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  argument was going on. Robie could see people he assumed were from his agency.

  And he could see other people who were not.

  They were easy to tell apart. The ones not from his agency were wearing blue windbreakers with gold lettering on the back.

  There were only three gold letters. But they were three letters Robie did not want to see.

  FBI.

  And when he saw who was heading up the FBI agents he turned and moved as quickly as he could toward the rear of the house.

  He was meeting Nicole Vance for dinner at eight.

  He did not want to meet her inside this town house in the next two minutes.

  CHAPTER

  8

  ROBIE KNEW HOW TO EXIT QUIETLY. He did so now, coming around the corner and watching from behind some bushes as Vance continued to argue with the other men.

  He pulled his phone and sent a text to Blue Man.

  A minute later Robie saw one of the men arguing with Vance touch his ear.

  Message communicated.

  He stopped arguing and Robie heard him say, “The place is yours to search, Agent Vance. We’ll leave you to it.”

  Vance halted in midsentence and stared at the man.

  Robie ducked down as she swiveled her head, looking in all directions. He could tell she knew exactly what had just happened. The dogs had been called off. The place was open to her now. That order had come from high up. Some condition had changed in the last few seconds.

  Robie was on the move, because he knew that Vance’s next tactic might be to send her men rushing in all directions to look for the source of the change on the ground. He didn’t want her to discover that the source was him. It would make dinner later even more uncomfortable than it was already shaping up to be.

  Robie reached his car and drove off. He punched in a number and Blue Man answered almost immediately.

  “Thanks for the assist back there,” said Blue Man.

  Robie snapped, “I’m meeting with Vance tonight. Agreed to it before I knew she was involved in this. Would have been nice to know before. Getting blindsided like that out of the gate does not inspire confidence.”

  “We didn’t know she had been assigned to it. We don’t run the FBI. I suppose that her success last time has lifted her up in the eyes of the Bureau.”

  “Exactly how much does the Bureau know?” Robie asked. “Your guys being outside that building tells her that it’s not a routine murder.”

  “We couldn’t completely cover up what happened to Doug Jacobs. FBI involvement was inevitable. But it’s up to us to manage it properly.”

  “So, again, how much do they know?” Robie asked.

  “They know that Doug Jacobs was a federal employee. They do not and will not know that he works for our agency. He is officially a member of DTRA.”

  “Defense Threat Reduction?”

  “More specifically in their Information Analysis Center. The building Jacobs was in is leased by the Center. It provides good cover for us. Not that we ever expected Jacobs to be shot dead in his office.”

  “And DTRA will play the game?” Robie queried.

  “They think big picture, just like we do. They’re part of DoD, after all.”

  “Do they know what Jacobs was doing in that office when he was shot?”

  “There would be no possible good coming from my answering that question. Suffice it to say that ignorance is bliss.”

  “Meaning DTRA won’t have to technically lie to the FBI when they come calling?”

  “They have already come calling.”

  “And what is the official line?” Robie said.

  “Jacobs was shot while performing his mundane job, possibly by a rogue gunman targeting the federal government.”

  “And you think the FBI will buy that?”

  “I don’t know if they will or not,” replied Blue Man. “That’s not my concern.”

  “But you can’t let the FBI find out that Jacobs was actually orchestrating the assassination of a foreign leader.”

  “He wasn’t a foreign leader yet. We do our best to be proactive. Eliminating those already in power is a tricky thing. Sometimes necessary but to be avoided if possible since it’s technically illegal.”

  “Vance is tenacious as hell.”

  “Yes, she is,” agreed Blue Man.

  “She might get to the truth.”

  “That is not an option, Robie.”

  “Like you said, you don’t run the FBI.”

  “What will you talk about with her tonight?” asked Blue Man.

  “I don’t know. And if I cancel she might get suspicious.”

  “Do you think she suspects your involvement in any of this?”

  “She’s smart. And she sort of knows what I do for a living.”

  “That was a mistake, Robie, it really was, letting her know that.”

  “I really didn’t have a choice, did I?”

  “What if she starts asking questions?”

  “Then I’ll answer them. In my own way.”

