Читать книгу Cody Walker's Woman - Amelia Autin - Страница 12

Chapter 3

Cody stood at a pay phone ten blocks from the agency’s complex, dropping quarters into the slot. It was a good thing he had enough change on him—who carried much cash anymore in this day of plastic?

It also hadn’t been easy even finding a pay phone—almost everyone had a cell phone these days, so a lot of the pay phones had been removed because they no longer generated enough income to make them worthwhile—and he’d almost given up before he found one that was still functional...ten blocks away.

He’d noted the location without drawing attention to it, then had walked several more blocks in a random pattern, “checking six” every so often to make sure he wasn’t being tailed. When he’d been sure he was clear, he’d doubled back to the pay phone and dialed the number he’d memorized earlier.

“Yeah?” Callahan’s gritty voice sounded in his ear.

“It’s me.” Cody knew he didn’t have to identify himself. “D’Arcy gave me the green light, but there’s one small problem.”

“What’s that?”

Cody watched the passersby carefully without letting on he was doing it, making sure no one was evincing interest in his conversation or got close enough to hear him. “He’s sending three of us to Black Rock.”

“No.”

“Just wait,” Cody said. “Don’t say no until you know who.”

“Okay,” Callahan said. “Tell me who, so I can tell you no.”

Cody laughed and shook his head. “Damn, you haven’t changed.”

“I’m alive.” Callahan seemed to think that was explanation enough.

“Besides me, D’Arcy wants to send Trace McKinnon.”

A short pause was followed by a reluctant “I guess I’m okay with that. McKinnon can probably be trusted, especially if D’Arcy says so.” His voice sharpened. “That’s two. Who’s the third?”

“Keira Jones, McKinnon’s partner. You don’t know her, but—”

“No.”

“Just hear me out,” Cody said. “D’Arcy already had them working on this investigation weeks before you called, so they’re two steps ahead of me. I told D’Arcy you wouldn’t like having a woman involved—”

“Damn straight.”

“But he said,” Cody continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted, “there’s one thing you know as well as he does—the organization doesn’t recruit women.”

There was a long pause. “He’s got a point,” Callahan finally acknowledged grudgingly. “But I don’t know her. Do you?”

Cody rapidly reviewed his meager options. He could stretch the truth—lie, in essence, which he really didn’t want to do to Callahan—or he could come clean and play the odds. “I’ve known her less than a week,” he admitted, deciding only the truth would serve. “Before you say no,” he rushed to add, “let me tell you how I met her.”

He related the whole story in a few brief sentences, knowing he didn’t have to paint the entire picture for Callahan to get the point. “Physically she’s no match for a man,” he concluded, “but she’s got guts and brains. And she’ll fight to the death, if that’s what it takes. You can’t ask for much more than that.”

Cody heard Callahan breathe deeply on the other end of the line and knew the decision was hanging in the balance. He played his trump card. “She reminds me a lot of Mandy—she’d shoot me if she had to.”

Callahan laughed, and Cody knew he’d won this round. “Okay,” said the voice on the other end. “How soon can you get here?”

“I’m not sure. There aren’t a lot of flights to either Sheridan or Buffalo. It might be easier, and maybe even faster, if we drove, especially since we’ll need reliable transportation while we’re there. We can drive up in six hours, but I don’t know how soon we can leave.”

“Let me know. We’ll need to set up a place to meet.” Where we can’t be seen, he didn’t have to add.

“What about my cabin near Granite Pass?” Cody offered as the idea occurred to him. “I haven’t been up there in six weeks, but I assume it’s still standing. I figure you’d have said something before now if it wasn’t.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Callahan said slowly.

“The three of us could stay there, too. Then no one would know we were even near Black Rock,” Cody said. “If things are as dicey as you intimated earlier...”

Callahan chuckled, but there was little humor in it. “You know, Walker, for an amateur you’re not half-bad.”

“Thanks,” Cody said drily. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” Both men hung up, and Cody laughed softly to himself. “Amateur,” he said and laughed again.

He walked back to the office listing in his mind all the things they needed to do before they left for Black Rock. D’Arcy and Callahan are right, he thought. We need to move on this fast. But he wasn’t so lost in thought he didn’t take every opportunity to check to see if he was being followed. And when he turned a corner two blocks before the outer gate of the agency’s complex, he let his gaze swing wide in the direction from which he’d just come, out of habit more than anything else. That was when he spotted him.

