He headed straight to his office with Lana Elkins foremost in mind.
Chapter 7
FBI agent Robin Maray trailed Lana silently into the office she used at NSA headquarters. He settled across the room from her, checked his phone, and studiously avoided all eye contact. It was as if they had no past. But they’d packed plenty of history into a lone night two years ago, potent enough that Lana now struggled to focus on her work. She had to. The security of the nation might be at stake, though fortunately there had been no bombs or other terrorist activity in the past twenty-four hours. Noting an absence of gruesome violence for a single sweep of the clock actually said reams about the otherwise miserable status of the country.
Well, there was one bomb, she thought, casting a quick glance at Robin, whom she’d met in a trendy Georgetown bar, just days before the grid went down and launched the cyberwar era in earnest.
Since Don had left Emma and her to smuggle boatloads of pot from South America up through the Caribbean, she’d directed almost all her free time to her growing daughter. But Emma had had a trusted babysitter so Lana could maintain a social life, mostly meeting work friends for drinks and dancing about once a month. And she’d met only a handful of men in Don’s fourteen-year absence, twice in bars, once after a colleague had stood her up. Less Looking for Mr. Goodbar than a slightly sybaritic Jane Goodall on holiday from the chimps.
To the point: nothing scandalous, which was precisely why she’d spurned online dating. She knew as well as anyone in the world how little she could depend on real privacy with the porous security of most of those websites. Rather than slipshod encryptions, she had trusted her gut, though the whole of her had been attracted to Robin in the time it took to make eye contact. Basically, a blink.
Of course he’d drawn her attention in that crowded bar. Look at him! she thought now, glancing away from her monitor. Curly blond hair, closely cropped; blue eyes, very bright; and a strong jaw and body. You could tell a lot with a glance, especially when your eyes were wide open, which Lana’s had been on that evening.
He’d bought her a drink, Glenfiddich straight up, intelligence he must have garnered from the barkeep, then moseyed his way through the Saturday-night thicket to greet her in person.
“I can’t believe you’re here all alone,” were his first words, not that an avalanche of them would follow. But he’d said enough that she’d liked his baritone.
“My husband’s out of town.” Which was true — for a number of years at that point. It was also her response on the rare occasions she was interested. It said: I’m married. It said: Whatever this is, it’s unlikely to happen again. It said: But I might want you within those strictly prescribed limits.
He’d used his real first name. Lana had not. She couldn’t recall the name she’d assumed.
After the requisite chitchat, they’d ended up at the Four Seasons in Washington.
He’d never told her what he did for a living. When she’d asked, he replied, “Nothing important.” Which immediately signaled quite the opposite.
When he’d asked the same of her, she’d given him the exact same response, the unwritten code of those who worked in the most sensitive arenas of government.
She’d even kept her purse and ID with her when she’d used the en-suite bathroom, recognizing that while she would trust him with her body, she would not trust him with her career. And she’d been well rewarded, for the sex had been explosive, as if he hadn’t been with anyone for months, either, though she never believed that. More to the point, he’d been the best choice she’d ever made on those rare forays, so good she’d almost reconsidered the anonymity she’d established for herself so carefully.
That said, she’d been eager to destroy his: when he used the bathroom after their first round of lovemaking, she’d rifled his wallet and found his FBI identification. He’d screwed up, and that meant he could screw up in other ways. Desire was pitted against discretion, and the latter won out, but only after Lana made love to him for the last time at five in the morning. Then she’d left, fully satisfied, yet shadowed by the paradox that always prevailed in the face of great physical pleasure: sated, she’d wanted only more.
Can’t have it, she’d told herself driving home at daybreak. She’d never looked back — till now.
“I’ve got to get back to my office in Bethesda,” she said to Robin without glancing up. “Have some things I need to discuss with my associates.”
“I’ll follow. I’ve got a Charger, but you won’t lose me this time.”
What’s he saying?
As they stepped outside NSA headquarters, he spoke up more directly. The timing was not coincidence: he was sparing them both surveillance within the building.
“You didn’t even use your real first name,” he said quietly.
“I know.”
“Do you remember what you did use?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Lucinda. Don’t you remember my saying that I loved Lucinda Williams and had been listening to Car Wheels on a Gravel Road?”
“Nope.” But Lana was lying because the conversation they’d had was coming back to her. So were other memories, like cinders in a burn pile of forgotten feelings. She didn’t need any sparks right now. She and Don had talked of remarrying. Which prompted a question from her that could keep things simple: “Are you married?”
“No,” Robin said. “I’ve been waiting for the right one. Actually, I thought I’d met her in a bar in Georgetown.”
Don received a call from Donna Warnes, who identified herself as Deputy Director Holmes’s executive assistant.
“He asked me to tell you about his son, a Malinois breeder and trainer up near Hagerstown. He said the dogs come from a strong bloodline and there are three good possibilities for family security work.”
Don thanked her and went online, pleased the younger Holmes had video of the three dogs in question, but only them. He figured the ones headed for secret government work were not made public, a thought that sent him on a diverting Google search, which revealed that the dog on the bin Laden raid had been a Malinois named Cairo. It boggled Don’s mind to think the government hadn’t kept that secret. None of the SEALs’ names had been made public, not by the feds, anyway. Don could only imagine what jihadists would do to Cairo if they ever had the chance.
He returned to the breeder’s site, deciding he liked the look of Jojo, the biggest dog. Also his name: two syllables with two hard vowels. Easy for a dog to hear, and Jojo was an unusual enough sound to stand out when a command had to be heard.
The dog also had an intensely alert look. He’d peered into the camera lens as if he were trying to solve the mystery of sight itself.
Don called and made an appointment to meet the dogs tomorrow afternoon, no sooner hanging up than his phone rang. Warnes again: “The deputy director just asked me to tell you that you’re approved to carry. I’m sending a courier to your home with the necessary materials.”
“When?”
“He should arrive in about forty-five minutes.”
“Could he meet me at the corner of Waverly and the East-West Highway instead?”
“In forty-five minutes?”
“Yes.”
Twenty minutes later Don slipped the loaded shotgun into the cab of the pickup and backed out of the three-bay garage. A beautiful late-summer day, balmy as he headed to the high school. He planned to trail Emma as she drove to Anacostia for choir practice. Bizarre, he realized, to think she’d be attending Quran study in two days.