Crossing Lines by Adrienne Giordano
2
The following day,after a series of encrypted emails, Liz stood in line at the Navy Pier Ferris wheel. She wore a tie-dyed purple shirt Dustin Osbourne had gotten to her via a dead drop at a park on the North Side. The emails had sent her on a journey around the city, the last one bringing her to the park and the large rock fifty paces from a tree with a missing dog flyer stapled to it.
So far, their covert communications had accomplished getting her to the target point at exactly 1:30. Without incident. Meaning she’d hadn’t been captured or killed.
Yet.
Midday sun glinted off the giant wheel and the lake breeze tickled her cheeks like gentle fingers.
When had she last been touched with affection? Long time. That’s when. Too long to do the math on. So, she’d stand in line, another person with her gaze hidden by sunglasses, blending into the crowd.
Her instructions had been to wait in line for a man to join her and present her with the code word.
The line nudged along. Another three people and she’d be next to board the ride. What then? Did she get on? Step out of line and wait? What?
Dammit. Resisting the urge to once again scan her perimeter, she kept her gaze straight ahead, focused on the wind-blown auburn hair of the woman in front of her.
And then someone nudged her elbow. Could have been an accident. Another tourist getting bumped and setting off a chain reaction. Happened all the time. Plus, no code word.
“Hi, babe,” a man said from behind her. “Sorry I’m late. Got hung up near Wrigley.”
Wrigley.
Code word.
She angled back, smiled up at Shane Quinn, the mountain of a man — nicknamed within the agency as Viper — she’d ambushed the day before.
“Hi, sweetie,” she said. “I’m glad you got here.”
Only a man in his position would understand how true that statement was. Playing her role, she boosted to tiptoes and kissed him on the mouth, lingering for a second because, why the hell not? She'd just been lamenting the lack of affection in her life and maybe this little charade wouldn’t fix that, but it sure wouldn’t hurt.
The Ferris wheel attendant cleared her throat and Liz pulled away from Shane. The attendant, a young woman with impossibly long legs and a too-sugary-smile, ushered them to the next car and held the door open. Sparing a glance at the woman, long enough to be kind, but short enough to be forgotten, Liz stepped into the air-conditioned, glass-enclosed car and settled onto one of the seats. Shane slipped the attendant some cash to ensure a private car and sat beside Liz, resting his arm over her shoulder and kissing the top of her head.
All apparently for the attendant’s benefit, given her blatant staring at the jacked, smoking hot guy in front of her.
Shane needed to turn the volume down on his looks. Big time. Even in a baseball cap and aviator sunglasses he grabbed attention.
Their car began to rise and Liz took in the whitecaps and sun-touched swells of Lake Michigan. Sailboats and yachts cruised the lake, their passengers completely clueless about the privilege of having their own names.
Using his thumb, Shane tapped the side of Liz’s arm. “Here’s the deal. We’ll get you new IDs, new social, education and employment history. In exchange, you never mention me or Dusty to anyone. Understood?”
“Or what?”
“Honey, your life is in my hands. Don’t fuck with me.”
She shifted sideways, looked up at him, feeling only slightly insulted he expected her to expose him or his friends. “Of course not. And I’d never jeopardize you. Or your friends.”
“Then we won’t have a problem.” He looked out at the lake. “I should have everything by tomorrow. You know the city at all?”
“No. First time here.”
“I’ll check into apartments for you. Get you set up.”
“Thank you.”
“Tell me about Alfaro.”
Liz flinched. When she’d been captured, she hadn’t known Number Two’s last name. All she’d known was that she’d been snatched off the street and tossed into a filthy basement. Later, after calling in every favor owed, she made it back to the States and was informed she’d taken out the son of Venezuela’s president, a man with connections to the Liborio drug cartel, the country’s most violent criminal organization.
“My assignment,” she said, “was to dig up intel on the chargé d'affaires.”
“The K and R case?”
Apparently, the man stayed up on Venezuelan news, because not many folks were aware the senior American diplomat had been kidnapped and held for ransom three months ago, presumably by the Liborio cartel. The CIA had been tasked with locating the missing woman. Enter Liz, posing as the daughter of a Cuban businessman.
