Operation Sheba Read online

  “You missed.” He chuckled softly in her ear.

  Her body went utterly still at the sound of his voice. She drew a sharp breath as her gaze snapped to his. Confusion and then crystal clarity made her swallow hard. He took a deep breath, as though immersing himself in her scent. Releasing his grip of her neck, he stroked her jaw line with the tip of his finger. “Julia,” he murmured, the husky voice caressing her.

  Julia held her breath, refusing to blink as she stared at the apparition hanging an inch from her face. Was this another of her horrible dreams? She automatically did a mental inventory of his face—the short dark hair, the eyebrows so soft to the touch, the fringe of dark lashes around his eyes, the straight line of his lips…

  “Who are you?”

  Another quiet chuckle from him. “The man who would love to kiss you.”

  Oh God, those words. She had brought Conrad to his knees over those words. She closed her eyes and tried to clear her head of the images that flooded her memory, trying to clear the nightmare she was experiencing now. But when she opened her eyes again, the apparition hadn’t disappeared. It was no ghost. The man she was staring at was alive.

  Her heart definitely pounding too hard, she whispered, “The price of a kiss is your life.”

  He released her arms and gently touched her lips with his. “I’ll gladly pay it.”

  Conrad glanced at his watch and back to Julia’s face. Light was seeping into the room, lifting the shadows as the sun rose higher. He had five minutes before Stone would return. The timer on his watch gave him three to clear the house.

  Julia’s face was unreadable, her previous pain and shock veiled behind her unwavering gaze. She was sitting on the edge of the bed now, knees drawn up to her chest, hair spilling between her breasts and thighs as she hugged her legs. She was wearing a tight-fitting white T-shirt and a loose pair of men’s boxer briefs that looked vaguely familiar.

  Conrad raised an eyebrow. “You’re wearing my underwear?”

  “I didn’t think you’d care since you were dead. Apparently, I was wrong on all counts. However, if you don’t explain yourself this minute—and it better be one hell of an explanation—I will kill you right where you stand.”

  “Sheba, you’ve never killed anyone.”

  “First time for everything, Solomon.”

  He locked eyes with her, his humor fading. “I’ll explain my actions later. I know you’re confused right now, but I need you to trust me. I need your help.”

  Her full lips parted to let a bitter laugh escape. “Trust you? Trust is a gray area with you. I don’t work in gray areas anymore. Put it in black and white. I want a clear-cut explanation.” She dropped her legs and sat forward. “Why did you do it? Where have you been? And how in the world did you manage to get into Michael’s house without alerting security?”

  He smiled at her interrogation. She always, always had more questions than he was willing to answer. Glancing at his watch again, he rose from the chair. “You need to stay at your place tonight.” He reached out to touch her, but let his hand drop to his side when she narrowed her eyes at him. “Expect me sometime after midnight. I’ll explain everything then.” He turned away from her, skirting the bed and heading for the door.

  Her voice, barely more than an accusatory whisper, stopped him. “How could you? How could you do this to me?”

  He hesitated for a moment as he stood in the doorway. That question he could easily answer. Because I’m a mean son of a bitch. Turning to look at her over his shoulder, he said, “This is bigger than you and me, Julia. You know I wouldn’t have left you if it wasn’t.”

  He reached inside his black leather jacket and pulled out a slim CD case. “I brought this for you.” He tossed the case on the bed next to her. “Don’t let anyone know you’ve seen me. Especially Stone.”

  Julia refused to acknowledge the gift or the demand. She watched Flynn’s back pass through the doorway, and continued to stare at the empty space for several seconds. Her ears strained to hear his retreat from the second floor. There was nothing. Confused? That was too mild for what she was feeling.

  Hurt, devastated, mad as hell.

  Relieved. He’s alive.

  Oh yes, overwhelming relief. Dropping her head into her hands, she began to cry softly. A minute later she ran into the bathroom and retched over the sink.

