Page 10 of Baby Take Me Home

I glanced at the wall that divided my office from the non-secure conference room beside it, where X had set up camp as she prepared for yet another Senate Subcommittee meeting. “She hasn’t poked her head out yet, but she’s usually punctual, so let’s give her a minute”

She nodded and stepped into my office. She joined me in looking out across the empty gym floor and into the quiet glass-walled technical and logistics offices on the opposite side of the first floor. Those rooms, as well as the staff kitchen and lounge along the back wall of the building, were empty because of the scheduled meeting.

“It’s strange when it’s this quiet, isn’t it?” she whispered.

“Eerie,” I agreed.

What I feared was that it was prescient, a vision of things to come, because while the Carbonados had been a gathering stormfront outside our agency, the Senate Subcommittee had been threatening to become the murderer inside the house.

“Has X mentioned anything about Jensen and Sparks?” she asked.

“No, but even if she suspects something, she’s in the same position as the rest of us.”

We were all pretending our tech lead and our logistics second weren’t in a hot and heavy relationship, because that would violate HEAT’s non-fraternization policy. Right now, I couldn’t afford to lose a single member of Alpha Team when we were overwhelmed and—as much as I hated to admit it and would never say out loud—often outmatched by the Carbonados.

Our team had been assembled from the best and brightest talent within HEAT for the specific purpose of taking down that organization. The international criminal enterprise was made up of mercenary former agents from the best spy agencies in the world, including Mossad, the KGB, MI6, and even the CIA. As such, the group owed allegiance to no nation, acted outside the bounds of any country’s laws, and operated beyond any sense of ethics or morality.

The Carbonados had personally targeted four of my team members, and we had just barely saved them. The extreme measures we’d undertaken to protect ourselves had come under scrutiny from the Subcommittee, who seemed to know every action we took almost before we executed our plans. The whole thing stank to high heaven. We had begun to suspect that the Carbonados had compromised someone high up on our food chain, maybe even a member of the Subcommittee itself.

X emerged from the conference room. She wore her signature black, this time an expensive tailored pantsuit and low heels. Her black hair was pulled back off her face in a tight bun and, like most of the time these days, she was frowning. I remembered a day long ago, when HEAT was in its early days and I was fresh out of the army, when she had smiled more, occasionally wore a bright color, and seemed to enjoy her work. The past couple of years, and especially this last one, had taken a toll on her.

“How are you sleeping, Xi?” Samantha asked, invoking X’s rarely used first name.

X exchanged a look with her. “The same as I always do.”

I suspected this was a conversation they often had in private so I stayed out of it. The three of us climbed the stairs, punched the day’s numeric code into the cipher lock, and entered the SCIF in silence. The whispered conversations that had been occurring around the table stopped.

I stood at the head of the conference table, beside the projection screen. “We’re all busy, so we’ll keep this meeting brief,” I said, bringing the meeting to order.

Jensen typed on his computer and brought up the standard meeting presentation. THE ARMAND JOB was typed across the top of the agenda as the first order of business.

Jensen spoke first, summarizing the innocuous data he had collected from Ashlee’s electronic devices. Per our limited warrant, he was not allowed to intercept or read anything that reasonably appeared to be communications with her newspaper.

“If she’s working with an editor there on a bigger Kovac story, she’s not likely to be sending it over email anyway.” Jensen glanced at X. “Given her involvement with Kovac, what are the odds we could expand the warrant?”

X furrowed her brow. “I might know a judge who would be sympathetic. I’ll have an answer for you by this afternoon.”

Next, Penn summarized Ashlee’s trips out of her house, which included daily visits to her local coffee shop, a book drop-off at the library, and a Monday morning dentist appointment.

“What do we know about the dentist?” I asked.

“He’s on the up-and-up,” Alder reported. “And this falls on her six-month, routine-visit schedule.”

“One thing has popped, though,” Sparks said. She nodded to Jensen, who pulled up an image of a fitness club in Silver Spring. “Armand has been going here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon since the week after we rescued her.”

I glanced at Penn, remembering a HEAT job we’d been on together in earlier days, before the existence of the Alpha Team. “Anything suspicious about it?” I asked Sparks.

“She takes kickboxing classes Mondays and Wednesdays and works with a personal trainer every Friday,” she answered.

I couldn’t help picturing Ashlee with her curly hair hanging down her back, her skin glistening, her tight tank top and short shorts clinging to her curves as she punched and kicked and… I shifted in my seat and furrowed my brow.

“Background checks on the kickboxing instructor and her personal trainer check out,” Sparks was saying, “but…” She glanced around the table, building the suspense. “Every Wednesday, she gets a massage.”

Jesus, take the wheel, now I could only picture Ashlee naked on a massage table.

“A once-a-week massage?” Li asked. “If her job is half as stressful as ours, that sounds about right.”

“I’m guessing something popped with the masseuse,” I said. My voice came out as a croak and I took a sip of water. Thankfully, only Samantha glanced at me.