What Lies Behind

Chapter 6

McLean, Virginia

ROBIN WAS STILL. She hadn’t moved since the wee hours, since the phone call and coffee and news and seething spiral of black oppressive knowledge had shut her down.

Riley sat next to her, not touching, whistling something under his breath. Rachmaninoff, she thought, or wait, no, it was one of the songs from the movie soundtrack of Braveheart.

Maybe she’d been asleep, drifted off, maybe she’d been sunk into meditation. She realized she was hearing him, the soft sibilance of his lips, so close, but never farther away, and shook herself slightly. The sun had come up. The sky to her west was hazy, the color of weak tea. The rustlings of the night creatures was long past. It would rain today.

Real. It was real. Amanda was dead.

A searing pain filled her chest. Red, she was red, everywhere. It rushed over her body, biting, stinging. She reached out to touch it, surprised when her finger touched skin, and the red absorbed into her, disappeared.

Not now, Robbie. You can’t go down that hole again.

Riley had told her everything when he arrived, about the boy who’d killed her sister, that she’d been taken to the D.C. morgue, that there would be an autopsy. That the boy who killed her had tried to kill himself, too, but was still alive.

Her legs were asleep. She’d stacked them beneath her before she’d gone into her empty place, the place she went to cope with anything overwhelming or hurtful, or when the synesthesia got to be too much. The empty place had gotten her through Afghani jails and snakebites and gunshots and torture. Had gotten her through her father’s death. It was a wellspring of nothingness, a virtual blank spot in her psyche filled with nothing but soft, calming white noise. She entered it when the pain was too great, and emerged when her subconscious recognized she could deal with things again.

It was a valuable tool. One she hadn’t thought she’d need ever again.

Swallowing, she realized the cup of coffee was still in her hand. The dregs were cold but she was parched. She let the chewy thickness linger in her mouth, realized she would never again drink the brew without thinking of her sister, a gash in her neck, dead in Georgetown.

Red, red, red.

Stop.

She shut her eyes briefly, and the moment passed. It had taken her years to learn how to control her curse, her gift, her otherness. Now it came to her gently, when she allowed it, pastels and soft things, but fear or horror killed her ability to control it. And she needed to be in control right now.

Amanda was supposed to die very, very old, or in the field somewhere, a hero’s death, not at the wrong end of a knife less than five miles from her sister’s loving arms.

Why hadn’t she said she was coming to the States? Why hadn’t she called? Robin would have protected her, done anything for her. Even if there was animosity between them, they were all that was left.

Amanda had called. A month prior. And you were too far up your own miserable ass to help. This is your fault.

There would be no tears, but her throat thickened, and she swallowed hard, again and again, until she realized the bile was rising; there was nothing she could do to stop it.

She jumped up and vomited over the railing.

Riley jumped up, too, one hand on her back, the other entangled in her long blond hair, pulling it back. He made shushing noises as if she were a child who’d had a bad dream. And she let him comfort her, using the only language either of them knew anymore—the dirty grayness of grief that helped with the shock of losing someone you love too soon.

When her stomach had finally settled, she sat back on the chair and met his eyes. They were pretty eyes. An odd shade of blue, dark and deep as the ocean, they were his best feature. The rest had been handsome, once, before. Before a knife to the forehead and ten years on the ground in too many countries to count wore even that out of him, and left him weary, battle torn and hungry for things she could barely give him. He was like a piece of granite, carved from the earth, silent and deadly.

“You’re back,” he said. It wasn’t a question, but the interrogatory was evident. She’d scared him, collapsing in on herself like that, only to emerge choking and flailing over the rail.

“Yes. Do they know why?” she asked, surprised at how rusty she sounded, like a pipe left years in the rain.

He shook his head. “It’s too early. If the boy wakes up, the police will certainly question him. But he’s barely hanging on.”

“She called me. At 3:23 this morning. She didn’t say a word.”

Riley frowned. “Not possible. She was already gone.”

Robin picked up her cell phone. Showed him the incoming call.

“Someone has her phone,” he said.

She shook her head. “No. It was probably one of the cops, checking her contacts for someone to notify.”

“And when they found your name, and you answered, they decided not to tell you?”

“Maybe I’m not listed as her next of kin.”

He touched her arm. “Robin. You are. You know you are.”

“It was a murder-suicide, you said.”

“There was a note. You’re sure you’ve never heard of Thomas Cattafi?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t. And a note, that’s not enough to go on. It doesn’t mean there wasn’t someone else with them. Someone that killed her, and tried to kill him.”

“What was she working on again?”

At that, Robin sucked in her breath and looked away. “You know I don’t know. We hadn’t been in touch for a while. She called me a month back, said she’d gotten into some trouble, wanted me to come bail her out. I was up to my ass in alligators with the failed meet in Kirkuk. There was no stopping to help her. So I said no. Told her she needed to learn how to deal with these things herself. That’s the last time we talked.” Hazy green clouds surrounded her head. The letters N and O rotated slowly, turning white in the mist.