The man looked no different from anyone else on the street. He blended in—almost too well. There wasn’t a single thing that made him stand out from the crowd. Cody couldn’t have said what it was about him, but there was something...and he knew he was being tailed.

He didn’t let on he’d marked the tail, just kept heading toward the agency’s front gate. While he walked, he reviewed the scene at the pay phone in his mind, and his first spurt of adrenaline subsided. This man had not been there; Cody was sure of it. Or if he had, he hadn’t been close enough to hear Cody’s side of the conversation.

But Cody knew he wouldn’t risk using a public pay phone again. Throwaway cell phones and encryption software, he added to his mental list, which was growing longer by the minute.

Cody managed another glimpse of the man when he reached the front gate, and he imprinted the face, rough height and weight, and other general characteristics in his mind. That was when a cold, sinking feeling hit him.

He’d seen the guy before.

Two days ago when Cody was filling his truck with gas on the way to work, this man had been in the next bay over doing the same thing to a little blue subcompact. He hadn’t picked up on it at the time. But now that Cody realized he was being followed, the memory returned to him. How long? he wondered. How long has someone been following me? I should have picked up on it earlier—I’m getting too damn lazy. Is it related to Callahan somehow? Or a different case?

Either way, he didn’t like it. It meant he was slipping, and that was a bad sign for a special agent.

Cody flashed his ID badge to the guard at the gate, then badged into the building using the electronic stripe on his ID card, without which no one entered the agency’s building. No one. Early on in his career with the agency, Cody had forgotten his badge one morning and had been forced to return home to retrieve it.

But he still had to run the human gauntlet. Two agency security guards stood watch at the front desk, armed and alert. Even if someone stole an electronic ID card, they still had to match the photo on the badge, and both guards perused Cody’s badge carefully before allowing him to enter the elevator. In the morning there were always two sets of guards on duty to make the line move faster, but it was never quick. But that made the building ultra secure. And there were things that went on in the agency they didn’t want the general public to know.

Going up in the elevator, Cody clipped his ID badge to the lapel of his jacket, remembering what D’Arcy had said about interagency cooperation—or lack of it. The CIA and the FBI both knew about the existence of the agency—they just didn’t like it. Maybe that was why they grudgingly shared information, and only when they had to.

The agency was a hybrid, created in secret long after 9/11 to do what neither the CIA nor the FBI had managed to do alone before that catastrophe. The agency was the “suspenders” portion of a “belt and suspenders” defense. Or you could call it a “better safe than sorry” organization, Cody thought with a touch of wry humor, even though part of him was still turning over in his mind what it meant that he was being followed.

Either way you looked at it, the agency could legally do things the “alphabet soup” agencies—the CIA, FBI, NSA, DEA, ATF and DHS—couldn’t.

That didn’t mean the agency was above the law. Cody couldn’t have worked there if it was—he still retained a strict moral code about that, a holdover from the way he’d been raised and the small-town sheriff he’d once been. The agency’s goal was still to obtain prosecutable evidence of crimes and turn that evidence over to federal prosecutors. But...they had latitude.

It wouldn’t work if the agency didn’t have people like D’Arcy running it, Cody acknowledged to himself. He still believed in the old adage that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But there were a few absolutely incorruptible people, and Nick D’Arcy was one of them.

Cody started to get off at the fifth floor, then realized he had something else he had to do first. He punched the button for the top floor, riding the elevator all the way up impatiently. He walked into D’Arcy’s outer office and told his executive assistant, “I need five minutes of his time.”

She assessed him as she had earlier in the day, then picked up the phone and pushed a button. “Cody Walker is back. He needs five minutes.” She hung up the phone. “You can go in.” She glanced at her watch, and Cody knew she’d be timing him.

He didn’t waste any seconds on small talk. As soon as he closed the door, he said, “I talked to Callahan. He’s fine with McKinnon. I also convinced him we need Jones in on this, but it wasn’t easy.”

D’Arcy flashed his teeth in a smile. “I figured you’d manage somehow. How’d you swing it?”

“I reminded him of what you said—that she couldn’t possibly be in the organization.” He hesitated, then added, “And I told him how I met her. That I—”

D’Arcy frowned and interrupted him. “Was that absolutely necessary?”

Cody made a face of regret, but nodded. “He needed to understand the kind of woman she is.” He stopped short as he realized the other man knew how he’d met Keira. Then he remembered D’Arcy’s curious comment earlier, that Keira already knew Cody. “How do you know how I met her? I never said...”

