Stephanie Doyle - Calculated Risk

Sabrina shifted herself more comfortably in the back seat of the Cadillac and tried not to think about who was coming for her and how close he really was. This was what she’d asked for after all, what she wanted. But with the adrenaline pumping heavy in her body and her heart still racing from the gunfight, it was suddenly hard to remember why her return to the agency was so important.

It was. She supposed that was enough.

Her Defender was still in her hand and with no real place to put it, Sabrina left it on the ledge behind the seat. It occurred to her that she was cold and with good reason. No socks and no coat.

Glancing over at Quinlan, she noticed that he’d managed to grab his dark overcoat during the melee. Typical. He’d have taken it as protection against a gunshot or flying glass. He’d have taken it in case they had to make a run for it on foot, knowing the temperature was below freezing. A hail of bullets pelting the house and he’d been calm enough and logical enough to put his coat on because it was the sensible thing to do.

And here she thought she’d been whizbang for grabbing her sneakers.

There was a panel on the back seat of the upscale vehicle for climate control and Sabrina leaned forward to jack up the heat to seventy-eight degrees. Hot air rushed out of the vents and the sudden change in temperature caused her to shiver.

“You should have thought to grab a coat or sweater.”

“Thanks,” she snapped even as she rubbed her hands over her arms. The sweater she had on was pretty heavy and as soon as the hot air filled the car she would be fine.

“If you think I’m going to give you mine-”

“I don’t think that,” she said, stopping him. There was nothing particularly gallant about Quinlan, certainly not when it came to business.

“Talk to me. Explain to me again what that was back there.”

She wished she knew for certain. “They weren’t trying to kill me.” Best to start with the obvious. The shots had been high and random. The shooters out back had been trying to prevent an escape rather than performing an execution.

“You contacted Kahsan,” he accused her. “You all but dared him to come and get you.”

“Yes, but getting me before I know the location of the computer gets him nothing. Taking you out, before he’s sure you’ve told me what I need to know gets him nothing. Think about it.”

“I am. You can’t possibly know what his motives are. All I know is that you called up the most dangerous man in the world and invited him to play in your fucking backyard.”

Sabrina considered telling him the truth. That it hadn’t been her idea at all, but rather his own people who had come up with this brainstorm. She stopped herself. Not so much because she cared about keeping Krueger’s secret, but because she doubted that Quinlan would believe her now.

“I told you why I did it. I want back in. I want a chance to make a difference again.”

“Spare me,” he said dismissively. “Your sudden patriotism, while touching, isn’t quite as convincing as I’m sure you would like. I want to know exactly what you told Kahsan.”

“I told him about Arnold’s project. About his death. And how it was going to be a big fat race to see who got to his computer first. But no matter how fast anyone got there, nobody was getting anything without me. Naturally, I explained that the cost to use my brain as a key would be high. Very, very high.”

He shook his head in evident disbelief. “How did you even know how to get in touch with him? It’s not like he’s listed in the phone book.”

“I knew the right Web sites to gain access to, the right message boards to post on. I haven’t been completely out of the game for the past ten years. Keeping track of the bad guys sort of became a hobby over time. That and hacking federal agency servers. You guys would be surprised to know how staggeringly vulnerable you are-”

“Focus,” he ordered. “I want details regarding the actual contact. Did you speak to him?”

She shook her head. “Our only contact was through e-mail and message boards. But I told him that if he wanted to deal, he had to come himself. And that he better bring a boatful of money. He thinks I’m a mercenary, and every background check he does is going to confirm that.”

“Right. A mercenary.”

Sabrina closed her eyes and struggled for patience. His distrust hurt, that was undeniable, but it was also frustrating. Especially since she thought she was lying really well.

“Look, all I ever did was suck at a job. Okay? I never gave away state secrets. I never compromised a mission’s security. I chose not to break a few codes because I was a kid and I was mad as hell. That’s no reason to believe I’ve gone Benedict Arnold.”

He sighed and leaned his head back against the seat. With the soft light of the waning moon filtering through the tinted windows, she could see him clearly. The creases around his mouth seemed even more evident. Ten years, and it didn’t look as though one of them had been easy on him.

“You don’t know,” he said softly. “No, you didn’t commit any crime against your country, but you’ll never know what you could have done to protect it. You’ll never know what it cost, how many lives lost, how many secrets lost, because you weren’t doing what you were born to do.”

Born to do. No pressure there. But now wasn’t the time to rise to the bait and argue with him over the merits of free choice. “You’re right,” she acquiesced. “I won’t ever know. And neither will you. But I’m here now. And I want to help.”

“Some help.” He snorted and held his arm out in front of him. She could see a beam of light through the bullet-size hole in his coat. She could also see the bubble of something wet that was about to drip from the material.

“Jesus, you’re shot.”

She reached for him and pushed the sleeve of his coat up his arm. It gave just enough to bunch the material over his elbow.

“It’s nothing. A graze.”

He was right. His sweater was torn and through the opening she could see a gash on his forearm that was bleeding steadily but not profusely.

“You got a first aid kit?”

He moved her back to her side of the seat and lowered the console between them. Lifting open the top, he extracted a small white kit. “Do you remember how to dress a wound?”

She smirked at him and his lips twitched in return. “Sorry.”

Sabrina opened the kit and found a tightly wrapped package of gauze and some pretreated wipes. She cleaned the wound, then wrapped it up tight with the cotton strips, tying off the ends exactly as she’d once been shown.

He flexed his arm once and nodded with satisfaction. “Let’s assume those men were Kahsan’s. Do you think it’s a coincidence that they showed up on the same night I did?”

Replacing the kit, she closed the console, but didn’t lift it back into place. It was silly but she felt more comfortable with the barrier between them. It made things clearer in her mind. He was on his side. She was on hers.

She did however turn toward him, her expression no doubt disdainful. “Still testing me?”

“It was a question.”

“Of course it wasn’t a coincidence. Very few things in life are. They must have been watching me. Waiting for someone to make contact before they moved.”

“Why?”

She knew that he was merely asking for the possibilities. “I made sure that Kahsan knew that I needed information from someone at the CIA. All that smoke with no real fire just delayed us. What if that’s all they wanted to do? To keep us pinned in the house another day. And the only reason they would need to do that is if…”

They looked at each other and she saw the same conclusion she had reached in his face.