Dynasties:The Elliots, Books 7-12 Read online

  “He showed me a badge,” Mrs. Pfluger said innocently, having no clue the badge he’d shown her was fake and could be bought on any street corner in D.C. “Anyway, he has trustworthy eyes. He’ll take care of you.”

  “I’m counting on it,” Lucy said, giving Bryan a meaningful look. “Can we go now?”

  Bryan thanked Lucy’s elderly neighbor, too, then “helped” Lucy out the door and down the wheelchair ramp.

  “Keep your head down. That’s it,” he whispered. “You’re doing great. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were someone’s grandmother.” But he did know better. The body that had been pressed against his when she’d fallen on him was not the slightest bit grandmotherly. In fact, he’d been surprised at how slim and firm she was beneath the frumpy suit she’d worn.

  His Mercedes was parked at the curb. Knowing the town house might be under surveillance, he’d made no attempt to be stealthy, walking right up to the neighbor’s door and ringing the bell. He’d known she would be home. He’d also known she’d been an army nurse in Korea and her husband had been a World War II veteran. He’d been counting on her patriotism to make her willing to help him out, and he’d been right.

  As he usually was. He liked to cover all the bases.

  As soon as the motor started and the car was underway, he relaxed slightly. If anyone had been watching, Lucy’s old-lady act had fooled them. No one was following.

  Bryan drove to a mall parking lot and pulled the Mercedes into a spot fairly close to where he’d found it.

  “Why are we stopping here?” Lucy asked.

  “Switching cars.” He turned off the engine and pulled his Multi-Key from the ignition.

  “What is that?” Lucy asked, pointing to the strange-looking device. Then she gasped. “Oh my God, you stole this car!”

  “Just borrowed it. The owner is blissfully shopping at Marshall Fields. She’ll never know.”

  “That is really scary,” Lucy said. “That such a device even exists, and that our government employees steal cars.”

  “Government employees do a lot worse than steal cars, I’m afraid,” he said as they exited the Mercedes. Unfortunately, he’d just found out the hard way what certain government employees were capable of.

  Lucy grabbed the walker from the back seat, but she didn’t use it. She walked beside him with a spring in her step, lithe and graceful. He led her to the car he’d arrived in, a silver Jaguar XJE. Since he’d been driving his personal wheels and not a “company car,” he hadn’t wanted to risk it being identified. Thus the switcheroo.

  “Hmm, I liked this even better than the Mercedes,” she commented as she put the walker in the trunk. “Is this one stolen, too?”

  “No, this one’s mine.”

  “I hadn’t realized government employees earned enough money to afford a Jag.”

  “We don’t. My government salary isn’t my only source of income.” He’d never imagined his cover business, the one he set up to satisfy friends and family, would turn so lucrative. He opened the passenger door for her. “You can ditch the disguise, now. We’re safe.”

  “Thank God.” She pulled off the wig. Her real hair pulled loose from its bun in the process, spilling over her shoulders in a rich chestnut cascade. He’d never found brown hair all that exciting before, but Lucy’s was thick and luscious.

  By the time he’d made it around to the driver’s side, Lucy was out of her housecoat, which she’d thrown on over her white tailored blouse. Then she cursed. “I forgot my jeans.”

  “No, I put them in—” Then he stopped. He’d been so fascinated watching Lucy shimmy out of them, revealing a glimpse of her sensible white panties, that he had forgotten to bring the jeans along. “We’ll get you some clothes, don’t worry.”

  He had no business thinking about Lucy’s panties, sensible or otherwise. He had a helluva problem here.

  Finding the listening devices was disturbing enough. He’d been sure Lucy was exaggerating, that no one was following her or sneaking into her home. But she hadn’t installed those listening devices herself.

  In fact, once he’d examined the bug in her telephone, the list of suspects who could have planted it had shrunk to a handful. That bug was the latest technology, purchased from Russia. So new, in fact, that only his agency had access to it. Besides the Russians, of course. And he didn’t think the Russians were involved in this.

