you’re dead. Jane Doe in Vegas was nobody. A prostitute, maybe. You open this . . . make it personal . . . and that anonymous face is given a name and you’re once again thrust into this life. You don’t want that.”

“You don’t know me.”

He shook his head. “Pohl went down, you disappeared. Or was it the other way around? If you wanted to continue the work, you could have. You decided to die.”

“So you were Pohl’s recruit.”

Friedrich remained silent.

“Why didn’t you leave? Why still live in this world?” she asked.

“It’s all I know.”

“Bullshit.”

Friedrich laughed. “And how have you earned your money since our benefactor died?”

“Stop buying expensive cigars and Armani suits. You’d be surprised what you can survive on.”

Friedrich shook his head. “It’s not my lifestyle.”

“So sell your soul to the highest bidder,” she countered.

“Who are you to judge?”

He was right, but Olivia had to convince him to walk away from Marie. The girl meant something to Neil and his team. She meant something to Olivia. The strength it took for Marie to go against her enemies and call them out . . . the way Olivia never did with Pohl. She had a considerable amount of admiration for the young girl.

“Let this one go, Olivia.” He sat forward and stubbed his cigar in an ashtray.

“Your father would be disappointed if he knew.”

Friedrich looked directly at her. “I told you my family means nothing to me.”

“Let me rephrase. Louis would be—”

“Don’t.” His voice was tight. “I spared yours. You owe me this one.”

She did . . . even though Leo meant next to nothing to her the night she was shot. That had all shifted and now she had a chance to walk away . . . they all had a chance.

He stood and smoothed the wrinkles from his coat with a slight tug. “For what it’s worth, it’s good to see you alive,” he said. “Cross me, and I will kill you.”

Friedrich walked out of the shadows, leaving Olivia in the dark.

Leo replaced Friedrich the moment her childhood friend left her sight.

“You okay?” he asked.

No. She had a decision to make and didn’t know if she was strong enough to make it.