Page 12 of Only the Wicked

“I’m going to head to the hotel. Plan to sit outside by the pool with a book on the off chance I might run into him before our dinner.”

“Rough life,” Quinn says, grinning.

I return her grin, letting her know I’m not pissed.

She bends down and passes me a zippered bag with two of the charging cords. “Throwaway phones, surveillance devices, the usual.” She shrugs. “I assume you don’t need a weapon?”

I don’t miss that her question is directed at our boss, not to me. Still, I answer. “I have a personal handgun secured at the hotel. I’m good.” I pause, unable to resist. “Though if you think Rhodes MacMillan is the type to require heavy artillery for dinner conversation, maybe we should reassess our intel.”

I’m halfway up the spiral stairway when Hudson calls, “Sydney, keep a tracker on you at all times. And call me in the morning.”

My brain immediately goes to the gutter - something about his commanding tone and that particular phrase combo strikes me as oddly sexual, deserving of at the very least a snarky “Depends on your performance,” response.

“Depends on—” I clear my throat, catching myself two words too late. “Copy that.”

Tonight, I might not immediately get valuable intel, but I’ll get a good sense of Rhodes’ character, and if he’s capable of selling out our country.

Chapter

Four

Sydney

Ten minutes before six, I’m in a cozy room in front of an unlit fireplace, steps away from the check-in desk. My time by the pool proved a waste, if one counts time half-reading, half-people watching a waste. Rhodes never appeared.

In the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the world-renowned spa attracts many of the visitors to the inn, and if I were to guess, that’s why I had the pool to myself. If I’d known I wouldn’t run into Rhodes, I might have scheduled a massage. But, given there was no chance of running into him in the women’s area of the spa, I stretched out in a lounge chair and, in a solitary moment, broke down and called Caroline.

“Hey, how’s it going?” Her voice sounded bright and cheery, but in the background I heard a click that I assumed was a door closing.

“Fine. Am I catching you at the office?”

“Home office, today, but Dorian’s working from home today too. He can be loud.”

I smiled at the way she drew out the word loud. It’s been a long time since I lived with someone, and I’ve never lived with someone I was romantically involved with, but I fully expect there would be challenges.

“How’s Dorian?”

Although I’ve been friends with Caroline for years, I’ve never met her husband. For one, when she and I first met, they’d split. They only recently reunited. She came to visit me not long ago in D.C., but he had meetings or something. But I don’t need to know him to approve of their reunion. She seemed happier, livelier.

“He’s fine. How are you? You’re at the new job, right? Do you like it? How’s the boss?”

“Well, obviously the boss is an improvement over asshat.”

She snorted. “Obviously.”

“But no, I like him. He’s levelheaded. Fair. Trusting. I’m thrilled to be back, doing my old thing.” There was no one around me, but Caroline understood my purposeful vagueness.

“That’s good. I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Ah, you know. No guarantees.” Quinn laying it out there and then my poolside nothing served as a cautious reminder. In this situation, failure is a realistic scenario, but failure isn’t acceptable. I’ll find a way.

“If anyone can crack the guy, it’s you,” Caroline said, as if she could read my mind. “Remember the test?” My mind flashed to the evening in a ballroom with classical music and champagne flutes. “You scored higher than anyone. You pulled one over on an instructor.”

Yeah, rumors spread that I slept with him because how else could a woman pull one off on a target aware of the assignment?