Soon they set off to the west. Though both Melanie and Jack were in excellent condition, Melanie was the all-around better athlete. She’d started playing soccer when her father, an Air Force colonel, had been stationed in Egypt during her teenage years, and she’d taken to the sport, earning herself a full-ride scholarship to American University, where she played as a tough and dependable defender and even led her team as captain her senior year.
She’d kept her fitness up in grad school and in the two years since college with running and many angry hours spent in the gym.
Jack had gotten used to three- or four-mile jogs a few mornings a week, and this helped him keep pace with Melanie for much of the run, but he found himself sucking wind after the end of the fourth mile. As they passed the Smithsonian he fought the urge to ask her to slow down; his ego would not allow him to admit he was struggling.
He noticed her looking over at him several times just past the fifth mile, and he knew his face would be showing the strain he felt in every part of his body, but he did not acknowledge her.
She spoke in a relaxed tone. “Should we stop?”
“Why?” he asked, his voice clipped between hard gulps of air.
“Jack, if you need me to slow down a bit, all you have to do is say—”
“I’m fine. Race to the finish?” he asked, picking up the pace slightly and getting in front of her.
Melanie laughed. “No, thanks,” she said. “This pace is comfortable for me.”
Jack slowed back down a little, silently thanking God she did not call his bluff. He felt her eyes on him for another fifty yards or so, and he imagined she could see right through him. She was doing him a favor by not pushing him any further this morning, and he appreciated her for that.
All in all, they covered just over six miles. They finished at the Reflecting Pool, where they started, and as soon as they stopped, Jack doubled over, his hands on his knees.
“You okay?” she said as she put her hand on his back.
“Ye-yeah.” He struggled to recover. “I might have a little cold coming on.”
She patted his back and pulled her water bottle from her fanny pack and offered it to him. “Have a sip. Let’s go home. We can stop and get oranges on the way and I’ll make juice to go along with the omelet I am going to make you.”
Jack rose back up, squeezed a long stream of water into his mouth, and then kissed Melanie softly. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.” Melanie took her bottle back and took a long gulp of water, and then, as she looked down the length of the bottle, her eyes narrowed.
A man in a trench coat and sunglasses stood a hundred feet farther along the Capitol Reflecting Pool, facing her. He was looking at them both, and he made no effort to avoid Melanie’s gaze.
Jack was unaware of the man behind him. “Ready to head back to the car?”
Melanie looked away from the man quickly. “Yes. Let’s go.”
They walked toward Pennsylvania Avenue, away from the direction of the man in the trench coat, but had gotten no more than twenty yards when Melanie reached out and took Jack by the shoulder. “You know what? I hate to do this, but I just remembered I need to get home this morning.”
Ryan was surprised. “You aren’t coming back to my place?”
Her face registered disappointment. “No, I’m sorry. I’ve got something I have to take care of for my landlord.”
“You need help? I’m handy with a screwdriver.”
“No… no, thanks. I’ll take care of it.”
She saw Jack’s eyes flick around, as if he was looking for a clue as to what really caused her to change her mind.
Before he could question her further about the sudden change of plans, she asked, “We’re still having dinner tonight in Baltimore with your sister, aren’t we?”
Jack nodded slowly. “Yes.” He paused. “Is something wrong?”
“No, not at all. Other than the fact I forgot I had some things I needed to take care of around my place. I also have some stuff to do for work on Monday.”
“Something you can work on in your apartment, or are you going to Liberty Crossing?” Liberty Crossing was the name of the building complex that housed the ODNI, Melanie Kraft’s place of employment.
“Just open-source stuff. You know how I am always moonlighting.” She said it with a smile that she hoped did not appear as forced as it felt.
“I can give you a lift home,” he said, clearly not buying the story, but playing along.
“No need. I’ll just jump on the Metro at Archives, I’ll be home in no time.”
“All right,” said Jack, and he kissed her. “Have a good day. I’ll pick you up around five-thirty.”
“I can’t wait.” As he headed off to his car, she called out to him: “Pick up some OJ on the way home. Take care of that cold.”
“Thanks.”
Minutes later Melanie walked north past the Capital Grille toward the Archives Metro Station. As she turned the corner onto 6th Street, she found herself face-to-face with the man in the trench coat.
“Miss Kraft,” the man said with a polite smile.
Melanie stopped in her tracks, stared at him for several seconds, and then said, “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Still smiling, the man asked, “What do you mean?”
“You can’t just appear like this.”
“I can, and I did. I need just a moment of your time.”
“You can go to hell.”
“That’s not very polite, Miss Kraft.”
She began walking again up the hill toward the Metro. “He saw you. Jack saw you.”
He followed now, matching her brisk pace. “Do you know that, or do you just suspect that?”
“I assume it. You caught me off guard. I had to give him an obvious brush-off because I didn’t know if you were going to walk right up to us. He picked up on the fact that something was going on. He’s not an idiot.”
“Intellect doesn’t have anything to do with one’s ability to detect surveillance measures. That comes from training, Melanie.”
Kraft did not respond; she only continued walking.
“Where do you think he would have gotten that training?”
Melanie stopped now. “If you needed to talk, why didn’t you just call me?”
“Because I wanted to talk in person.”
“About what?”
Now the man affected a crooked smile. “Please, Melanie. This won’t take any time at all. I’m parked up on Indiana. We can find someplace quiet.”
“Dressed like this?” she asked. She looked down at her skintight Lycra running shorts and a form-fitting Puma jacket.
The man looked her up and down now, taking a little too long to do so. “Why not? I’d take you anywhere looking like that.”
Melanie groaned to herself. Darren Lipton was not the first lecherous asshole she had met while working in the federal government. He was, however, the first lecherous asshole Melanie had met who was also a senior special agent in the FBI, so she reluctantly followed him to his car.
SEVENTEEN
They walked together down the ramp of an underground parking garage that was nearly empty so early on a Saturday morning, and, at Lipton’s direction, they climbed in the front seats of his Toyota Sienna minivan. He put the key in the ignition, but he did not turn the engine over, and they sat in the silence and the near darkness of the garage. Only the faint light of a fluorescent bulb on the concrete wall illuminated their faces.
Lipton was in his fifties, but he wore his gray-blond hair in a boyish flop that somehow did not make him look any younger, just less put together. His face was pocked with acne scars and frown lines and he looked like he enjoyed sitting in the sun as much as he enjoyed drinking — Melanie pictured him doing a lot of both at the same time. He wore his aftershave so heavy that Melanie wondered if he filled his bathtub with it and took a dip each morning. He talked too loudly and too quickly, and, she had noticed the first time they met face-to-face, he went out of his way to stare at her chest while they talked, clearly taking pleasure from the fact that she knew what he was doing.