“Stay with me,” Lori whispered to Jake.
“What about keeping up appearances?” he asked her.
“Screw that.”
Jake put his hand on her leg and said, “All right.”
They spent the next twenty-four hours not even leaving Lori’s apartment. They called out for pizza and Chinese. And they made love as often as physically possible. The two of them were good together, but he had no idea where this was going. Those who got too close to him ended up dead. He couldn’t live with that outcome for Lori.
The next evening, while Lori was taking a long shower, Jake accessed the internet for a little research. She came out naked with a towel wrapped over her hair like a turban. My God, Jake thought. Her body was perfect.
“What will it be tonight?” she asked.
His eyes scanned her body from top to bottom and then back up again. “This works for me.”
She smiled. “I was talking about dinner.”
“Oh. I thought the turban meant you wanted Indian food tonight.”
She stepped in front of him, her nakedness within touch. “Perhaps the Kama Sutra first, and then we can call out for Indian.”
He couldn’t argue with her logic.
Much later, after eating, Jake opened a bottle of wine and handed a glass to Lori. She got only a few sips down before she started to sway. Jake helped her to her bedroom and tucked her under the covers.
He checked his watch and then found his backpack and retrieved one of the Glocks. He pulled out the magazine and flipped out the bullets onto the living room coffee table. Then he put on some surgical gloves and wiped down the bullet brass before putting the bullets back into the magazine. Then he also wiped down the magazine and the gun itself.
Jake glanced back to the bedroom. He hated to slip Lori a Mickey, but he also needed to take some time to finish something.
He spent the next couple of hours traveling by bus, by subway and by simply walking, until he got to a secluded house in Arlington, Virginia. It was a two story raised ranch with massive deciduous trees in the back yard. In the darkness closing in on midnight, only a couple of street lights gave Jake any view at all of the neighborhood.
It took Jake less than two minutes to break through the security system for this house. Getting in the place took another three minutes.
Knowing that his target lived alone, Jake made his way through the house with a small pen light with a red lens. Finding the master bedroom on the second floor was easy. Jake just followed the heavy breathing.
Now he slipped the 9mm auto from his right pocket and sat in a chair at the side of the bed, simply watching the man sleep. Since finding out about the man, Jake had run every possible scenario through his mind.
Finally, he aimed his gun at the man and clicked on a small table lamp.
The man with the red hair shot up in bed, saw Jake, and then reached for the nightstand drawer. “I wouldn’t,” Jake told him. Then he reached into the drawer and found the man’s handgun — a 9mm Sig Sauer almost identical to the one he had used in Korea.
The man in bed said, “What do you want?”
“You know who I am.” It wasn’t a question.
The redhead nodded. “Jake Adams.”
“Then you know why I’m here.”
“I didn’t…”
“Shut up. You killed my friend, Toni Contardo. Don’t deny it. I know who pays you. I’ve tracked payments to you from both a company in South Korea, Gang-Ho Industries, and the North Korean government.” He paused to see the man’s freckled face turn as red as his hair.
“That bitch deserved it,” the Lobbyist said, his words coming out like spit.
Jake casually raised his aim and shot the man in the forehead with the 9mm. The Lobbyist crumpled onto the bed like a sack of potatoes. He stood up, put the man’s gun back into the nightstand drawer, found the spent brass and shoved it into his pocket, and then walked away. After he left the house, he charged the security system again. Then he disposed of the Glock — the barrel in the Potomac River, and other parts scattered around the city as Jake made his way back to Lori’s apartment.
Before going to bed, he emptied three bottles of wine into the sink and left the empties as remnants of a wild night that never happened.
In the morning, the late morning, Lori finally woke up and went to the bathroom. Her disposition was a cross between hung over and uncertain as she entered the kitchen from the bedroom.
Jake was drinking his second cup of coffee and checking his e-mail on his phone. “You all right?” he asked her.
She rubbed her hands through her hair and glanced at the empty bottles of wine. “Wow, did we drink all that?”
“I helped a little,” Jake said.
Lori poured herself a cup of coffee and warmed her hands with the mug. “What are your plans today?”
“I have two things,” he said. “First, I have to head over to the Agency and download a copy of the professor’s work for them.”
“The Slavs took the copy from your friend, right?”
“Yes. But they’ll never break the encryption.”
“Then what?”
“The Agency is having a memorial service for Toni this afternoon. They’ll put a star on their wall for her also.”
“Could I go with you?” she asked.
“You probably shouldn’t. It will be mostly family and old friends.”
“Well, I don’t know if I’ll feel better by then anyway. This has never happened to me before.”
“What? Forget what happened the night before?”
She shrugged. “I remember all the sex and the Indian food. But after that…”
He felt like shit having to lie to her, but there was no way she could find out what he’d done after leaving her.
Jake’s phone buzzed and he checked his text. It was from his brother in Montana asking if he still needed help at the cabin.
“Crap!”
“What?”
“I forgot all about leaving Professor Tramil at my cabin in Montana. I’ll need to leave in the morning to retrieve him and deliver him to DARPA.”
“Do you need some company? I could use another trip to Montana.”
He took her coffee cup from her and set it on the counter. Then he hugged her and said, “That would be great, Lori.”
That afternoon, after Jake first downloaded the professor’s work and handed it over to the Director, Kurt Jenkins, Jake sat in the back while his old friend spoke about Toni and they revealed the star on the Memorial Wall. Although family would know of Toni’s heroic service, none would know the specifics of her actions.
While the ceremony took place, Jake tried his best to hold back tears, his thoughts drifting to the good times he and Toni had experienced over the years, from their first meeting in Italy as young officers, to their encounter at the DC hotel recently. He noticed a woman sitting in the front row next to a young Army lieutenant. Jake looked more carefully and saw that it was Toni’s sister, whom he had only met a couple of times over the years. CIA operatives usually kept their personal lives secret, but Toni had opened up to Jake. But it had been at least ten years since their last meeting.
After the ceremony, folks wandered about. Those who were still active in the Agency probably went back to their offices to work.
Jake wasn’t sure Toni’s sister, Francesca, would want to see him. So he started to wander toward the front entrance.
“Jake,” a woman said.
He turned to see Francesca, along with the Army lieutenant, heading his way. She stopped and said something to the young, chiseled man, and he nodded and stood back a ways.
Francesca embraced Jake for a long minute. Then she pulled back and said, “I’m so glad you could make it.”
“I almost didn’t,” Jake said. “I was out of the country.”