“I’ll tie this off,” Verris told her. “I can make it look like a Russian op.”
Lassiter felt a surge of anger. “You will do nothing,” she said. “I can handle this. I’ll tell my team that Henry’s gone rogue.”
Verris blew out a contemptuous breath. “After you whiffed four times on Dormov? Forget it. You need Gemini for this.”
Anger surged in her again, more intensely this time. “I will not let you do hits on American soil—”
“You don’t have anyone who can take out Henry Brogan,” Verris said, talking over her loudly. “I do.”
This was one of those times when Lassiter understood the atavistic impulse to take a swing at someone. Verris had a way of bringing it out in her. “We’ll clean up our own messes, thank you,” she said in full-on bitch-demon-from-hell mode.
All expression drained from Verris’s face as he stalked over to her desk and leaned his fists on it. “Everything we’ve worked for is at risk—thanks to your failures.” His gaze bored into hers as if he were willing her to shrivel but the bitch-demon held her ground. “You have one chance to not screw this up. Please surprise me.”
He straightened, still giving her his death-ray look, and then left. She stared after him. The bitch-demon still wasn’t scared of him—not yet, at least. But Janet Lassiter was nervous.
After tying the Ella Mae to the piling on the dock, Henry decided to let Monk finish his solo before he set foot on land again. At some point between the time he had untethered from the Scratched Eight with Jack Willis smiling hopelessly as he waved goodbye and when he’d reached the marina, the glint in the sky had vanished, but that was hardly a positive sign. As glad as Henry had been to see his old friend, Jack’s visit was like that glint—a harbinger of the turbulence to come, after which nothing would be the same. It was all the more reason to steal a few quiet moments while he could.
Henry leaned back, stretching his long legs out on the seat beside him. Monk was working his way up to the finish of ‘Misterioso’ when his gaze fell on the dashboard.
The rudder angle gauge was slightly out of position, as if someone had pried it out of the dash and put it back in a hurry. Henry felt a surge of anger. This was a custom-fitted dash—you weren’t supposed to pop things in and out like Lego. The Ella Mae was a classy lady who wouldn’t be caught dead with a hair—or a dial—out of place, and Henry had always treated her with the respect she deserved, making sure she looked her best. So who had been taking liberties with her, and why?
He worked the gauge out of the polished wood dash, being careful not to rip out the connections, and saw the problem immediately. Son of a bitch, he thought as he disentangled the fiber-optic line from the other wires.
Damn, he should have known better than to think that after twenty-five years with the DIA they would just let him go without pulling some kind of shit. This was one of the tiniest bugs he’d ever seen. It would be sound-only, and he found it hard to believe that it would hear anything other than engine noise, wind, and water, but these days surveillance tech was insanely good. For all he knew, the thing was picking up his pulse and respiration. Which should tell whoever was listening that he was furious.
The agency must have put this in while he was on his way home from Liège, right after Monroe told them he was retiring. Jerry would never have allowed anyone to touch the Ella Mae, so the DIA had gotten rid of him. Henry fervently hoped they had made him a retirement offer too good to pass up. Jerry was a nice guy who deserved a piece of the good life; emphasis on life.
Henry shut the music off and marched up the dock to the booth outside the marina office. Yeah, Ms. Marine Biology was still on duty. She probably thought she was pretty slick, looking oh-so-innocent as she took out her earbuds and smiled like there was nothing going on. Maybe she was so young she really didn’t know what a pissed-off retired assassin looked like.
“Any luck?” she said brightly as he put the fiber-optic mic down on the counter in front of her. She stared at it for a moment, then looked up at him again, her smile tentative now. “Okay, most guys try flowers, or a playlist they think I’ll find romantic. But—”
Did she practice that ‘who, me?’ expression in the mirror? “Are you DIA?” he snapped.
“Um…that depends,” she said, still doing pleasant-but-bewildered. “What’s DIA?”
“Dance Instructors of America,” Henry told her. “Who sent you to surveil me? Was it Patterson?”
“‘Patterson?’” she said, frowning a little, like it was a word in a language she had never heard before.
The guileless child act was starting to get on his nerves. “Listen, you seem like a decent person,” Henry said, “but you’re burned. Your cover’s blown.”
She tilted her head to one side. “I was in the middle of a Marvin Gaye song, so I think I’ll just—”
“Name three buildings on the Darien Campus,” Henry said. “Come on, marine biologist, any three. Go ahead.”
“Really?” She looked at him dubiously.
“Really.”
She sighed. “Rhodes Hall, McWhorter Hall, Rooker Hall.”
“Now I know you’re DIA,” Henry said. “A civilian would have told me to piss off.”
“Not a polite civilian,” she said evenly.
“Damn, you’re good,” Henry said. “Keep it up, keep charming me—that’s straight out of the DIA playbook. Do you live near here?”
She blinked at him. “What?”
“Because I want to see your place—”
“Excuse me?” She drew back from him in alarm.
“—where I bet I won’t find a single textbook about marine biology, just a big ol’ file on Henry Brogan,” he finished, talking over her.
Suddenly she found her smile again, but not for him. Two fishermen were now standing behind Henry, patiently waiting their turn.
“This has been fun, really,” she said, “but I kinda have to do my job now. So if you don’t mind—”
“Okay, how about a drink, then?” Henry said. “Pelican Point?”
Her mouth fell open in genuine surprise. “Why? So you can keep interrogating me?”
“Maybe. Or maybe I’ll spend the whole time apologizing. Either way, they’ve got a great band on Mondays.”
Henry could almost see the wheels turning in her head like they had in Jack Willis. Should she say yes and then stand him up, should she drop the act and call for backup, were those two fishermen behind him going to start complaining, why the hell had she even gotten out of bed this morning.
“Seven o’clock,” she said finally. Her smile was hesitant and a bit wary. “But how about you leave the crazy at home? Please?”
Henry grinned without agreeing to anything.
Danny made a quick stop at her apartment to change into jeans and a UGA Darien t-shirt before going over to Pelican Point, getting there a little bit early so she could sit at the patio bar with a boilermaker and collect her thoughts. A couple of guys on the prowl tried their luck one after the other, a couple of minutes apart; to her relief, they didn’t try to change her mind when she made it clear she wasn’t interested. Some guys automatically approached any woman sitting alone in a bar; at least these two had taken no for an answer.