Calculated deception, p.16
Calculated Deception, page 16
* * *
Ree had just left the office to meet the team in the van when Matt offered to walk her to her car or home since it was getting darker out as the days grew shorter. Ree, unable to find a way to decline without admitting she was working with the FBI and they wanted her to be careful, accepted Matt’s offer. She didn’t sense any nefarious motive from him, and the team seemed disinterested in pursuing him as a suspect when she’d asked. Perhaps his desire to be a gentleman had been hyper-developed for some reason. There were worse qualities to have in a friend. In case she was wrong, Ree made it a point to pass the surveillance van on her way home.
* * *
Expecting to see Ree at any moment, Parker looked out the window of the van and saw her walk by with a tall man at her side. He could spot Matt Brown from a mile away. While his laptop bag, polo, and khakis blended in with other engineering professors, Parker’s trained eye saw a quiet strength in his mannerisms and build that didn’t quite fit in on campus. Parker waited until they turned the corner and then sprinted down a side street to keep them in view. Even if Parker wasn’t allowed to consider Matt a suspect, Ree shouldn’t be alone with him until this case was solved.
* * *
Not far from her house, Ree spotted Parker carrying a messenger bag and approaching at a casual pace from the opposite direction. He reached them and leaned over to give Ree a quick kiss on the cheek. “Hey, babe. How was your day? Oh, hey, Matt. Thanks for walking Ree home.”
“No problem. I get to work with her every day, so I thought it would be a nice way to return the favor,” Matt said, his smile amused rather than annoyed.
Ree narrowed her eyes at both of the men standing in front of her. Ree was usually the last to notice any wordless messages expressed in her presence, but she was pretty certain by their postures and the tone of their exchange that things wouldn’t be too different if they were two dogs and she was a fire hydrant.
Ree turned to Matt. “Thank you, Matt. I appreciate the company.” Turning towards Parker and shooting her eye lasers, she said, “Come inside, dear.”
Parker followed Ree inside. She shut the door behind him before placing her hands on her hips. “Seriously, Parker. You need to tone it down. He’s a nice guy.”
“Yes, he probably is. Or he’s helping one of his students commit murder. I happen to agree with your nice guy assessment, but I’m not willing to risk your life on probably.”
Ree wrinkled her nose at him. “Can’t you just let me have a good mad once in a while?”
Parker grinned. “Don’t want you getting bored. But hey, peace offering – I think we know who our bad guy is.”
“Well, hopefully, it’s not Simon, since I’ve been in the lab alone with him.” Ree shivered and looked towards Parker hopefully. Her imagination had been running unchecked for the last several hours, and it would be reassuring to find out she was blowing the danger out of proportion.
“Yeah, I hope you were nice to him because the odds are 10:1 that he’s not on the same page you are about preserving human life.”
“I guess I better fill you in on what happened today. I think it might actually help.”
Parker’s interest fully piqued, he gestured to Ree’s living room, where they both sat on the couch. Her front door opened, and Mike and Alexis filed in, locking the door behind them.
Alexis was talking into her phone and looked apologetically to Parker and Mike. Mike rolled his neck to crack it, tapping his foot impatiently, as if listening to one half of a conversation was pure torture. Alexis accommodated his annoyance by shooting him an exasperated look.
“Yes, thank you, Jordan. I appreciate your work. We’ll keep you up to date.” Alexis ended the conversation and sat on the loveseat across from Parker and Ree, next to Mike. Ree had retrieved some water bottles from the kitchen, and she tossed one to Alexis.
Ree opened her own water bottle. “Please tell me you guys figured this out today, and you are arresting someone tomorrow. The suspense is killing me.”
Alexis rubbed the back of her neck. “We just went from about 50 percent sure to about 90 percent sure in the last five minutes, but unfortunately, the stakes just got raised. We’re piecing together the evidence, and this smells like an operation with high-level backing. We’ve got a big problem here, guys. We can’t arrest him.”
