Enemy Closer, page 16
I didn’t trust myself to answer; so I crossed my arms and stared at him, hoping I looked stony and indignant. He closed the distance between us and grabbed me by the shoulders.
“This is what happens when you lie to me,” he breathed. “You could’ve been killed. And if it interests you, the bullet Philip sent into the terminal full of innocent people behind you hit a concrete pillar instead of the ten-year-old kid standing right next to it. He could just as easily have been killed, too.”
I shrank at this, avoiding his eyes; but the thought of a child getting shot was too much. In my mind it wasn’t a ten-year-old boy but a certain seven-year-old girl. I could feel my face turning red as my eyes began to sting with tears.
He let me stew in it for a few more seconds, then asked again, “What aren’t you telling me, Anna?”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with Philip,” I insisted somewhat weakly. His eyes narrowed, and I took a deep breath, telling myself it made absolutely no sense to withhold this. “Luke said… when he left the casino in Albuquerque… he said he’d be in London by Christmas and I could come find him there, if I wanted.”
My admission seemed to have sucked all of the air out of the parking structure. Jim stared at me, his face frozen, for an unbearably long time while his hands tightened around my shoulders.
“Jim?”
“Why are you just now telling me this?”
I moved my lips, but no sound came out: “I don’t know.”
“I do. You’re protecting Jackson.”
“No.”
“Name one other possible explanation. Go ahead, I’ll wait.”
“I forgot.”
“You were fucking him, and you got attached, didn’t you?”
I shoved him away, snarling, “Stop it.”
“Give me the mic, Anna.”
I ripped the microphone off my bra and threw it at his head, but he caught it.
“Go home and try not to do anything stupid. You’ll be hearing from me.”
He left me alone in the parking garage, shaken and angry. I refused to give any thought to anything he’d said, instead focusing on figuring out a way to get home without so much as a nickel in my pocket.
It took me a while to work out what to do, which gave Jim plenty of time to depart. He was nowhere in sight when I emerged from the parking structure and slipped into the line waiting for a hotel shuttle. I shuffled onto the next shuttle with a dozen other passengers and was ferried to a hotel within the airport, where I used the hotel lobby phone to call my dad. I asked him to come pick me up, told him where I was, and started to explain what happened (albeit in a largely untruthful way), but he cut me off.
“We can talk about it when I get there.”
I groaned as I returned the headset to the receiver, knowing what his tone forbode. He was sick and tired of getting jerked around: I was in for it, and my mom wouldn’t be there to run interference.
He hadn’t even made it out of the city before turning around, and I only ended up waiting in front of the hotel for about forty-five minutes before he pulled to a stop in front of me. I climbed up into his truck, feeling at once perfectly safe and indescribably anxious. He didn’t look mad, but that didn’t mean much in his case.
“Thanks, Dad,” I forced.
“Where’s your backpack?”
“It got stolen.”
Sparing any extraneous details, I related the fictional account of my backpack being stolen before I could get through security, that my boarding pass and wallet were in it, and the ticket counter would not print me a new one, and I couldn’t remember the confirmation number to print it myself, and I didn’t have my cell phone to call anyone for help, and the airport wouldn’t let me use a phone, and my only choice had been to sneak onto a hotel shuttle to find a phone, by which time my flight to Washington had departed DFW Airport.
My dad listened expressionlessly and then asked, “Who hit you?”
“Huh?”
He pointed to my left cheek. I felt the spot gingerly and winced; it felt like a carpet burn, probably inflicted when the TSA was cuffing me.
“When he took my backpack, he pushed me against the wall.”
“Why didn’t anyone stop him?”
“It was in the parking garage. No one saw.”
“What the heck were you doing there? I dropped you off right in front of the airport, the door was ten feet away.”
“I… I wanted a cigarette before the flight. To calm me down, you know I hate flying.”
“Since when do you smoke?”
I lost my composure and snapped, “Will you quit trying to poke holes in my story? God, you’re like the Spanish Inquisition.”
To my astonishment he laughed, then asked, “Want to get a drink before we head home?”
I knew he meant coffee, not beer (it was barely noon), but the question still surprised me.
“I—uh—sure, that would be good.”
On the way out of the airport, we spotted a Tex-Mex restaurant we both liked and decided to make it lunch. The hostess gave us a much better table than I would’ve been given alone, and we had a relatively private booth to continue the interrogation. My dad ordered coffee, and I followed suit somewhat regretfully, thinking of how long it had been since I’d tasted a house margarita. He waited until the coffee had arrived and we’d placed our orders to start back in.
“Annie, all I ask is that you don’t lie to me and your mother. If you can’t tell us, that’s fine. Just say so.”
“Sometimes I have to lie. I can’t always tell you that I can’t tell you.”
He shook his head. “That’s some convoluted nonsense.”
“Brought to you by Uncle Sam.”
That got me a grin. I could always score points with him by directly or indirectly taking pot shots at the government. He wasn’t a fan.
