Cliff Ryder: Out of Time

They’re privately funded, very quiet and already making hundreds of millions of dollars a year,”

Kate said.

Denny nodded, wondering where this was heading.

“Last year, MRIS opened a facility in China, up in one of the northern provinces, specifically for the continued development of this nanobot imaging system.”

“Where’s the part where this concerns us?”

Denny asked. Kate could be blunt, but she could also drive a man to distraction with too much detail.

“Apparently, that isn’t all they’re up to. Yesterday, we got a communiqué from one of our assets in China. Site intel and surveillance shows that MRIS isn’t just working on the imaging systems.

Seems they’re also building some sort of related biological weapon. According to the Chinese, the biological end of it is complete. It’s just the weapon part—the delivery system—that needs work.”

Now his interest was piqued. He sat forward and leaned both elbows on the desk. “And they want us to eliminate the threat.”

“Bingo.” Finally, she tossed the file across the desk, watching it skid slowly into Denny’s hands.

She took a seat in a chair and crossed her long legs, watching his face as he accessed the information and read through the file and scanned the pictures.

When he was done, Denny slid the folder back and shook his head. What he’d read had made him sick, deep inside. The particular nerve gas MRIS

had created was very spooky. They’d found a way to use the nanobots to deliver a payload specifically designed to kill slowly in order to maximize suffering and increase the contamination rate. “They’re right,” he said. “We need to stop this. Now.”

“Pai Kun completely agrees,” Kate said. “It was one of his who that initially got the intel. But he wants us to take the lead on it, rather than using a local asset.”

“Why?” Denny asked.

“He thinks we’ll have a better shot at keeping things quiet and suspicion away from any of his local assets,” she said. “I think he’s right.”

Denny stared at the folder for a long moment, and then glanced up, another question in his eyes.

“Who do you want to send?” he asked.

“I was thinking of Alex Tempest. This is right up his alley. He’d be perfect for it.”

Denny shook his head. “He’s great at blending in, but even he might have trouble looking Chinese.”

A crease formed down the middle of Kate’s forehead and she frowned. “He pulled off that mission in Korea just last year,” she countered. “I think he can do it.”

“Maybe,” Denny admitted. “But he’s only been back from that mission in Mexico a few weeks or so. And things didn’t go very well down there. I was thinking of giving him some extended downtime.”

Kate nodded thoughtfully and studied her shoes for a moment. “There’s nobody better suited for it,”

she said. “And we can’t afford a failure here. Who else has his level of experience, let alone his training?”

“I can think of a few—”

“Who else will get the job done or die trying?

Come on! You know damned well that nobody else we’ve got right now is capable of taking this on with any kind of certainty of success. There’s only Alex.” Kate paused for a moment and studied his face with the trained eye of an interrogator.

“We mandate three weeks minimum between missions, Denny. He’s had that and is probably sitting on his hands waiting for something else to do by now. Maybe sending him back out is what he needs, more than extra time off.”

Denny thought for a moment. He knew Kate.

She had all the tenacity of a bull terrier. He could tell her no until the cows came home and still not win the argument. “All right. But you have to promise not to try and influence his answer in any way. Not to pressure him into it. I’m still waiting for his full report on what happened down in Mexico, but I’ve got a bad feeling right now where he’s concerned. If he says no, then we’ll find someone else, okay?”

Kate nodded her head slowly. “You know I would never, ever try to push an agent into taking on a detail he wasn’t ready for.”

Denny stood his ground, frowning. “Promise me.”

When several beats passed without an answer from Kate, he glared at her, staring daggers.

“Promise or you can ask him yourself.”

She held up her hands to ward off the heat of his eyes. “Okay, okay! I promise I will not try to influence his decision in any way. Happy now?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then. Good luck chatting with Alex.”

Kate rose, tucking the folder under one arm and pushing open the door. Once outside, she shoved the door shut and Denny sighed, then disconnected from his virtual office.

They both knew it was as good as decided.

Alex would take the job. He was too white-hat not to.

Alex was folded over a cup of coffee, his gaze turned inward, when Brin joined him. She was dressed for work, not a hair out of place, her brown eyes bright and dazzling. He was the opposite—

careless hair, unshaved, vision murky. When he wasn’t on a job, he was unkempt and relaxed. He kept it casual. He loved that Brin could roll out of bed looking perfect. Her gorgeous blond hair always looked sexy, either smooth and perfect or playful and tussled, his favorite, the way she looked after sex. Or was it just that his love affected his vision?

Brin eased into the chair opposite his and rubbed his hand for a moment. “Sleep well?”

He looked up at her with a smile and a wink.

“Always do, first night home.” He hadn’t told her that he’d been back for almost a month, staying in a nearby hotel until the doctors had finished working him over. It had been incredibly hard not to race right home, to see her and their daughter, but he wanted to know what was going on before he allowed himself the luxury of the feelings his family aroused in him.

“Me, too.” She let loose an uncharacteristically girlish giggle.

Alex took a long sip of his coffee, studying her face over the rim of the cup. He held it in both hands, just in case the tremors returned. So far, they had only affected one hand at a time. He could always steady one hand with the other.

“Things went okay in Mexico, then?” She fiddled with her briefcase latch. “You were gone longer than I thought you’d be.”

“Took longer than I thought,” Alex said. “They don’t have a lot of the resources we do here, but it turned out all right. No worries.” Brin had no idea what Alex really did for a living. She thought he was some sort of security expert, doing contract work all over the world. He wasn’t sure if she’d have been able to handle all the alone time if she’d really known what he was doing in those faraway places. But he couldn’t tell her anything without putting her in danger and he liked the image that she had of him now. Besides, she might actually take exception to his killing people for a living.

Quite a few people seemed to think that it wasn’t the most honorable line of work.

“Glad to hear it.” She turned a bit in her chair, so that she was facing him, and cupped her chin in one hand. “So, how long do we have you for this time?”

“Right up to the moment you get tired of me.

There’s nothing on the radar, so I guess I’ve been gifted with some major downtime.”

“Good. Savannah will be happy to hear that, too.

She misses her big old daddy bear when he’s gone.”

If there was anything sexier than Brin talking baby talk, Alex couldn’t imagine what it was. “I miss her, too. Like I’d miss the air.” He reached for his coffee and a sigh slipped out before he could cut it short.

“Alex, are you all right?”

Confused, his arm paused halfway to his mouth and he frowned at her across the table. “Fine. Why?”