Chapter Five #2
“I’ve been redialing this number over and over,” she admitted. “But it wasn’t you.”
His index finger tapped against the handset. “I have no idea how many other places take these calls. But it’s probably a few.”
“Everyone hangs up on me.”
He laughed and wondered how many times she’d called. Had she given the passcode each time? Or asked for him by name? The CIA could be tracking her calls. Jared could.
“You’re not supposed to call this number if there isn’t an emergency.”
“Don’t hang up,” she pleaded. “Please.”
His index finger tapped again. This was a test—one he was certain he was already failing.
Goodbye, Titan career. Hello… motel security?
That would be all that he would get if Boss Man deemed he’d screwed up with a CIA asset—or an asset’s family member.
But he still hadn’t hung up. “Why are you looking for me?”
“No one will tell me anything.”
He almost laughed. “I can’t tell you. Even if I knew. Which I don’t.”
“You knew enough to listen to ‘Banana. Light bulb. Chicken. Heart.’ Or whatever. That’s more than anyone else.”
He ran a hand over his face like he could scrub away his hesitation. Camden wasn’t one to overthink. Amanda and Shah were watching him in a way that made the room feel small. “You shouldn’t…” What? Say that? What did it matter? “I should go—”
“My sister is missing. My brother-in-law is dead,” she whispered.
“I talked to investigators, and they act as though I’m hiding Hailey in my back pocket.
And there are these people… They say they worked with my sister.
It doesn’t make sense. I don’t have any answers, and the things that I have been told are… They just don’t make sense.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I can’t help you.”
“Where are you?” After a moment, she let out a defeated breath. “Of course, you can’t tell me that. No one can tell me anything.”
“I need to keep this line open—”
She scoffed. “Right. Because whoever you are, wherever you work, you want me to believe that you don’t have call waiting?
Even if I didn’t call a hundred times before I found you and talk to a hundred different people, do you expect me to believe that your super-secret call center doesn’t have more than one phone line for your super-secret bullshit? Got it.”
His lips quirked. Camden dropped his head back and stared at the lights in the ceiling.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head.
No one would tell her anything other than an approved cover story, and no matter what they told Amelia, a well-thought-out cover story wouldn’t matter if there wasn’t a body to bury.
Missing people were almost harder to process than murdered ones.
The lack of a body meant hope. Hope wasn’t helpful.
It wasn’t kind. It was a torment that loved ones fought against, praying that one day, life would return to normal. Most times, it never did.
“I’m going to find my sister.” She paused as though expecting him to shoo her away from the plan. But he didn’t, and Amelia grumbled. “Lord knows no one else is doing anything to help Hailey—”
“You don’t know that.” The CIA tracked its assets. If one went off the grid, they would dedicate resources to resolving the situation and, if need be and circumstances allowed, the recovery of remains.
“I thought you could help me.”
“Me? I can’t.” He couldn’t say that he was Titan or not CIA. He couldn’t say squat.
“You don’t even know what helping would entail. How can you say no without knowing what I want from you?”
His mouth pinched. “All right, Amelia, forget the fact that my boss would fire my ass on the spot for even having this phone call. Call me curious. What do you want from me?”
Amanda and Shah crept closer. Camden waved them back.
“Are they listening? Your boss, I mean?”
He glanced around the operations center with its surveillance equipment and technology that could probably track a fart on the International Space Station. He didn’t know and wouldn’t lie to her, so he punted the question with a half answer. “This is a secure line.”
“A secure line,” she repeated with a dry laugh. “My sister didn’t teach art history, did she?”
Is anyone just an art history teacher? If they lived in the Washington, DC, metro area, the answer was probably a fifty-fifty chance they were an art-aficionado-slash-CIA-operative. “You know she did. Everything you know about her and her husband was real.”
“But there was more. Another layer I didn’t know about. Right?”
Camden wouldn’t answer her, but he didn’t have to.
Amelia already knew. Cops had probably talked to her then swiftly deposited her into the capable hands of men with obscure badges and dubious backgrounds.
Their conversations would have had far more substance but somehow without any information to decipher.
“What does a secure line mean?” she asked. “Like in the movies? Untappable. Untraceable.”
He shrugged. “Just as it sounds. No one can access the line. It’s safe.”
“For people like my sister to call into if they’re in trouble.”
He repositioned and leaned back in the office chair. “Look, Amelia. It’s late for you. The middle of the night, right? You should get some sleep and forget this phone number. All right?”
“Even if I wanted to, I can’t get the permanent marker off the inside of my forearm.
I woke up and thought the whole thing had been a nightmare.
But then I looked down and saw my sister’s chicken scratch in black Sharpie on my skin.
I think I’m going to see your phone number in my head for the rest of my life. ”
Fuck. That wasn’t going to help her move forward from whatever she’d stumbled upon.
Camden didn’t have any advice. “You should talk to someone—”
“I am. You.”
He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. Her stubbornness was a pain in the ass.
But he sort of appreciated her tenacity.
“Someone who knows what to say. Because…” He sucked in his cheeks and tried to play out a few responses.
She deserved the genuine truth, and he didn’t have that.
“I don’t feel like I’m doing right by you or this conversation. ”
The phone line was quiet. He wished she would hang up and forget everything. At least, part of him wished that. Another growing part of him was curious. He wished Amanda and Shah weren’t listening.
She broke the silence. “You know…”
Hanging up was the right thing to do. Reporting the conversation was another right thing to do.
But according to his track record, doing the right thing wasn’t his usual modus operandi, at least according to Boss Man.
Camden never thought he was doing wrong, necessarily. He just wasn’t falling in line.
“Camden, you’re the only person who talks to me for more than two seconds. Even if you’re trying to get me to hang up first.”
He laughed quietly but kept listening.
“And you’re the only person who isn’t actively trying to make me forget what I think I saw.”
“Yes, I am.” But that was interesting. He wondered what the spooks in badges were trying to convince her had happened. He bit his tongue to keep from asking. She was giving him all the more proof that he needed to hang up the phone. “Take care of yourself. Okay, Amelia?”
She didn’t answer. Camden needed a second to realize she’d hung up on him. Well, she probably threw her phone across the room. He didn’t blame her.
“That was interesting.” Amanda perched on the edge of the table in the center of the operations center. “First, you stay on the phone long past when you should.”
“Second,” Shah continued, “you talk to her…” He gestured as if there were more to the story. “Because, why?”
“She needed someone to talk to.” Camden scanned the room for the football and found it nestled in a chair on the far side.
“Not to mention”—Amanda crossed her arms—“how many times did she have to call to get routed here?”
“No telling.” Camden retrieved the football and tossed it to himself, not very high but enough that he had something to do with his hands. “She’s having a hard time finding information.”
“Of which you have any?”