“It’s my business to know everything,” D’Arcy said with a faint smile. Then he stated unequivocally, “I told her the story wouldn’t get out.”

“She told you what happened?” Cody was surprised.

“She came to me Monday morning. Said she felt she owed it to you to see that you didn’t get into trouble over blowing your cover. She even offered me her resignation, which I obviously didn’t accept.”

“I don’t follow you.” Cody’s brows knit in puzzlement. “How did she know I was a fellow agent?”

“She recognized your name when you introduced yourself afterward. Said she knew then who you were, that you had to be undercover. Said she wouldn’t let you take her to the hospital or to the police because she didn’t want to compromise whatever operation was in play any more than she already had.”

“Damn,” Cody said. “I wish I’d known.” He drew a quick breath. “But even if I had, I would still have needed leverage to convince Callahan.” He chuckled ruefully. “I told him Keira reminded me of his wife, that she would shoot me if necessary.”

D’Arcy was forced to laugh. He’d been there in the aftermath of what had gone down six years ago, when Mandy had shot Cody through a tragic misunderstanding. And he also knew there was no surer way to Callahan’s trust than to compare someone to the wife who would have killed her childhood friend to protect him.

Cody added, “I don’t need to tell you Callahan won’t reveal a word of this to anyone. Keira doesn’t have to worry about the story getting around.”

The phone buzzed, and D’Arcy hit the intercom button. “Yes?”

“Five minutes, sir.”

“Right.” D’Arcy hit the disconnect button and smiled at Cody. “I run this branch of the agency, but she runs me,” he joked.

“There’s one more thing,” Cody said quickly. “I’m being tailed.”

D’Arcy’s smile vanished as if it had never been there. “You’re sure?” he asked softly.

“Dead sure. I made him just now, on the way back to the agency from calling Callahan. And I’ve seen him before.”

“How long?”

Cody had already cast his mind back over the past weeks, then months, but couldn’t remember catching even a whiff of having been tailed until now, and he quickly recounted what little he knew.

D’Arcy assimilated this unwelcome news, trying to fit this puzzle piece in place with all the other little bits and pieces. He held out his hand, and Cody shook it. “I don’t need to tell you to be careful,” he told Cody. “Just remember one thing—Callahan was running the show six years ago, but this is your case now. The extent of his involvement is at your discretion.”

“Yes, sir,” Cody said.

“Keep me posted. If there’s anything you need, you have the full resources of this agency at your disposal. Just ask.” His eyes turned cold, and he added even more softly but with deadly intent, “I don’t need to remind you what the New World Militia was capable of six years ago. If they’ve really been resurrected as the same organization, all the agency’s special rules apply, especially seven and eight.”

* * *

Cody pressed the button for the fifth floor and rode down in the elevator lost in thought. Special rules seven and eight. He knew what they were—every agent in the agency knew all eight of the special rules by heart—but he’d never had special rule eight apply to a case he was working before. It was too broad, too open to interpretation, and he didn’t agree with the basic concept.

And there was a part of him that didn’t agree with special rule seven, either—the part of him that had once sworn to uphold and enforce the law as a sheriff back in Wyoming. The part of him that had once bluntly told Ryan Callahan, aka Reilly O’Neill, there were other ways of taking David Pennington down...without killing him.

In the end it hadn’t been possible—he and Callahan had killed Pennington together. Whether Ryan Callahan’s .45 had done the deed or whether it had been the knife Cody had thrown while clinging to the side of a building nearly bleeding to death, neither of them knew, nor cared. They’d both been trying to save Mandy, held hostage by Pennington with a gun to her head and murder in his heart. The fact that Pennington had been the one to end up in the morgue rather than Mandy or Callahan was all they’d cared about in the heat of the moment.

But that didn’t mean Cody was happy how things had ended, even though Pennington’s death made a lot of good things possible. Cody would have preferred to go by the book: arrest, prosecution and incarceration. Long, long incarceration. It just hadn’t been in the cards that night.

Deal with it, Callahan had told Cody when Cody had expressed regret about the outcome. Cody could still hear him saying it in that disconcertingly direct way he had. Callahan had been visiting Cody in the hospital while he recovered from the gunshot wound that had nearly taken his life. You can’t ever second-guess yourself, Callahan had advised him. Not if you want to stay alive. If you do, you’ll be frozen with indecision when the chips are down. That’s the quickest way I know to end up dead. Even worse, someone who doesn’t deserve to die might pay the price for your screwup.

