“Geez, Q, you said yourself you’ve been chasing him for fifteen years and you’ve only gotten close three times. If we’re right, and he’s as close as we think he is, one e-mail can have him here at our freakin’ doorstep. Possibly within hours.”
She could see Quinlan was tempted. She could see the need to hunt in his icy gray eyes. Then suddenly that need was gone.
“I have orders.”
Sabrina threw up her hands in disgust, knowing for now the debate had been closed. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is that. Because we all know you’ve never disobeyed orders.”
“With good reason,” he countered.
“This isn’t the army,” she disputed, knowing where his ironclad allegiance to orders stemmed from. “This is different. You’re an agent. You can think for yourself. Analyze each situation as it arises. I don’t know why this cell suddenly picked up and moved. It could be as simple as they spotted their government surveillance. God knows they must have been dripping with Feebs, who aren’t always the subtlest bunch. It might have nothing to do with a strike.”
“But it might and if you have even the slimmest chance of breaking that code in time to get us their location, we have to take it. There is no other option, not when we’re playing with lives.”
Sabrina fell back down on the bed. There was no point in arguing any further. He wasn’t going to quickly decide to counter a direct order-if he did it at all. She would work on him again in a while, try to wear him down. However, if in the end she had to break away from him and work alone, she would do it. She had orders, as well.
There was only one last point she wanted to make.
“I meant what I said before. I have no idea how long it will take to decipher Arnold’s prototype encryption codes. It could be weeks, months. And only if that works will I be allowed to move on to the real thing. Which means we could let Kahsan walk away, fly back to Europe, whatever, and it is possible that this ‘lost’ cell is still going to have the time they need to do whatever monstrous thing it is they’re planning on doing. Are you willing to take that chance?”
He didn’t reply. She didn’t think he would and she didn’t lift her head to see his reaction. Instead, she kicked off her sneakers. “How long until the goon squad arrives?” She needed to start planning.
“Shouldn’t be more than two hours,” he replied.
“Just out of curiosity, how long would it take us to get to Arnold’s place from here?”
He didn’t answer immediately, but eventually said, “Forty minutes.”
That wasn’t such a shock. Arnold didn’t know his exact location. It had been part of the agreement he’d made with the CIA. They picked the remote location, then blindfolded him, transported him by what was no doubt a circuitous route and eventually dropped him off on the island, preventing him from even accidentally giving away his location. He agreed to stay put and was more than happy to do without any contact from the outside world.
But based on the weather patterns, the transitional seasons, the position of the stars in the sky, he determined he was somewhere on the East Coast in one of the centrally located states. Forty minutes could mean Maryland, Delaware or back toward central Pennsylvania.
Arnold had also written her that he was on a small island in the center of a river. He talked about fishing to clear his mind. He talked about a rowboat. There were only a few choices of a river that wide that it could support a string of islands within it. The Susquehanna, maybe the Monongahela. Possibly the Chesapeake.
Somehow she would need to get the actual location before the goons arrived. Either willingly or unwillingly. She didn’t look forward to the latter.
Sabrina pushed down the comforter and crawled between the sheets, peeking first to see that they looked reasonably clean before she did. “You should rest,” she suggested. There was no chair in the room and as fresh and alert as he still looked he had to be feeling the effects of the night they had just had.
Quinlan seemed to study her for a moment. Then he must have reached some internal conclusion. He circled the king-size bed, sat and took off his shoes, then lifted the comforter and joined her.
At no point did their bodies touch, but that didn’t do anything to ease the tension she could feel rippling along her nerve endings. It was too hard, she thought, not to remember the very last time they had shared a bed. Too hard not to remember everything that had happened after.
If the stiffness of his breathing was any indication, Quinlan was having a hard time forgetting, too. She was stunned that he didn’t have better control over showing it. Not that he said anything. Neither did she. But they both knew what the other was thinking.
It was a technique that she’d been taught during her training, one that she’d embraced throughout the years. Sometimes as the only means of holding on to her sanity.
If she could block out the memories from her past, she could move forward with her life. If she could block out what her quirky brain sometimes wanted to process, she could pretend she was a normal person.
If she could block out the pain echoing faintly inside her heart at just lying next to him, she might be able to sleep.
It had been the second thing she’d learned during phase two.
The first, of course, had been pain.
Chapter 13
Sabrina danced on the balls of her feet, the gym mat underneath cushioning her weight, as she let her arms shake loose in front of her in preparation for the workout to come. Regardless of whatever else she was learning at Secret Agent U, fight training remained a constant in the curriculum. Two hours every day. Today she expected to be working with Kai, who was her kung fu master.
She’d already mastered karate and jujitsu, and a few other more obscure martial arts, but kung fu was her favorite. There was artistry in the movements that all the disciplines shared but that “the foo,” as she liked to call it, took to another level. The symmetry of the form, the elegant angles the body was required to simulate, all of it was a math freak’s physical dream come true.
Actually, for most math freaks, Carmen Electra was probably a physical dream come true, if the poster in Arnold’s classroom was any indication. The idea of the old man lusting after the woman half his age made Sabrina snicker. For all his genius he was still just a man.
A
Sabrina removed her stylishly ripped T-shirt, the various holes giving it a cool look-and tossed it off the mat. That left her dressed in a pair of dark leggings and a white stretch tank top that was more than tight enough to contain what she liked to refer to as her respectably smallish-size breasts. The snug workout clothes gave her freedom of movement and bare feet gave her better traction and balance on the mat. All in all she was feeling pretty good today.
As a result, she decided she was going to kick Kai’s ass. If for no other reason than she wanted Kai to have to say,
Not that she was all about trying to impress Q. Okay, maybe she’d shown off a little at the shooting range, but she couldn’t help it if she was a natural. Fighting, however, was something she’d had to learn just like everyone else who came through the program and she’d learned it well. She’d applied herself mentally and physically, until her instructors proclaimed her to be good. Good wasn’t great, but she was working on it.
That was all she wanted Quinlan to know. That she hadn’t been slacking in his absence. It was no big deal.
She heard the door open and was surprised to see Quinlan enter with another man-shorter and not nearly the physical specimen Q was-right behind him. She suspected that she wouldn’t be working out with Kai today.
“Are you serious?” the smaller man asked Quinlan, as he stared openly at Sabrina. His face was a spasm of
