Chapter 18
Agent Simmons drove me to the local station in Oakland. The long ride around the bottom of the bay gave me plenty of time to think about what Bray had told me.
Wallace had been murdered.
Olena was getting out of prison early—today.
There was a hit out on me.
Not to mention, my cover had been compromised.
The dark thoughts swirling in my head had me terrified and sick to the point I nearly hugged Bray when I saw him.
He wore a black T-shirt and slacks and looked like he hadn’t slept—which I knew he had to some extent since I’d found him that way on my couch.
But still, the shadows beneath his eyes said he hadn’t gotten much.
He greeted me and Agent Simmons in the station’s lobby, a completely and intentionally nondescript building on the outside, and guided me into an elevator, which delivered us to an underground floor of busy cubicles and open office doors.
Phones rang from every direction, and people walked around holding stacks of papers looking frazzled.
It was a run-of-the-mill office, just one buried under so much security clearance no one knew about it.
Similar stations were hidden all over the country.
I’d been to plenty of faceless concrete buildings, old dry cleaners, empty restaurants.
Fronts for an underground organization—literally—that policed crime off the radar.
Bray led me to a small office at the end of the room. He glanced over his shoulder before he guided me in the door and closed it behind us.
I took in the small space stacked with papers, a whiteboard covered in scribbles, a small potted plant by a box light emulating an external window. An internal window faced the cubicles in the busy office belly.
“Is this your desk?” I asked and welcomed myself into the chair. My ankle was not as recovered as I’d thought.
“No. That’s my desk,” Bray said and pointed through the internal window at one of the cubicles. “I just wanted some privacy; Jeremy won’t mind.” As he said it, I noted a framed photo of two men and a little boy smiling from the desk’s corner.
Bray leaned on the desk with his arms spread. The T-shirt strained to accommodate the position. “Are you okay?”
I looked up at him, chasing away thoughts of his arms and how they’d held me in my dream. “Of course not. Will you please tell me what’s going on?”
He stood up with a heavy breath. “I finally got clearance to get the information we need, not exactly legitimately, but that’s beside the point. We were right: It’s all connected, and you are in danger.”
“Clearly,” I said. “What did you learn about Wallace’s death?”
“It was a heart attack, but the autopsy showed a high dose of potassium chloride in his blood, which can trigger a cardiac event, and found evidence of an injection site on his neck.”
“Oh shit. He was poisoned?”
“It appears so, yes.”
I shook my head, trying to keep at bay the complicated wave of pain lapping at me. “I knew he wouldn’t just drop dead. He was too healthy.”
“Well, you were right. I want to have us moved, but I need sign-off first. I’m waiting on a meeting with the director in a few minutes, and I wanted to get you safe in the meantime.”
I was used to my life taking sharp, unexpected turns; the thought of disappearing was not new to me. But my brain snagged on one word he’d said.
“Us?”
Bray nodded. “Yes. With Olena Nova out of prison, I don’t want them shipping you off to another case who-knows-where with a new handler, and have all your classified files go back underground. I want you with me until this is over.”
His declaration nearly knocked the wind out of me. He wanted to stay with me. To keep me safe. Any annoyance I’d had with him over blowing my cover fizzled out and was replaced by a feeling deep in my chest that I’d never felt before. Something warm and curious and a little disarming.
“Okay,” I said. “Before you talk to the director, you should probably know my cover is blown, so I can’t go back to Del Rio anyway.”
He looked up in surprise. “What?”
“Yeah,” I said and stood up. I rounded the desk to his side of it.
“Right before you sent Agent Simmons to the door, Melanie told me they’d been on to you, and they knew I was a setup from the moment I got here.
She said it was all an act, welcoming me and hiring me, so they could keep tabs on both of us. ”
Bray’s mouth fell open. I could see him reliving the whole case like a highlight reel of his mistakes. “Shit, Erin. I’m so sorry.”
I reeled, not expecting him to apologize. “Well, I was right: Melanie is scared as hell of Montrose. When she called my bluff, I confronted her with what we know, and she told me to leave. But maybe it doesn’t matter anymore if someone is coming to kill me anyway.”