  Someone in his own organization had betrayed him, which meant his life and Lucy’s weren’t worth a used teabag unless he found out which agent was the Benedict Arnold—and neutralized him or her, fast.

  Two

  They drove in silence for a few minutes. Bryan took a circuitous route out of the city, darting on and off the freeway to be absolutely certain they weren’t being followed. Then he headed north on Interstate 95 as a plan slowly formed.

  “Are you okay?” he asked Lucy. She was awfully quiet. He’d expected her to be peppering him with questions about where they were going and what would happen next, questions to which he didn’t have all the answers.

  “I’m fine.”

  “I’m sorry I put you in danger.”

  “I knew what I was getting into when I signed on for this gig. You told me there would be some risk.”

  She didn’t know the half of it. He’d never expected the risk to come from his own people. “You did great. I wish we could have finished the job, though.”

  “I did.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “After I talked to you, I knew I wouldn’t be returning to Alliance Trust. So I threw caution out the window. Before, I was careful to cover my tracks when I downloaded information. I figured that didn’t matter anymore. So I just downloaded everything in sight. Practically the whole computer system. I can’t believe how much that little memory stick holds.”

  “You downloaded everything?” he asked, hardly able to believe it.

  “Everything I’ll need. It will take some time to go through it all. Whoever was embezzling from the retirement funds was very sneaky. But I’ve got calendars, phone lists, log-on and log-off times, passwords, who attended what meeting when. Using a process of elimination, I can figure out who made the illicit withdrawals—I know I can.”

  “You won’t have to. The agency has some of the best minds in the country—” He stopped. Until he knew who had betrayed him, he didn’t dare turn this information over to anyone. One keystroke, and all of the evidence Lucy had risked her life for could be erased.

  “I could do it,” Lucy said. “I’m very good at puzzles. Maybe your organization has experts and high-tech equipment, but I know the people involved. I know how everything worked at that bank. No one is more qualified than me to analyze this data.”

  She might just be right. “What will you need?”

  “A computer powerful enough to handle the amount of data involved. A quiet place to work. That’s it.”

  The plan he’d been working on earlier became a bit firmer in his mind. It was kind of crazy. But he didn’t know any other way to keep Lucy safe. He had access to any number of safe houses, but safe from whom? Everyone who was part of this mission knew those houses, too—Tarantula, Stungun, Orchid and his immediate supervisor, Siberia. His list of suspects. Four people whom, until an hour ago, he would have trusted with his life.

  “I think I can accommodate you,” he said.

  “Okay, then.” She settled back into her seat, looking satisfied. “Where are we going?”

  Finally. He’d wondered when she would get around to asking that. “New York.”

  “Your home turf.”

  Bryan felt a prickle of apprehension. How did she know that?

  “Your accent,” she said before he had a chance to ask. “I went to school with a guy from New York. Long Island. You sound just like him.”

  Observant little thing, wasn’t she? During his training, he’d learned to erase every trace of accent from his voice. His safety, and that of his wealthy family, depended on keeping every
detail of his personal life separate from his life at the agency. It was like that for all the agents he worked with. They all used their code names, and they never revealed any personal information for any reason.

  How had he let his guard down long enough that Lucy had figured out where he was from? Maybe he was slipping. Because of the intense pressure, a lot of agents didn’t last long in the field.

  “You work for the CIA?” she asked.

  He used to. They’d recruited him in college, when he’d been studying business management with every intention of joining the family business, Elliott Publication Holdings. They said it was because of his straight As and his uncommon athleticism. He’d worked a lot of undercover.

  Then a nameless, faceless person had recruited him to a newly formed investigative arm of Homeland Security, an agency so secret it didn’t have a name. The agency had no central office, and it wasn’t mentioned in the national budget. Basically it didn’t exist.

