Under Deepest Cover
highlight_author
Kara Lennox
highlight_reads
16,7K
highlight_chapters
12
One
“You have to get me out of this!” Lucy Miller hissed into her encrypted cell phone, the one that had been delivered to her home a few weeks ago. The phone had rung just as she’d left a staff meeting. She’d ducked into the ladies’ rest room, where she’d checked every stall to make sure she was alone.
“Relax, Lucy,” said the soothing voice Lucy had come to know so well. She had often fantasized about what the man who owned that deep, sexy voice might look like, but not today. Today she was too terrified to fantasize about anything but getting out of this situation with her skin intact.
“Don’t you tell me to relax,” she whispered back.
“You aren’t the one stuck in this bank trying to act normal when she knows she’s about to get liquidated.”
“Liquidated? You must be watching too much Get Smart. No one is trying to kill you.”
“You didn’t see the man who was following me. I know a hit man when I see one. He was wearing a coat, and it’s like ninety degrees outside.”
“It’s also raining in D.C. today. He probably had on a raincoat.”
“Casanova, you’re not listening! My cover has been blown. Someone has been in my apartment. Either you get me out of here, or I’ll hop the first plane I can find to South America and I’ll take all my data with me!”
“No! Lucy, be reasonable—”
“I’m done being reasonable. I’ve done everything you asked without question. I’ve trusted you implicitly, though I’ve never met you and don’t even know your name. Now it’s your turn to trust me. I’m not stupid. If you don’t get me out, this very expensive little cell phone is going into the nearest sewer, and you’ll never hear from me again.”
“All right! I’ll be there by five-thirty, six at the latest. Can you hang tight till then? Can you make it home?”
Lucy took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. She’d spotted her tail three days ago, and she’d realized yesterday that someone had searched her apartment. But so far her observer was keeping his distance. Maybe she could make it a few more hours. She struggled for a reasonable tone of voice. “I’ll do my best. But if anything happens, tell my parents I love them, okay?”
“You’ll be fine, drama queen.”
Lucy disconnected before she said something she’d regret. Drama queen? Did Casanova think she was some flaky paranoid? Hadn’t she proved her worth over the past weeks? Casanova. Who’d come up with that handle, anyway, and why?
She put the cell phone back in her purse and started to exit the rest room, but then she caught a look at herself in the mirror. She looked like a mad woman, her wavy brown hair escaping from its customary bun and frizzing around her face, her cheeks flush with panic, eyes wild with fear behind her glasses. She took five minutes to neaten her hair, powder her nose and apply her pink lipstick. The shade did nothing for her, but that didn’t matter. She wasn’t exactly supermodel material these days. She only wore a little makeup because she was in an executive position and the other female executives did.
She’d been trying to fit in, not call attention to herself.
When she looked and felt more composed, she left the sanctuary of the rest room and headed for her office, hoping she could close the door and hole up in there for the rest of the afternoon. She was afraid that if she had to deal with anyone, she would fall apart.
Some spy you turned out to be, Lucy Miller. Disintegrating at the first sign of danger.
As luck would have it, she rounded a corner and ran right into the bank’s portly CEO, the man who’d hired her.
“Oh, hello, Lucy,” he said politely. “I was just looking for you.”
“Sorry, I was in the ladies’ room. My lunch isn’t sitting well, I’m afraid.” She figured he wouldn’t ask too many questions about that. He was easily embarrassed, she’d discovered.
He scrutinized her face with his one good eye. The other had been destroyed in some kind of accident, though she didn’t know the details. Her skin prickled with nerves. Could he see her fear?
“You don’t look well,” he said. “You’re very pale. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine, really.” Just like Mr. Vargov to be concerned. He was a kind, fatherly man, a friend of her uncle Dennis who’d given her this job when she sorely needed a safe, stable employment. She’d been under-qualified for the fund auditor’s job, with her piddling bachelor’s degree in finance and no experience to speak of, but she felt she’d performed the job well.
Too well, in Mr. Vargov’s opinion. He thought she was too conscientious. He hadn’t taken her suspicions about embezzlement very seriously. That was why she’d gone to Homeland Security. That was how she’d gotten involved with Casanova.
“Why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon off?” Mr. Vargov suggested.
“Oh, I couldn’t. You said you wanted those reports—”
“The reports can wait. Your uncle would have my hide if he found out I was cracking the whip over you when you’re sick.”
“Thanks, Mr. Vargov. Maybe I will leave just a little early if I don’t feel better.”
“I think you should.”
And maybe, she thought, if she left early, she could fool the man or men who’d been following her. She wouldn’t mind saying goodbye to this place. She’d needed a place to recover, to heal, to get her bearings, and Alliance Trust had provided that. Her co-workers had been kind, the working conditions pleasant. Her boss hadn’t required too much of her, and the salary had been much higher than someone her age and experience normally earned.
