Mark Del Franco - Face Off

She smiled back and settled into his guest chair. “Better. Now, let’s bring Bill Burrell to life.”

WITH SINCLAIR SLUMPEDhalf-asleep in the passenger seat the next morning, Laura pulled her SUV into a parking space a half block away from Fallon Moor’s apartment building. She turned off the engine, let the seat back to make more leg room, and picked up her coffee from the console. The pale dawnlight revealed a flat-front, nondescript building in a muted shade of brick in a line of similar row houses. It had no distinct architectural character, but the location near Logan Circle was pricey enough to warrant its appeal.

The morning commute coasted past the SUV on the left, traffic moving at the speed limit at the early hour. Within a few minutes of parking, it started to slow, as the traffic began its gradual build for the day. Early risers made their way along the sidewalks, coffee cups and briefcases in hand, their faces neutral except for the occasional avid cell-phone talker. Another typical day in a typical city neighborhood with the noted exception of its being home to an international terrorist.

Sinclair slouched in the passenger seat. That a grown man with rugged good looks seemed like a little boy when asleep amused her. She wanted to smooth the worry line off his forehead but resisted the urge. They were working. “Am I going to handle this myself, or are you going to wake up?” she asked.

Sinclair shifted sideways in his seat, his eyes open to slits. “It’s so nice to wake up next to you.”

She chuckled into her coffee. “Yeah, if you actually, you know, woke up.”

He reached for his coffee. “You drilled me half the night. Even I think I’m Bill Burrell now.”

She smirked. “Be glad you only had to do a history. It’s worse when you have to bring some kind of expertise to the job.”

He snorted. “Well, I think I’m bringing some expertise to the job.”

A motion near Moor’s building caught Laura’s eye, and she cocked her head for a clearer line of sight. A man in a maintenance uniform stepped out and swept the sidewalk. She leaned back. “I’ve had to learn languages for missions. I became a qualified English professor for one. I’ve been on archaeological digs, and no one questioned my knowledge. There’s a difference, Jono, between behaving like someone and becoming that person. You’re using existing skills and memorizing a life history you can create on the fly. You can’t do that every time.”

Even as Sinclair complained about the hour, his gaze was on the street. “Boast much, Cuddles?”

She flushed with anger and embarrassment, at the nickname, at his tone, and at the dig. Several cutting responses flew through her mind. As the silence lengthened, she caught herself short and laughed. “Sorry. You totally have a point there.”

He smiled. “Thanks. You do, too, but it would go down better with doughnuts.”

“I’ll try to remember that next time you’re snoring when I’m going through the drive-through. And I’m going to pretend you didn’t call me Cuddles,” she said.

They fell into a comfortable silence. Laura was tempted to quiz him on his undercover persona but resisted the urge. She had to acknowledge to herself he knew it. In fact, she had quizzed him far longer the previous night than she needed to. He had it down, but her own anxiety kept her at him. On several points, he had become so comfortable with the constructed history that his voice resonated near truth when he spoke. Now, that impressed her. As she had gone to sleep, she allowed herself to hope everything would work out for him.

As the caffeine kicked in, Sinclair eased straighter in his seat. He tapped his fingers to the beat of a song playing on the satellite radio. “Do you like to dance?”

“Sometimes,” Laura said.

He glanced at her. “That’s kind of a yes-or-no question.”

She pulled her hair back and flipped it up from where she was leaning on it. “Not really. There have been times when I’ve liked current music enough to dance to it and time periods when I didn’t. I liked the stuff in the seventies and some of the eighties.”

Sinclair cocked an eyebrow. “Time periods? How old are you anyway?”

Laura pursed her lips. “Umm . . . right now, Mariel is twenty-eight.”

Amused, he grunted. “Okay. How old was Janice Craw-ford?”

Laura lifted her eyes in thought. “Well, I wanted to create a SWAT persona who was old enough to have some experience but not too old to be considered a washout. She was twenty-eight.”

“Uh-huh. And Laura Blackstone?”

“Oh, Laura Blackstone is older. Twenty-eight and a half.”

He tilted his head at her. “I like younger women.”

She smirked back at him. “Oh? And how old are you?”

He rubbed his chin. “I’m going to go with thirty.”

She let a smile linger on her lips to hide a sudden sense of unease. Her truth-sensing ability detected a fluctuation. His statement should have registered as an outright lie, but it didn’t. Granted, he had been joking, but humor didn’t hide underlying responses. “That’s not what your birth certificate says.”

He arched his eyebrows with a playful look. “Really, Mariel Tate? My birth certificate might be altered?”

She pressed her lips into a thin line to hide her annoyance. She hadn’t considered that his biographical details might have been altered. Cress wasn’t the only person in the world who was good at constructing fake life histories. “Thirty, is it, then? It must depress you to be so old.”

He laughed as he shook his head. “Nah. It works out ’cause, like I said, I like younger women.”

“Then maybe you should—” Laura began.

“There she is,” Sinclair interrupted.

Fallon Moor had emerged from the entrance of her building and turned up the sidewalk. Laura mentally chastised herself for being distracted. She had not seen the brownie leave the building. Moor stopped at her car, parked a few spaces up, and unlocked the door. Sinclair started to open his door. “Not here. She’s sufficiently high-profile that Legacy might have security watching her,” she said.

He closed the door. “I didn’t notice anyone.”

“Me, either. That doesn’t mean they don’t have someone in one of these buildings.” Laura started the SUV. When Moor pulled out of her space, Laura merged with the traffic behind her. She watched her mirrors for several blocks, but no one appeared to be following. Moor cut across the lane, parked her car on the corner of a side street, and turned on the emergency lights. Laura pulled into the space in front of a fire hydrant a few car lengths away while Moor entered a small tea shop.

“What’s she doing?” Laura asked.

Sinclair narrowed his eyes. “She’s getting tea . . . and . . . wait . . . a croissant. It’s definitely a croissant. I’m thinking she’s secretly French.”

Laura pretended to be impressed. “You’re good.”

He grinned. “Want to know how good?”

She rolled her eyes and got out of the car. “Let’s go.”

They both slipped on sunglasses as they strolled up to the shop. The glasses were clichéd government-agent intimidation, but they looked good. Moor shouldered her way slowly out of the shop with her cup of tea in one hand and the croissant in the other.

Laura held up her badge. “Fallon Moor? Agent Tate, InterSec. This is Agent Sinclair. We’d like to talk to you.”

Moor froze, her expression hard-edged for a second before slipping into puzzled confusion. “InterSec? What’s that?”

Laura didn’t need her sensing ability to pick up the obvious subterfuge. “Let’s not play games, Moor. We’re enforcing a Homeland Security warrant. You’ve overstayed your visa.”