“I was only in Venezuela a few weeks when my name was leaked. I still don’t know who or how, but my identity made it to the cartel.”
Someone, more than likely at the agency, had probably made a bundle by selling her out.
Traitors everywhere.
“I saw that in your file,” Shane said.
He had her file? She looked up again. “They gave you that?”
“Hell no. Dusty got it. We still have friends inside Langley. Otherwise, we couldn’t do this for you. Or for ourselves.”
“Why are you helping me? There are other burned agents.”
“Mainly because Dusty is a sucker for a pretty girl.”
“Oh, please.”
He smiled briefly. “Maybe that’s crap.”
“Maybe?”
“Sully reached out to Dusty. Thought I might have an interest in your situation.”
“Why?”
He looked down at her, pulled his sunglasses off to reveal those sparkly blue eyes she’d first seen in a photo two nights ago.
“I’ve never done this for anyone other than Dusty and Trevor. Had no interest either. It was bad enough I got burned. When it happened to Dusty with an unrelated case, I helped him out.”
“Why?”
“Simple. He’s my friend. We met at Fort Huachuca during our Special Activities Division training six years ago. Trevor was part of Dusty’s mess, so he got a pass. We’re all in Chicago but spread out. Close enough to help, far enough to not be connected. It’s just the three of us. You make four.”
“Why me?”
“Because Alfaro is after me too.”
Goddamn it feltgood to say it. To blurt it out like it hadn’t been trapped inside him for two years. Outside of the agency and Dusty and Trev, Shane had never spoken of it. To anyone.
Even the most well-meaning people tended to have loose lips and he’d refused to risk it.
Until now.
And what the hell had gotten into him, letting that factoid fly? Beyond Liz Aiken’s agency file, he didn’t know jack about her. Hell, she could climb off this Ferris wheel, go right to Alfaro’s father — or the cartel — and cut herself a deal by sacrificing Shane.
He averted his eyes and concentrated on the John Hancock Center and its antennas jutting up into a cloudless blue sky.
For a few seconds, he blocked out the panic and took in the perfection of the moment. The freedom of discussing his past.
He glanced back at Liz and her crazy-beautiful dark eyes that made his brain ping. Forget about what kissing her did to him. That, along with everything else about Liz Aiken, had been careless. Careless, but enjoyable.
“You know Alfaro,” she said.
Statement, not a question. And, oh, yeah, he knew him. “Last time I saw him I was having breakfast with his family.”
“Really?”
“I was a Recon Marine recruited for SAD.”
“Impressive.”
He shrugged. “I love my country. I love serving. And I was good at what I did. It still took me three years to get inside Alfaro’s circle.” Shane held his fingers up, pinched them together. “I was so close.”
“What happened?”
What didn’t happen? “I went into Colombia under the guise of teaching English to wealthy students. I hooked up with a professor, also a member of FARC. A little moaning about my hatred of capitalism and he took me to the rebels.”
“You joined FARC?”
“Yeah. It worked for my mission. We left Colombia and set up camp just over the border in Venezuela, running drugs in and out of the country. Dabbled in illegal gold mining, too. Anything to get some cash rolling.”
“How did you get to Alfaro?”
“I met Andres while doing a drug deal.”
“He’s the older son,” she said. “I took out Luca, the younger one.”
“Yeah. They were both involved with the Liborio Cartel’s drug smuggling. Daddy gets a piece of the action so he lets the smuggling — and his sons’ involvement — go.”
Liz shook her head. “Lets it go? Please, he does more than that. His sons were members of the cartel.”
“Which is how I got to Andres. I met him and worked him for months. Got him to trust me.”
Shane sat back, rested his head against the glass and formed a mental picture of Andres. His twisted attachment to the kid’s wit and generous heart — at least materialistically speaking — still haunted him. When Andres loved someone, he trusted completely.
A fold Shane had managed to worm his way into.
Liz shifted, propped her head against his arm and once again, he paused to appreciate the absolute normalcy of what could never be normal.
“That’s why you’re nicknamed Viper. You got them to trust you.”