But it was time to move on. She would spend another hour downloading as much information as she could onto her supercapacity memory stick, then leave here and never come back.
Casanova would take her to a safe house. He’d promised. And then, when all the arrests were made and the perpetrators were in jail, she could start over somewhere else. A new job, a new life.
It sounded like heaven.
At ten after three, she was ready. She stashed the memory stick in her bra. Taking only her purse and umbrella, she told Peggy Holmes, Mr. Vargov’s executive secretary and the woman who knew everything, that she was going home early due to an upset stomach.
“Oh, my dear, I hope it’s nothing serious. You’ve missed only one day of work since you started here, and that was for a root canal. On a lower-left molar, I believe.” Peggy was in her sixties and had worked for Mr. Vargov for twenty-something years. With her tightly permed hair and dumpy, big-bosomed figure, she was everyone’s grandmother. But Lucy knew she was highly intelligent with an astounding memory for detail and an efficiency that bordered on pathological.
“I’ll be fine,” Lucy said, hoping it was true.
The idea of walking into the parking garage alone held little appeal. One of the security guards would have been happy to escort her, but if a hit man was waiting for her there, she might just be dragging the guard into danger.
She shouldn’t behave as expected, she decided. She would take the bus. There was a bus stop just a block from her office.
The weather was warm and humid with an insistent, light rain falling, but Lucy felt cold inside as she exited her building. She put up her umbrella, taking the opportunity to glance surreptitiously around to see if she spotted the man in the raincoat. But she saw no one suspicious.
She walked up the block, her sensible low heels tapping against the wet sidewalk. She pretended to window-shop, not wanting to stand at the bus stop too long. When she saw the bus approaching, she hurried to the stop and dashed onboard just in time. The only other people to board with her were a mom with two small children. Thank God.
When she got off at the stop near her Arlington, Virginia, town house, she still saw no one. Maybe she’d outmaneuvered him. Or maybe he’d given up on her, decided she was no one to worry about. He wouldn’t have found anything incriminating in her home. She kept the memory stick with her at all times.
Her tiny town house had only one door, and this morning she’d rigged it so she would know if anyone had been inside. She checked; the tiny hair she’d caught between door and frame was still in place. She inserted her key and entered, pausing to close her wet umbrella and shake it off on the porch.
She’d lived here for two years. Her uncle had found it for her, and she’d committed to renting it without ever seeing it. It was nice but boring—like her life had been until a few weeks ago—and she’d made no effort to turn it into a real home. She wouldn’t mind walking away from it.
As she closed and bolted the door, a hand clamped over her mouth and a strong arm hauled her against a rock-hard body.
Panic rising in her throat, Lucy didn’t think, she just acted. The umbrella was still in her hand. She aimed it behind her and jabbed her attacker in the thigh as hard as she could.
Her attacker issued a strangled gasp and loosened his grip on her just enough that she could bend her knees and drop. As she did, she grabbed one of the man’s denim-clad legs and yanked, throwing him off balance. He fell onto the marble floor with a painful-sounding thunk. Still gripping the umbrella, Lucy straightened, swiveled toward her attacker and went for his throat with the sharp tip of her impromptu weapon.
He grabbed the umbrella and deflected it. “Lucy, stop! It’s me, Casanova!” He jerked the umbrella out of her hands and tossed it aside. Unfortunately, he also knocked her off balance. She fell on top of him and found herself staring into a pair of the most remarkable blue eyes she’d ever seen.
“Casanova?” But she knew it was him. She’d recognized his voice instantly.
“Jeez, woman, are you insane? You almost killed me.”
“You broke into my home and attacked me, I fought back, but I’m insane?”
“You’re not supposed to be home until later. I had no idea who you were. And where did you learn to fight like that?”
“I took a self-defense class. What are you doing in my house?”
“If you’re under surveillance, I couldn’t just come to the front door. I broke in.”
“How? I have an alarm.”
“Your neighbor doesn’t.” He grinned, and Lucy looked up and into the living room, where she saw a huge hole in her wall. “You came through the wall? You didn’t frighten Mrs. Pfluger, did you? And what’s my landlord going to say?”
“You won’t be here to find out. We’re leaving.”
That was the first comforting thing he’d said. “Then you believe me?”
“Your house is riddled with more listening devices than the American Embassy in Russia. Someone’s been here, all right.” His expression turned grim.
Lucy dropped her voice to a whisper. “Are they listening? Right now?”
