Crossing Lines by Adrienne Giordano

6

Did he just say. . .

Shane Quinn might be a man after her own heart with these ambitious ideas.

Faith folded her arms, tapping her right index finger against her biceps. “Even if we pulled that off, there are a thousand more Gustavos out there. Alfaro will send another one.”

“But it’ll buy us time to regroup. Brutus is independent. I met him at the palace a couple of times. Rumor had it he’s good, but drives Alfaro nuts. He doesn’t check in enough. Disappears for weeks at a time and then shows up when the job is complete. They’re used to him going dark. If we eliminate him before he finds us, we’ll buy ourselves a couple of weeks to regroup. You got a better idea?”

She wished she did. Maybe he was right. Killing Brutus wouldn’t solve the problem, but a few weeks would give her enough time to settle somewhere else. And what the hell kind of lives were they living where calmly discussing ending a man’s life was the best option?

She continued tapping her finger against her arm. Tap-tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap.

“Hey,” he said. “We’re working this on the fly. I don’t have all the answers.”

“I get that. Believe me. It took me days with no sleep to get out of Venezuela. I’m good on the fly. My boss didn’t call me Queen of the Pivot for nothing. But I’m not risking your lives anymore.”

“We’re not leaving you,” Dusty said.

Great. Now him too?

Dusty clapped his hands together. “We’re wasting time. How do we find this guy?”

She eyed him, took in the set of his jaw. She’d learned enough about men to know he wouldn’t be swayed. She went back to Shane, who wore the same stubborn look.

“Come on,” she said. “You can’t do this.”

Shane cocked his head. “If we do, we’ll all be safer.”

God, these men. As much as she hated it, they were right. And this was her fault. In her quest to keep herself safe, she’d brought heat to Shane.

Still, she couldn’t have known Alfaro was after Shane as well. Sully should have warned her.

Sully.He could help them. She waved a hand. “I’ll ask Sully how we find Brutus.”

“Shane doesn’t trust him.”

Interesting. She faced Dusty. “Why?”

The two men exchanged a look. “Sully,” Shane said, his gaze still on his friend, “you will learn, has a big mouth.”

“Not that big,” Faith said, “because he never told me Alfaro was after you. If he had, we wouldn’t be in this mess. What’s your problem with him?”

He finally broke eye contact with Dusty and gave her his attention. “Dusty got caught in a jackpot that involved Sully. Miraculously, Sully came out unscathed.”

“It wasn’t a big deal,” Dusty added. “Shane’s sensitive.”

“When my friends get fucked? Bet your ass.” He faced Faith again. “Your relationship with him, however, seems solid.”

Oh, no he didn’t. “If you’re implying I’m screwing him, you’re way out of line.”

Dusty let out a snort. “That’s exactly what he’s implying. Our guy here is trying to ascertain your loyalty to Sully.”

She supposed she couldn’t blame him for that. Considering Sully had risked their safety by sending her to them. “He’s a friend. If he’s interested in more than that, it’s not my problem and it’s definitely not something I’ve encouraged. I don’t need the drama.”

She reached into her back pocket for her phone — the burner she carried in addition to the one Shane had given her — and checked the signal. Nothing. Not a surprise since they were in a damned coal mine.

She held the phone up. “When we get outside, I’ll call him. See what he’s got on Brutus.”

Shane stepped back, leaned against the wall and propped one foot on it. “There might be another option.”

Excellent. Considering they seemed to be short on options. “I’m all ears.”

“There was a woman. Leslie Larshot. She worked for Alfaro doing intelligence work. She’s beautiful and charming. If Alfaro needed intel from world leaders, he invited them to his compound and unleashed her on them. At the time, her brother worked in the compound as well.”

Not uncommon considering men — at least in Faith’s opinion — habitually let their sexual urges overrule their common sense. Just ask the two guys she’d gutted on a basement floor.

“What does she have to do with Brutus?”

“After seeing her in action, Alfaro realized she could help Brutus on certain jobs. She’d lure men in and Brutus took them out.”

“She traveled with him?”

