Actual Stop (Agent O’Connor #1)
Kara A. McLeod
Dedication
For Pumpkin, who handled my “f-you attitude” toward the apostrophe with all the grace and poise anyone could ever hope to muster. You can’t see it, obviously, but I’m clapping for you. I know how much you like that.
Chapter One
“Thanks for coming with me,” I said to Special Agent Meaghan Bates as we pulled out of the parking garage and onto Adams Street. “I really appreciate it.”
“You owe me,” Meaghan replied without hesitation. “I definitely didn’t want to be out here this late. What are we doing exactly?”
“Going on an interview.”
I didn’t even have to look at her to know she’d rolled her eyes. “Gee, thanks. Do you think you could be any more vague?”
I grinned at her sarcasm. “A buddy of mine from WFO asked me to take a run at a guy who passed a counterfeit hundred down in Maryland.”
“Since when do you do favors for the guys from Washington?”
“Since she did a favor for me. Quid pro quo and all that.”
“Why didn’t you just pass it along to the counterfeit squad?”
“Because she asked me.”
Meaghan sighed and slumped down in the passenger seat. “You know Mark’s going to crucify you for this if he finds out, right? That man has made it his mission in life to destroy you.”
“Trust me, I know.”
“So why are you taking this chance? Can’t you find less consequence-laden ways of annoying your boss like a normal person?”
“I told you, because she asked me. Besides, how’s he going to find out?”
“That man’s the devil. If there’s a way, he’ll find out.”
“I’ll keep you out of it, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“It’s only partly what I’m worried about.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“This has disaster written all over it,” Meaghan muttered.
I grinned again.
In case you’re wondering, I’m a special agent for the United States Secret Service. I won’t be offended if you don’t believe me. When most people think about Secret Service agents, they think of tall, broad-shouldered, dark-haired males wearing mirrored sunglasses, an earpiece, and no facial expression. Medium height, blond-haired, blue-eyed, smirking females never enter anyone’s mind.
Because of that, I’m a natural choice for undercover assignments. And my air of innocence helps me get anyone to tell me anything during an interview, given enough time. Usually my friends laugh when I say as much. Okay, they always laugh.
Most people think we work only out of Washington, D.C. and only protect the U.S. president and his family. Not true. President Lincoln actually founded the Secret Service in 1865 to combat the growing counterfeit-currency problem plaguing America. We didn’t even get in on the protection gig until 1901.
While every agent dreams of going to a permanent protection detail like the Presidential Protective Division or Vice Presidential Protective Division—commonly referred to as PPD and VPD, respectively—those have only so much room. The rest of us in the field—and we have offices covering every state, as well as several overseas—wait to be called to The Show by guarding visiting dignitaries and investigating various crimes. We deal with counterfeiting, financial-institution fraud, credit-card fraud, and identity theft. We also investigate threats against the president, vice-president, their families, former presidents, and foreign heads of state.
Meaghan and I are assigned to the Protective Intelligence Squad, which handles the threat cases. Any time anyone threatens a Secret Service protectee either verbally or in writing, an agent gets sent out to look into it. The majority of the threats we receive are made toward the president or the vice-president, but people also make them against former presidents and their spouses or other dignitaries sometimes, too.
Many times, the people making the threats are just venting. Or drunk. Sometimes they’re just plain nuts. Occasionally, it’s an interesting combination of the three. And every now and again, someone’s just acting like an idiot. But we take each and every threat seriously and investigate it thoroughly because the person making the threat might like to do someone else harm, if given the chance. That’s normally where I come in.
Today, however, I was getting into the spirit of Throwback Thursday. I’d transferred to the PI Squad from the Counterfeit Squad early last year, so I’d become accustomed to a certain type of investigation. This would be a good chance for me to reuse some techniques I hadn’t needed to employ in my PI cases.
My phone rang before Meaghan could find another way to tell me to punt this to the counterfeit guys, and I smiled when I saw the caller ID.
“Hey,” I said as I lifted the phone to my ear.
“Hey,” Lucia Mendez, the NYPD Intel detective I’d been seeing, replied. “Where are you?”
“On my way to an interview with Meaghan. Where are you?”
A long pause. “So, I guess it’s safe to say you forgot we had dinner plans.”
My heart sank. I was such an *. “Oh, shit. Luce, I’m so sorry.”
“Are you?”