Agent X - Boyd Noah - Страница 3

“Your blood didn’t show any kind of drug in it, but if you didn’t drink much, maybe it dissipated before you got here.”

“Are you going to try to track him down?” she asked, trying to judge just how far he was going to pursue what had happened to her.

“I’ll have to see where everything takes me.”

Right, she said to herself, becoming lost in thought. There was just something about a near-death experience that brought Vail to mind. And she couldn’t decide whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. She knew that he would never just “see where everything takes me.” A small smile creased her lips.

“What is it, Kate?”

“Oh, no, nothing. Did you need anything else?”

“That’s enough for now.” Daniels stood up. “Take care.”

He closed the door, and after a moment her smile disappeared.

She was sure she was never going to see Vail again.

1

Kate Bannon opened her door. “What are you doing here?”

With mock surprise on his face, Steve Vail recoiled slightly at the level of protest in her voice. He stepped inside, setting down his suitcase and, for the briefest moment, allowed his eyes to trace the flawless symmetry of her face. “I’ve got the right day, don’t I? This is New Year’s Eve. Is it the wrong year?”

“After that last time, when I told you this wasn’t going to work, I assumed you understood that included tonight.”

He smiled crookedly. “Come on, Kate, it’s the twenty-first century. What woman wants to have to admit that she’s never been stalked? It’s become an accoutrement, like Italian shoes or one of those little purse-size dogs.”

“We tried, Steve. Three times. And the last two, if you remember, were not pretty.”

“That means statistically we’re due.”

Kate shook her head slowly. She really couldn’t believe he was standing there. “You know as well as I do that we’re a disaster. We’re too different. Or too much alike. I don’t know. Every time we try to get close, we wind up driving each other crazy. You don’t know how much I wanted it to work, but it can’t.”

Vail looked at her dress. “I guess you were planning to go to whatever this was tonight without me. Why don’t we go together and see what happens? What’s the worst that can happen? So I ruin your career. That would probably be the best thing that could happen to us.”

“I have to go to this. It’s a command performance. And you know exactly what it is—an ambassador’s reception. Why else would you have a suit on? Even though the proper dress is a tuxedo. Which I’m going to guess was your way of letting all the phonies in the room know that you’re a lowly bricklayer.”

“A man has to seek amusement wherever he can.”

“I’ll never understand you. You could be whatever you want. You have advanced degrees. The director has offered you complete autonomy if you’ll come back to the Bureau, but instead you choose physical labor just so you won’t have to take orders. If that’s who you are, fine, but you don’t get to rub everyone else’s face in it simply because they’re not like you.” She looked at him sternly. “It’s called hypocrisy.” She could see that her words had stung him, but she couldn’t find anything inaccurate in what she’d said.

He reached up and traced the small L-shaped scar high on her cheekbone and then smiled gently. “You don’t have to wonder anymore, Kate, whether we’re too much alike. There was a time, and not very long ago, that you would have thought they were phonies, too,” he said. “But you’re right, I’ve been a phony myself. The only defense I can offer is that you make my compass go haywire. The only reason I’m doing any of this is you.”

He turned and opened the door. “Like you said, we gave it a shot,” he said. “When it was right, it was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. That’s why I had to try one last time.”

“You can’t just walk out like that. Not after everything we’ve been through.”

“This is the best way to leave it. Then we won’t have any lingering doubts.”

“At least let me drive you to the airport. It’s freezing out.”

“I live in Chicago, remember? This isn’t cold.”

“I’ll feel better about this if I can take you. It’ll give us a chance to talk a little more. Right now I feel like we’re supposed to hate each other.”

“It’ll be fine, Kate. I’ll get a taxi.”

“It’s New Year’s Eve—you’ll never find one.”

“You’re probably right.” He picked up his suitcase. “Okay, I’ll take a ride, but only if we don’t talk. I don’t want to say anything that’ll make this worse.”

For the briefest moment, she considered telling him about the night before Thanksgiving and asking him what he thought about the guy in the bar. The day she got home from the hospital, she’d gone into her garage to change the battery in the remote for the overhead door. But it had worked fine. She thought that maybe she’d just pushed the wrong part of it in her semiconscious state. But three days ago she’d realized that it had been over a month and she hadn’t heard anything from OPR. So she’d gone back into the garage and retraced the events from that night as best she could. That’s when she realized that she couldn’t have opened the inside door to her condominium if her keys were locked in the car.

Then she’d bought a bottle of Drambuie and tasted it. It had a honey-sweet taste to it, nothing like what she remembered from the bar.

The next day she’d checked with the Metropolitan Police, and they’d said they hadn’t had any recent drug-facilitated rapes reported. Since she was sneaking around behind OPR’s back, she didn’t want to start asking questions of people who were at the bar and have it get back to Daniels. Vail, who saw these things on a different level, would have been the perfect person to ask. But under the circumstances, giving him a reason to stay would be counterproductive.

“If that’s the way you want to leave this,” she said.

The phone rang. “You’d better get that,” he said. “The Bureau probably thought we actually had a date and needed to ruin it one last time.”

“That isn’t fair.”

“Probably not, but you can’t say it’s inaccurate.”

“This is exactly why it would never work between us. Not everyone who takes orders for a living is a mortal enemy of Steven Vail.”

Vail held up his hands in apology. “I told you I’d say something that would make it worse.”

As she walked to the phone, she decided to lighten the mood and try to initiate some sort of interim peace. “I know it’s been a while since the FBI fired you, but nobody gets called out on Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year’s Eve. It’s in our latest contract.” She picked up the receiver. “Kate Bannon. Oh, hi, Tim. Happy New Year.” She listened and after a few seconds turned her back to Vail.

He sat down on his suitcase and waited for the inevitable change of plans.

She hung up and said, “A seven-year-old boy was abducted in Reston, Virginia, which is two towns over from here.”

When she didn’t offer any other details, he said, “The FBI doesn’t have jurisdiction for twenty-four hours in an abduction. Why did they call you?”

“The Reston chief is a retired agent from the Washington Field Office. We go back a lot of years. He’s a good guy, but something like this, he’s probably in over his head. His entire career was working applicant cases, asking the same handful of questions about character and loyalty. Would you mind if we stopped there on the way? It shouldn’t take long. He just needs some reassurance—you know, what help the Bureau can give him. Maybe a little direction.”

In a cryptic tone, Vail said, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“You wouldn’t miss what?” she asked suspiciously.

“You pretending not to get involved to prove to me, and yourself, that your career isn’t what’s come between us.”

“If you’re trying to ensure that there’ll be no talking on the way, congratulations.” She handed him her keys. “There’s one more call I have to make, would you mind warming up the car?”