A Covert Affair (Deadly Ops #5)(3)
“I’m good.” For now. “You?”
“Yeah.”
Okay, then. That would have to do for now. As he settled up against the uncomfortable pile to take a short break, the image of Amelia filled his head. The thought of her surprised him, but maybe it shouldn’t have. He’d locked up his memories of her for years, compartmentalizing the way he had to in order to attempt to get over her.
For the first time in almost twelve years, he wanted to reach out to her, just hear her voice again. He could have died today. Hell, he still might die. The only thing he was sure of, he didn’t want to leave the earth without talking to her again, seeing her again.
Chapter 1
HUMINT—Human intelligence: information gathered from human sources. It is done openly and covertly.
“So, who’s the lucky lady?” Selene asked, raising an eyebrow as she straightened her white blond ponytail back into place. With multiple skill sets, most of them deadly, she was one of the best operatives Wesley Burkhart had ever trained.
Right now Wesley decided to ignore her as his two-year-old granddaughter bounced on his knee. “How was the run?”
“Uh-uh. You don’t care about my boring run.” Tall, lean, and strong, she strode to her refrigerator and pulled out a water bottle. “Spill the deets. I know you’re not heading back to D.C. tomorrow for work. And you’ve been acting weird lately. It’s a woman; I know it.” She pinned him with a pale blue stare that would have made a lot of people squirm.
But he was deputy director of the NSA. A stare didn’t affect him. Even if she was right about it being a woman. But the situation was complicated.
“Spill da deets!” Faith demanded, her little fist sweetly patting his face.
His heart tightened. He’d never been married or had kids. Though he considered Selene like a daughter to him. And now he considered Faith his granddaughter, whether they were related by blood or not. That shit was just unimportant details, because the two females in the kitchen with him were his family. He’d taken Selene in when she was a teenager—after she was rescued from a drug lord who’d kidnapped her—and she’d burrowed her way into his heart without trying.
As he cleared away the knot in his throat, his mouth pulled into a thin line. “You’re teaching her terrible slang.”
Selene just continued watching him as if she could read his mind. “I’ll figure out who she is. You know I will—and I won’t use my computer skills either. Just good old detective work.”
He snorted, then cringed when he smelled something unpleasantly pungent. Lifting Faith off his lap, he handed her to Selene. “I got the last one. Your turn.”
Her lips parted, likely to protest, but she stopped when his phone buzzed on the kitchen table. He was never off the clock, so it wasn’t a surprise that he was getting a call after what most civilians considered normal working hours on a Thursday evening. When he saw the phone number of an old friend, he frowned. This wouldn’t be work-related.
“Hey,” he said as Selene and Faith disappeared from the room.
“You busy?” Matias Deleon, one of his oldest friends, asked. Former CIA, now living in sunny Miami, he’d been enjoying his retirement for a little over a year.
“I’m free. Everything okay?”
There was a pause. Slight enough, but Wesley didn’t miss it. “Are you in Miami right now?”
So Matias was avoiding answering by asking a question. Typical. The retired spook knew that the NSA had a covert base in Miami. Whenever Wesley was in town, he got together with Matias. But he could tell this wasn’t a social call. “No.”
Another, longer pause. “I . . . need a favor.”
“Lay it on me.”
“It’s small scale for you, but I’m calling in all my favors for this. It’s about a girl.”
Surprise filtered through Wesley. Much like him, Matias had been a lifelong bachelor, married to the Navy first, where the two of them had originally met decades ago, then to his job. “Okay.”
“Before I retired I bought some condos when the real estate market in Florida crashed. Instead of flipping them, I decided to rent them out, especially since I’m living here to manage them. It’s been a good investment.”
Wesley pulled a water bottle from the fridge and stayed silent as Matias got to his point, which sometimes took a while. They’d been friends a long time and Wesley knew how the man operated.
“One of my renters is—was—a young girl about twenty. She didn’t have much of a credit history, but she’s had a hard life, so I went with my gut and gave her a chance. She’s been the perfect tenant. More than a tenant if I’m being honest. She’s become like a daughter to me.” He snorted self-deprecatingly. “Or maybe like a granddaughter. Whatever. She’s a good kid and she’s gone missing. It’s been about a month.”
Finding missing people wasn’t remotely his specialty, but Wesley had resources he’d lend to Matias if he was able. Before he could respond, his friend continued.
“She’s been living in the condo almost as long as I’ve been in Miami. We have dinner together twice a week and sometimes lunch more than that. She’s been working and putting herself through college, going part-time. Then out of the blue I get a letter from her—a fucking letter, not an e-mail—with the current and next month’s rent, explaining that she’s found a new job and will be moving out of the city. The letter read as if it was from a tenant to an owner with no clear personal relationship. Her place had been cleaned out and all her accounts closed. Not that she had many. There’s been no activity on her one credit card, and her cell phone has been shut off. By her, or someone claiming to be her. It’s not like she lapsed in paying her bills, she just fell off the grid.”