  Lying usually came easily to him. But for some reason he didn’t want to lie straight-out to Lucy. He settled for a partial truth. “I work for Homeland Security.”

  “I didn’t know Homeland Security had its own spies.”

  “Things are still evolving there.”

  “How does one become a spy?”

  “Why, are you interested in joining up?”

  “Maybe. Anything’s better than what I was doing.”

  He’d only been kidding, but she was serious. “So why did you work at a bank if you didn’t like it?”

  She shrugged. “It was expected of me. And the money was pretty good. I’d been thinking about doing something else, though.”

  “Like what?”

  “I dunno. Running away and joining the circus, maybe. I’d make a good lion tamer.”

  “You?” he blurted out, then wished he hadn’t, given Lucy’s reaction. He’d insulted her.

  “Why couldn’t I tame lions?”

  “I’m sure you could. You could poke them with umbrellas.”

  “I think you’re making fun of me. But you didn’t think it was so funny when I had you on the floor. I almost gave you an impromptu tracheotomy with my trusty umbrella.” She looked around the car. “Oh, we left it behind. I liked that umbrella.”

  “I’ll buy you a new one,” he said, feeling a bit sorry for her. Her life had been disrupted, and it would never be the same. He didn’t think that fact had sunk into her head yet.

  “We won’t be going back, then,” she said.

  “Not in the foreseeable future.”

  “Good. If I’d had to spend one more night in that boring town house with its boring white walls, wearing those boring suits, I’d have slit my wrists.”

  She’d surprised him again. He’d done a considerable amount of research on Miss Lucy Miller. She came from a solid Kansas farming family, had attended the state university, got good grades. She’d been working at a job for which she was underqualified, but her employee reviews had come up glowing.

  The only mystery about Lucy Miller was a period of about two years shortly after her college graduation, for which Bryan could not unearth much information. Her passport indicated she’d done some traveling abroad. The best he could figure, she’d been soaking up some culture before tying herself down to a serious career. She had an older brother who lived in Holland, so she might have been staying with him.

  “My family will be worried,” she said.

  “You won’t be able to contact them.”

  “Ever?” she asked in a small voice. “Am I going into the witness protection program?”

  “Is that what you want?”

  She sighed. “I could stand a new identity. I’ve always hated the name Lucy. But I want to pick the name.”

  “What would you pick?”

  “Certainly not something as silly as Casanova—though I guess given the way you schmoozed Mrs. Pfluger, it fits. She’s always been mean as a snake to me.”

  “Casanova wasn’t my idea. You can call me Bryan.” She would have learned his real name soon enough.

  “And you can call me…Lindsay. Lindsay Morgan.”

  “Sounds very sophisticated. Does it have any significance? Do you know anyone named Lindsay? Or Morgan?”

  “No. I’ve always liked the actress Lindsay Wagner. You know, the Bionic Woman. I catch it on late-night TV. And Morgan—I don’t know. I pulled it out of thin air.”

  Exactly what Bryan wanted to hear. “Then Lindsay Morgan it is. Get used to it.”

  Oh, God, she thought, he was serious. She was really getting a new identity. A new life. A new job, a new home, maybe somewhere exciting like New York. She knew she should be terrified. Ruthless criminals with ties to international terrorism had broken into her home and planted bugs. They might even now be searching for her, intending to kill her.

  But she could feel nothing but anticipation.

  She wished her parents didn’t have to worry, though. She wanted to ask Bryan if she would ever see them again. But she had a feeling he really didn’t know the answer to that question. Something was troubling him. She got the feeling he was on shaky ground, that the turn this investigation had taken had thrown him for a loop.

  He hadn’t believed her when she’d told him she was being followed. He’d only come to her town house because she’d threatened to disappear with all the data. He’d been very surprised to discover she was right, that the operation was blown to bits.

  Did he suspect she was the one who’d blown it?