Cody had taken that advice to heart. He’d never allowed himself to second-guess his actions in all the years since. Not until today. Not until he’d seen the bruises he’d inflicted on Keira.

She doesn’t blame you, he reminded himself. She said it herself—you did what you had to do to save her. But after seeing the bruises on her pale, delicate skin, the reminder was cold comfort.

* * *

Cody checked the agency’s intranet listing for McKinnon’s phone number and picked up the phone. Then he changed his mind and looked up another number instead.

He heard a crisp “Keira Jones” in his ear, but for some reason he couldn’t help remembering those two words she’d spoken to him the night they met—I will. He pushed the memory ruthlessly to one side and told her, “You’re in.”

“You’re kidding,” she said, and he heard the little edge of excitement she couldn’t suppress in her voice. “I thought you were sure Callahan would refuse.”

“He’s not unreasonable, just stubborn—I should have remembered that. If you get to know him the way I do, you’ll realize unpredictability could be defined by watching him.”

“Is he really that good? What I mean is,” she explained, “the way you and Trace and D’Arcy talk about him makes me wonder why he’s not working for the agency.”

Despite everything Cody was worried about, he laughed. “If you ever meet his wife, you wouldn’t ask that question. Mandy is...” Pictures of Mandy flashed through his mind, from when they’d been toddlers together, through their high school years, to the last time he’d seen her after the birth of her third child, the daughter she and Callahan had been hoping for. “Let’s just say any man married to Mandy could be forgiven for wanting a job that kept him home nights.”

“I see.”

There was an odd inflection to the innocuous words. I wonder what that’s about, Cody thought before dismissing it as unimportant and moving on to why he’d originally called her. “Can you and McKinnon meet me down here? I’ve started a list of things we’ll need, but now’s the time for the three of us to make plans. I want to move on this as soon as possible. And there’s something I just learned about that I need to share with the two of you,” he added, knowing he needed to inform them he was being followed.

“I think Trace went to get coffee, but I’ll round him up and we’ll be down there shortly. Where’s your office?”

He told her. After they hung up he started jotting down cryptic notes of the things he’d mentally listed, but then he paused, pen in hand, and stared at the phone for a few seconds as it hit him. The odd inflection he’d noted earlier but had dismissed suddenly made sense.

She didn’t like hearing you talk about Mandy, he told himself as his pulse unexpectedly kicked into gear. She didn’t like it, and that must mean—

Cody tried to shut down that train of thought. Keira was a fellow agent; not only that, she was also working for him now—that made her off-limits. Fraternization between agents was frowned upon and was strictly forbidden between supervisor and subordinate.

I’m not really her supervisor, though, he temporized. I’m just the agent in charge. It was a fine distinction, a legal nicety, but...it meant he could at least think about her without feeling he’d crossed a line he shouldn’t cross.

He’d been involved with a few women since he’d left Black Rock...and Mandy. But nothing that had touched his emotions. Nothing that had made him feel. He’d blocked off his heart from the moment Mandy had married Ryan Callahan and had told himself he was better off that way—a lone wolf traveled farther and faster. But deep inside he hadn’t really believed it. That hard, cynical edge was just a facade. Mandy had known the truth about him; but Mandy belonged to Callahan, heart and soul.

He’d finally, finally cured himself of loving Mandy, but he wanted a woman like her for his very own. A woman who would make him her first priority. A woman who would love him fiercely with every beat of her heart, the way Mandy loved Callahan. A woman who would kill to protect him, just as he’d kill to protect her. A woman like...

He told himself he was overreacting. That it was just the circumstances surrounding their first meeting coloring his perspective, when a vision of a woman rose in his mind. Translucent skin with a sprinkling of pale freckles; red-gold curls that made a man want to tangle his fingers in them and see if they were as soft as they looked; brown eyes fringed with gold-tipped lashes untouched by mascara—soft brown eyes that refused to cry.

And faintly pink lips without a trace of lipstick. Firm lips. No-nonsense lips. Lips that hadn’t trembled even when she’d believed she was about to be raped and killed. Lips he’d give a sizable chunk of his next paycheck to discover if he could soften under his.

You’ve got no business daydreaming about her, he warned himself with stern resolution. He’d barely managed to relegate her to a corner of his mind when a slight movement caught out of the corner of his eye made him look up. Walking toward his office was Trace McKinnon. And right beside him was the woman with the unkissable lips Cody wanted suddenly—and urgently—to kiss.