“Jesus. I’m sorry.”

She sniffed once, hard, then snapped to, waving her hands to dissipate the cloud. It went away dutifully, and when she opened her eyes again, she saw nothing but the backyard she loved, with the feeders and flowers grown out of control, the water, roaring past. Her very own jungle. Control.

“Riley, we need to investigate. Get Alicia to run the call logs into my phone. I don’t care what sort of excuse she needs to make, who she needs to promise what, just find out where my sister’s phone was when she...when it was used to call me.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. We’ll need clearance—”

“Riley Dixon, when is the last time you asked for clearance to run a phone call?”

His jaw flexed, the muscle in his cheek jumping. She’d hit a nerve. Good. But she softened her voice the tiniest bit.

“I don’t know what Amanda was up to. But I will find out what happened to her. Are you going to help me or not?”

“I’ll help you, Robbie. But I can’t promise you’re going to like where this leads. What if she’s involved in something bad? What if you find out there’s some sort of attack coming, and she’s a part of it?”

She nodded, and stood, arms tight around her waist.

“Riley, she’s not. She’d never be involved in anything to hurt us.”

“Have you seen today’s bulletin? On the threat to the nation’s natural aquifers? What if someone hit our water supply here in D.C.? Just strolled right up to the plant on Roosevelt and popped something in the water.”

“Wouldn’t happen, Riley. There are fail-safes to make sure nothing biological can get through.”

“You don’t know that. Read the bulletin. It’s scary stuff. There are too many threats to count. Amanda could have stumbled across the wrong person and they tried to recruit her into doing their dirty work.”

“Then I absolutely need to find out what she was involved in.”

He ran a hand through his brown hair, the bicep flexing. Hard. He’d always been so hard, all sinew and bone and flesh, muscles tightly coiled, a big cat, ready to pounce or leap away at a moment’s notice.

“I’m going to have to call in a favor or two.”

“Thank you, Riley.”

He gave her a brief hug, cold lips pressed to her forehead, and left, stalking out through the living room, his heels banging on the hardwood. That man could walk silently across a field of broken glass; she knew he meant it to make a point. He was doing this against his will.

Well, so was she.

Riley would work things from his end, seeking out who had called using Mandy’s phone. There was one phone call she needed to make. If there was anyone who might know what Mandy was involved in, Atlantic would be the one.

She put in word that she needed to talk to him, then sat back and waited.

And waited. And waited.

Chapter 7

Georgetown

CANCER? SAM FELT the quick flash of alarm, tried to keep herself in check. “Are you okay? Are you sick?”

Fletcher shook his head. “Oh, no, this isn’t about me. Emma said Cattafi was involved in cancer research. He’s doing some sort of specialized microbiology internship that has been making waves. Cellular differentiation or something like that. Stem cells, cancer vaccines, all sort of really cutting-edge stuff.”

“What’s a fourth year doing in research? That’s usually postdoctoral work.”

“Kid’s a prodigy, from what I’ve heard. Juggling internships. Someone said he was in the M.D./Ph.D. program. So he’s at GW in a coma. There was a woman with him—her name was Amanda Souleyret. She didn’t make it.”

He was messing with his spoon, putting it in his cup, taking it out. The fidgeting was uncharacteristic. Clearly, something had him rattled.

“And?”

“And...” The spoon went back in the coffee cup with a clatter. “On the surface, it looks like a domestic. He stabbed her, stabbed himself. He had the knife in his hand. The spatter patterns are consistent with an attack. It’s cut-and-dried. Only thing that saved his life is his ex-girlfriend getting drunk and deciding she wanted a reconciliatory booty call and stumbling right into the scene. If she hadn’t shown up when she did... It was a near thing. EMTs managed to get a heartbeat. He’s not doing well. His family is flying in. Probably brain-dead—they may be looking at organ donation.”

Sam had a vivid flash from the night before, the EMT working frantically, giving CPR. “That’s terrible. But...?”

He looked at her finally, really looked, met her eyes and smiled. “You know me too well, don’t you?”

The food came, and they waited for the waiter to clear off before they continued the conversation. Sam ripped off a chunk of croissant, lavishly buttered it. “I know when you’re building up to something. So spit it out.”

“The ID on the woman had a red flag. This is between us, right?”

She crossed her heart, waved the flaky pastry at him. “You, me and my croissant.”

“She’s blacked out in the system.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I can’t do my job, because someone doesn’t want me to know who she really is, and what she really does.”

“Oh. That is rather odd. What do you think, she’s some sort of agent? A spy? We are in D.C., after all.”