  Chapter Three

  Michael carefully balanced a full mug of steaming Starbuck’s French Roast in each hand as he climbed the carpeted stairs to the second floor. Thanks to the new Krups coffeemaker with a timer Abby had bought him, the coffee was freshly brewed every morning the minute he was ready for his shot of caffeine. This morning, he’d cut his shower short, shutting off the constant stream of unwanted thoughts about her, but the coffeepot was full enough he could still tweak out two cups. For now, he would force his mind to focus only on the next few minutes—coffee and the paper. The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal were tucked neatly under his left arm. He paused at the top of the stairs and listened for the sound of the shower in the master bath. Not hearing it, he continued down the hallway to the bedroom. Maybe Abby was still asleep. A smile touched his lips. Maybe he could slide between the sheets and wake her up before dealing with the reality waiting for both of them.

  As he approached the room, his nose picked up a familiar but out-of-place smell over the scent of the coffee. He would have dwelled on it if the sight of the room’s French doors, opened to admit the morning light, hadn’t distracted him. Abby was sitting on the balcony, her back to him, her white shirt accenting the graceful arch of her shoulders above the black wrought-iron chair. Her lime green Sony Walkman laid on the matching glass and iron table, its ear buds lost under her brown hair. Abby and her music. She took it everywhere, usually with her iPod. Running, target practice, in bed at night, her iPod was as much a part of her as her right arm.

  Michael paused for a moment at the threshold, enjoying the sight of her relaxing in the open air. He had worked hard to get her there. In his mind, he remembered the first time he’d led her to the balcony.

  “Come look at the moonlight reflecting on the hills,” he’d cajoled. It was a beautiful night and he had planned his seduction carefully. She had finally accepted an invitation to his house, but he knew she was only intrigued by that, by him. She was there because he’d been her friend, not because she wanted him as her lover.

  “No.” Shying away from him into the shadows of the bedroom, she saw the confusion on his face, and tried to explain. “I would be an easy target. We would be an easy target.”

  He’d mentally kicked himself for forgetting. Because of her past, she would never walk out on a second-story balcony to simply enjoy the moonlight. Not even in America. Not even with the security guard at the gate, the laser tripwires and motion detectors. And not even with the CIA’s Director of Operations holding her. After what happened to her partner, it could be suicide.

  Months later, even after Abby was reading his books, helping herself to his best wine and sharing his bed every night, she still avoided the balcony like a child avoiding an unlit hallway. Only in the past few weeks had she begun sitting outside with him, enjoying coffee and the paper in the fresh spring mornings, a shot of brandy or a quiet dance in the shadows of the Virginia nights. She had finally relaxed into the security of his house and the protectiveness of his arms.

  He set the coffee cups down on the table and studied Abigail’s face for a moment in the soft light. Her green eyes were closed, her focus tuned to the music she was listening to. She was pale this morning, and distracted. He couldn’t remember one time in their relationship he’d entered a room without her knowledge.

  He quietly slid a cup toward her and laid the Post next to it. Almost absently he noticed her bare arm under the glass top, her gun hanging loosely from her hand. His eyes did a double take. Snapping his head up, he stared past the open French doors and into his bedroom.

  The smell. Abigail had fired her gun. />
  Julia knew the song Conrad had circled by heart. A year ago, she had listened to Sting’s A Thousand Years echo inside her head long after she had taken the headphones off and thrown the CD in the trash.

  In many ways, Julia was a prisoner of her mind. She had always been absorbed by thought. Analyzing details most people overlooked. The idiosyncrasy made her crazy sometimes—mystery novels, Clue, any Who Done It puzzle, was solved in a matter of minutes—but it also made her great at her job, whether behind a desk or in the field. She was good at troubleshooting, good at finding a common link and putting the pieces together. Good at figuring out who the bad guys were and more importantly how to nail them. She loved her job and had never sat back and watched the world go by.