“Always hated that nickname. But, yeah, that’s where it came from.”
“What happened?” she asked. “The op fell apart?”
“Big time. I was staying inside the compound with Andres when one of the staff caught me messing with his phone. He left it on the table when he went to the john. I took the opportunity to look. He had this crazy coding system he used for names where he’d spell the name backward and then toss in some symbols. I was trying to figure it out when I got busted. With the help of an asset I had inside the compound, I talked my way out of it, but let Langley know that same night. They weren’t risking it and SEALs pulled me out the next morning. It took seconds. Boom. One minute I was having breakfast with the fam and the next I was hustled into a waiting helo. Along with me, they grabbed Andres.”
Liz nodded. “He’s in a CIA prison in Europe now. They keep moving him.”
“Yeah. I heard.” He glanced down at her, still snuggled under his arm. “Alfaro got over me getting inside his organization. He couldn’t handle his son being captured. That, he pegged me for.”
“God, this world we live in. The two of us should be dead. Thank you for helping me.”
“I know what it’s like to be hunted by this guy. He’s a vicious prick. If he finds you — ”
“I know.”
The two of them stayed silent while the last minute of their ride wound down. Fourteen minutes of semi-normalcy. Of two supposed lovers enjoying a spring day.
As their car approached the jump-off point, Shane pulled Liz close, made a show of kissing the top of her head again. Just a guy and his girl. He nuzzled her ear.
“When we get off, I’ll grab your hand, we’ll walk to the entrance of the pier and split off. I’ll contact you tomorrow about your new setup.”
She nodded. “Thank you,” she said again. “You have no idea.”
“Yeah, I do. Don’t thank me yet. You’re not nearly secure.”
The following morning,after three bus changes and a cab ride, Liz sat on the designated bench in a park on the city’s northwest side. Her instructions, via another set of encrypted emails, instructed her to find the red bench two hundred yards from a brass dedication plaque. From there she counted three more benches to the left for her meeting spot.
And she’d managed to be on time. Not bad for a girl who’d been on the move for two hours.
She unzipped her backpack, that same one she’d swiped from the hellhole in Venezuela. Most would think her nuts for keeping it.
Her?
She considered it a badge of honor. The reminder that she’d survived.
The battle she’d won.
Under bright morning sunshine that would fry her skin in twenty minutes, she pulled a People magazine — excellent prop — from the backpack and stole a peek at her surroundings.
Tall European buckthorn and green ash trees lined the pathways, offering shady spots to rest or take a break from the hot sun. Big park with just the right amount of pedestrian traffic, cyclists and happy kids. As with Navy Pier, the perfect place to get lost in plain sight.
She slid her gaze right — no Shane — then left to where a young guy, maybe early twenties, approached, his focus solidly on her.
She wore jeans and a short-sleeved Henley. Throw in the backpack and the cute wispy bangs she'd helped herself to the day before, and she’d nailed the college-girl look.
Before going back to her magazine, she met the guy’s stare, hitting him with a quick and universal I’m-not-interested smile.
Taking the hint, he cruised right on by.
These were the moments she’d miss about fieldwork. The rush, no matter how small the victory, that came with succeeding.
Once again, she scanned the area. Her focus landed on Shane, his big body moving down the path at a pace that wasn’t quite leisurely but far from hurried. He wore baggie black cargo shorts and an untucked tan T-shirt that neither hugged his big body nor hung loose. Nothing to draw attention. Just an average Joe cutting through the park.
Blending.
He nudged his sunglasses up, hunched his shoulders — blending, blending, blending — and angled around two women pushing baby strollers. Lord, he must have been a good operative. The two of them together? That would have been fun.
He reached the bench, braced one hand on the back of it and dropped a quick kiss on her lips. “Hey, sweets,” he said.
Sweets. Funny. She’d been called many things — bitch, whore, conniver — and now she could add sweets to her stable. If only it were true.
He dropped beside her. Still playing the role of attentive lover, he set his big hand over her thigh. She glanced down, spied the corner of a folded note peeping from under his fingers. Casually, she slid her hand under his, burrowing into the warmth of handholding. Along with the note was something hard. Metal.