Shane jerked his head. One solid nod. “She did. Knows his quirks. The types of places he likes to stay, restaurants and such. She knows our enemy better than the agency or Alfaro.”

Finally, Dusty boosted himself off the wall. “How do we find her? We can’t exactly reach out on Twitter.”

At that, Faith laughed. Good one.

“When I was in Venezuela,” Shane said. “I flipped her. Made her an asset. She wanted out and we promised we’d help. By then, she’d seen enough and wanted a better life for her and her brother, Reynaldo, but he refused to leave.”

Now this might be a promising lead. If nothing else, a way to take an offensive stance rather than a defensive one.

“Can you still make contact?” Faith asked. “We could talk to her. Maybe she’ll tell us how we find Brutus and get ahead of him. It’ll save us time if she can give us a lead. She probably also knows his weaknesses. We can exploit those.”

Shane shook his head. “Yeah. If we can find her. After the agency got what they needed out of her, she was given a new identity. Last I heard she was in Alabama. That was right before I got burned.”

Whether Shane liked it or not, if this woman was a CIA asset, Jonathan Sullivan could help them. “We need Sully. I’m calling him.”

She headed out the door into the dirt-strewn hallway, heard the swish of fabric behind her and peered back to find Shane and Trevor on her heels and Dusty quickly locking the door.

Uh, no. She wouldn’t do this with an audience. Sorry, boys. “Are we making this a conference call?”

“We’ll give you privacy,” Shane said, “but you’re not standing out there alone.”

Excellent. Now they were chained at the hip. Time for her to set these boys straight about a few things. She reached the hole they crawled through to enter the mine and spun back. “We need to be clear on a few things.”

“Uh-oh,” Trevor said. “It’s the mom tone.”

Shane made no attempt to hide a sigh.

“You’re not calling the shots,” she said. “I’ve been working solo a long time. Personally and professionally. I don’t need a bunch of alphas taking over. I’m grateful for the help you’ve given me, but this is my life and if you’re expecting me to fall in line, it won’t happen.”

“Fall in line?”

Shane stepped closer, his gaze pinned to hers and the confined space grew…small. Really small. Whoopsie. She’d apparently hit a nerve. She held her breath and waited for the yelling to start.

“We know,”Shane said, “what it feels like to have no control. To feel trapped. If anyone should be laying down demands, it’s us. You could seriously fuck us over.”

No yelling. But his quiet tone, the punch of the words, had an equally devastating effect.

“I wouldn’t do that,” she said.

His hand shot up. “How about we agree that we’re all in this for the right reasons? And, yeah, there will be times when one or more of us will try to take over. That’s what we do. You don’t survive in our line of work without being aggressive. And that goes for you too. Don’t lose your shit when it happens. We operate as a team. That work for you?”

A team. Yeesh. She sucked at teamwork. Supremely sucked. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate a team environment. She simply did better on her own. Pivoting was so much easier without a partner. Or three.

She nodded. “Fine.”

“Good,” Shane said. “Now let’s call that prick Sully and see what he can tell us about Leslie Larshot.”

The second Shanecrawled out of the air duct, his phone dinged. Three times. His bartender letting him know they were short on olives, bitters and the all-important straws. He’d deal with that in the morning.

Faith followed him through the opening, her phone in hand. He waved her down the hall and walked while checking his texts. “Let’s get out of here before you call Sullivan. I don’t like lingering. You never know if someone’ll come in.”

“I can call while we’re moving. I’d like some privacy though.”

And why would she need privacy unless his suspicions about her relationship with Sully might be spot-on? Could he trust this woman?

Hell, it was probably way too late to think of that now.

“You can walk ahead of us,” he told her. “Is that a burner phone?”

“Yes. I carry this and the one you gave me.”

“Good.”

“I feel bad enough dragging you into this situation. I won’t further compromise you by calling the CIA on the phone you gave me. Besides, I think of that phone as Faith’s. The burners are about my former life. Liz’s life.”

He glanced over at her. “I get that. It sucks that we live this way, but…”

“It’s safer. We both know it.”

True ʼdat.