“Wait. You can’t arrest him? So, we just quit? That’s it?” Ree asked.
“No,” Mike and Parker said at the same time, but then said nothing else. Mike focused on a spot on the ceiling with a disgusted look on his face, and Parker clenched his fists, mouth pressed together.
After a long silence, Parker unclenched his fists and said, “We just have to be more discreet.”
Ree jumped up from the couch and started to pace. “How could we possibly be more discreet? I’ve spent the last several weeks making new friends, avoiding the old ones, not talking to my family in the event I give something away, and overanalyzing every action of every human being I talk to. I fail to understand how we could possibly be more discreet. Obvious, yes. Devious, yes. Discreet, no.” Ree paused. “Give me a minute.”
Ree walked to the kitchen to get something stronger than water for the rest of their conversation. She had leftover wine and a clean wineglass. It wouldn’t solve her problem but would calm her nerves, at least for the next ten minutes. And she was going to need chocolate. There was a large bar of extra dark stashed next to the wine glasses for emergencies, and this definitely qualified.
* * *
“Told you she’d be pissed,” Alexis said to Mike as soon as Ree was out of earshot. He pulled five dollars out of his wallet and handed it over.
“Seriously, guys?” Parker said, shaking his head. “If she catches you, it’s only going to make it worse.”
“What’s going to get worse?” Ree mumbled from the doorway, holding one hand over her mouthful of chocolate while the other held her wine glass.
“We were going to do an investigation into Simon after hours and wanted to keep you out of it,” Alexis offered.
* * *
Ree took the bait and swallowed a large sip of wine to wash down her stress chocolate. She sputtered and caught her breath before squeaking out, “I don’t know if you need to. This afternoon, Simon told Ivan his grandmother was sick, and he wanted to go back to Ghana. He asked to take his machine with him. Then, Ivan said they needed someone over there within the next month due to a request from an outside donor. It can’t be coincidence. Oh, and he was trying to get one of the undergrads to give him rocket fuel on the side, which is not only odd, but also raised some flags with another student I talked to.”
“Is it possible that someone could hide these components by making them look like something else?” Parker asked Ree.
“You could do any number of things, Parker. If you’re talking about a control system, what is that but a bunch of electronics and some sort of power supply? What if his test equipment is the key to this whole operation? Doesn’t it make sense that Simon doesn’t have a working machine if it’s designed to do something altogether opposite of what he’s saying it can? Or, if you weren’t even trying to be clever about it, you could build a false bottom and store everything in there. Test equipment can get pretty big.” Ree slowed her pacing to take another sip of wine. “And wouldn’t that be the perfect explanation as to why the guy has been so unproductive? I would think that if you are distracted, trying to build a missile from the ground up, you wouldn’t have a lot of extra time to do your actual job. And, if your boss isn’t happy with the work you have been doing, when you ask to leave, they’re happy to see you go. Sounds like a rock-solid plan to me.”
“What about this outside donor?” Mike asked. “Do you think he’s an accomplice?”
Alexis shook her head. “Doubtful. We looked into the guy’s emails. He sent a transfer of money after he received a request from an old friend to fund a grant to the lab. Everything else about him seems clean. We’ll check it, but he looks like a pawn.”
“So, what do we do?” Ree asked.
“The only thing we can do. We need to go talk to Simon and find out what we can without tipping him off or backing him into a corner. Then we need to have a meeting with the Chief and figure out how to stop him without ruining relationships with any of our key allies,” Parker said.
“Oh. Well, that sounds simple.” Ree said, and took another long drink of her wine.
“All in a day’s work.” Mike tipped his water towards her in salute while Ree broke off another chunk of dark chocolate.
“Says the guy who sits in the van,” Alexis muttered.
“Says the guy who saves your bacon if you get in trouble,” Mike corrected.