  But once in awhile, she needed to escape her left brain and enjoy her right. Music was the key in the lock that opened the door and freed her from overanalyzing everything—normal things other people didn’t worry about.

  She had ached for Conrad in the days and months after the explosion. She had begged the powers that existed to bring him back. Offered her soul to any devil who could raise him from the dead. Just let me watch him sleep again. Hear him laugh. See his eyes peek at me over a hand of cards. Please.

  Wish granted. Conrad Flynn was alive. But he had betrayed her. Not a simple lie or a regrettable indiscretion. Those things she could forgive. No, Conrad’s betrayal had sent her to hell.

  And now Michael was sitting three feet away. She’d felt the slight tremor of the balcony as he’d approached the table and sat down. Keeping her eyes closed, she wondered how she could face him. The man who had reached down into hell and pulled her out. The man who had created a safe, relatively normal world for her. Michael’s world. Comfortable and predictable, it was a fairytale world that offered vestiges of hope.

  Under Julia’s closed lids, Michael’s face blurred into Con’s.

  Chapter Four

  Scanning the sloping green hillside, Julia watched robins fluttering and hopping over the grass in search of their breakfast. The air was sweet with spring. Bringing her hand up, she laid the gun on the glass tabletop and pulled the ear buds out of her ears. Michael was sitting at the other end of the table, his newspaper and coffee untouched. “What happened, Abby?” His blue-gray eyes watched her intently. He was always so calm, so rock-steady. Handsome. Kind. Patient. Everything she wanted in a man.

  She shrugged and stared at the horizon. “Nightmare. When I woke up I thought someone was in the room. Remnants of the dream I guess. I apologize for the holes in the wall. I’ll have them fixed immediately.”

  She glanced at him to see his reaction. He nodded, but his brow creased with a frown. “Are you all right?”

  Am I? “I’m a little spooked.” She stood and forced a smile. “I haven’t had one like that in a long time.”

  Walking over to the balcony’s railing, she rubbed the goose bumps on her arms before leaning her stomach against the parapet. She knew this would be the last morning she spent here.

  What a shame. I was just starting to believe in Michael’s world. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, imprinting the beauty of the morning on her brain.

  “Anything I can do for you?” Michael asked.

  She turned and faced him. Concern etched his handsome face, a face that would still be handsome ten years down the road when Abigail Quinn was nothing more than a beautiful regret to him. God, he had done so much for her. She swallowed hard.

  The balcony’s tiles felt cool under her feet as she crossed to where he sat, crawling into his lap. She kissed him on the cheek and the clean scent of his aftershave filled her nose. “I’m all right,” she whispered, laying her head on his shoulder.

  Part of her actually meant it.

  CIA Headquarters, Langley

  Two hours later, the phone on her desk buzzed softly, interrupting her thoughts but not her concentration. Julia ignored it as she continued translating a satellite intercept of a phone conversation in French that had been picked up in the previous night’s intelligence chatter. She was fluent in both Italian and French. Her German was passable, enough to buy a beer and find a public toilet. The phone conversation in her hands had been brief and on the surface made little sense, but was directly linked to the terrorist group she knew well. Translating the language was easy. The challenge lay in reading between the lines, peeling layers off the words. If Julia was right, Dr. Jean-Paul Bousset was back in business. He was producing and distributing biological agents to the Algerian GIA, the Armed Islamic Group, as well as another internationally wanted terrorist she’d been watching, Fayez Raissi.

  The phone buzzed again. Her focus never leaving the paper, she pulled one ear bud out of her ear, pressed a button and picked it up. Susan Richmond, the CTC’s director, was on the other end. “Abby, meet me in Director Stone’s office, please.”

  Susan had been with the CIA for thirty-some years, working both in the field and at Langley in the intelligence and operations departments. She was one of the few people in the CTC who knew the story behind Abigail Quinn.