  Blue Man seemed about to continue this line of questioning, but then said, “What’s your next step on Reel?”

  “Any way to trace her movements leading up to the shooting? I mean, do we know for certain if she was in the country and pulled the trigger? Her voice over the headset doesn’t prove she was actually the shooter.”

  “Reel went silent before the shot, so we didn’t pick up any sounds on her end, just on Jacobs’s. But her voice means she was involved somehow.”

  Robie said, “The sniper nest was set up overseas. Any clues there?”

  “Nothing. We confirmed that she was seen there, but two days before. Plenty of time to get back here and shoot Jacobs.”

  “What’s the latest on Ahmadi?”

  “Business as usual. We removed all traces of the sniper nest, of course.”

  “Planning another hit on him?” asked Robie.

  “Well, if he was aware of the first try and foiled it, turning it back on us, I would imagine he would be ultra-cautious now. We might not see his face again until he’s Syria’s new leader.”

  “I don’t like it that Reel had my email address.”

  “I don’t like it either,” agreed Blue Man.

  “We have a mole. A leave-behind.”

  “Possibly. Or she might have gotten that in formation beforehand.”

  “How would she know I’d be the one going after her?”

  “A calculated assumption?” suggested Blue Man.

  “She might be tailing me right now.”

  “Don’t get paranoid on me, Robie.”

  “You missed that window by a few years. My paranoia knows no bounds now.”

  “Where are you off to now?”

  “To get ready for my dinner.”

  Robie clicked off and accelerated. He checked his rearview for Vance, Reel, and assorted bogeymen.

  I’m not growing paranoid. I am paranoid. And who could blame me?

  He punched the gas harder.

  Sending a killer to catch a killer actually made sense.

  We talk a different language and we see the world through a separate prism that no one else could possibly understand.

  But it worked both ways. Reel would understand him as much as he would understand her.

  So Reel dead.

  Or me.

  It really was that simple.

  And also that complicated.

  CHAPTER

  9

  JESSICA REEL SAT ON HER bed in her hotel room. Her sweat-drenched exercise clothes lay on the floor. She was naked and looking down at her toes. The rain was hitting with increased velocity outside.

  Like bullets. But unlike bullets rain leaves you alive.

  She rubbed her hand over her flat belly. Her firm core had come from agonizing exercise and careful diet. It had nothing to do with appearance. The core was power central. And fat slowed you down. In her world that was poison. She was also proficient in every martial art wor
th anything in close-quarter combat.

  She had had to use her fitness and fighting skills to survive many times. She didn’t always kill with a gun from long range. Sometimes her targets were right in front of her, trying to murder her as fiercely as she them. And they were almost always men. That gave them a genetic advantage in size and strength.

  Still, up to this point, she had always been the winner. But that was only until the next time. In her field, you only lost once. After that, no one bothered to keep score anymore.

  You just got eulogized. Maybe.

  She debated whether to send Robie another message. But she decided that would be overplaying her hand. She didn’t underestimate anyone. And though her cell was presumably untraceable, the agency might buck those odds, track her back through communication channels and find her.

  And what more was there left to say anyway? Robie had his assignment. He would do his best to carry it out.

  Reel would do her best to make sure he failed. One or both of them might end up dead. That was the nature of the beast. There was nothing fair about it. It was just the way it was.

  Reel slipped on a robe, crossed the room, and pulled her phone from her jacket hanging on the door. She began hitting keys. It truly was amazing what these devices could do. Trace your every step. Tell you exactly how to get to somewhere else. With a flick of a key Reel could get the most esoteric information in a matter of seconds.

  But there was a flip side to all this freedom.

  People had trillions of eyes now with which to watch you. And it wasn’t just the government. Or big business. It could be the man on the street with the latest gadgetry and a modicum of technical savvy.

  That made Reel’s job harder. But it was hard to begin with.

  She digested the information that had come up on the screen. She put it away, slipped into the bathroom, and took off her robe. The hot water in the shower felt good. She was tired, her muscles weary from a workout that had pushed her harder than ever.

