Page 60 of Agency

“What?” I asked with a shrug. “You didn’t expect me to do this in a vehicle I rented, did you? The front door’s unlocked.”

“What about the dossier?”

“In the trunk,” I said. “Along with a bag with some spare clothes that actually fit me, if you don’t mind.”

He looked across to Morgan, who nodded. “Get ‘em for her. Anything else he needs to grab?”

“No,” I said, quickly. “No, nothing else.”

Andrew was out of the driver’s side door, then. The dome light was turned off, so we remained in darkness as he stepped out into the Tahoe’s headlights. Opening the driver’s side door and popping the trunk, he began heading back to the trunk.

Up front, Jericho was adjusting his rearview mirror, and I caught something in his eyes as he looked first to me, then past.

“You did this mission alone, right?” he asked after a second.

Up ahead, Andrew was already about to open the trunk the rest of the way.

“Only my handler was in town, but she’s probably skipped by now.” I shifted in my seat and glanced out the rear window. “Why?”

Back at the alley’s mouth, a silvery sports SUV had crept into view, headlights off.

No. Notasilvery sports SUV.

Thesilvery sports SUV. The pearlescent Audi from the parking garage, to be exact. The one with Illinois license plates.

Joergensen, the operator who’d been up in Chicago with his team, but couldn’t leave to complete this contract. What the fuck was he doing in town?

Oh no.

Oh no, no, no.

Aunt Val couldn’t have gone to him instead, could she? Or had Management? Either way, that would have given the Afrikaner plenty of time to drive down and…

My heart leapt into my throat, and I nearly gagged as my head snapped forward. “Andrew!” I screamed, immediately trying to get up from my seat, but suddenly having to fight against Morgan’s pinning arms as Jericho gunned the engine.

“Andrew, there’s a bomb! Get the fuck out of there!”

Chapter Seventeen

Andrew

Heart already jack-hammering like the tools on a never-ending federal highway project, I spun around from the open trunk as soon as I heard Ambyr’s shout, one hand already on my sidearm and the other filled with her bag and a thin manila folder.

Bomb. She’d said bomb. Had to be in the car.

Time slowed to a crawl as adrenaline pumped, pumped,pumpedinto my veins.

No more than two or three seconds later, the sound of gunfire and shattering glass was meeting with the roar of the Tahoe’s engine in a cacophonous crescendo, and gun fire was chattering back from the alleyway’s opening as Jericho brought the SUV barreling down the ten meters separating us. The twin headlights and silvered bumper loomed till there seemed to be nothing else in the world. Jericho veered to my right. Sparks flew as he scraped the truck down the brick wall and drew closer and closer.

Still that single word from Ambyr continued to reverberate in my skull to the pace of my own suddenly racing heart: “Bomb. Bomb. Bomb. BOMB.”

Too late to run or even pull open the passenger’s side door, and I was too close to the bomb to take cover.

So I reacted, and threw myself on the hood of the passing Tahoe.

Fingers curling at the top of the hood, I pulled myself onto the vehicle as Jericho, gunning the engine, jerked away from the alley wall and Morgan continued to fire through the rear window.

I opened my mouth, as much to scream in excitement and release the adrenaline thrumming in my veins as to protect against the explosive shock wave I knew would be coming. Kicking a leg up onto the hood, I dragged myself onto the truck and pressed myself down low.