this shot? I got him. We’re out. Be happy with that.”
He nodded. “It would have been better if we could have questioned him and ascertained that he was, in fact, working for Kahsan. You know he isn’t the only bad guy out there. Any one of them would want to know the location of terrorists already inside the country.”
“Yes, but none of them would know about me. And they certainly wouldn’t know how important keeping me alive was.”
They left the body and walked back to the car only to find that their sudden stop hadn’t been caused by the driver hitting the brakes hard, but rather by a large tree, which the front of the Cadillac was currently wrapped around.
“That sort of sucks,” Sabrina noted.
“You mean because we’re going to have to walk out of these woods?”
“No, I was thinking that it sucks for the driver, who was lucky to have survived this impact only to get it in the face ten minutes later.”
Quinlan regarded her for a moment.
“I’m not going soft,” she insisted. Heaven forbid. Softness had been driven out of her a long time ago. “I’m just saying it sucks, that’s all.”
“From the very beginning your psyche profile indicated an unwillingness to take a life,” he said, as if just recalling that particular fact.
“Okay, but here is where I’m going to point out that that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
“It almost kept you out of the program.”
This was news. She was doing all of this, risking everything really, to be let back in, thinking it was the only place she truly belonged and Quinlan was telling her that she’d almost not gotten into the program in the first place.
For a moment she tried to imagine what her life would have been like if she’d never started down the CIA path. If she’d never met Quinlan. She didn’t like the idea, which was almost hysterically funny considering the number of times she’d wished that she’d never met Quinlan.
“I’d still be stuck with the geeks at Harvard,” she muttered, wondering if she had stayed on that course would the past ten years have been more productive? More purposeful? Maybe if she’d stayed there…
“You never would have lasted with them,” Quinlan said, interrupting her thoughts. “You were ready to bail when we found you, remember?”
Yes, she remembered. And he was probably right. She wouldn’t have stayed, which meant she probably would have just gotten thrown out of the casinos at a younger age. Quinlan had come at a very pivotal time in her development. He saved her really. Absolutely, she’d needed him back then.
But she didn’t anymore. What she did need, however, was a new direction. Or, she supposed, an old one.
Sabrina glanced back at the body. “If you’re worried that I’m not up to handling the job-”
“What makes you think it’s going to be any easier to kill Kahsan?”
“Because Kahsan is a bad guy. I don’t have a problem taking out the bad guys. The driver was just a stooge. Some grunt taking orders to keep us occupied and out of commission until he got word from his boss. I did what I had to do to ensure our escape, I don’t have to be happy about it.”
He didn’t respond, but instead took the phone off his belt and dialed a number.
Sabrina walked away and tried to get a sense of where they were. She contemplated the drive from the time they left the house. Then she glanced up and saw the position of the sun coming up over the trees.
“This is Quinlan. I need a location.”
While he was talking to someone back at headquarters, who was probably using a GPS to figure out where they were, Sabrina made her way back to him.
“The highway is about two miles south of us. Once we get back there, there’s a motel about ten miles east. We can probably get to it before your people get to us.”
Quinlan pulled the phone away from his ear, and Sabrina could hear someone on the other end giving him the exact same information. For whatever reason he seemed annoyed that she’d been able to determine their position without the satellite.
She just shrugged her shoulders. “What can I say? I know the area.”
“Get me Krueger,” Quinlan said into the phone, and then frowned as he listened to the other person give his response. He seemed to hesitate for a moment before he said, “No. No need to pull him out of a meeting. Let him know our situation and tell him to contact me as soon as possible. And you’ll need to send a cleanup team to Stansfield.”
Sabrina jumped on that. “Hey, tell them while they’re picking up bodies that if they want to go ahead and put on a new porch that would be okay by me. And remind them that if they fix the door, I had stained glass…”
He didn’t bother to roll his eyes, just snapped the phone shut and replaced it on his belt, then holstered his gun, certain now that there was no one else in the woods waiting for them. “Let’s go.”
“Maybe once we get to the highway we can hitch,” she suggested.
“No, we’ll keep to just inside the woods and parallel the highway. I’m not taking any chances.”
“You think Kahsan is going to drive by on Route 15?” She was being sarcastic, but Quinlan wasn’t laughing.
“We both agree there is a real possibility that he’s in the country. If that’s the case, then yes, I think he might be able to drive by on Route 15.”
There was something in his tone, Sabrina concluded. Something that suggested he wasn’t happy and she didn’t think it had anything to do with the fact that they had a long walk in front of them. She figured now was as good a time as any to lay more of the groundwork for what was to come.
“I thought you would approve of my plan,” she told him. “You can’t tell me,
“It’s a chance. I’ll give you that. But not one you had to take.”
“I don’t mind being the bait,” she offered and realized that she meant it. “I had nothing else to do.”
He released a breath and followed with his eyes the puff of icy air that escaped his mouth. In an efficient motion he removed his overcoat and handed it to her.
“I told you I didn’t want it,” she protested.
“Take the coat. Give me the gloves. And don’t argue.”
Sabrina considered being stubborn, but the truth was she was cold and it was going to be a long walk. He was wearing a heavier sweater and, given his weight over hers, wouldn’t be as susceptible to the cold. Plus, she planned on pressing him on the first question she’d asked so there was no point putting up a fight over the coat.
Pulling it around her as she pushed her arms into the too long sleeves, she tried to ignore the scent of him that immediately infiltrated her senses. It was so familiar to her. It seemed strange that it should be that way after ten years, but it was. Mentally, she sighed and moved on to practical matters. She found the gloves, one in each pocket, and tossed them to him.
“Let’s go,” he ordered and started heading south, his legs eating up the distance, so that she had to almost jog to keep up.
“So tell me what you thought when they told you to come get me,” she urged. “I can’t imagine you were thrilled.”
He didn’t turn around, but he did answer her. “No, I wasn’t.”
“Were you really that freaked out about seeing me again?”
He stopped then, so abruptly she almost ran into his back. He spun around and she waited for his reply.
“You’ve always got to push,” he muttered.
But she heard him. “I know. I want to know. Tell me what’s got you all riled up. I can’t believe this is about seeing me again.”
“You think this is about you? You think I would let a bad scene from ten years ago affect me?”
No, she didn’t, but now he was even more worked up.
“That’s incredibly arrogant.”
“Maybe. But I think about how the last person I wanted to pick me up for this job was you, and then I can’t help but think that the last person you would have ever wanted to deal with again was me. But I didn’t have a