He nuzzled up to her ear. “Your key and apartment address. Nothing fancy, but it’s clean. Good neighborhood. There’s an envelope there with everything you need. Including a job lead.”
Wow. He worked fast. In less than two days, he’d built her a new life and hooked her up with a potential job.
“That’s great. Thank you.”
“I know a professor at Northwestern. He mentioned he needs a research assistant. Tell him I sent you. Pay is for shit, but it’s enough to get you by for a while.”
“I’ll work it out. Do I have a work history?”
He nodded. “We didn’t have a lot of time, but there’s enough to pass a cursory background check.” He withdrew his hand. “I should go.”
“Yes, you should.”
He needed to get up and leave. Just walk away from her because two people on the run from a sadistic foreign leader shouldn’t be seen together. It was, in fact, a disaster waiting to happen.
Walk away.
He stood, but — wait — she grabbed his hand, clutching his long fingers while she rose from the bench and ensured no one was in earshot. “What’s my name?”
“Faith Burgess.”
Faith? Was he kidding? Way too optimistic for her. All she wanted was to survive. She didn’t consider that faith. Stubborn, yes. Faith? Not so much.
She shook her head, let out a small snort and stood. “That’s funny.”
“I thought it fit.”
This man didn’t know her at all. “Who is she?”
“Three-week-old infant. Died twenty-eight years ago.”
She closed her eyes a moment, let that sink in. “A baby.”
“Yeah. Took three hours of schlepping through a cemetery looking for someone about your age. I was about to give up and there she was. Faith Burgess. Gotta say, I haven’t missed that part of the job.”
“The part that requires you to hunt down the names of dead children so you can steal their identities?”
“Exactly.”
“Thank you. You saved me.”
“You saved yourself. You can find me at my bar — the Corner Tap — if you need something, but unless you’re in deep, try not to contact me. Or Dusty.”
Liz — Faith — nodded. Of all the cover names she’d had, this one would be permanent. As much as it hurt, that letting go of Liz Aiken, she owed it to him to disappear. To sever ties that would get them all killed.
She stepped back, one stomach-shriveling step that left her once again alone. Tipping her chin up, she set her shoulders and her mind ticked back to that first foster family. She could do this. Just like every time she’d started over before.
“Bye, Shane. Take care of yourself.”
Shane pushedthrough the bar’s alley entrance and forced his thoughts to the day’s tasks rather than Faith Burgess and her Iowa farm girl sweetness.
God willing, he’d never see her again.
Not seeing her brought safety. And maybe her carving out a life for herself. As much as someone could, anyway. The relentless pressure of an assumed identity meant constant scrutiny, checking surroundings, mistrusting new people, wondering if they were the ones sent to kill him.
Or her.
Yeah, not a great life.
But it sure beat dead.
He waved a greeting to the kitchen staff and retreated to his cluttered office, a shoebox of a room barely big enough for a desk and two chairs, never mind the filing cabinet he’d crammed into the corner. Whatever. It was his. And from the hell he’d come out of, even a cramped office and some beat-up secondhand furniture could be considered paradise.
His cell phone rang. Private number. Maybe Dusty or Trev — both cover names like his — calling from a burn phone.
Not a lot of people rang up Shane. Mainly because he didn’t give out his number. If people wanted him, they found him at the bar.
“This is Shane.”
“Hey.”
Dusty. His voice didn’t have that deep baritone of Trev’s. Made them easy to identify by one syllable.
Shane closed the office door, eased into his desk chair and propped his feet up. Helluva day so far and he still had fourteen hours until closing.
“What’s up?”
“You back from your errand?”
Meaning, was he back from giving the former Liz Aiken a life. Yeah, he was back and in a piss-poor mood.
He should have been happy that he’d helped her. Or, as she put it, saved her. But had he? Most likely, it hadn’t hit her yet that he’d just wiped away the last twenty-nine years of her existence. Sure, he’d helped her get a new name and history, but taking on a stolen identity permanently was a whole lot different than doing it for an undercover assignment.
And that nagged at him, bit right into the back of his neck because not only had he wiped away her life, he’d told her to get lost. Even if his intentions were to keep them all safe, he’d abandoned her.