“And we call it a cover story, not a lie,” I added. “Call it a parable, if that makes you more comfortable.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Well… just know that if you think I’m lying, I’m probably doing it at my boss’ direction and I don’t like it any more than you do.”
“Were you really going to DC?”
“Yes.”
“Was your backpack really stolen in the parking garage by a stranger who inexplicably got away?”
“No.”
“But it was taken from you.”
“I certainly didn’t give it up willingly.”
“Who hit you?”
“No one, Dad. I promise that’s the truth.” I decided not to add that Jim had definitely come close to hitting me. I’d never seen him that angry before. Again I pushed those thoughts away.
“Are you still going to Washington?”
“I don’t know. Until I get my wallet back, I don’t see how I can get on a plane.”
“Do you really not know what happened at the airport today?”
I straightened up, asking sharply, “No, what happened?”
“Some kind of shooter, it happened right after I dropped you off. I heard about it on the radio and tried to call you, but you didn’t answer.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“You expect me to believe you had nothing to do with that?”
“I didn’t shoot anyone!”
“Were you involved?”
“I—” I swallowed the automatic denial that flew to my lips and said slowly, “Please don’t ask me any more questions about that.”
He sighed and leaned back, both palms resting on the table on either side of his coffee. My dad was a large man, six feet tall and built like a refrigerator. At sixty years old he was still an intimidating person, even to someone who knew he didn’t have a violent bone in his body. The only people who weren’t at least a little bit afraid of him were my nieces, who treated him like a giant, sentient teddy bear, and my mother, who wasn’t afraid of anything. I could only imagine the terror he’d struck into the hearts of the green engineers he’d been instructing when I first arrived in Texas.
“I won’t ask you any more questions, Annie, but I need to tell you something.”
“What?”
“First I need you to promise not to be upset at your mother.”
Shit. “Of course, I promise.”
“After you went up to Oklahoma to meet your boss the first time, someone else called the house claiming to be your boss. Your mother answered the phone, and she got a little upset. It wasn’t the same person who’d called before, and she told him off.”
“What did she tell him?”
“That she didn’t believe him, and he’d better leave you alone. She told him your boss had already called and it was a different person, an Agent Camposanto.”
I closed my eyes. “She told him Jim’s name?”
“According to her, yes.”
I opened my eyes again but couldn’t look at him, staring into space instead. “This was on July seventh?”
“Right after you got to Manchester, yes.”
“… Can I use your phone?”
“You have to tell me one thing first, and it better be the truth: Are my granddaughters in danger?”
“You really want the truth?”
“I always do.”
No, you fucking don’t. “They were. They won’t be anymore, because I’m not going back to your house.”
He accepted that so quickly his next question seemed to come from left field. “What about Dude?”
“I can’t take him with me.”
Sighing again, he pulled out his phone and handed it to me, saying only, “Text your mother and ask her to pick up some dog food at the store.”
I took my dad’s cell phone to the relative seclusion of the women’s bathroom and called Jim, who answered on the first ring. “Camposanto.”
“Jim, it’s me.”
“What? What now?”
“I need your help. I can’t go back to my parents’ house, I can’t put them in danger anymore. Please.”
“Hold on.”
I heard tapping on a keyboard, a few mouse clicks, and then more tapping. Several minutes passed without a word from either of us, during which another woman used the restroom, washed her hands, and departed.
“Are you in a bathroom?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
I told him the name of the restaurant and he told me to hold on again. A minute later, “There’s an Uber coming to pick you up. Red Jeep, driver’s name is Rudy. He’ll be there in eight minutes.”
“Thank you.”
“He’s taking you to the Marriott on Grapevine Mills Circle. I’ll meet you there.” He hung up.
My dad was not the least bit surprised to be informed I was ditching him. He accepted my lack of explanation with a curt nod, standing up to give me a hug.
“You still into that kav magra stuff?” he asked.
“It’s Krav Maga, Dad, and yes.”
He nodded his approval. “Don’t you let anyone hurt you, Annie. You take care of yourself.”
“I will.”
Even though my Uber was still five minutes away, I went outside to wait in front of the restaurant. I didn’t think I could bear waiting with my dad, whose expression seemed to indicate he was saying goodbye to me forever. Perhaps I was just being dramatic.
Once I’d been dropped off at the Marriott without incident, I planted myself in a chair in the lobby and waited for Jim to show up. He took longer than I expected, nearly half an hour, during which time the concierge came over three times to ask if I needed anything. The third time I dismissed her rather rudely, and I was pretty sure she was trying to figure out how to bounce me from the hotel when Jim finally appeared.
He spared me one quick glance before heading to the counter to check in, then simply beckoned to me to follow him to the elevators. If his intention were to impress me with his continued bad mood, it failed.
“Still mad at me for almost dying?” I asked tartly when the elevator doors closed on us.
“It couldn’t be for withholding information in a federal investigation.”
“Could be that. Maybe you’re mad because you think I have feelings for Luke.”
“Of course I am,” he said, so quietly I wondered if I were meant to hear. I was surprised until he added, “You’re obviously compromised, and I still have to use you because my other options are approximately dick.”
