You Need a Vacation #2
G: ITS G. (Agent G.)
G: GOT BAD NEWS TODAY. (I’m in trouble.)
G: COMPANY DOWNSIZING. (Mission shut down.)
G: SA brANCH CLOSED DOWN. (South America job exposed at the source.)
G: LOOKING FOR A NEW JOB. (CIA burned me.)
G: NEED A CHANGE. (Need an exit strategy.)
G: KNOW OF ANYTHING? (Can you help?)
Wow. Talk about a blast from the past. Agent G.
The last time he’d talked to her, she’d just started her operation in South America.
When she managed to catch the eye of the Colonel Cartel’s eldest son, he’d been assigned to create her legend, instruct her on which files the CIA wanted to take him down, how to encrypt them, and then how to send them.
They’d talked daily over secure channels, sometimes multiple times a day.
Wow. Yeah, he knew he’d thought that already, but this deserved a repeat. What the hell was she doing in his text messages? She couldn’t possibly have been undercover and with the cartel all this time, could she?
The CIA operative with the sexiest voice he’d ever heard.
He remembered how much he’d loved talking to her, that rasp drawing him in like a siren’s call.
Her first words over the line always gave him chills as they grazed his ears, and each subsequent sentence stoked the warmth higher and higher.
Disconnecting from her calls always left him a little sad. And horny as fuck.
When he’d quit over her, he’d actually fallen into a full-on depression at never hearing her voice again. Didn’t help that he was still worried as hell about how much danger she was in.
Looking back at her texts, he pondered what to do.
He could just ignore the texts. He no longer worked for the NSA, so it wasn’t his problem.
But she said she’d been burned. The CIA had cut her loose, which was why she was forced to look for other avenues for help.
His fingers moved over the old keyboard setup as fast as if it were a laptop.
M: GOOD TO HEAR FROM YOU. (Message received.)
M: I’M NOT SURE ANYONE’S HIRING, BUT I CAN ASK AROUND (I don’t have any exit contacts anymore, but I can maybe call in a favor.)
M: HOW SOON CAN YOU START? (Threat level?)
G: YESTERDAY. (Extreme.)
Fuck. That meant whoever was after her was closing in fast. Probably less than a day.
M: YOU HAVE ENOUGH FUNDS TO GET YOU THROUGH FOR A DAY OR TWO? (Are you somewhere safe for the next hour or two?)
G: QUESTIONABLE. (Maybe.)
M: ILL NEED TO ASK AROUND. (I’m going to need time to come up with something.)
G: WHATEVER YOU DO DON’T TELL MY MOTHER I LOST MY JOB. SHE’LL FREAK OUT. (Don’t call the CIA. Not safe.)
M: I WONT. (Understood.)
M: KEEP YOUR PHONE CLOSE. (Stay hidden.)
M: SHOULDN’T BE MORE THAN 5 DAYS. (I’ll contact you in no less than 5 hours.)
G: THANKS M. (Understood.)
M: YOURE WELCOME. (Talk soon.)
The cursor on his phone blinked at him. Mocking him.
Holy shit. He’d just offered help to a burned CIA agent. He hadn’t demanded any explanations, any burden of proof, nothing. Just took her at her word that she was worth helping.
Had he lost his goddamned mind?
There was probably a fucking good reason why she’d been cut free. The CIA didn’t just do that.
Well… yes, they did.
“What the fuck am I fucking doing?” he murmured to himself.
He stared at the blinking cursor again.
“I’m a fucking idiot.”
Idiot or not, the world suddenly came into sharper focus. He hadn’t even realized how cloudy things had been. It was as if he’d applied a filter to his point of view that had warped things just enough to go unnoticed until it was removed. When had he done that?
No lying to himself—he chastised himself with a disgusted shake of his head.
He knew exactly when he’d done it. When Tilly died, it had rocked his world.
His brain couldn’t make sense of it, couldn’t rationalize it, couldn’t process it.
Couldn’t deal with it. So he’d softened the blow for himself by laying guilt over the events.
A guilt that shouldn’t be there but made it easier to cope.
If those events were somehow something he could lay blame at his own feet for, then he could move forward because they now made sense in some perverse way.
Now, it was as if his contact with Glennon had somehow dislodged that filter, bringing his view back into focus. And not only that, but something inside him clicked back into place. Something he had either turned off, or paused, or… He didn’t even know.
Or maybe that filter was just dissipating and had completely cleared?
In the end, did it really matter?
He looked at the number for another minute, and it was as if his body surged forward with purpose.
Jaw set determinedly, he memorized it, deleted the exchange, emptied the trash, took the SIM card out of the device, and crushed it under his heel.
Spinning around, he immediately went to his laptop and opened a video chat link to Francesca, the only person he could think of who could help him.
When the woman picked up, he didn’t waste time with niceties. “Fleur. Sorry if I woke you. I could use your advice.”
“You didn’t wake me. We just got home today, and I’m working through the jet lag by waiting up for Tripoli.”
Francesca. It still floored him. A little over two years ago, she’d been undercover at The Library working the sex-trafficking case involving Tilly.
Then, without warning, she’d waltzed into Elysium, assigned to investigate the murders of several club employees, including Tilly.
Now she was out of the FBI, married to Tripoli, a new mom, and living in a house outside Castroville with a Great Dane named Agatha, when she wasn’t traveling with him to the club properties.
“He went to work the day you got back?”
“Said it would be the best way to work through the jet lag for him.” He heard the soft woof of the dog, then a door sliding open as Francesca let the dog outside. “How’s your vacation going?”
“Uneventful until about ten minutes ago. I may have just committed several acts of treason and quite possibly may have some of your brethren waiting for me on my doorstep when I return home.”
One delicate eyebrow arched on the beautiful blonde’s face. “Do tell.”