“Yeah, I’m back,” he said.
“It go okay?”
“She’s probably heading to her place now. What are you up to?”
“I’m at work.”
Dusty, the engineering genius, had landed a nine-to-five job — murder for guys like them — at a Chicago trading firm. Shane wasn’t sure what the hell Dusty did all day, but it had something to do with managing the company’s computer servers. Whatever the job, it paid the bills and kept him out of sight.
“And?”
Dusty never called to make small talk. None of them did. Wasn’t their style. When they called, they had something to say and if Shane knew his friend at all, Dusty had more on his mind than checking on Liz-now-Faith.
“I got a call. About Brutus.”
Son of a bitch.
Brutus. The nickname the CIA had given Luis Gustavo, an assassin rumored to have ties to the Liborio Cartel. And President Matias Alfaro.
When the cartel wanted someone dealt with, they rang up Luis. It cost them a healthy chunk of their misbegotten profits, but what did they care? Plenty more cash rolling in from their drug and arms smuggling.
If Dusty had received a call about Brutus, chances were that call came from somewhere inside Langley. Specifically Sully, Liz’s former coworker who’d sent her to Shane by way of Dusty.
Because, hey, kids, it was no coincidence that they’d provided Faith with a new life and Dusty suddenly had intel on a man associated with a cartel that kicked money up to the corrupt president of Venezuela. A man who’d placed a bounty on not only Shane’s head, but now-Faith’s also.
Oh, the tangled web…
“Where is he?”
“They tracked him to a town in Ontario. Sault Ste. Marie. Located on the St. Mary’s River. Close to the US border. A mere seven-hour drive from our fine city.”
Shit.
“Any idea what he’s doing there?”
“Nope.”
Terrific. “Keep me posted.”
Shane disconnected, opened his top desk drawer and grabbed a piece of hard candy out of the bowl. Some people smoked, some drank. Shane? Hard candy. The root beer barrels from the shop near his apartment were his favorite, but he’d run out of those the day before and hadn’t had time to buy more. Not yet anyway. He’d been busy giving Faith Burgess a life.
One that, on freaking day two, might already be compromised.
Liz— Faith, I’m Faith now — set her duffle on her new bed and plopped down next to it. As Shane had promised, the tiny attic apartment above a two-story single-family home provided a private rear entrance. It was also clean and orderly with a queen-sized bed that appeared lump-free. One long dresser stretched along the wall, anchored by a wicker rocking chair. A woman must have lived here before. Most men didn’t buy wicker rocking chairs.
None she knew anyway.
She stretched out on the bed, stared up at the freshly painted ceiling and breathed in.
Home. For a while at least. With little money and even fewer resources, she’d have to stay put for now. In a few months, after working and saving, she’d move on. Maybe find a quiet island somewhere.
Life in the foster system had trained her for solitary existence. That early experience honed her skills for fieldwork. No emotional ties, no hesitation when it came to risks, no pull from home.
A noise below — a chair scraping on a wood floor — shot her upright. She got to her feet, already reaching for her compact 9mm.
She stood in her new bedroom, weapon aimed at the open doorway. Wait. The whoosh in her ears died down, allowing her to focus. To listen for any movement in the apartment.
A five-hundred-square-foot space offered limited hiding places and the inability to move around without being heard. Good for locating bad guys. Bad for getting away from them.
The tick, tick, tick of an analog clock sounded from somewhere. Otherwise?
Silence.
She let out a forced laugh and lowered her weapon. Weeks she’d been on the move, barely sleeping, her mind on alert and now, somehow, she had to manage that, had to stop the constant anxiety, because she couldn’t spend her life on edge.
Waiting for a killer.
Cautious, yes. But the stress of a full-blown, hyper-paranoid state would put her in a grave long before Alfaro ever did.
She shook her head and set her 9mm on the bed within reach. Time to get settled. To unpack and grab groceries. Explore the neighborhood. Even if she didn’t make friends, knowing her surroundings and where the streets led could save her life.