  “I didn’t give myself away,” she said abruptly, wanting to clear this up right now. “I was extremely careful. Until today I did the downloading only five or ten minutes at a time, always when I was alone in my office, the door closed. I never said anything to anyone. Ever. And no one had access to the memory stick. I kept it in my bra.”

  He looked over at her. “Really? Is it there now?”

  “Yes.”

  The car swerved slightly, and not for any apparent reason. Lucy wondered if something as innocent as mentioning her bra had startled Bryan. But how could it? The guy was a spy—he’d probably seen things unimaginable to normal people. Surely the mention of women’s underwear wouldn’t faze him.

  Especially her underwear, which was about as boring as underwear could get.

  It had been a very long time since anything she said or did had any effect on the opposite sex. She had buried that flirtatious, reckless girl under a frumpy suit, thick glasses and mousy hair, and she’d done it for a reason, she reminded herself.

  So Bryan had probably been avoiding a bump in the road.

  They drove for almost five hours, but the days were long in July, so it was still daylight when they hit New York. Lucy had been to the city many times, but it had been a while, and she’d forgotten how much she loved it. New York had an energy unlike any other city in the universe. Even if she’d had her eyes closed, she’d have known she was here. The traffic noise and exhaust fumes were peculiar only to this place.

  “Are we staying in Manhattan?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you putting me up in a hotel?”

  “No. I don’t want to go anyplace where ID is required until we get your new name officially established.”

  “A safe house, then?”

  “The safest.”

  He flashed her a brief smile, and it was the first time she’d seen him looking anything but grim since they’d met. That smile did things to her insides. No wonder cranky Mrs. Pfluger had become so cooperative. If Bryan had taken ten more minutes, the older woman probably would have dropped her own pants. Jeez, Lucy couldn’t believe she’d taken off her jeans in front of a strange man. But she’d been just panicked enough not to care.

  They’d crossed over to Manhattan via the Lincoln Tunnel, and in midtown they were surrounded by skyscrapers, buses, cars, taxis and pedestrians. People were everywhere. And such interesting people! All colors, shapes and sizes. Some were elegantly dressed—theatergoers on their way
to catch the curtain perhaps. Some in bedraggled business attire, waving down taxis, looked like they were just getting off from a long day at the office. And of course there were the ubiquitous colorful characters—hot-dog vendors, shady men selling designer-watch knock-offs and bootleg DVDs, and your garden-variety vagrants.

  She’d forgotten how much she loved this city, though it held some painful reminders, as well. Normally she didn’t allow herself to think about her last time here, when she’d made a headlong dash home, crying the entire way. But now she did, and she found the pain wasn’t so sharp anymore. She felt more sad and wistful than anything.

  She’d healed during the past two years. She’d needed the downtime, the safe haven her job at the bank had provided. But she was ready to move on now—older and wiser. She was actually grateful to the embezzler, whoever he or she was, for shaking her out of her boring, complacent life, or she might have remained there indefinitely, afraid to live again.

  She was living now, that was for sure. Riding up Tenth Avenue in a Jaguar with a spy. Not your everyday occurrence.

  Lucy cracked open her window, and the wonderful city smells assailed her. She got a whiff of some exotic food—garlic, tarragon, curry—and her stomach rumbled. It occurred to her she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and even then she’d barely managed to choke down some yogurt. She’d been too nervous about her situation.

  “I’m starving,” she said. “Any chance this safe house will have food in the fridge? Or maybe we can order in Chinese?” she asked hopefully.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll feed you.”

  They were driving through the Upper West Side now, the street lined with posh shops, trendy restaurants and bodegas, and residential high-rises where the beautiful people lived. Most of her time in New York had been spent around here, near Cruz’s apartment.

  They passed a restaurant called Une Nuit—“One Night” in French. Though it was early by Manhattan standards, a line of trendily dressed hopefuls was already forming at the door.

  “I read about that place,” she said, nodding toward it. “In People magazine, I think. Or maybe The Buzz. Some movie star had a birthday party there or something.”