“One more thing,” Alexis said. “I don’t know if it’s relevant, but Jordan was able to dig into Simon’s history. It looks like his parents were killed in a car crash when he was still a teenager, and he joined the military shortly thereafter. Jordan is trying to find out if he has more family or contacts in the area that might help us understand his motive or target. I’ll tell him to keep an eye out for a sick grandmother.”
“So we’ll find out if he’s on a mission or just a special kind of crazy?” Mike asked.
Alexis rolled her eyes. “Who says he can’t be both? But, yeah, that’s what we’re hoping.”
Before they ended their meeting, the team worked out the details of how they would approach their latest suspect. Parker and Ree would find out what they could from talking with Simon the following day. If they didn’t find anything at that time, they would have to take the risk of sending in a search team to Simon’s house. The FBI didn’t know the extent of the team Simon had in place, and adding more FBI agents to the mix was a big hammer to bring down without tipping anyone off.
As they stood to leave, Parker made a game-time decision. “Hey, Alexis, you mind if I take the watch tonight? I’d like to make some plans with Ree about how we’re going to approach Simon tomorrow.”
“No problem, boss. As long as you order Mike to stop watching so much football. I got enough exposure to that growing up with three brothers.” Alexis rolled her eyes. “I even like football, but a girl can only take so much. Replays from earlier championships cross the line.”
Parker eyed them both and said in his best parental tone, “You kids play nice and share the remote.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Parker saw Ree laughing. Maybe tonight wasn’t going to be so difficult after all.
* * *
Ree rubbed her forehead and put away the remaining half of her chocolate bar before she went too far. She could barely taste it past the stress anyway. Even the wine didn’t touch her nerves, it just made her tired. As Alexis and Mike put their jackets on to leave, Ree’s anxiety took a turn to disappointment – after this was all over, she’d probably never hear from them again. When Alexis was hired into Ree’s lab, she used a different last name than what she’d heard the analyst, Jordan whoever it was, use for her. Mike had never offered up his last name. When Parker introduced himself as Parker Landon, there was a slight pause between his first and last names the first few times she’d heard him give it. He too was probably using an alias.
Parker ordered a pizza, and Ree’s mind returned to the problem of the evening. In the several hours before seeing her FBI friends, she had soothed her troubled mind by convincing herself all they needed to do was find the bad guy. Now Parker wanted to “talk” and “strategize,” and Ree really just wanted to throw her head down on to her pillow and sleep off this strange dream. However, much like when she was cleaning the gunk and oil out of the lab equipment, she would just keep chipping away at the problem. She would have her nervous breakdown when her schedule allowed for it.
Parker at least made an attempt at small talk while they waited for the pizza. Despite their inevitable breakup, her curious mind would not behave itself. Staring down into her empty wine glass, Ree began to fidget. When Parker raised his eyebrows, she finally asked, “So, what is your real last name?”
Parker smiled. “You, Dr. Ryland, are the first person to ever ask me that.”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
Parker shifted in his seat. “You are correct.”
“That Landon isn’t your last name?”
“That I didn’t answer the question.” Parker winked.
“I think I’ve earned a little trust at this point.”
“Alright – that’ll teach me for trying to pull one over on an academic. You’re correct – Landon is not my last name.”
“Do I get to know?”
* * *
“If I clear it with my boss, yes.” Parker wasn’t sure why Ree was so stuck on the question, but he chalked it up to her wanting to avoid the issue at hand. The doorbell rang, Parker paid for the pizza in cash and returned to the living room. Parker was pulling a gooey slice out of the box onto a paper plate and paused when the outspoken professor asked softly, “When this is all over, will I get to see you guys again?”
“That depends on you, Ree.” Parker talked out of turn. He hadn’t voiced his thoughts to Sandy yet, but he wanted to bring her all the way in and keep her as a part-time consultant. Sure, she’d been freaked out, but considering the circumstances, she’d held up. That said something about her. The leader in him had automatically started to recruit her. She’d be a real asset if they needed her skills on future investigations.
“How is that?” Ree asked.