In the small galley kitchen, she examined the contents of the large envelope Shane had provided. New passport and driver’s license. Birth certificate. Cell phone. The all-important cash and a neighborhood map. Look at that, Mr. Thoughtful had marked little x’s where she’d find a grocery store and a clothing boutique.
Handy since her only clothes were two pairs of jeans and a few shirts. Sully had promised he’d pack up her apartment in DC and send some things when he felt it was safe, but she’d been rotating the same clothes for two weeks and needed a fresh wardrobe. Her limited funds wouldn’t allow for a shopping spree at a boutique, but she could probably swing a few things from a less expensive big box store.
Faith leaned against the counter and stared beyond the breakfast bar big enough for two. An upholstered sofa — a decent caramel one with nicely stuffed cushions — and a metal framed coffee table filled the small living room.
Her new home.
For now, anyway.
Tick, tick, tick.There it was again. That clock might drive her to madness. Given the current circumstances of her life and the fact that a vicious — not to mention pissed-off — corrupt politician wanted her head on a stick, she didn’t need the drama of a ticking clock. She turned toward the sound, found the bugger on a small shelf above the sink and removed the battery.
Done.
She set the ceramic clock back on the shelf and placed the battery in the drawer. Now it was time to survey her new neighborhood, discover possible escape routes and hiding places. Maybe she’d stop at the bank on the corner and open an account. Get on with life as Faith Burgess.
She wandered five blocks — all of them lined with bumper-to-bumper parked cars capable of hiding attackers — in search of a coffee shop. According to the app on the phone Shane had given her, she’d find one at the end of the street. She tucked the phone in her jacket pocket and peeped over her shoulder, checking behind her, beside her, everywhere she could sweep a casual glance.
No one following. At least not that she could see. Her pulse kicked — that instinctive paranoia she’d grown used to making itself known.
Now, thanks to Shane Quinn, she could relax. Even if only a little bit.
She’d never be completely safe. Alfaro wasn’t a man to give up, but part of Faith’s anxiety over the past weeks grew from her lack of a plan. She was no good to the CIA anymore and they’d sent her on her way.
Nice knowing you, thanks for your service, good luck.
That was the risk that came with fieldwork. When you were blown, you were blown. US citizens couldn’t foot the bill for every compromised agent.
Faith reached the corner and found the Daily Brew. Quaint little place. Not a typical storefront, but a squat brick building with large windows in front. She pushed through the heavy wood door — nice touch that — and stepped inside. The barista, a woman in her thirties with blond dreadlocks tucked under a bandana, wiped down the counter.
In the far corner, a man sat on a cushioned chair while he pounded the keys on his laptop. Two women with baby strollers occupied one of the three larger tables in the middle of the room.
The long hallway toward the back was troublesome, but she couldn’t clear every building she entered. She’d keep her eye on that hallway. Make sure no bad guys came from the back entrance.
“Hi there,” the barista said. “Welcome to the Brew. What can I get you?”
Faith stepped to the counter. “Vanilla latte, please. Make it a skinny.”
Who needed all the extra calories?
Actually, she probably needed them since her jeans hung on her, but she’d worry about her weight later.
“You got it,” the woman said. “First time here?”
“Yes.”
Why bother providing details? Fieldwork had taught her to keep it simple and concise. Made the lies easier to remember.
“Thanks for coming in. I’m Darla. The owner.”
The owner. Good to know.
While Darla prepared the latte, Faith scoped out two empty tables by the front windows. Not there. Anyone on the street would have an easy shot.
“That’s the Corner Tap,” Darla said. “Great cheddar burgers. It’s their specialty.”
Huh?
Faith looked back at her. “The Corner Tap?”
“The bar.”
The Corner Tap.
Across the street, emblazoned with large green-and-white block letters on the window was indeed the Corner Tap.
That fool.
Darla put the finishing touches on the latte and handed it over. “On the house,” she said. “A welcome gift.”
Well, that was nice. And a terrific way to gain repeat customers. “Thank you.” Faith smiled. “I’ll definitely be back.”
Disregarding her earlier hesitation about the windows, she slid into one of the front tables, her gaze glued to the nicely stained entry door on the bar across the street.
The one owned by Shane Quinn.