Framed in the doorway was Kate’s live-in housekeeper, Arminda Todd, holding a stack of folded towels and grinning from ear to ear. A couple of inches taller than her employer, she was slender and willowy where Kate was more muscular and toned. She shifted from one foot to another, fiddling with her waist-length hair, currently bound in a thick braid that curled down over her shoulder.
“That’s okay, Mindy, we were just sparring. We’re done for now,” Kate said.
Jake stood and offered his hand. Kate accepted it warily, expecting him to try another takedown maneuver. However, once on her feet, he simply released her.
“I’m gonna hit the shower,” Jake said. He walked by Mindy, snagging a towel as he passed. Kate noticed the college student’s gaze follow as he left the room, and put on her most disapproving stare as the young woman turned back.
“What?”
Kate shook her head. “Don’t be thinking what I know you’re thinking.”
Mindy’s eyes widened in shock. “I just—like watching him leave, that’s all.”
“As long as that’s all you’re doing, then we’re fine.” Kate wasn’t the jealous type and Jacob wasn’t even close to the kind of man she’d be interested in. However, pretty little Mindy, all of twenty years old and usually wise beyond her years in most matters, seemed to have a soft spot for the laconic bodyguard. Owing to the unusual relationship between the three of them, Kate wanted to make sure that Mindy didn’t do anything she might regret later.
She wasn’t concerned about Jake. He understood the rules, and wasn’t about to bend any of them for anyone, officer, civilian or otherwise. As he liked to say, “This ain’t that bodyguard movie with Costner, but real life, and there’s a world of difference between the two.”
The best way to remind Mindy of that was to get her mind back on the job. “I assume you didn’t just stop in here to deliver towels?” Kate asked.
“Oh, right. You had two messages. One from Mr.
Tilghman—” Mindy scrunched up her pretty face as she said Kate’s soon-to-be-ex-husband’s name “—regarding some papers you were supposed to sign and scheduling that conference call to discuss more terms.”
Kate rolled her eyes. “Great, he probably wants to discuss dividing the weekends at the Hamptons cottage. Someone ought to remind him that he was the one cheating on me, not the other way around.” Noticing Mindy’s sympa-thetic gaze, she shrugged. “Never mind, thinking out loud again. Okay, I’ll get back to him—sometime soon. Please tell me you have something more pressing than that.”
“The other message is from Judy.”
Kate’s internal antenna went up. Judy Burges was the liaison between Kate and her superiors—the men and women who headed up Room 59—and the various division heads and agents around the world.
“What did she say?”
“I asked if she wanted to wait while I got you, but she muttered something about you being indisposed and just said to pass along this message. She was very specific, as always.” Mindy smoothed out a crumpled piece of paper and handed to it to Kate. On it were two lines of neat script: Contact soonest you receive this.
Trouble in Paradise.
Although it sounded cute, Kate knew instantly what Judy was referring to. “Paradise” was their current code name for Cuba, and trouble meant something had happened to their asset there. Without a word, she grabbed a towel from Mindy and wiped her face and neck, then draped it around her shoulders as she headed to her home office.
When Kate had been appointed as the director of Room 59, the town house she lived in had been swept and cleared by the agency, and modifications had been made to every room, particularly this one. As she pulled her chair up to the glass-topped desk, Kate slipped on a pair of MicroEmissive Displays eyescreen glasses, enabling her to access and surf the Web not only wirelessly, but without a keyboard. With precise eye movements, she selected where she wanted to go and blinked to activate programs. She quickly logged in and sent a page to Judy.
Judy Burges was the consummate diplomat. Recruited from England’s diplomatic service, she was the only person, besides the shadowy heads of the agency, to have been with Room 59 since its inception. As always, she looked perfect, from her sleek, highlighted brown hair done up in a simple chignon to her immaculate navy pantsuit. Kate smoothed her rumpled gi and thanked her lucky stars that she could only be seen from the neck up.
“Good to see you, Kate.” There was a barely perceptible pause. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything?”
Kate berated herself for assuming that Judy wouldn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. “Not at all. I was just working out when I got your message.”
“Naturally.” Her clipped tone made clear what Judy thought of Kate’s excuse. “You have my message. Our asset in Paradise has not made any of his drops in the last seventy-two hours. Given the rumors of increasing instability there, there is concern that he has been compromised. The heads would like a sitrep and proposed plan of action in an hour.
I’ve downloaded all of the pertinent information for you.
Shall I expect you in the conference room at eight-thirty?”
“I’ll see you then.” Kate broke the connection and leaned back for a moment, taking a deep breath while frowning at the wall. She knew as well as Judy that they had to work together, but that didn’t mean they had to like each other.
Kate was proud of the work she did, but she couldn’t help getting the feeling that the polished Ms. Burges sometimes considered her nothing more than glorified middle management just because she had come to her position through her intelligence-analysis work at the CIA. Kate was extremely aware of the difference in her current position. If I screw up in this business, it’s not just that an operative dies.
Hundreds, maybe thousands more could die with him, she thought.
Kate brought up her instant-message screen, finding Mindy online as usual.
“Hey, what’s up?” Mindy typed in response to Kate’s greeting.
“Just coffee and a plain bagel this morning—duty calls.”
“Right away.”
“And let Jake know I’ll be in conference until at least nine.”
“You got it.”
Rising, Kate walked into the adjoining master bath.
Shucking the gi, blue belt, white cotton pants and her under-garments, Kate stepped into the shower, already analyzing and discarding plans and possibilities. Assuming he has really been compromised, and given the island’s current state, will they go for an insertion to get real-eyes intel, or just write him off and move on? If the former, who’s available with the necessary background? She reviewed dossiers in her mind, until a likely candidate popped up. Marcus would be the perfect choice, if he’s finished with that mission in cattle country.
Shit, this is not how it was supposed to go down, Marcus thought, eyeing the meth-cranked biker brandishing a meter-long rusty iron pipe.
“I’m tellin’ you, guys, we got a fuckin’ rat in the house, and we’re all looking at him right now!”
Robbie “Horse” Jenkins shook with the conviction of his drug-fueled suspicions. The biker was a long-term user—
in his case, several years, and his face and body showed the ravages of his addiction. His words sprayed out from rotting teeth and his lips, along with the rest of his face, were scabbed and cracked, a by-product of the constant thirst and poor hygiene methamphetamine induced in addicts. His limbs trembled from the damage to his nervous system, but his grip on the pipe was as solid as a rock. The pungent odor wafting from the biker’s filthy jeans, T-shirt and grimy leather vest made Marcus think of summertime on his godfather’s ranch in Texas, where dead cows would bloat and burst from the heat. Given the choice, he’d rather have smelled one of those stinking carcasses than Horse at the moment.