“My guess is the bugs are connected to a voice-activated recording device. They—whoever they are—probably aren’t monitoring live when you’re not supposed to be home. But we don’t have much time. They’ll catch up with you soon. I want to be long gone by the time they get here. So if you could, uh…”
Lucy was humiliated to realize she was still lying on top of him, and she hadn’t made even a token effort to move. She could feel every hard-muscled inch of him pressed against her body, and she had to say the effect wasn’t unpleasant. It had been a very long time since any man had touched her more intimately than with a handshake.
She scrambled off of Casanova, managing to knee him in the groin in the process, though not intentionally.
“Damn, woman, you’re dangerous.” He sat up and shook his head as if to clear it, and she got her first really good look at him. In all her fantasies he’d been handsome, but nothing had prepared her for the reality. He was gorgeous—six feet of highly toned body, thick, jet-black hair and those incredible eyes. His hair was all mussed from their impromptu romp, the way it might look if he’d just gotten out of bed.
Oh, Lucy. Knock it off.
“You’ve got exactly three minutes to pack anything you absolutely need. Medications, a toothbrush, change of underwear. Don’t worry about clothes.”
Lucy believed him. She ran into the bedroom, grabbed a couple of pairs of underwear and socks, her toothbrush and her allergy medicine. All of it could be tossed into a tiny backpack. Since she had a couple of minutes, she peeled off her skirt and sticky pantyhose and put on a pair of jeans and her running shoes. She didn’t know where they would go, how they would travel or how long before they stopped, and she wanted to be comfortable.
She emerged from the bedroom with seconds to spare. Casanova was waiting for her, looking antsy, rolling up on the balls of his feet. “About time.”
“You said three minutes, I took three minutes.” Then she couldn’t help it. She grinned.
“You’re enjoying this.”
“In a way,” she admitted. It had been a very long time since she’d had adrenaline pumping through her veins and color in her cheeks. Years. She’d forgotten how good it felt. “And you enjoy it, too, or you wouldn’t be a spy to begin with.”
He nodded, conceding the point. “Let’s go.”
Casanova led Lucy through the hole he’d made in her sheetrock. “I’m glad Mrs. Pfluger wasn’t home,” she said. “You’d have probably scared her to death.”
“What makes you so sure she isn’t home?” And sure enough, sitting in the living room watching her TV was Lucy’s neighbor, Mrs. Pfluger, who was eighty-two years old. She smiled at Casanova. “So, you’re back,” she said with a bright smile. Although she was nearly incapacitated with arthritis, her mind was as sharp as any twenty-year-old’s. “Hello, Lucy, dear.”
Lucy stared, dumbfounded. “Do you two know each other?”
“We do now,” Mrs. Pfluger said. “He came to my door, and when he explained you were in danger from some terrorists, and that he needed my help so you could escape…” She shrugged helplessly, as if to say, Well, you know how these things are. Like they happened every day.
“But the wall. He ruined your wall,” Lucy said.
“He handed me a wad of cash to pay for it.” She turned back to Casanova. “Now, while you were busy searching Lucy’s apartment, I gathered the things you would need.” She gestured toward an old shopping bag.
“They’re clothes and other things from my fat days. I won’t need them back.”
Casanova inspected the contents of the shopping bag, then grinned and looked at Lucy. “Excellent. Lucy, put these things on. You’re about to become Bessie Pfluger.”
Bryan Elliott, aka Casanova, tried not to grin as he watched Lucy Miller wiggle into a pair of huge orange polyester stretch pants and pin them at the waist. She’d turned out to be a surprise.
He already knew a lot about her from the background information he’d obtained—where she grew up, where she’d gone to school, her employment history. He’d pegged her as the perfect mole to work inside Alliance where the embezzling was taking place—dutiful, conscientious, intelligent. And she was all those things. Over the past few weeks she had proved amazingly helpful, downloading tons of information onto the supercapacity memory stick, following his instructions without question.
In person, though, she was surprisingly feisty—and damned efficient at defending herself. With the proper training— No, he shouldn’t even think about that. He’d let himself get sucked into a life of lies and shadows, and he was in so deep now he could never lead a normal life. He didn’t wish that on sweet Lucy Miller, who, by all accounts, was ignorant of the uglier side of life.
But she was no longer ignorant about the ugliest clothes in the universe. She’d topped the orange pants with a tentlike housecoat with rainbows all over it. She’d tucked her hair up into a silver, curly-haired wig and donned an old pair of Mrs. Pfluger’s glasses, which had red frames and were only slightly uglier than Lucy’s own.
“My old walker is over there.” Mrs. Pfluger gestured toward a corner of her living room.
“This will never work,” Lucy said on a moan. “No one will believe I’m eighty years old.”