Once outside, Faith picked up her pace, leading the charge across the vast cemetery. Shane, Dusty and Trevor hung back, but kept her in sight in case they had to reach her in a hurry. Say, if a psychotic serial killer working for Alfaro popped up in the middle of a cemetery.

Jesus, the paranoia. Total killer.

Beside him, Dusty stared up at a sky dotted with stars, then brought his attention back to Faith, walking ahead of them. “What’re you thinking?”

“Besides that this day won’t end and my paranoia might get me committed?”

“Yeah. Besides that.”

“She can’t go back to her apartment.”

“No way.” This from Trevor on the other side of Dusty. “Hotel?”

Damn, Shane didn’t know. Hotels had cameras. Plus, Brutus might be making calls to see if she was in residence.

Assuming he knew her new name.

That’s what Shane would do. Just start calling hotels and asking for her.

Then again, there were so damned many hotels in the city, it’d be easy to hide. Except…cameras. Was it worth the risk?

The implications bounced around in his mind, ping-ponging in all directions.

Like Dusty, he peered up at the starlit sky, drew a long pull of fresh air to settle his mental bedlam. Concentrate here, buddy.

“Wait,” Dusty said. “You’re not —”

“Taking her to my place and risking both of us? Yeah. What option is there?”

Trevor peered around Dusty. “Dude, that’s nuts. What the hell are you thinking?”

As they walked, he held up a finger. “It is nuts. But, I live in a first-floor unit where every window and door is armed. If anyone so much as touches something, the alarm goes off.”

“Shane, I’m—” Dusty ran one hand down his face. “Fuck. I shouldn’t have—”

Shane stopped walking and faced his friends. “No. No way. You did the right thing sending her to me. If you hadn’t, she might be dead now. It’s our rotten luck Brutus is that damned good. How the hell did he track her? I mean, how many people know where she is? Far as I know, only us and Sullivan. Someone who knew where she was leaked it to Alfaro.”

“It’s not Sully.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t. Except, I do. He’s not that guy.”

Shane didn’t believe it. Not for one second. Jonathan Sullivan would sell his soul if it got him promoted.

“I don’t know what it’s gonna take for you to realize he is that guy. And I’m not letting him fuck us over. That’s not happening.”

“It's me.”Faith said when Jonathan Sullivan answered his cell phone. “Virginia.”

Her code name, inspired by wartime spy Virginia Hall, came in handy when she needed to reach Sully. He'd been her coworker, her mentor and, she liked to believe, her friend.

Was he ambitious to a fault? Probably. In DC that described ninety percent of the sharks she’d come in contact with. Kill or be killed environment, that one.

“Virginia.” The name rolled from his tongue slowly, the disbelief evident. “Nice to hear from you. How are you? “

Simply on the basis of this phone call, he knew damn well she wasn't any good. Why else would she be risking her apparently already compromised new identity.

Still marching through the grass, she swung a look over her shoulder where Shane, Trevor and Dusty trailed behind, shadowed in darkness.

She went back to Sully. “I’ve had better days. Bad news from my brother. You remember Rodney.”

Before she’d come to Chicago, they’d agreed Shane’s code name would be Rodney.

“Is he off the wagon again?”

Off the wagon. What the hell was he talking about? Had they discussed code for that? She thought back to their last conversation. Nothing. Whatever. “Rodney’s marriage fell apart a few years ago. Ugly split. Now, his ex appears to be back. And, you know she hates me as much as she does Rodney. We’re both having to deal with her nastiness.”

A long pause ensued. Was he even understanding her reference to Alfaro?

“I’d heard about that,” he said.

Excellent. Somehow, he’d deciphered her hints. “It’s a shame.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.” He paused for a few seconds, the line filling with silence. “Virginia, someone is at my door. Can I call you right back?”

Calling her back meant ditching his cell phone for an untraceable burner he’d toss after the call.

She hung up and glanced back at the three men trailing twenty feet behind. She kept moving, tromping through a patch of longer grass in the open field where graves had yet to be dug.

If she could focus on the good, on the kindness of people willing to help — the positives — she’d be okay. She’d find a way out of this and once again escape from Alfaro and his henchmen.