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Julia dropped the ear buds, stuck the transcript in her desk and started down the hall, the heels of her shoes soundless on the commercial blue carpet. Like most professionals, she could effectively compartmentalize her brain. On the balcony at Michael’s house she had split off and shut down the part that wanted to dwell on Conrad. For today, she was Abigail Quinn and Abby had work to do. Julia Torrison would deal with Flynn tonight.

  The door to Michael’s office was closed. Knowing they were expecting her, Julia knocked softly and stuck her head in. The room was quiet except for the faint hum of the notebook computer sitting on the broad top of Michael’s mahogany desk. He sat studying it, several files scattered nearby in front of him. His suit coat, discarded, Julia knew, the minute he’d walked through the door, hung nearby on a coat rack. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up to his elbows.

  Susan was standing behind the desk, gazing out the window at the Agency’s campus below. A tall woman at five foot ten inches, the CTC director was known for using her height to her advantage and always wore heels with her well-tailored suits. To level the playing field, she routinely told Julia with a wink. Her graying hair was cut in a short bob with bangs that accentuated her square face. It was a face Julia admired. This woman understood her, understood the seduction of playing spy. Susan had recruited her, had taken her through the Farm—the CIA’s training camp—and sent her on her first tour in Paris.

  Julia hesitated inside the doorway, the tension in the room prickling the hairs on the back of her neck. Michael glanced up and motioned her in.

  “Abigail, have a seat.” He stood and pointed to a chair facing his desk. His voice was neutral, his face expressionless. The two of them had agreed from the beginning to keep their personal relationship behind closed doors. Pragmatic discretion, Michael called it. There were rumors about them floating up and down the halls of the CIA headquarters, but they didn’t lend credibility to them. They arrived at the office separately and left separately. There were no stolen moments together in his office, no shared lunches in the cafeteria. Everything here was strictly business.

  Julia sat in the proffered chair and glanced from Michael to Susan. Something was off. Did they somehow know about Conrad? This might be it, she thought, taking a deep breath. Time to decide which side of the fence I want to land on.

  Susan moved toward the desk and gave her a brief smile as she picked up a remote from Michael’s desk. “Abby, we have digital video of a surveillance tape from Dulles Airport we want you to look at.” She walked toward a TV/VCR unit on the room’s west wall and pushed a button.

  Julia let her gaze rest on Michael’s face while Susan’s back was turned. He avoided her look and resumed his seat. Julia turned toward the TV.

  Susan stood off to the side. “This footage was taken two days ago as passengers were disembarking from an international flight that origi
nated in London.”

  The footage was shot from an overhead camera angled down at a gate inside the airport. A solid stream of men and women with briefcases and carry-on luggage emerged from the gate and passed under the camera. Most seemed lost in thought and haggard from the flight. A few were impatient, pushing their way through the crowd but making little progress.

  “What exactly am I looking for?” Julia asked.

  Michael was watching her. “See if you recognize any of the passengers.”

  She stood and walked around to the end of the desk to get a closer look. She could feel Michael’s gaze on her back. Yep, they’ve caught him.

  In amongst the mostly British and American group, there was a smattering of other nationalities, although few were obvious. Turbans, veils or other distinguishing head coverings were all but absent. Fallout from 9/11.

  Julia watched as a heavily bearded man tried to push forward with his sari-wrapped wife. Then she caught sight of another man’s face weaving in and out behind them. Maybe it was the tilt of his head or the angle of his jaw that struck her as familiar. She leaned forward slightly, trying to pull the image in closer…

  It wasn’t Conrad. “Freeze it there, please.”

  Susan hit the pause button and the picture stopped. Julia frowned and studied the digital image of the man’s profile. His sandy brown hair was longer than the last time she’d seen him and his eyes were covered with sunglasses, but there was little doubt in Julia’s mind who he was. She almost let out an audible sigh of relief. “Smitty,” she said under her breath.