He looked serious all of a sudden, put a hand on the back of his neck and squeezed. “That would be my guess. I don’t know what agency she’s from, whose side she’s on. What I do know is ten minutes after I got to work this morning, I was told that there’d been a meeting scheduled at State, and my presence was requested. Either I’m about to be relieved of this case, or they’re going to send me on a wild-goose chase.”

“Fun times, my friend. You always catch the coolest cases.”

“Which is why I was thinking, maybe if you have a look-see, I’ll have a better sense of what’s happening. I don’t know what a spy would be doing having a fight with a kid in med school. It’s probably just domestic, like I said, but...”

“No worries, Fletch. I’m happy to help, as always.”

Her cell phone rang. She apologized, pulled it out of her pocket. Glanced at the screen, saw the call was coming from Quantico. John Baldwin. In a way, he was her new boss.

“Fletch, forgive me, I have to answer this.”

He held up a hand. “No worries. Go ahead.”

She stood and walked outside, determined not to disturb everyone around her with the call.

“Baldwin?”

His deep voice sounded stressed. “Sam, good morning. I hope you’re doing well.”

“I am. Out of the house and everything, having breakfast with Fletcher. What’s up?”

“Ah, that’s good. I’m glad you’re already with him. Has he told you about the murder near your house last night?”

She grew wary. “He has. Plus I saw parts of it—the sirens woke me. Why?”

“The female victim, Amanda Souleyret? She was one of ours.”

“She was FBI?”

“Yes. A longtime undercover agent, working...well, what she specialized in is most likely irrelevant, considering. I was told this looks like a domestic situation.”

“That’s what Fletcher said.”

“Such a shame. No one even knew Amanda was in the US much less that she was dating someone here. I don’t know how she found the time. She works primarily overseas, as an investigator for a French company called Helix International. Have you ever heard of it?”

Now Sam really was on alert. “As it happens, I have. They’re in the same business as Xander, albeit on a much larger scale. They do everything from close protection to industrial investigations.”

“That’s right. Amanda is—she was—a very talented agent, capable of handling most anything thrown her way. She’s been on an undercover op that’s stretched for over a year. Anyway, there’s a briefing scheduled at ten at the State Department. Fletcher’s already on the guest list. They wanted me there, but I’m flying out to Denver in an hour. Just between you and me, we might have another Hometown murder.”

“You’re kidding. That’s two this month alone. He’s accelerating.”

“Yes, he is. I have to get out to Denver and see what’s happening. Can you go to State in my stead? See what they have to say, take notes. Call me after, fill me in?”

“Of course,” she said coolly, but her mind was going a thousand miles an hour. Why her? Why not pull someone from the Hoover Building to go, someone on Baldwin’s direct staff? What did she have to offer this investigation? Especially if it had been bumped to this level, which felt awfully strange for a domestic case. Why would the State Department want to stick their oar into a lovers’ spat gone horribly wrong?

She kept her mouth shut, though. When she’d agreed to come on board Baldwin’s team, he’d been very clear that sometimes she’d be getting her hands dirty in all facets of his investigative life. It’s why he wanted her in particular, someone he could trust, someone who understood the way things worked, but was an outsider.

“Great,” Baldwin said. “I’ve already called in your DOB and social, just be sure you have your driver’s license on you. They’re on alert today, as you can imagine. I’ll call you when I land in Denver and you can brief me.”

“Sounds good. Talk to you then.”

She hung up, hugged her arms around her body. A kid on a skateboard zoomed past her, calling out to a friend behind him, the small transparent wheels clattering on the sidewalk, the answering shouts. Cars whizzed by, people walked the streets with smiles on their faces.

Carefree. Careless. Too young to realize how precarious life truly is, too involved in their own moment to imagine what could happen.

She went back inside. Fletcher had finished his sandwich, and her croissant, too.

“Sorry, I was starving,” he said. “I already ordered you a new one.”

“We better get it to go.”

A shadow crossed his face. “Gotta go to work?”

“Actually, we have to go to work. I just got called in on your murder. You better take me to that crime scene pronto.”

Chapter 8

Teterboro Airport New Jersey

XANDER WHITFIELD SLOUCHED in the chair at the gate, shades firmly in place. While he looked like a sleeping tourist trying to catch an uncomfortable nap before his flight, he was on high alert.

He watched his partner, Chalk, move through the room near the principal, waiting for the nod telling him it was time to move. They had a loose box around their principal—a wealthy British industrialist named James Denon, who didn’t want it known he had a protection detail on him while he visited his interests in the States—and his people. Their job had been to blend into the crowd everywhere the team went.

So far, they’d done well. Not great—they’d had one small mishap when Chalk turned the wrong way for a moment and the principal had gotten too far ahead of them—but good. Xander wasn’t entirely thrilled with this lurking-from-afar crap, but sometimes the principal got to make the call. Once the doors to the plane closed, he and Chalk would be done and on their way, thousands of dollars richer and with a glowing recommendation to boot. Just what they needed to get their new company off the ground.