style="font-size:15px;"> Must be nice, he mused, thinking how quickly she had gone from tears to smiles. Would that his own grief and sadness were as easy to shake.
Although he understood on a logical, rational level that his brother’s death hadn’t been his fault, he couldn’t dismiss the guilt that plagued him at the thought of Roger.
I should have taken Mom....
After a late-winter storm had pounded the city, his mother had called needing a ride to a doctor’s appointment. Buried at work, Thomas had asked Roger to cover for him. Since he was off duty at the time, Roger hadn’t hesitated to hop in the car and head over to their mom’s house. It should have been just another drive, a normal errand, nothing to write home about.
Except for the garbage truck that hit a patch of ice and slammed into the car, crushing it and his brother in the blink of an eye.
For the first few weeks after the accident, Thomas had woken almost nightly, soaked with sweat and with a scream trapped in his throat. The nightmares were graphic and all too real, the accident playing out in horrible slow motion while Thomas stood on the sidewalk, helpless to do anything but watch as his brother disappeared into a pile of twisted metal.
The images had gradually faded, but the worst part was that Thomas still couldn’t think about his brother without imagining Roger’s last conscious moments as he lay trapped in the wreckage. His pain. His fear. His worry for Jenny and Emily. He hoped that one day, he would be able to remember Roger without recalling the accident, but for now, thoughts of Roger just left him feeling raw, like he’d taken a bath in acid.
So he tried not to think about it.
With a shake of his head, he reached for the dial, wanting some music to distract him for the rest of the drive. No sense in brooding over a past he couldn’t change. In that way lay madness.
Before he could settle on a station, his phone rang. A quick glance at the lit display showed his boss calling, which was unusual. Agent Harper liked to keep track of the team, but he usually wasn’t overbearing about it. For him to call now, minutes before Thomas was due to show up at the office, meant something was going on.
“Kincannon here.”
“How close are you?”
Thomas bit back the urge to reply Good morning to you, too. Harper’s brusque tone made it clear his sense of humor was on vacation, and since Thomas still didn’t know him all that well, he decided to play it safe. “Five minutes, give or take a few.”
“I need to see you when you get in. Right away.”
“No problem,” Thomas replied to the dial tone. Snapping the phone closed, he tucked it back into his jacket pocket and pressed on the accelerator to beat a yellow light.
It sounded like Harper had a new case for him, an idea that had his pulse quickening with anticipation. Forget music—work was the best distraction.
* * *
Harper’s door was partially open, so Thomas gave it a perfunctory rap with his knuckles as he walked into the office. The older man looked up from his computer and gestured for Thomas to take a seat. He did, glancing about the room as Harper finished typing.
While Carmichael, his former boss, had been a bit of a pack rat, keeping papers and other bits of miscellany piled high on every flat surface, Harper was practically a monk by comparison. His desk was clear of everything but his computer, a cup of pens and pencils, a desk calendar and a single piece of paper. The filing cabinets were a new addition to the space, the neatly labeled drawers a testament to Harper’s organizational prowess. Thomas thought briefly of his own desk, which fell somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. Even though he wasn’t terribly messy, he had the fleeting thought that Harper would not approve of his filing system. Good thing the man stayed in his office most of the time.
“I have an assignment for you.”
Thomas returned his focus to the man in front of him, belatedly realizing Harper had stopped typing and was staring at him.
“What’s up?”
The older man winced slightly at his choice of words, and Thomas bit his lip to keep from smiling. He knew his casual speech bothered the buttoned-up man, and the small, rebellious part of him liked to poke the bear. One of these days it was going to come back and bite him in the ass, but he didn’t care.
“Dr. Claire Fleming received a death threat this morning,” Harper informed him, pushing the paper across the desk toward him.
Thomas picked it up and glanced over the dossier. Claire Fleming. Thirty-two years old. Scientist with the Nuclear Safety Group. The grainy black-and-white photo didn’t do her any favors, but he could see she was pretty enough, with her light hair piled atop her head and slightly plump lips under a straight nose. She didn’t look like the kind of person to inspire death threats, but there were a lot of unhinged people in the world.
“Why do we get the case?” Death threats usually stayed at the level of the local police, so there must be something more to the story.
“This particular threat came from Russia. Dr. Fleming’s contact, Ivan Novikoff, was killed yesterday, and she received a picture of his body with the threat.” Harper pressed a few keys, then flipped the monitor around so Thomas could see the gruesome photo.
“Has this been verified?” Ivan Novikoff lay sprawled in a puddle of blood, his open mouth an echo of the gaping wound in his neck. “You’re next” was written on the man’s white shirt, the reddish-brown of the letters a stark contrast to his pale skin.
“Yes. It’s legitimate.”
Thomas frowned. “Is State involved?”
Harper pressed his lips together, a sure sign of agitation. “They are...facilitating discussions with the Russians,” he said delicately, leaving no doubt as to his opinion of their involvement. “We’re hoping to hear more from our counterparts regarding the circumstances surrounding Dr. Novikoff’s death.”
“Well, it wasn’t accidental, that much is clear.”
“Quite.”
Thomas set the paper back on Harper’s desk and stretched out his legs. “What are we doing?”
The older man regarded him with a level gaze. “There is no ‘we’ at this point. There is ‘you.’ And you will act as our contact with Dr. Fleming. I want you to stick by her side and keep her safe until we figure out what is really going on here.”
“You want me to act as her bodyguard?” Disbelief made the words come out a bit sharper than he intended, but Thomas didn’t bother to apologize. No way was he going to take a babysitting job when he had other cases to work, other responsibilities that needed his attention.
“Is there a problem?”
“Yeah, there kind of is. I’ve got other cases—I can’t just drop everything to hang out with this woman on the off chance someone tries to pull something.”
Harper narrowed his gray eyes, the atmosphere in the office growing decidedly chilly. “Agent Kincannon,” he began icily, “lest you forget, you are in a precarious position. After the debacle that was
