Lisa Phillips - Double Agent

She grinned. “No offense, but you sort of stick out. Even though that outfit screams ‘average-joe tourist.’”

He opened his mouth to object and realized she was probably right. He couldn’t answer anyway because the waitress chose that moment to place their food in front of them.

“You could take off the hat,” Sabine suggested.

He rubbed his shaved head and tugged the ball cap back on. “The hat stays.”

“You don’t have enough hair to have a bad hair day.”

She picked up her silverware and cut a massive bite of burrito. His eyes widened as she shoved it in and chewed with gusto, then swiped up the bottle of hot sauce and shook a few drops onto her next forkful.

She realized he was staring and straightened. “What?”

He picked up his silverware. “Enjoy your food, don’t you?”

“What’s it to you?”

Doug shrugged. “It’s just...refreshing is all. Women who look like you don’t usually eat like, uh...that.”

“I’ll suffer working it off tomorrow, don’t you worry. But it’ll be worth the miles. Take a bite and see for yourself. It’s really good.”

Doug took a bite. She was right, though it was almost too spicy for him. He ate fast, one eye on the time. It would be simplest if they arrived at the airport with enough time for him to get a ticket on the same plane.

“So what’s the real reason you don’t want to take off your hat?”

He hesitated, unsure how to say it without dredging up a whole bunch of grief neither of them could handle. “It’s—”

Sabine’s knife stilled and sadness washed over her face. “That’s Ben’s hat.”

Doug nodded.

“He gave it to you?”

“Wanted me to have it.”

Sabine swallowed. “And here I only got the joy of cleaning out his musty, cluttered bedroom.” She drew in a long breath, and he saw the quiver in her lower lip. “Not that I’ve done it yet. I mean, really, you’d think a grown man would be able to keep his room tidy. Especially someone in the military.”

“You’d think that, what with all the spot inspections during basic training. Some guys pick up a tendency for order and bring it home with them. Others see their private living space as somewhere else to blow off steam.”

“So what are you? A neat freak? Or does your place look like a tornado the way Ben’s always did?”

“Does it matter?”

Sabine pulled away, any rapport they might have had now shut down by his tone. Doug had no intention of moving into personal territory with this woman. No matter how much he wanted to.

It was for the best.

He stood. “I’m going to make a pit stop, and then we should get going.”

The bathroom looked about as good as it smelled. Doug held his breath and took care of business as fast as possible. What would his superiors say when he turned up with Sabine in tow? CIA operatives and the army didn’t exactly mix. Talk about a clash of cultures.

He pushed open the door and glanced around the restaurant. His stomach sank. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

He rushed out the front door. The cab was gone, too.

She’d ditched him.

FOUR

Seattle, WA

Friday, 23:00

Windshield wipers valiantly swiped the rain away, but more drops continued to pound on the car. Sabine parked her baby—a paid-in-full black Cadillac CTS—in the garage of her Seattle home. Only when the garage door lowered fully did she get out and pull her suitcase from the trunk.

It was late, and every muscle in her body ached, which was good because it distracted her from the throb in her ankle. Sabine had never been able to sleep on planes, and today was no exception. She tried to tell herself it was because she had felt bad for having ditched Doug. His tears had been genuine, the grief he had felt over Ben’s death right there in his eyes. He clearly wanted to know what had happened as badly as she did—even if his professional manner left something to be desired.

There was still no way she was going to let him question her. She would need clearance from her handler before she could give him any of the details of her mission or tell him what she knew about Christophe Parelli.

The utter disaster the mission had turned out to be weighed on her. Apart from the fact she had the hard drive, everything that could have gone wrong had. Hiding the hard drive from Doug had been necessary, though apparently pointless since he’d known what she was after.

Now she needed to go through the contents before anything else went awry—like being hauled in for questioning by the army.

Christophe’s death played like a movie reel through her mind. Maybe she didn’t need to feel bad since the man was responsible for the deaths of so many others. He had acted without remorse or any consideration for national and international laws. But seeing him gasp his last breath had hit Sabine at the very center of who she was.

Her house was dark and quiet, except for the patter of rain against the windows. That wasn’t anything new—the Seattle weather or the solitude. Even when she was married, Sabine would come home to an empty house and dinner for one.

What she had thought was her husband’s work as an investment banker keeping him busy with “late-night meetings” turned out to be Maxwell having drinks with his twenty-two-year-old secretary. Now Sabine was as alone as ever but with the added bonus of feeling like a chump because her husband had cheated on her with someone younger and prettier. She would think twice about letting anyone else in again.

She punched the first two numbers of her ten-digit code on the panel for the security system and paused. It wasn’t armed. That was weird. She’d set it before she left, hadn’t she? She never forgot something as important as security. Sabine set down her suitcase at the bottom of the stairs and stood still for a moment. The house was quiet as always.

After a walk-through of the downstairs rooms yielded nothing, Sabine crept upstairs, keeping to the side so as not to step on the creaky stair halfway up. Cold shimmered through her from head to toe. She had never needed a gun at home before. Her handler’s words from the park came back to her.

Don’t get caught with a gun. Ever. And don’t get caught by the police, not even for a speeding ticket. You do and you’re on your own.

Careful not to look at the pictures of Ben on the wall, Sabine rounded the stairs at the top and studied the upstairs hallway. Her ears strained for...a rustle coming from Ben’s bedroom.

The door to her brother’s room had been closed since his last day of leave and his subsequent return to base. He’d always been sort of juvenile about her going into his room, a response probably from the lack of privacy they’d had in foster homes. She’d respected his wishes and had agreed not to go in there.

Light flashed across the opening, and Sabine crept forward. She peered into the room and eased the door open inch by inch.

A black balaclava covered the intruder’s face, leaving only his eyes visible. It was definitely a guy, judging by the shape of his wiry body. The efficiency with which he worked his way through Ben’s belongings told her that he was a professional. This wasn’t just some teenager looking to score.

He slammed the dresser drawer shut and yanked open the next one. A gun wouldn’t scare off this guy and would likely raise more questions than she was okay with when she had to explain a dead body to the police.

She would have to rely on her CIA training.

Sabine took a deep breath and rushed him. He looked up a split second before she slammed into him with the force of her body and knocked him off balance. The guy twisted so she was the one who hit the floor and the back of her head slammed against the carpet.