Spy Games (Tarnished Heroes #1)(38)
Rand pushed a hotel uniform at her.
“Come on. We need to get in place and ready to listen. Change clothes.”
Chapter Nine
Irene kept her head up, despite wanting to drop dead in her pumps.
It’d already been a long day, and it was only going to get longer. The key was pushing forward as if nothing were wrong. As if she hadn’t left her sister across an ocean in the hands of people who couldn’t even understand her if something went wrong.
She stepped into the elevator and swiped her badge. The doors shut, giving her a few blessed moments of peace. She pushed her shoulders back and sucked down a deep breath of air.
The problem with being a black woman in a predominantly white male department was that no one cut her any slack. Ever. And she was fine with it. She’d gone through the same training as the boys and held her own. She could carry on, doing the same thing as always now.
Irene was stronger than this.
She’d weathered the death of her mother, her marriage, her father, her aunt—hell, even the death of her child. Just because Anna was all the family Irene had left didn’t make this any more of a stressful situation. Everything else that went along with it did.
The elevator doors opened, dumping her out on her floor. She strode out, making straight for her office. Technically, she was late, but doing what they did meant keeping strange hours. No one would—or could—throw shade her way. She had been doing company work, after all.
Irene unlocked her office and pulled the trash bin in after her. Some called her paranoid for not wanting even the cleaning staff in her office without her being present. That was fine. Those people hadn’t been there for some of the storms she’d weathered. If they had, maybe they’d be as cautious as she was.
She booted up her computer and got her things situated. After a week out of the office, there was plenty to catch up on. The receiving tray on her door was full, as was her inbox.
It was going to be one very long day. She blew out a breath, cracked her knuckles, and picked up her pen. Before she could begin slaying the red dragon of emails and tasks, she had to have a plan.
“Irene, there you are.”
She glanced up at the pretty boy closing her office door. “Something I can help you with?” She put a little of that Southern drawl into her voice while tapping her pen on the legal pad. The nerve of some of these guys. Mitch was one of the better ones, but that wasn’t saying much when Irene only knew him in passing.
“Have you spoken with your asset, Sarah Collins?” Mitch McConnel turned and perched on the arm of the guest chair currently holding Irene’s tote.
The tote with all her files on the suspicious cases in it. The files she wasn’t supposed to remove from the building.
Shit.
She really was losing her mind if she hadn’t done something about those already. Like put them the fuck away.
“Irene?”
“No, not since our handoff a week ago.” Irene folded her hands on top of the desk to keep the tremors at bay. “What’s up?”
“Someone burned her.” Mitch stared at her, those three words stabbing deep.
“Excuse me?” Irene blinked. “Back up. Start at the beginning. What?”
Mitch began at Sarah’s intended drop in Seoul, which she’d performed flawlessly a dozen or more times, and ended with some sort of finger-pointing story, laying blame on Hector Martinez, the nice guy down the hall.
“Hold up.” Irene pressed her fingertips to her temples. Was Mitch saying what she thought he was saying?
“We need to force Hector into sharing operational control with us. My man died because of this, and he could get your girl killed, too. We can’t trust him.”
Irene swallowed.
Well, this was one way to skin the cat. Talk about her prey coming to her.
…
Rand studied the piece of paper as he would the lay of the land. Weighing tricky situations, the danger of being caught with his back up against the wall, or simply hoodwinked. Sarah played it safe, so he couldn’t.
He slashed two lines, creating an X on the grid, and passed the tablet to Sarah.
“Hmm.” She tapped her pen on the paper once, twice, then scribbled an O.
At least now he had someone to play tic-tac-toe with. Trying to beat himself was getting pretty boring.
“Anything?” he asked.
“Not really, they’re talking about interoffice politics. It’s…boring. I mean, some of these people I know, so it’s interesting in sort of a rubbernecking kind of way to hear them talk, but it’s not informative, you know?”
Rand sighed.
It would be too much to ask for the Chinese delegation to lay out their entire dastardly plan while they were being monitored.
Surveillance was about as exciting as watching paint dry. Worse for him, since all he was doing was waiting for Sarah to say something worth writing down. She at least got to listen to the social drama of it.
“Did your guy ever say if your people got out okay?” Sarah asked.
“They should be in the UK by now. Things like that take time. There could’ve been a delay. I’d hope someone would tell me something next time we talk.” Rand couldn’t help but be proud of Sarah. Sure, she might just be a delivery girl, but she was smart. Circumspect. Careful. Even in this somewhat secure location she wouldn’t use places, names, identifiers. As much as he hated to admit it, the company had chosen well when they’d picked her.