A fresh start. For her? No big deal. Between her mother walking out, her grandmother’s death, bouncing from foster home to foster home, she’d learned to navigate ever-changing landscapes.

In Faith’s world, love wasn't important enough for people to stick around.

Her phone rang, shattering her miserable thoughts. “Hello?”

“It's me,” Sully said, his voice more clipped than a minute ago. “Secure line. What the hell’s going on?”

They hadn't come up with code names for Alfaro and Brutus yet and she needed him to understand. Quickly. She didn't have time to mess with code names and explaining things.

He'd already told her they were on a secure line and she knew she'd be ditching her phone. Screw speaking in code. “Rodney thinks Brutus found me. There's a coffee shop. Some foreign guy who likes the same coffee served in Alfaro's compound showed up. Rodney recognized the coffee.”

Even on a secure line, she wouldn’t share that Shane’s bar was across the street. Some details didn’t need to be revealed.

“Hang on,” Sully said. “You're freaking out because Rodney thinks some guy who requested a cup of coffee is an assassin?”

“This coffee is from Colombia and the owner of the coffee shop described the guy who requested it. Rodney thinks it's Brutus. He's got the scar on his eyebrow. And you told, um, that other friend, about the boat. Between the coffee and the boat, it's a pretty good bet he found me. Let's not even talk about who may have leaked where I was. Or the fact that Rodney and his friends could be exposed.”

She shook it off. Who had time for these thoughts? Later they'd figure out who ratted her out.

“We’re on the move,” she said, “and looking for a woman who worked with Brutus. Rodney says she was an asset.”

“Leslie Larshot.”

Good; he remembered her. “Yes. That's her. We need to find her.”

“Why?”

“Because she knows Brutus's habits and can fast-track our reconnaissance. If we find her, maybe we find him.”

“Six months ago she was in Alabama. Or Kentucky. Let me poke around. You know this is dangerous. Talk about opening Pandora's box.”

Oh, she knew. She was the one running from that box. What choice did she have? She'd done her job, worked for years improving her craft, mining countless amounts of critical information regarding national security and now, as the government's way of saying thanks, they’d discarded her. Sent her on her way because she was no longer of use to them.

That alone should fry her ass. Never mind all this sneaking around trying to stay alive.

“Leslie Larshot,” she said. “Help me find her. The agency owes me that much.”

Shane,Dusty and Trevor caught up to Faith, who’d apparently ended her call because she stood in the middle of the field, hands loose at her sides, but still holding her phone.

“I talked to Sully,” she told them. “He said Leslie was in Alabama or maybe Kentucky as of six months ago. He said he’d dig around. But let's face it, the agency hasn't exactly been fair to us. I'd say we need a plan B.”

Plan B. Lucky for them Shane had gotten pretty fucking good at Plan B. Two years of living under a fake identity tended to sharpen survival instincts.

“Let’s see what he comes up with. If I had to, I could probably scrounge an address or phone number for her.”

The moon bullied its way from behind a cloud and a shaft of moonlight threw shadows over Faith, who flapped her arms. “Then why did I call Sully?”

Now she wanted to get testy with him? He started walking again, angling around her. “I didn’t say I had an address. If necessary, I can make some calls. If your buddy can help, I won’t have to risk any of our safety by making inquiries.”

“Let's give Sully until tomorrow morning,” Faith said when she fell in step beside him. “Let him get to the office and see what he can dig up. In the meantime, I'll lay low somewhere. Drop me at a motel outside the city.”

As if. Someone had attempted to snatch her off the street and now she expected them to leave her alone?

“Too risky,” Shane said. “You can come home with me. And before you start screaming about me bossing you around, I'm not. I've got my place wired so tight the alarm goes off if someone breathes. You'll be safe there. And so will I because, hell, I go to Darla’s for coffee, too. Brutus may have seen me. We don’t know. And, if Sullivan has intel, we’ll mobilize faster if we’re together. Unless Sully tells us Leslie Larshot is dead, we may be calling her tomorrow.”