Illicit Contact Read online

  “You’re back!” Tara shouted as she walked into the locker room, saving me from having to acknowledge the suggestion Tony was obviously about to make.

  “Yep,” I said. “Feeling much better.”

  “Hey, Tony,” she said, as she walked past him to her own locker.

  He said a quiet, flat hello back to her, then started for the door. “I’ll let you girls catch up. Talk later.” He walked out.

  “Jesus, thank you,” I said.

  “Actually, the name’s Tara, but you’re welcome.”

  The joke wasn’t all that funny, sure, but in the relief of having Tony leave, anything she said was a welcomed opportunity to laugh and relax. For the first time that morning, I felt a surge of relief course through my body. The tension in my shoulders dissipated, and my stomach no longer felt like it had knotted up and seized around a brick.

  “Feeling better?” she asked.

  “Much better, thanks.” I considered giving her more of an explanation, then settled for something basic. “I get migraines,” I said.

  “Oh, shit. I hate those. I used to get them all the time.” She stepped into her protective suit. “Doctors put me on all kinds of medicine but all it made me do was sit around and stare at a wall, you know?”

  I did know. I had probably taken some of the same medications she had. I wondered if her experiences had been as bad as mine. No, they couldn’t have been. She was too happy, too outgoing. I was curious, though, but didn’t want to ask.

  “You know what cured them?” she said.

  “What?” I turned the combination on my lock, oddly wondering if Tony knew it and could get inside. I shook off that thought.

  “Pot,” she said. “I mean, I don’t have a prescription for it or anything. I should be able to get one. They need to legalize that shit. Fast. Anyway, do you smoke?”

  “No,” I said. I barely drank alcohol, fearing it would trigger my old illness again, so marijuana had always been off the table for me.

  “It’s no worse than drinking,” she said. “Actually, it’s less dangerous. You never hear about anyone getting really high and beating their wife, right?”

  She had a point. “True.”

  “Anyway, next time you have one of those bastard migraines, text me or call, I don’t care what time it is. I’ll bring a little over for you.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I was pretty sure I had no intention of smoking pot with her. For one thing, it had been seven years since I’d had a crippling migraine or any of the other symptoms of my childhood illness. Also, there was no way I was going to risk my job with the FBI just to get high.

  Still, though, her offer sounded better than Tony’s green tea chicken soup or whatever it was.

  She sat in a chair and was retying her shoes. “I hate to ask but did you find out if he has a wife?”

  “He doesn’t,” I answered right away. “It’s all good.”

  “Oh, shit. Thank God. I was so worried that he was the reason you weren’t here on Friday. Like you’d found out something. I mean, now I know you were sick, but I was worried. Oh, and if you try to text me and I don’t write back, it’s because something’s wrong with my phone. Sometimes I get texts, sometimes I don’t. I have to take it to the store and have those geeks look at it. So that’s why I didn’t text you all weekend. But, omigod, I’m so glad you’re back!”

  . . . . .

  I managed to take my lunch break alone. Tara had wanted us to eat together, but I told her I needed to make some phone calls and promised her we’d have lunch together the next day.

  I just wanted to be by myself, and my bench on the National Mall was the place where I did my best thinking.

  First, I checked my email and got the one from Watts with the subject line “Have a seat.” I had always craved his written words, and found myself looking forward to them even more now that we actually knew each other. I could put a face and voice to the words, which made them even more intense than before. In addition to that, the emails had become even more special lately; now that we were seeing each other, they had become somewhat rare.

  I typed my response to him—trying to match his bluntness—and adding my own little sarcasm to my message. He really did have me flustered.

  There were times during the past several days that I found myself worrying that I’d gotten in over my head. I was sleeping with a man who killed people. Granted, the people he killed were terrorists, so Watts and his associates were ridding the world of some of the worst murderers among us, but still….

  I worried about his safety. I worried what would happen if he were caught by the United States government. Worried what would happen if he found himself in a battle with the terrorists—fighting, guns, bombs, God knows what else.

  It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that I could stop hearing from him one day, and the next find out that he’d been arrested or, worse, killed.