  There had been a couple of young guys in the gym doing one-armed curls while preening in the mirror. Another had put in twenty moderately active minutes on the elliptical and obviously thought that qualified him as a stud. She had gone into an adjoining room and begun her exercise. She had sensed two of them watching her after a few minutes. It wasn’t the way she was dressed. She didn’t wear tight-fitting spandex. Loose, baggy clothing that covered her completely was her thing. She was there to sweat, not find a husband or a one-night stand.

  She sensed they weren’t a threat. They were simply astonished at what she was doing with her body. Thirty minutes later, when she was barely a third of the way through her routine, they turned and left, shaking their heads. She knew what they were thinking:

  I couldn’t last five minutes at that pace.

  And they would be right.

  She turned off the shower, dried off, and put her robe back on, her hair wrapped in a towel. She scanned the room service menu and selected a salad and indulged herself with a glass of a California zinfandel.

  When the young, good-looking man brought the tray in she caught his reflection in the mirror. He was checking her out.

  Reel had slept with men on several different continents. All had been in connection with a job. A means to an end. If she could use sex to get her where she needed to go, so be it. She assumed that was one reason the agency had employed her. And they had encouraged her to use that weapon in her arsenal, with the caveat that she was never to become personally involved with any of them. Which translated into never feeling anything for them at all. She was a machine and they were simply convenient for the mission.

  In that regard men were decidedly the weaker sex. Women could get them to do anything with a promise of action under the sheets, up against a wall, or on their knees, as the case might be.

  She signed the bill and gave him a generous tip.

  His eyes asked her for more.

  She denied the request simply by turning away.

  Once the door closed behind her she took off her robe, freed her hair, and put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. She pushed a table against the door, sat down to her meal, and slowly sipped her wine as the rain pounded away outside.

  She would soon have somewhere to go. It was always important to keep going. Stationary objects tended to get run over.

  At some point soon Will Robie would come after her in earnest. That would then occupy much of Reel’s time and energy. Until that point, she would have a window of opportunity.

  She intended to make the most of it.

  Doug Jacobs was one level.

  Now Reel was moving to the next level.

  It wouldn’t be easy. By now they were forewarned.

  Doug Jacobs had a wife and two young children. Reel knew what they looked like. She knew their names. She knew where they lived. She knew they were now suffering tremendous grief. Because of what Jacobs did, his family couldn’t be told the exact circumstances of his death.

  It was just company policy. And that policy never varied.

  Secrets to the last.

  There would be a funeral and Jacobs would be laid to rest. And that would be the only normal thing about his passing. His young widow would go on with her life, probably remarry. Perhaps she would have more children. Reel would suggest that she marry a plumber or a salesman. Her life would be far less complicated.

  Jacobs’s children might or might not remember their father.

  For Reel, that wasn’t such a bad thing.

  In her mind Douglas Jacobs wasn’t all that memorable.

  Reel finished her meal and slipped under the covers.

  She remembered as a child listening to the rain beating outside as she lay in bed. No one had come to check on her. It wasn’t that sort of a home. People who came to you in the night where Reel had grown up usually had ulterior motives, motives that were not benign in the least. This had made her suspicious and hardened from an early age. This had made her want to be alone, only summoning companionship on her terms.

  When people came for you in the night the only response was to hurt them before they could hurt you.

  In her mind’s eye she conjured the image of her mother—a frail abused woman who on her last day on earth looked forty years older than she actually was. Her death had been violent, wrenching. She had not gone quietly, but she had, eventually, gone. And Jessica Reel, then only seven years old, had watched it all happen. It had been traumatic in ways that even now Reel didn’t fully understand or appreciate. The experience had come to define her, and guaranteed that many normal things people did in life would never be part of hers.

  What happened to you as a child, particularly something bad, changed you, absolutely and completely. It was like part of your brain became closed off and refused to mature any further. As an adult you were powerless to fight against it. It was simply who you were until the day you died. There was no “therapy” that could cure it. That wall was built and nothing could tear it down.

  Maybe that’s why I do what I do. Engineered from childhood.

  Her gun was under her pillow, one hand clenching it, and the table still against the door.