Carla Cassidy - Pawn

There had been no bitter blowup and destruction of her relationship with Nick, only the interference of different lives and different paths.

She frowned, blaming the unexpected appearance of the FBI for the whisper of regret that now filled her heart.

With her computer up and running she decided to check her e-mail before she got to work on the drug company’s Web site. She pulled up her e-mail program and typed in her password.

Her mailbox showed about two dozen new e-mails. Several she knew were work related, a couple were from cyberfriends, some spam that had managed to get past her filters, but there was one sender she didn’t recognize.

The return address read, Delphi@orcl.org.

Lynn frowned, trying to decide if she should open it or not. She had filters and blocks on the system that shouldn’t allow in any viruses or bugs, but she also knew she couldn’t be too careful.

Deciding to take a chance, she opened the message.

Athena sister Lynette,

You have come to our attention. Your special, genetic skills are needed in our battle. As friends of Rainy we need your help. The Oracle Network awaits you. We will be in touch.

Lynn stared at the note, her mind whirling. Delphi…Oracle…sounded like something from Greek mythology. It would be easy to dismiss the note as nothing but some sort of crazy ad campaign or spam except that it mentioned Athena, her special, genetic skills and the mother Lynn had never known.

There were only a handful of people who knew that she had been created by a human experiment, that the experiment had been a success in that she had been born with superhuman speed and hearing and other strengths.

Even Nick hadn’t known the entire truth about the circumstances of her birth and her full capabilities, although he had suspected she was physically gifted.

So, who had written the note and what was Oracle? She hit Reply. What is Oracle, she typed in, then hit Send. It took only a moment for her to get a message that the e-mail address of Delphi@orcl.org was not a working address.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” she muttered. She spent the next half an hour trying to trace the e-mail address but came up with nothing. Definitely intriguing, but also rather suspicious.

Was it possible the note was from the FBI? She narrowed her eyes and stared at the message. It was pretty coincidental that she’d been detained by them earlier then came home to find this cryptic e-mail.

She closed the message, but was unable to still the new edge of agitation that rose up inside her. She didn’t like things she didn’t understand, things that didn’t make sense.

And she got the definite feeling that somehow the peaceful, quiet life she’d built here was about to explode.

Raymore, Florida

The ring of the telephone pulled Nick Barnes from the sofa, where he’d been cat napping for the past thirty minutes. He gazed at his watch and frowned. Who in the hell would be calling at midnight?

He grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”

“Is Haley there?”

Nick’s gut twisted at the sound of the deep male voice. “Sorry, you’ve got a wrong number.”

“I was just looking for Haley.”

“Nobody here by that name.” He hung up the phone, his heart pounding with apprehension. Something was wrong. Otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten that phone call.

He got up from the sofa and grabbed his car keys from the kitchen table, then walked down the hallway and paused in the master bedroom doorway. Good, the phone hadn’t awakened her.

As he walked back down the hall toward the front door, he wondered what in the hell had happened. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.

They had agreed, when he’d gone deep undercover three months ago, that there would be no contact unless it was a dire emergency. The fact that the code had been used meant something terrible had occurred and that couldn’t be good news for him.

He left a note on the table that said he’d gone to get a pack of smokes, just in case she woke up and wondered where he was.

As he left the house, as always, his gaze shot up and down the street, looking for anything suspicious, anything or anyone that didn’t belong.

Although Raymore, Florida, was only an hour’s drive from Miami, it was light-years away in culture and flavor. Struggling economically the small town was populated by people on their way down rather than on their way up.

It was also the place where an FBI undercover operation had been ongoing for the past year to break up a huge methamphetamine ring.

Nick started the engine of his ten-year-old sedan, then pushed against a panel in the door that opened to reveal a secret compartment. Inside the secret compartment was a cell phone.

As he headed away from the small bungalow he’d called home for the past three months, he punched in the number that would connect him with his contact.

“Are you safe?” a deep, male voice asked.

“I don’t know. You tell me.” Nick didn’t know the name of his contact, had only spoken to him by phone once before, on the day he’d gone undercover. He knew the man only by his contact name of Haley, a name that would have nothing to do with his real one.

There were only three people who knew where Nick was and what he was doing in Raymore. Buzz Cantrell, an agent who coordinated much of the undercover work within the agency; Frank Jessup, Nick’s boss; and Haley, a faceless voice over the phone.

“I’m alone in my car, on my way to a convenience store for a pack of cigarettes. What’s up?” Nick’s stomach remained knotted as he waited to hear what could only be bad news. As he listened to what Haley had to say, the knot twisted tighter. By the time Haley had finished telling him why he’d called, Nick had arrived at the convenience store.

Nick disconnected the call and sat for a minute, trying to digest what he’d just heard. He didn’t want to do it, but knew the men in charge would find a way of forcing his hand no matter how much he protested.

He got out of the car and went into the store. As he paid for a pack of cigarettes, he continued to think about what he’d just been told. They were asking him to play a dangerous game. They couldn’t pull him off the case he was working—too much time and effort had gone into setting him up in his current position.

But, they needed him to do another job for them, one that could not be done by any other agent. It was a dangerous request, with dangerous consequences should it be discovered.

He already knew that one false move on the case he was working would see him dead. The meth operation was headed by a handful of ruthless, amoral men who would think nothing of putting a bullet through his head should they entertain even a moment of suspicion. Now he’d been ordered to risk compromising his position.

He got back into the car and restarted the engine at the same time he shook a cigarette from the pack. He hadn’t been a smoker before he’d started this job, and he intended to quit as soon as this assignment was finished, but you couldn’t go out to buy cigarettes and not smoke them.

As he headed back toward the bungalow, he thought again of what he’d just been asked to do. The only positive thing he had to focus on was that if this got him killed, at least he’d have an opportunity to see Lynn again before he died.

Lynn was having a bad morning. Part of the problem was that she was trying to function on too-little sleep. Despite the fact that she’d tried to forget the unexpected appearance of the FBI in her life once again, she hadn’t been successful.

She’d tossed and turned all night, cursing them even as she wondered exactly what they’d wanted from her. She’d finally fallen asleep as dawn was creeping into the bedroom, then had awakened just before ten and had forced herself out of bed despite a headful of grogginess. After two cups of coffee she’d felt better prepared to face the day.