“Eighty-two,” Mrs. Pfluger said.
“Trust me, if anyone is watching the place, they won’t look past the obvious at the place next door.” He unfolded the portable walker and set it in front of Lucy.
“Let’s see you do an old-lady walk.”
Lucy hunched over the walker and did a creditable imitation of an arthritic senior citizen inching along.
“Oh, heavens,” Mrs. Pfluger said. “Please don’t tell me I look like that when I walk.”
“I’m exaggerating,” Lucy said. Then she turned to her neighbor and gave her a spontaneous hug. “Oh, Mrs. Pfluger, I can’t thank you enough for helping us out like this. I mean, you don’t even know this guy.”
“He showed me a badge,” Mrs. Pfluger said innocently, having no clue the badge he’d shown her was fake and could be bought on any street corner in D.C.
“Anyway, he has trustworthy eyes. He’ll take care of you.”
“I’m counting on it,” Lucy said, giving Bryan a meaningful look. “Can we go now?”
Bryan thanked Lucy’s elderly neighbor, too, then “helped” Lucy out the door and down the wheelchair ramp.
“Keep your head down. That’s it,” he whispered.
“You’re doing great. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were someone’s grandmother.” But he did know better. The body that had been pressed against his when she’d fallen on him was not the slightest bit grandmotherly. In fact, he’d been surprised at how slim and firm she was beneath the frumpy suit she’d worn.
His Mercedes was parked at the curb. Knowing the town house might be under surveillance, he’d made no attempt to be stealthy, walking right up to the neighbor’s door and ringing the bell. He’d known she would be home. He’d also known she’d been an army nurse in Korea and her husband had been a World War II veteran. He’d been counting on her patriotism to make her willing to help him out, and he’d been right.
As he usually was. He liked to cover all the bases.
As soon as the motor started and the car was underway, he relaxed slightly. If anyone had been watching, Lucy’s old-lady act had fooled them. No one was following.
Bryan drove to a mall parking lot and pulled the Mercedes into a spot fairly close to where he’d found it.
“Why are we stopping here?” Lucy asked.
“Switching cars.” He turned off the engine and pulled his Multi-Key from the ignition.
“What is that?” Lucy asked, pointing to the strange-looking device. Then she gasped. “Oh my God, you stole this car!”
“Just borrowed it. The owner is blissfully shopping at Marshall Fields. She’ll never know.”
“That is really scary,” Lucy said. “That such a device even exists, and that our government employees steal cars.”
“Government employees do a lot worse than steal cars, I’m afraid,” he said as they exited the Mercedes. Unfortunately, he’d just found out the hard way what certain government employees were capable of.
Lucy grabbed the walker from the back seat, but she didn’t use it. She walked beside him with a spring in her step, lithe and graceful. He led her to the car he’d arrived in, a silver Jaguar XJE. Since he’d been driving his personal wheels and not a “company car,” he hadn’t wanted to risk it being identified. Thus the switcheroo.
“Hmm, I liked this even better than the Mercedes,” she commented as she put the walker in the trunk. “Is this one stolen, too?”
“No, this one’s mine.”
“I hadn’t realized government employees earned enough money to afford a Jag.”
“We don’t. My government salary isn’t my only source of income.” He’d never imagined his cover business, the one he set up to satisfy friends and family, would turn so lucrative. He opened the passenger door for her. “You can ditch the disguise, now. We’re safe.”
“Thank God.” She pulled off the wig. Her real hair pulled loose from its bun in the process, spilling over her shoulders in a rich chestnut cascade. He’d never found brown hair all that exciting before, but Lucy’s was thick and luscious.
By the time he’d made it around to the driver’s side, Lucy was out of her housecoat, which she’d thrown on over her white tailored blouse. Then she cursed. “I forgot my jeans.”
“No, I put them in—” Then he stopped. He’d been so fascinated watching Lucy shimmy out of them, revealing a glimpse of her sensible white panties, that he had forgotten to bring the jeans along. “We’ll get you some clothes, don’t worry.”
He had no business thinking about Lucy’s panties, sensible or otherwise. He had a helluva problem here.
Finding the listening devices was disturbing enough. He’d been sure Lucy was exaggerating, that no one was following her or sneaking into her home. But she hadn’t installed those listening devices herself.
In fact, once he’d examined the bug in her telephone, the list of suspects who could have planted it had shrunk to a handful. That bug was the latest technology, purchased from Russia. So new, in fact, that only his agency had access to it. Besides the Russians, of course. And he didn’t think the Russians were involved in this.
Someone in his own organization had betrayed him, which meant his life and Lucy’s weren’t worth a used teabag unless he found out which agent was the Benedict Arnold—and neutralized him or her, fast.