  I worried about my own safety for one reason and one reason alone: if I got caught up in his world and was arrested for something, I would miss him. If I got killed, I’d miss out on what was most assuredly my one true love.

  Chapter Fourteen – Watts

  I got a text from Catherine late that night, just before midnight: I don’t want to wait until the weekend to see you.

  Me: Then let’s not wait. I was going to suggest the same.

  Her: Will you come see me tomorrow night? Maybe stay with me?

  Me: I’ll be there at 6. You should answer the door naked. It will save us some time.

  Her: Very funny.

  Me: I’m not kidding. Goodnight, Catherine.

  . . . . .

  Tuesday started off badly and got worse as the day wore on.

  I woke up to an urgent message from the team that transmitted new intelligence information to me. When I logged into the encrypted email site, I saw the one new red-flagged message with the ominous subject line: TRAIN & BUS STATIONS.

  I opened it and read it quickly. We had information that a cell in Alexandria had been activated and put on short notice to hit multiple stops along the Washington, D.C. Metro rail and bus lines.

  It brought back the horrible and still very vivid images and emotions from the bombings that killed my parents and sister. Anger welled up in my stomach, my breaths growing shorter, pulse pounding in my temples.

  I’d been a part of stopping certain attacks over the last ten years, but never involving train stations. This was new. This was big. This was exactly the kind of thing that made me agree to Atherton’s offer a decade ago.

  The email ended with a comment speculating on the date of the attack: eight days from today.

  We would have to act quickly, it said, and added that they were sending someone to work with me—a guy I had trained with at Atherton’s camp back when all of this began. His name was Chris Spencer, we’d been good friends during our training and the mission to Chechnya. I hadn’t seen or spoken to him in years. That’s just the way this kind of stuff works. I was looking forward to seeing him, and also knew he would be the perfect colleague for the mission.

  Shortly after two o’clock, the door chimed and a man walked in. I knew immediately who he was.

  “Mr. Watts,” he said, approaching the counter, behind which I sat on my stool thumbing through a book.

  I closed it and stood, extending my hand. He took it and we shook.

  Howard McDowell was one of Mr. Atherton’s right-hand men. He was what you might call a “handler” for those of us in the employ of his boss, though I recalled Mr. Atherton referring to him as a “field director.”

  He had been present during the training for our mission to Chechnya, as much of an ass then as he was now. He was a former British Army colonel, an expert in close-combat situations—involving hand-to-hand as well as firearms—and while I learned a lot from him and respected his abilities, I couldn’t stand the idea that Mr. Atherton had chosen him to handle operatives in the U.S.

  We’d had our dif
ferences and run-ins in the past, but managed to keep it professional. The mission was larger than any one man.

  McDowell rarely made personal visits. Usually it was a phone call. There were times, though, when he showed up out of nowhere, unannounced, just to check in. He had done it three times in ten years, and it was always because something of a grave nature needed addressing.

  While Mr. Atherton was a relaxed, mild-tempered guy, Howard McDowell was as ruthless a person as I’d ever met. I suppose that’s the kind of attitude Atherton needed in a man who organized his mercenaries and kept them in line and up to speed.

  McDowell fit the part and then some. I’d always hated the callous son of a bitch.

  McDowell was in his late 40s, tall, broad-shouldered, clean-shaven with closely cropped white hair. He always wore a three-piece suit, and he had a habit of clasping his hands behind his back all the time, giving off the sense that he was comfortably in control.

  “How’s business?” he asked, not looking at me, but instead raking his eyes around the store.

  “Slow.”

  He nodded and made a low humming noise as if thinking. “Everyone’s taking it hard in this economy,” he said, “but it’s really no wonder that a bookstore is struggling as it is. What with technology and ebooks taking over, the ease and speed and reliability of online ordering and delivery…it’s all working against you, Mr. Watts.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  McDowell selected a book from a shelf, turned it over in his hands, and put it back. He walked toward the door, and I thought he was about to leave. It would have been an odd end to his visit.

  Instead, he locked the door and turned the “CLOSED” sign facing outward.

  He walked back toward me, once again putting his hands behind his back. “You got the message this morning, I presume? About the train and bus stations.”

  I nodded.

