too. “That’s none of your damned business.”
Up went the eyebrows again. “Excuse me?”
Enunciating more carefully, she repeated, “It’s. None. Of. Your. Damned. Business.”
His gaze never once leaving hers, he glared at her harder, shifted his weight to one foot, crossed his arms over his chest, expelled a soft sound and said quietly, “Don’t push me, Lila.”
It spoke volumes about his effect on her that she actually found herself relenting. Then again, it wasn’t as if her whereabouts in two weeks would be top secret. “Fine,” she muttered, relaxing her stance. “If you must know, I have a wedding to go to in two weeks.”
His mouth dropped open a fraction, and he eyed her blandly. “A wedding.”
She nodded. “Yeah, a wedding. I’m gonna be the best man. So I need to wrap this thing up before then. I need to bring down the son of a bitch one way or another before the Saturday after next.”
Faraday didn’t reply right away, only looked at Lila in a way she found a little disconcerting. It kind of made her feel the way a bug must feel when it was pinned under a microscope, while some guy in a white lab coat loomed over it holding a big ol’ pair of tweezers in one hand and a specimen slide in the other.
Finally he said, “We.”
Confused, Lila asked, “What?”
“We,” he said again. “We are going to bring the son of a bitch down.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “What are you talking about?”
“You and I,” he clarified. “We’ll be bringing in Sorcerer together.”
She shook her head. Oh, she didn’t think so. Aloud, she told him, “No, we won’t. I’ll be going to Cincinnati, and you’ll be staying here with all your gizmos and files. The wonders of technology and all that. Even hundreds of miles away, I can report in daily. That’s the way it always works. Me in the field sending intelligence where I find it, my partner manning home base collecting and dissecting that information. Yeah, we’re usually no more than a few miles apart at most, but it shouldn’t be a problem, you staying here in D.C.”
Now Faraday smiled in a way that Lila found really disconcerting. Like maybe the guy in the lab coat just lit the flame on a Bunsen burner. He pointed behind himself at the overflowing desk, where, at the bottom of a pile of papers, sat a laptop, now folded closed. “The wonders of technology,” he echoed. “As long as I have a wireless connection, I can be hundreds of miles away from all my gizmos and files and still have everything I need at my fingertips. Meaning I’ll never have to be more than a few miles at most away from my partner.”
Oh, no, Lila thought. No, no, no, no, no. He was not saying what he seemed to be saying.
He continued, “See, Lila, you may officially be back to tabula rasa with the big guys, but they’re not quite ready to cut you loose to your own devices again.”
She studied him morosely, a nervous knot forming in her stomach, and wondered why she hadn’t seen this coming from a hundred miles away. Man, she really had been out of the game too long. She’d forgotten the most rudimentary rule of OPUS. They didn’t trust anyone anytime anywhere anyhow anyway.
“I’m going to have to be on a leash for a while,” she guessed.
Faraday nodded.
“And you’re going to be the one holding it.”
He nodded again.
She sighed, much more softly than before. Even though it wasn’t necessary for him to spell it out any further, he did. Probably just his little way of showing Lila who was going to be in charge.
“I’ll be going to Cincinnati with you,” he told her. “And you’ll be reporting to me pretty much every day. If you don’t, I’ll be obliged to tell your superiors that you’ve gone missing again, something I doubt either of us would like to see happen. In other words, Lila, I’ll be the one running this operation. And you’ll be the one doing whatever I tell you to do. And maybe, maybe, if you’re a very good girl, and do exactly as you’re told, we’ll get you to your wedding on time.”
CHAPTER FOUR
A LITTLE MORE than twenty-four hours after leaving Joel Faraday’s Georgetown town house, Lila was back again—this time arriving at his front door, and with more than just the clothes on her back. This time she had some clothes packed in a carry-on bag, as well. Along with some assorted toiletries. And some official files. And some lethal weaponry. And a good book to read on the plane. Normally, carrying weaponry, lethal or otherwise, onto a plane, even with a good book, might pose a bit of a problem. But not when one was flying chartered. Government charter. Top secret government charter at that. In fact, Lila wasn’t sure, but she and Joel Faraday might just be flying to Cincinnati in Wonder Woman’s invisible jet. Which she had to admit, even to her jaded self, might be very cool.
When she’d left his house yesterday, the sun had just been staining the eastern sky with the pinks and oranges of early dawn. Now the sun had fully crested the horizon, but the western sky was still a bit smudged with remnants of blue and purple left over from the fleeing night. Lila wished she could retreat with it and stay in the darkness, where she felt infinitely more comfortable.
There was something about the light of day that made everything scarier. More threatening. Less comforting. At least in the dark she knew where she stood. Daytime exposed too much ugliness, revealed too many sights to consume and digest and make sense of, released too many people who assumed too many roles. At night, everything was pretty cut-and-dried. People who populated the nighttime never worried much about making a good impression or keeping up an appearance. At night, not many people bothered with artifice. Daytime dwellers often had people to impress. Schedules to keep. Jobs to protect. So they often had much to hide. It was harder to trust those people.
Joel Faraday was just such a daytime dweller. But that wasn’t why Lila had trouble trusting him. It wasn’t even because she couldn’t be positive he wasn’t the leak. No, with him, it was the same as it was with everyone else. She didn’t trust him because…Well. Because he was human. And, she supposed, because she was human, too.
Before moving her hand to the doorbell, she first ran it briskly over the front of her white linen shirt and beige linen trousers—and immediately chided herself for taking even that small effort with her appearance. Flat beige skimmers completed the outfit. She’d pinned her hair atop her head when she showered and hadn’t bothered to take it down once she was dressed, nor had she bothered with jewelry or cosmetics. Not her typical attire or appearance by a long shot, but she liked to dress for comfort when she traveled. She’d slip into character once they arrived in Cincinnati. For now, she didn’t have to be She-Wolf. For now, she could still be Lila Moreau if she wanted. So for now, she would dress and act and talk however she wanted.
She adjusted her carry-on over her shoulder, pressed her finger to the doorbell and waited for Joel to answer. And waited. And waited. And waited. She was bent over with her bag open and was wrapping the fingers of one hand around her lock pick and the fingers of the other around her .32 when he finally opened the door. Her gaze lit first on his bare feet, then moved up long legs clad in faded jeans, then up more, over a pin-striped white oxford button-down in the decidedly unbuttoned—and untucked—position. Again
