Читать книгу Comeback - Doranna Durgin - Страница 13

Selena settled into the saddle, ready to head back to Athena—and from there, back to work. Back to Virginia, to prepare for her upcoming evaluation—and after that, either back to the Farm or back to Langley. Either way, she’d deal with it.

She’d just lifted the reins when her cell phone rang, the Looney Tunes riff she’d installed upon returning home from Berzhaan. Her horse startled, head raised and ears swiveling, and she shifted seat and leg just enough to reassure him. The Velcro closure of the pommel bag yielded to her grip and she slipped the phone out just as it was ready to give up on her and switch over to voice mail.

She didn’t bother with much of a greeting. Very few people had this number. “I’m here,” she said, without hesitating to check the caller ID.

“Miss Jones.”

“Shaw Jones,” she corrected the man, hunting her memory for a name to go with that familiar, gravelly voice.

“We need you back at Langley.”

She stilled. The DDO, that’s who she had on the other end of this call. Deputy Director of Operations. The man who would make the ultimate decision about her readiness for working counterterrorism.

Except he wouldn’t be calling her himself if that’s what this was about. In fact, she couldn’t think of any reason he’d be calling her himself.

Without asking any of the questions bouncing around in her mind, she said, “On the soonest flight, sir.”

“We’ll have a chopper pick you up in forty-five minutes. I assume you can get down off that mountain by then?”

She didn’t even ask. He’d talked to Christine. He had the best GPS tracking system in the world and the tech to latch on to her protected phone…it didn’t matter. He knew what he knew. “If this horse is as good as advertised,” she told him, already heading toward the trail and mentally calculating where she could cut downhill between switchbacks.

But his next words stopped her short. “You should know,” he said, “JOXLEITNER missed his pickup.”

Selena froze in the saddle, her world spiraling in around those words. No sight, no sensation, only the barest awareness of the horse prancing sideways beneath her. Not Cole. Not now. “He—”

“You’ll be briefed on the plane.” The man hesitated— not out of uncertainty, that was clear enough. Out of courtesy, to give her more time to process the news. “We’re sending you in to bring him back.”