Bray opened his mouth to respond, frustrated, when someone knocked on the door. He spun to open it.
“The director is ready,” a young woman in neat pants and a blue blouse said.
“Thanks,” Bray told her. He shut the door and turned back to me. “Look, I’m going to fix this. Just come with me and don’t say anything.” The determined, apologetic look on his face told me not to argue.
I nodded and followed him.
We traveled back through the belly of the office to a hallway of closed doors. Bray stopped at the farthest one with two uncomfortable-looking chairs sitting outside it and knocked. He tilted his head at the chairs. “Sit here.”
I did as I was told, wondering if I was going to be paraded in front of the director in an attempt to plea for my protection.
“Come in,” someone said from inside the office, and I was surprised to hear it was a woman.
Bray slipped inside and left the door open a crack. “Thanks for making time for me,” he said.
“For you, Agent Bray, always,” the director said. I imagined a woman in a prim pantsuit with a sharp bob, though I couldn’t see her at all. “What can I help you with?”
He got straight to the point. “I have reason to believe our asset in Del Rio is in danger.”
The director paused. Her voice took on a serious tone. “What kind of danger?”
“It’s related to the case that brought her on as a CI years ago. The parties involved in that night have discovered her location, and I have reason to believe they are actively trying to intercept her. I would like to have the both of us reassigned from the Del Rio case.”
The director paused, and the air grew tense. “You don’t have security clearance to look into those matters from the past, Agent Bray. In fact, I personally told you not to.”
“Yes, but that was before—”
“Before what? Before you decided to break protocol and risk the progress you’ve made in recovering? You had strict instruction: Del Rio only.”
I reeled at the tone of her voice and imagined Bray blushing in shame. Further thoughts of what had happened to him spun in my mind: What had he recovered from that had resulted in being assigned Del Rio with me, but also revoked his clearance?
“Yes, but there are bigger things at stake now,” Bray said.
“Maybe so, but they are things you don’t need to concern yourself with.”
A long pause passed. I heard what sounded like a stack of papers being tapped on a desktop to straighten it. “You both stay, Agent Bray. If you’d like to request an increase to her protection detail, fine, but no one is being reassigned.”
He paused again, and I imagined him chewing his bottom lip in distress. “With all due respect, you denied the request for overnight protection last night.”
I blinked in surprise. That was why he’d shown up at my apartment the night before; his request got rejected so he’d had to do it himself.
The papers tapped again. The director’s voice came back with a slight bite to it. “Then ask again, Agent Bray.”
A tense silence passed.
“I think it would just be easier if we were reassigned.”
I was waiting for him to confess my cover had been blown, but he didn’t. He was dancing around the detail and instead using Olena as an excuse to have us moved.
The papers landed on the desk with a smack and a chair audibly rolled back. “No one is getting reassigned, Agent Bray. The both of you are staying on the Del Rio case until it’s finished. Is that clear?”
I flinched at her tone and wondered if Bray had done the same at closer range.
“Yes, ma’am,” he eventually said, defeated.
I let out a heavy sigh in the next pause. When the director’s voice came back, it had softened enough to sound as if someone else was speaking.
“Cal, darling, you look exhausted. Why don’t you come for dinner on Sunday? Your father would love to see you.”
I startled, unsure I’d heard correctly.
Bray sighed. “I can’t, Mom. I’m busy.”
“All right, sweetheart. But please take care of yourself.”
Bray mumbled something unintelligible before returning to open the door. My jaw was on the floor when he stepped back into the hall and closed it behind him.
I immediately stood from the chair and gaped at him. “I’m sorry, did you say mom?”
He glanced over his shoulder toward the door with a dark furrow to his brow. “We’re not talking about this,” he muttered and began walking away.
I hurried after him, a smile stretching my face. “Oh, but we definitely are! The director is your mom?!”
In the quickest motion I’d ever seen him make, he gripped my arm and yanked me toward the door at the end of the hall.
He pushed our way through it, and before I had time to react, he had me up against the wall in a drafty stairwell with bare pipes and concrete floors.
He leaned in so close, his nose almost touched mine.