“Yes, but getting me before I know the location of the computer gets him nothing. Taking you out, before he’s sure you’ve told me what I need to know gets him nothing. Think about it.”
“I am. You can’t possibly know what his motives are. All I know is that you called up the most dangerous man in the world and invited him to play in your fucking backyard.”
Sabrina considered telling him the truth. That it hadn’t been her idea at all, but rather his own people who had come up with this brainstorm. She stopped herself. Not so much because she cared about keeping Krueger’s secret, but because she doubted that Quinlan would believe her now.
“I told you why I did it. I want back in. I want a chance to make a difference again.”
“Spare me,” he said dismissively. “Your sudden patriotism, while touching, isn’t quite as convincing as I’m sure you would like. I want to know exactly what you told Kahsan.”
“I told him about Arnold’s project. About his death. And how it was going to be a big fat race to see who got to his computer first. But no matter how fast anyone got there, nobody was getting anything without me. Naturally, I explained that the cost to use my brain as a key would be high. Very, very high.”
He shook his head in evident disbelief. “How did you even know how to get in touch with him? It’s not like he’s listed in the phone book.”
“I knew the right Web sites to gain access to, the right message boards to post on. I haven’t been completely out of the game for the past ten years. Keeping track of the bad guys sort of became a hobby over time. That and hacking federal agency servers. You guys would be surprised to know how staggeringly vulnerable you are-”
“Focus,” he ordered. “I want details regarding the actual contact. Did you speak to him?”
She shook her head. “Our only contact was through e-mail and message boards. But I told him that if he wanted to deal, he had to come himself. And that he better bring a boatful of money. He thinks I’m a mercenary, and every background check he does is going to confirm that.”
“Right. A mercenary.”
Sabrina closed her eyes and struggled for patience. His distrust hurt, that was undeniable, but it was also frustrating. Especially since she thought she was lying really well.
“Look, all I ever did was suck at a job. Okay? I never gave away state secrets. I never compromised a mission’s security. I chose not to break a few codes because I was a kid and I was mad as hell. That’s no reason to believe I’ve gone Benedict Arnold.”
He sighed and leaned his head back against the seat. With the soft light of the waning moon filtering through the tinted windows, she could see him clearly. The creases around his mouth seemed even more evident. Ten years, and it didn’t look as though one of them had been easy on him.
“You don’t know,” he said softly. “No, you didn’t commit any crime against your country, but you’ll never know what you could have done to protect it. You’ll never know what it cost, how many lives lost, how many secrets lost, because you weren’t doing what you were born to do.”
Born to do. No pressure there. But now wasn’t the time to rise to the bait and argue with him over the merits of free choice. “You’re right,” she acquiesced. “I won’t ever know. And neither will you. But I’m here now. And I want to help.”
“Some help.” He snorted and held his arm out in front of him. She could see a beam of light through the bullet- size hole in his coat. She could also see the bubble of something wet that was about to drip from the material.
“Jesus, you’re shot.”
She reached for him and pushed the sleeve of his coat up his arm. It gave just enough to bunch the material over his elbow.
“It’s nothing. A graze.”
He was right. His sweater was torn and through the opening she could see a gash on his forearm that was bleeding steadily but not profusely.
“You got a first aid kit?”
He moved her back to her side of the seat and lowered the console between them. Lifting open the top, he extracted a small white kit. “Do you remember how to dress a wound?”
She smirked at him and his lips twitched in return. “Sorry.”
Sabrina opened the kit and found a tightly wrapped package of gauze and some pretreated wipes. She cleaned the wound, then wrapped it up tight with the cotton strips, tying off the ends exactly as she’d once been shown.
He flexed his arm once and nodded with satisfaction. “Let’s assume those men were Kahsan’s. Do you think it’s a coincidence that they showed up on the same night I did?”
Replacing the kit, she closed the console, but didn’t lift it back into place. It was silly but she felt more comfortable with the barrier between them. It made things clearer in her mind. He was on his side. She was on hers.
She did however turn toward him, her expression no doubt disdainful. “Still testing me?”
“It was a question.”
“Of course it wasn’t a coincidence. Very few things in life are. They must have been watching me. Waiting for someone to make contact before they moved.”
“Why?”
She knew that he was merely asking for the possibilities. “I made sure that Kahsan knew that I needed information from someone at the CIA. All that smoke with no real fire just delayed us. What if that’s all they wanted to do? To keep us pinned in the house another day. And the only reason they would need to do that is if…”
They looked at each other and she saw the same conclusion she had reached in his face.
“He really is coming,” Quinlan finished. His jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed. “I can’t believe he’d risk it. His face is on a hundred watch lists. He even attempts to get through an airport and we’ve got him.”
“He’ll come by boat, on some cargo ship,” she surmised. “Where our security is most vulnerable.”
“Maybe,” Quinlan agreed. “There’s no other explanation. It’s all in the timing.”
Sabrina nodded. “He knows I have to make it look like I’m cooperating with you. If you take me to Arnold’s computer there is only so much time I can waste pretending to hack into it. So he has to delay us getting to the computer until he’s in a position to make his move. Depending on where he’s coming from, that could take weeks.”
“They couldn’t have kept us in the house for weeks,” he muttered, obviously still piecing it together.
“You think he’s already here, in the country?”
“I don’t know how it’s possible. I truly don’t. But yeah, I think we have to consider it.”
Sabrina nodded. “Then this is good. This is what we wanted.”
“No,” he stated quickly, again turning his head toward her, letting her see his annoyance. “This is not what
“I’m sorry, but that’s a little like the pot calling the kettle black. Whose decision was it to let terrorists in the country in the first place? Not mine. Besides, if the government was really serious about finding these guys, they wouldn’t have waited days after Arnold’s death to contact me. No doubt they spent that time letting some government geek-head try to break Arnold’s code. You didn’t really think that was going to happen, did you?”
“No. I didn’t,” he stated. “But that’s not what caused the delay. They were waiting for me. You think you’re the only one who can break Arnold’s encryption code. The CIA still thinks I’m the only one who can handle you.”
“I don’t need to be handled,” Sabrina said softly.
“It doesn’t matter what you think. Kahsan is close. And maybe, just maybe we actually have a chance to get him. We’ve got to get back to D.C. as soon as possible so I can begin planning.”
“Does he know where he’s going?” she asked, jerking her chin toward the front seat. The partition between the two seats had been raised most of the way revealing only a portion of his head.
“He does.”
The heat had finally kicked in making the back seat almost uncomfortably warm. She pushed the thermostat down a few degrees and closed her eyes in an attempt to feign rest. She didn’t know what time it was-close to five in the morning, she guessed. That time when night just began to break and the sky hinted of a sunrise to come. It occurred to her how tired she should be, a few drinks, several rounds of poker, a hand-to-hand fight, a reunion she wasn’t expecting, all followed up with a gunfight.
It had been a hell of a long night. But she wasn’t tired and knew that it was doubtful she could achieve real
