Josh would know about Cabot’s death.
They became aware at the same moment that someone was walking toward them. A man and a woman were approaching, moving toward him. Josh turned his head, openly watching them, which surprised her.
The couple walked passed the entrance, deeply engrossed in their conversation. Josh waited until their voices could no longer be heard before he looked down at Paige again. Even in the dimness, his eyes were as blue as she remembered them.
“Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “Those names don’t ring any bells. Maybe you’ve got me mixed up with somebody else.”
She supposed she should have been expecting that denial, but she hadn’t been. Maybe he was part of some witness security deal, with the formal constraints that imposed, but he was also her partner. Her lover. Or he once had been. And he owed her more than this. They all did. From Steiner on down.
She had been lied to throughout this entire deal, and it infuriated her. She’d spent so many damn hours during those three years regretting the things she had done. Regretting even more the ones she hadn’t done. Too many hours lost out of her life to be fobbed off with this crap.
“I don’t think so,” she said almost mockingly. “I don’t think I’ve got you mixed up with anyone else.”
He took a breath, his lips pursed slightly. She tried not to remember what they felt like moving over her skin in the darkness. Tried and failed, and for some reason that made her even more furious.
“Look—” he began again, his voice still reasonable, not reacting to the obvious anger in hers.
“Your name is Joshua Stone,” she said, interrupting whatever lie he intended to offer. “You were a member of Griff Cabot’s External Security Team. You and I were on a mission in Vladistan when you disappeared. That was three years ago. And then, less than four months ago, they put you back into the computers as Jack Thompson. I’ve seen the file, so ‘You’ve got me mixed up with someone else’ won’t work, Josh. Not with me.”
“Vladistan?” he repeated, and she wondered why he had picked that out of all the rest. “In…Russia?” he questioned.
“A republic of the former Soviet Union.” Paige corrected. She sounded like some geography professor.
“Who is ‘they’?” he said, ignoring the lesson. “Who put me back into the computer?”
He had asked those questions in exactly the right tone. As if he really didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. Of course, Josh had always been good. So damn good at everything.
“The company,” she said. That was the nickname for the CIA that almost everyone who worked for the agency used.
“Debolt?”
Which was the name of the firm he was working for here in Atlanta. Again the tone of his question held exactly the right note of confusion. She laughed, mocking his skill. The sound of her laughter almost prevented her from hearing his next question.
“After the accident?” he asked. “Is that what you mean?”
“What accident?”
The word had shocked her for some reason, jerking her out of her very satisfying anger. But the concern in her repetition was the wrong response, and she regretted it as soon as she had given it voice. She had wanted to convey her absolute certainty that she knew who he was and knew that he was lying to her. And then she had bit on that ploy like an amateur.
“The wreck,” he said. “Is that what this is about? Insurance or something? If so, maybe you’ve got the right guy but the wrong name.”
There was enough information there, and the tone reasoned enough, that she had to stop and think about what he had said. Accident. Wreck. Insurance. Wrong guy. Except, of course…
“Not Debolt,” she said again, rejecting the scenario he had just dangled in front of her. “The CIA. And you know what I’m talking about, Josh, so let’s stop playing games. Maybe you’re only doing what they told you to do, but don’t expect me to buy it. Maybe I didn’t spend as many years in special ops as you did, but I spent long enough to know how to do a computer search. Joshua Stone dies, and Jack Thompson is born. It’s all there. Right in the External Security files for anyone who wants to look for it. And I think that means you’ve got a problem.”
He said nothing for a long time, his eyes still considering her face. Trying to read it, maybe? She didn’t care if he was. She was telling the truth. A truth he needed to hear. If she could find him, then a lot of other people could as well.
“I think you’d better come in,” he said. “We need to talk.”
The strongest emotion she felt when she heard that invitation was satisfaction. She had forced him to listen to her and to stop making those ridiculous denials. She started up the basement steps, expecting him to lead the way over to the street-level set of stairs and up to the building’s front entrance.
Instead, he stayed where he was, watching her face until she reached the top. When he still didn’t move, she stopped beside him, looking into his eyes. She didn’t know what she had expected to find in them. Embarrassment that he’d tried to put her off like that? Admiration that she hadn’t bought that cock-and-bull? Maybe even some memories.
They held none of those things. They were interested. Reflecting the same deep intelligence she remembered so vividly, but nothing else. Not even, it seemed, an admission that they had once been more to one another than professional associates.
“I take it I’m supposed to know you,” he said.
Just when I was about to give you some credit, Paige thought. Her mouth tightened in frustration. She broke contact with his eyes, looking past him, focusing on the row of cars parked across the street. An exercise in gathering control, like counting to ten. And then it became something else.
“They’re taping us,” she said, her eyes coming back to Josh’s. “Someone in a car across the street is filming us.”
“Filming?” he repeated, turning around and staring at the car that was parked along the opposite curb, its motor running.
What Joshua Stone had just done was against everything Paige had been taught when she’d been brought over to Special Ops. Griff’s people were carefully trained. They had to be because the things they were called on to do were not only dangerous, but potentially embarrassing for their government as well.
And one of the cardinal sins was to have your picture taken. To have your face caught on camera. That was especially true while you were on a mission, but the rule applied at any time. Any place. And Joshua Stone, the best agent she had ever known, had just blatantly violated it.
As shocked as she had been by his turning toward the man who was video recording their meeting, she was even more surprised when he began walking toward the car. The camera was still pointed toward them, still filming. Josh stopped at the near curb and looked both ways before he stepped out into the street, not even seeming to hurry.
Was he going to ask them to stop shooting? Or was he going to try to get the tape? Which called into question, she supposed, just who Josh thought the two men in that car might be.
Paige’s