  “This could be the biggest job you’ve had yet,” he said. “Mr. Spencer will be here in a day or so.”

  “That’ll be good.”

  McDowell had been looking over my shoulder at something. Maybe the rare books in the locked glass case. His eyes met mine again. “The two of you will be perfect together for this. You should be receiving the complete intelligence package by tomorrow.”

  That gave me one full day to do my own digging based on what I already knew.

  “I worry, Mr. Watts.”

  “About what?”

  He slowly walked around as he spoke. “I worry about you getting caught. Now, I know you have a long and stellar track record doing what we do, and I commend you for that. You’ve always been ready, effective…brilliant, if I’m truthful.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s true,” he said. He was standing down one of the aisles. I saw his profile as he spoke and browsed the titles on the spines of the books. “You do know, however, that you run an incredible risk if you’re caught. The theory has always been that if you’re caught by the Americans, they would secretly handle your case, turn you over to the British government, and Mr. Atherton would purchase your freedom. Correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “But you do know there’s no guarantee of that.” His eyes slid back in my direction.

  I nodded.

  “The world can question the morality of what we do all they please. There’s a valid argument to be made that we cross lines, to put it mildly. What they can’t question, though, if they’re truthful with themselves, is that people like us are absolutely necessary in this dangerous world.”

  I had always seen it that way, but I was also quite aware that he was correct—there was something to be said for the moral ambiguity of our missions.

  He stepped closer to me, standing just a couple of feet away. “You’re one of our top operatives, Mr. Watts. Always have been. But lately, something’s changed.”

  I didn’t like where this was going. I didn’t like the effect that it had on my nerves—my mouth felt like it was going dry, my shoulders tensed, my eyes began to tunnel vision. “You sent that girl last night.”

  He smiled. “Indeed.”

  He had tested me before. Sometimes it was a girl. I’d almost fallen for that once. Other times he would have a man approach me in a similar setting, like a bar, and try to strike up a conversation about work, asking me what I did for a living. Last year a guy attempted a conversation about the Boston Marathon bombings, blaming U.S. authorities for failing to connect the dots.

  All of these were attempts to see how much I would let someone into my head. Aside from almost taking a girl home from a bar and fucking her three years ago, I had never failed to pick up on McDowell’s tests.

  “It was a good try,” I said. “Young, big tits, a little naïve.”

  “It had to be done. And I wasn’t testing you this time. I wanted you to have your way with her. Not only would it have been fun for you, but it also would have provided me with the necessary material to end your relationship with Ms. Kolb. By the way, you really hurt that young girl’s feelings.” He faked like he was shivering. “Cold, Mr. Watts. Very cold. I felt so bad for her I paid her a little more than I’d promised.”

  “Not my problem,” I said. “So where’d you find her? Aspiring model or actress? Money-strapped college student? Or are you running a prostitution ring on the side?”

  He was silent for several long, agonizing seconds, ignoring my questions. I hadn’t expected an answer anyway.

  Finally he said, “Your girlfriend works for the FBI. Now, I know she’s not an agent, she’s not an investigator, but FBI is FBI. There are countless ways you could get caught doing what you do, but having an FBI girlfriend increases that risk by…” he looked up at the ceiling, then back down at me, “say, a thousand times? That seems like a fair estimate.”

  He looked at me, but I didn’t say anything.

  “I’m thinking…” he said, with a dramatic pause, “maybe you should have stuck with that flight attendant. Or maybe that cute redhead who went to Georgetown. Or any woman, really. At least none of them had the risky connections your current toy does.” His tone changed, his voice lowered. “You must leave the girl. I’ll give you a little time because she seems quite vulnerable. Let her down easy, Mr. Watts. That’s my advice to you.”

  I wanted to punch the fucker right in the mouth, but managed to tap into the deep well of self-control I had developed over the years and avoided creating even more problems for myself.

  McDowell turned on his heel and walked down the aisle toward the door. He unlocked it, flipped the sign so the “OPEN” faced outward. He pushed the door open slightly and said, “You don’t have a choice, Mr. Watts,” and walked out.

  The SHATTERPROOF Series concludes with NAKED RISK, available July 23, 2014.

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