she said weakly. “No. That’s not fair. You can’t just kick me out.”
“We can.” Marion turned then. She was cold and distant. Shannon had never seen the woman like that before. In the past she’d always been understanding and kind. “You’re here by invitation, Miss Connor.”
Miss Connor? Shannon had never been addressed by Marion like that before.
“An invitation the academy can rescind at any time,” Marion went on. “We have rescinded that invitation. Effective immediately. School staff are packing your room for you now. Your parents have been notified. You’ve already been booked on an evening flight. You’ll be back home in Virginia by tonight. Your parents will meet you at the airport.”
Shannon wanted to scream. She couldn’t imagine going back to her parents or to that small house where it was so cramped she couldn’t breathe. She’d been away from there for three years.
That place wasn’t home anymore. That family wasn’t her family anymore. Didn’t anyone understand that?
Even though she wanted to speak and tell them again that she hadn’t acted alone, that Allison was as guilty as she was and therefore just as deserving of being kicked out of the academy, Shannon couldn’t. Her voice wouldn’t work, and her throat hurt so badly that all she could do was cry as silently as she could.
“I’m sorry, Shannon,” Principal Evans said.
She sounded so sincere that Shannon believed her. That only made things feel worse.
Chapter 1
Washington, D.C.
Now
The second time Shannon Connor talked with Vincent Drago, the freelance information specialist wrapped a hand around her neck, slammed her against a wall hard enough to drive the air from her lungs, put a gun to her head and told her, “I’m going to blow your head off for setting me up.”
The first time she’d talked with him had been over the phone and she’d used an alias. Maybe if she hadn’t started everything with a lie, things might have gone more smoothly.
“Wait,” Shannon croaked desperately. Wait? He’s pointing a gun at your head, looking like he’s going to use it, and the best you can come up with is wait? She really couldn’t believe herself. Maybe something was wrong with her survival instinct.
Other reporters—and friends—or what passed as friends, acquaintances really—had sometimes suspected she had a death wish.
Shannon didn’t think that was true. She wanted to live. She glanced around the small room in the back of the bar where Drago had arranged to meet her. Actually, he’d arranged to meet her up front. He’d just yanked her into the back room at the first opportunity.
Then he’d slammed her up against the wall and put the gun to her head. If she’d known he was going to do that, she wouldn’t have shown up.
Judging from the low-life clientele the bar catered to and the fact that they were in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood only a few blocks from the Watergate Hotel, Shannon doubted that help would be forthcoming even if she could yell.
“Do you know how much trouble I’m in because of you?” Drago demanded.
“No,” Shannon croaked around the vise grip of the man’s big hand. “How much?” She’d been trained for years to ask open-ended questions. It was only the politicians that had to be restrained from climbing up on their soapboxes.
Vincent Drago wasn’t a politician. He was a private investigator, only he called it “freelance information specialist.”
From what Shannon had found out about the man, he had a shady career. Some of Shannon’s police contacts had claimed the man sometimes worked for the government on hush-hush jobs. Others claimed that he was a semilegal blackmailer.
One of the people Shannon had talked to had told her that Drago had gone after a blackmailer preying on a presidential hopeful. When he’d gotten the evidence of the candidate’s philandering with a young intern, Drago had put himself on the candidate’s payroll.
Shannon knew that because she’d broken the story about the intern when the girl had come to her after the affair ended. The intern had come forward so she could claim her fifteen minutes of fame. Everybody wanted that.
Drago was six feet six inches tall and looked like a human bulldozer. The carroty orange hair offered a warning about the dark temper that he possessed. His goatee was a darker red and kept neatly trimmed. He wore good suits and had expensive tastes. He could afford them because he did business with Fortune 500 companies.
According to the information Shannon had gotten, Drago was one of the best computer hackers working the private investigation scene. The man was supposedly an artist when it came to easing through firewalls and cracking encryptions. He was supposed to be more deadly with a computer than he was with a weapon.
Shannon was pretty sure she wouldn’t have felt as threatened if Drago had been holding a computer keyboard to her head. Of course, he could have bashed her brains out with it.
She held on to Drago’s wrist with both of her hands and tried to reel in her imagination. Thinking about the different ways he could kill her wasn’t going to help.
“Somebody found out about me,” Drago snarled. Angry red spots mottled his pale face.
“You advertise in the Yellow Pages,” Shannon pointed out.
“People are supposed to find out about you.”
“Somebody got into my computer.” Drago looked apoplectic.
“My computer! Nobody gets into my computer.”
“You get into other people’s computers. I’ve heard that’s dangerous. That’s why I came to you.”
“I’m invisible on the Internet,” Drago roared. He stuck his big face within an inch of Shannon’s. “I’m a frigging stealth ninja.”
Shannon couldn’t help thinking that stealth ninja was pretty redundant. When a ninja killed someone, they weren’t supposed to be seen. That was part of what made them a ninja.
“Who are you working for?” Drago slammed her against the wall again.
The back of Shannon’s head struck the wall. Black spots danced in her vision. She tried to remember the last time she’d had her life on the line and thought it was during her coverage of the apartment fires that had broken out downtown. Nine people had died in that blaze. She’d very nearly been one of them.
But it hadn’t seemed as scary then. She’d been with Todd, her cameraman, and he’d been rolling live footage. Every time the camera was on her, she was fearless.
Unfortunately neither Todd nor a camera were currently present.
Shannon held on to Drago’s thick wrist in quiet desperation. Even standing on tiptoes, she could barely draw a breath of air.
“I’m not working for anyone,” Shannon said.
“You
