agents. They didn’t approach, and aside from a casual glance at them, neither seemed interested in her and Connor. Their disinterest was the most curious part. Not even a second glance at the couple lingering in a dark alcove in an airport?
What reason did anyone from Sphere have to follow her? Her boss had been clear he wouldn’t search for Aiden. Kate hadn’t told him she’d planned to do so because Sphere would have discouraged her or outright forbidden it. Instead, she had pretended to accept what he’d said and had made her plans to find Connor.
Kate hadn’t given a reason for her leave of absence, except to say she needed a break after months and months of long hours and high stress. Lots of her colleagues took sabbaticals from work. Vacations were encouraged to keep stress from causing mistakes. Her work leave shouldn’t have been a big deal or raised any red flags. Was Connor right? How closely did Sphere track her activities?
Connor took off in the direction from which they’d come.
Kate grabbed her bag from the ground and chased him. “Where are you going?”
“Getting out of this airport. You need to ditch your clothes and that bag,” Connor said. He tore the bag from her hand and shoved it inside a nearby trash can.
Kate looked at it and then him, confusion and fear overwhelming her. Her clothes and supplies were in that bag. He was making fast, impulsive decisions as she knew field operatives were trained to do. Indecision cost precious time that was sometimes in short supply. On her training missions, she’d had time to think and plan. Connor was moving in the opposite direction of the exit signs. With a final look at her bag, Kate left it in the trash can and followed him. Connor glanced over his shoulder.
“They know I made them,” he said.
Glancing behind her, Kate felt her heart rate escalate. The same man and woman from the airplane and the hallway were following them. Though they weren’t running, they were closing the distance and moving quickly. Could it be a coincidence that the couple had changed their direction soon after Kate and Connor had?
She wasn’t that naive. Not anymore. “What should we do?” Kate asked, accepting that Connor was the expert on this mission and they were safest following his directions.
Connor didn’t say anything. He’d quickened his pace. He pushed at doors as they passed, perhaps searching for an open one to duck inside. After several tries, a door popped open. They slipped inside an office with a window to the outside. She assessed their options. The L-shaped desk and bookcase were cheap particle board covered with laminate and the file cabinet was made of scratched and dented mental. Connor grabbed the desk and pushed it across the carpet. He slid the file cabinet in front of it, angling it against the wall to barricade the door.
He unlocked and opened the window. “It’s a ten-foot drop. Can you make it?”
Kate looked between the door and the window. Ten feet? That didn’t seem high.
The door opened partially before slamming against the desk Connor had used to block it.
“Open the door. Kate, please be reasonable. We’re worried about you.”
They’d used her name. She tossed away the final remnants of her flimsy theory that she and Connor had misread their intent. They were agents from Sphere.
“I’ll go out first and break your fall,” Connor said.
Break her fall? Running to the window, she looked down and her vision blurred. She’d told Connor her fear of heights only included life-threatening falls. Faced with one that might only injure her, dizziness washed over her and fear threatened to freeze her in her tracks. The desk moved across the carpet, and the file cabinet ground into the drywall and slid along the wall as the agents forced open the door.
Connor disappeared over the ledge, his backpack strapped to him. With a final look back, Kate mimicked his actions. She slipped through the window onto the ledge, refused to look down, wobbled at the edge and jumped. Several seconds later, she was pressed to Connor, his strong arms around her. He’d caught her fall as he’d said he would. As far as she could tell, nothing had been broken.
Her stomach was against his face. As she slid down his big body to get her feet on the ground, the friction between their bodies burned through her. She wove her arms around his neck to gain her balance. He set her down and his arms lingered around her. “Are you injured?” he asked.
The eye contact set off a tiny shower of sparks between them. “I’m fine. I think I lost my job, though.”
“Those are the stakes. The moment you pursued this course of action, you put your job on the line. Smart woman like you, you must have considered that.”
He’d worked for Sphere. He knew what it took to separate from them and the consequences if the separation was not amicable.
Kate’s stomach knotted with worry. She had considered it, but facing the reality was harder than she’d expected. Her home, her car, her bills and her reputation were at risk because of one decision she’d made. Refusing to turn back now, she forced the negative thoughts away. Her career wasn’t as important as a man’s life, and for the next several days or weeks, however long it took to find Aiden, she would stick to their plan.
Connor released her and Kate grasped his upper arms to steady herself. “Would you have left me behind if I’d been caught?” she asked.
“Would you have stayed behind if you knew it could save your career?” he asked.
“I jumped, didn’t I?” She’d made a clear choice.
His brow lifted. Had she earned a sliver of his respect? “Let’s move. They’ll get through the barricade soon enough.”
He hadn’t answered her question. He’d made it clear he didn’t trust her, but could she trust him?
The airfield encircled the terminal. With the openness of the layout, she and Connor had few places to hide. The garden surrounding the building was filled with drab green bushes, sparse in some areas, overgrown in others.
“Stay close to me,” Connor said.
At the moment, it was the safest place to be. Kate wasn’t trained to avoid Sphere agents or survive an altercation with them.
They crept along the side of the building. Though Connor tried to hold them from her, bush branches scraped at her face, arms and legs as they hurried. “This can’t be just about Aiden,” Connor said.
Kate took the branch he was holding and slipped past it. “If we find him, it would look bad for them, like they left a man in danger.”
“They have enough staff working to keep their name out of the media through threats or force. I don’t think they’d go through this trouble to stop us from finding one man. Aiden knows something or Aiden did something that they want kept quiet. Maybe they have tried to find him and failed. Maybe they want us to lead them to him.”
Connor was a conspiracy theorist and shades of doubt entered Kate’s mind. Kate had witnessed Sphere taking extreme actions to further their agenda, but she had been on the team that had worked the mission when Aiden disappeared and she’d never heard or read anything to indicate Aiden had displeased Sphere. If Aiden was alive and Sphere knew it, why the charade of a memorial service? Why not list him as missing in action?