Parker handed her a plate of pizza and sat down beside her. “Look, I have to clear it with the Chief, but if you’re willing to work with us on a part-time basis, we can still stay in touch. Given the nature of this case, we’ve already taken care of nearly everything we would normally do to get your security clearance in order. Otherwise, truthfully, it’s going to be difficult. We don’t even tell our families what we’re doing when we work undercover, so I’m afraid it’s not an easy answer. Understand, we don’t usually get so close to civilians on an investigation. This has been an exceptional situation, and I’m sorry if you’re disappointed that you won’t be able to point your eye lasers at me on some sort of regular basis.” Parker nudged her with his shoulder. Sure, he had grown fond of the professor and wasn’t happy about not getting to see her again either. Still, he’d learned over time that his erratic schedule made it hard to have friends outside of the Bureau.
Ree’s lips quirked. “Yeah, not being able to shoot you with my eye lasers or threaten to drop you is really going to cramp my style. But Parker, either way, no matter how this works out – ”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for caring enough to keep me alive.”
Parker cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. “Don’t thank me yet, Ree. We may be 90 percent of the way there, but it’s the last 10 percent that’s the real doozy. Speaking of which, can we talk about a certain graduate student we have to approach tomorrow?”
* * *
Ree sighed and looked into her empty wine glass. The full glass of wine had relaxed her at last, but just in case, she retrieved the last half of her chocolate bar. When she returned, she sat cross-legged on the couch facing Parker, and asked, “What do we need to do to catch him?”
Parker outlined his primary plan along with a few contingency plans. Given the high probability that Simon would go off the deep end if he realized he was caught, the FBI had mapped out every detail of the interaction. They would time their questions when the crowd in the lab was smallest, in case of collateral damage, a phrase that caused Ree’s eyebrows to shoot up in the middle of Parker’s explanation.
Parker soldiered on, Ree ran out of chocolate, and somehow, they made it through all of the intel, planning, and follow-up questions in a little under an hour. When the discussion turned to what could go wrong, Ree found herself turning and getting tucked under Parker’s arm as she leaned her head on his chest. If she was going to die tomorrow, and she couldn’t have the dignity of companionship with her friends and family, she’d take advantage of the support of her FBI handler, or whatever he was.
To be fair, Parker’s job description probably didn’t usually include cuddling with his coworkers, but he didn’t seem to mind. In the midst of asking more questions about backup plans, Ree started yawning and her limbs got heavy. She would move in just a minute.
* * *
Parker looked down at Ree. She had fallen asleep mid-sentence. Only this woman could fall asleep talking. She needed rest, and he left his arm wrapped snugly around her. It wasn’t any hardship for him to stay where he was. Weeks of sleeping on her couch and years of irregular sleeping quarters had made him flexible, and he hadn’t really been this comfortable in a long time. He’d send her off to bed shortly.
22
The following morning, Ree woke up more content than she’d felt in years...until she realized there was a weight resting on her stomach. It was heavy and hot. Pieces of the night before fell into place in her head, and a quick glance behind her confirmed her memory. She and Parker had fallen asleep in the middle of their discussion, and things were about to get a little awkward.
Parker stirred, and Ree’s heart jumped into her throat, ready to make an apology. She felt his arm tighten, and her eyes went wide as he adjusted in his sleep to hold her closer. Awake now, the seconds ticked by as she waited for him to wake up enough so she could make her escape and pretend it never happened. How embarrassing.
While Ree was ready to admit to herself that she had feelings for Parker, he didn’t need to know that, and it was absolutely the wrong time to be thinking about it. Her awake body had clearly been on its best behavior and had done an excellent job keeping her feelings at bay. Apparently, asleep Ree lacked awake Ree’s self-control, especially when Parker was probably just trying to be polite. She felt his hold loosen slightly and slipped out from underneath his arm, tiptoeing out of her own living room and into the kitchen. Hopefully, he would be as unaware as she had been, and they could return to normal.
