LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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