“Use me?” I repeated.
He glared at me, then led the way out of the elevator without a response. I followed morosely, thoughts straying to my lost backpack and then to my nieces and Dude, who I thought I’d be seeing again in a couple of days at most. I trudged into the hotel room behind Jim, still lost in depressing thoughts, and was snapped back to reality by the feeling of his arms encircling me.
“I’m sorry,” he said gruffly. “I’m glad you’re okay.” He held me at arms’ length and asked, “You are okay, aren’t you?”
I shook my head, imagining Dude roaming around my parents’ house and yard looking for me. My face crumpled, and Jim wrapped me up again.
“I didn’t sign up for this,” I complained, voice muffled. “I was supposed to get information from Luke, pass it to you, and lay low until you sorted everything out. That was what you said.”
“That was the original plan.”
“How much longer do I have to do this?”
He let me go, only to slide his hand around the back of my neck, lightly gripping my hair. Errantly I noted how fixated he seemed to be on my hair in general; I filed that away and looked up at him.
“You have to do this until it’s done,” he answered. “What happened? Why are you suddenly so sure your family’s in danger?”
I explained how my mother had inadvertently spilled the beans about Jim being my boss long before I had, which absolved me of that mistake but gave Philip a lot more time to mull over the implications. Now that I’d been marked for death, intuition told me my family could find themselves in the crosshairs at any moment. Jim didn’t question my logic, or lack thereof; he just nodded.
Defeated, I asked lifelessly, “So what’s next?”
“You’re going to get something to eat, and I’m going to the airport to get your stuff back. We’ll go from there.”
September to November, 2020
Dallas, Texas
I stayed in the hotel room for two nights while Jim found a semi-permanent residence for me to pass the time until I could go to London. This ended up being a modest, furnished apartment a couple miles south of the hotel, which whoever controlled his purse strings had allowed him to rent month-to-month under a name he pointedly refused to tell me.
Since all I had were the contents of my backpack, which Jim had wrestled away from the TSA through what he wanted me to believe was pure finesse, the apartment was a dismal place. Jim insisted I behave as though I were in witness protection.
“Whoever Philip answers to decided they wanted you dead more than they wanted someone in his position in the FBI,” he had explained, “and that should scare the shit out of you. Never use Breckenridge again, and even though this goes without saying, I feel you need to hear it anyway: Don’t use your real name, either, and don’t call or visit your parents or anyone else you know. Don’t even leave this fucking apartment. If I see a single dog hair in here, your ass is grass.”
So, for three miserable weeks I hunkered down in the apartment, broken only by two massive grocery deliveries and one visit from Jim halfway through week two when I’d been washing and wearing the same three sets of clothes so much I wanted to rob a Kohl’s at gunpoint.
Jim had been on a miniature adventure, goading my parents and nieces away from the house with free tickets to Six Flags and sneaking in to collect all my things. I had to admire his fortitude, burglarizing a house guarded by a horse-sized German Shepherd who didn’t know him from Adam. I may have come home with Jim’s scent on me once or twice, but otherwise Dude had no reason to trust him.
Removing all my things from the house wasn’t something he wanted to hide; the more people who saw, the better. Unfortunately for Jim, the opposite was true for delivering them to me. He had driven halfway to Alabama before meandering back to my temporary apartment. The whole ordeal had taken him two days, at the end of which he was so tired it took very little convincing for him to stay the night; but he insisted on sleeping on the couch.
I was dealing with Agent Camposanto, not simply my Jim, and knew I would be until I caught a flight to Europe. Agent Camposanto had no interest in flirting with, sexually harassing, or even so much as touching me; he was so focused on the task at hand that he reminded me of a sand spider, which will wait in a hole for as long as it takes for prey to wander by, even at the risk of starving to death. I knew from experience that fun Jim wouldn’t resurface until all the planning, strategizing, preparing, and briefing had been completed to his satisfaction.
Spending the night, or even coming to my apartment, was generally out of the question. Like participants in an illicit affair, when we needed to meet, we did so in a random hotel and kept it brief. An exchange of information, a homework assignment, a reminder about the rules, and I’d be on my way via Uber, Lyft, or regular old taxi back to the apartment alone.
Jim had supplied me with a new identity, now that Abigail Breckenridge was burned to uselessness. Tegan Mercer, according to the Oklahoma driver’s license, U.S. passport, and only-for-emergencies credit card, was to be my name for the foreseeable future. I had to memorize a few details about her but was otherwise left to my own devices as to her life story. That part took less than a day; the real meat and potatoes was preparing me to, in Agent Camposanto’s words, “be set loose in Europe with no one to watch your back or make sure you don’t fuck up and get yourself or someone else killed.”
With the scant information from Luke that I’d finally passed on to Jim, he and his team were preparing me to go to London and operate completely alone, not to return to the states until directly ordered to. The target date for my departure was November fifteenth, but that date came and went while Jim waited for confirmation that everything was ready. Finally, on November twenty-third, I got the call: Get to the airport; your flight leaves in three hours.
