Cindy Dees: Target

Diana blinked. “Uh, okay then. Should I stick around until he’s done and lock up, or may I leave?”

A pause, and then the strange, disembodied voice asked, “Do you have somewhere pressing to go?”

“Yes. I think I may have a lead on who’s backing the Q-group. Or at least I may know someone who has a lead.”

Another pause. “Then by all means, go ahead and leave. You don’t have much time to stop these people.”

Even through the filter of the electronic voice alterations, Delphi’s concern was clearly audible. A chill raced across her skin. It could not be a good thing if her employer, whose stock-in-trade was global-scale crises, was so worried.

Delphi’s urgency latched on to the back of her neck and clung to her with sharp talons as she drove back to her house. Fortunately, no one appeared to follow her or otherwise attempt to assault her between Alexandria and Bethesda. When she got home, she did a quick walk-through to verify that nobody had been inside since she left. The hairs across doorsills and other signals she’d left behind were still in place.

She retraced her steps to the kitchen and put a pot of coffee on to brew, then pulled out her thick folder of newspaper clippings on Gabe Monihan. She sipped at a mug of strong, hot coffee while she spread out copies of the Chicago Tribune for the week immediately following the October Q-group attack. Kim Valenti’s name appeared several times as the heroine who’d worked with FBI bomb squad member Lex Tanner to stop the terrorist’s plans. The headlines all shouted about the attempted terrorist bombing in Chicago and Gabe Monihan’s brush with death. Pictures of the presidential candidate splashed just beneath the headlines.

Lord, Monihan was a handsome man, in a clean-cut, All-American kind of way. The sort of guy she’d found wildly attractive until she got burned by a jerk who looked just like that in college. Three years she’d been desperately in love with Robert Danforth. She’d practically done his law school for him. And the bastard had dumped her cold the minute he made Law Review and graduated with honors. Told her she wasn’t wife material for a man with a bright future like him. Said she wasn’t classy enough-wouldn’t fit in at the country club. To hell with him and the snooty crowd he represented. Who wanted to fit in with a bunch of snobs anyway? At least she’d gotten her revenge. He was a lousy lawyer without her to do his reasoning for him. He’d crashed and burned at the high-powered law firm that hired him based on his-her-grades in law school. Served him right.

She blinked away the memory, and Robert’s casual, blond good looks were replaced by Gabe Monihan’s serious, patrician visage on the page in front of her. Unlike Robert, the next president had dark hair, a rich, warm brown shade. And instead of blue eyes, Gabe’s were light brown, a dancing golden color that hinted at dry humor beneath the keen intelligence of the man.

Work, girlfriend, work. Someone was trying to kill Mr. Wonderful and she was supposed to be figuring out who it was. Quickly, she skimmed the portions of the articles she’d highlighted. There it was. Richard Dunst. That was the guy’s name. An ex-CIA agent suspected of doing arms deals with a group of Berzhaani rebels awhile back. He’d been part of the group that had taken over the UBC TV studios in Chicago to divert security attention from the airport. The newspaper article said he was being held in jail without bail under provisions of the Homeland Security Act.

She went to her computer, plugged his name into a search engine and sat back to wait. It didn’t take long. Only one recent hit. He’d been arrested in a raid of a suspected Q-group headquarters in Baltimore over Columbus Day weekend and was being held by federal authorities.

Which meant Dunst was here, in Washington. The CIA was probably debriefing him now that they’d caught up with him. Typing quickly, she poked around the federal prison database but didn’t find what she needed. And so, like any good Athena Academy graduate, she took matters into her own hands and engaged in a little quick extracurricular activity, hacking into the restricted portion of the federal prisoner database.

Bingo. He was being held at Bolling AFB, a gray and unobtrusive spit of land sitting in a curve of the Potomac on the south side of Washington, D.C., and home of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The prisoner database indicated only that Dunst was under investigation for possible un-American activities. Yup, the CIA was still working him over.

She needed to talk to him. ASAP. He wasn’t likely to give up any significant information to her in a single interview, but she had to try. He was her only potential link between the Q-group and the CIA. The more she thought about it, the more sure she was that the Berzhaani terrorists were behind any forthcoming assassination attempt on Gabe Monihan. And if they’d gained access to more CIA training and techniques, she bloody well needed to know it if she was going to save the President.

S he stared at the clothes in her closet, pondering the perfect outfit. She opted against her Army uniform. The idea was to get Dunst to talk to her, not put him off by coming across as yet another government flunky out to milk him for information. Even if that was exactly what she was. She needed to strike a tone that would put him at ease. Professional yet casual, with a touch of sex appeal.

She settled on a pair of tailored, brown suede slacks and a pale yellow turtleneck that hugged her figure in all the right places. She brushed her golden blond hair into soft waves around her face and reached for her makeup kit, which looked more like a fishing tackle box than anything else. But then between her work and real life, she wore so many different faces that maybe it wasn’t surprising she’d put a clown to shame with the array of cosmetics she used.

Today, she went for a classic look. A little eyeliner and understated eye shadow, enough mascara on her extravagant lashes to draw attention to her big blue eyes, a hint of blush over her flawless skin and coral lipstick to match the peaches-and-cream color of her complexion. This wasn’t a face she put on often. Her big sister, Josie, would call it her about-damn-time-she-cleaned-up face. Her mother, vacant soul that she’d been until recently, would have patted this cheek and called her such a pretty little thing. As if she wasn’t five foot seven and twenty-seven years of age. And Dad. Dad would flash her the dimples that exactly matched hers and nod in silent approval at this face. She sighed and sprayed on one of the expensive, elegant perfumes her sister was prone to giving her as gifts.

There. As good as she could manage on half a night’s sleep before the sun was even up. Hopefully, the look would work on Richard Dunst. She drove down to Bolling AFB, suffering through the early phase of the morning rush hour. Washington, D.C.’s streets were designed for horses and buggies, and she was firmly convinced everyone would get places faster if the residents went back to using horse-drawn conveyances. The many government agencies downtown staggered their work hours to ease the daily gridlock, but the result was a morning rush hour that stretched from before 6:00 a.m. to nearly 10:00 a.m. She eventually wound her way past the Jefferson Memorial and its now skeletally bare promenade of cherry trees to her destination.

The gate guard at Bolling didn’t raise an eyebrow at her civilian clothing in concert with her military ID. Many of the Defense Intelligence Agency staffers headquartered here worked out of uniform. But the guard did raise a brow when she asked for directions to the prisoner holding facility on base. Its very existence wasn’t something most people knew about, let alone visited. He pointed to her right and rattled off a confusing series of street names and turns. Ah well. She’d find it. At least he’d given her a decent description of what the building looked like. She’d fake the rest.