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Something, just something about the way she was holding herself spoke military to me, not crime boss, not random, angry woman.
And then my eyes took in more.
Took it all in.
Her face.
My heart froze in my chest.
The chill I had felt in the glass room came back, stronger, colder, making goosebumps rise up on my skin.
"Remember me, you sonofabitch?"
I did.
Fuck, I did.
A shiver racked through my insides.
Because she was a ghost.
She couldn't be standing here, breathing, talking to me.
Because she was dead.
I had killed her.- PAST -Roan - 15 years ago"What the fuck am I doing in Yerevan?" I asked the faceless voice on the other end of the phone.
I had nothing against Armenia. There were certainly worse places to be stationed in the world. I just had no idea what the hell could be so important here when our current issues in the world leaned a little more toward Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, or even a comfy hotel in Turkey overlooking the Aegean sea. That, at least, was where we wanted to focus our intelligence efforts.
Or, it seemed, that was where all the top agents were being re-stationed.
So I was a little resentful at being stuck in Armenia instead.
Regardless of the view I had of the town center from my fourth-floor hotel room balcony.
It looked more like a vacation than a job.
And for someone who liked to be in the thick of it all, it felt like a slap in the face. This was the kind of place they stationed old fucks who weren't in shape enough to handle the running around of more risky jobs. This was the place for near-retirement agents needing a peaceful exit from the program.
Not fucking me.
"Watch the attitude, Roan," Allen, my handler for the past few years since Loren, the guy who found me, brought me in when I was hardly more than a kid, caught a clot to the brain.
Desk jobs'll do that to you.
"You can't drop me in a country without telling me why," I objected.
You got away with a little more lip when you weren't officially a member of any branch of the US government, when you didn't even know what higher-ups you were supposed to be afraid of upsetting.
"I don't speak fucking Armenian," I reminded him.
I'd been the child of multi-lingual parents - each speaking two languages - aside from English - each, giving me an unexpected leg-up in espionage. Needed someone fluent in Russian? I was. Spanish? Had you covered there too. Needed someone who could passably get by in German or Arabic? I could carry on a decent enough conversation.
But Armenian? No.
Not even a goddamn greeting.
"Open a history book, Roan. A lot of Armenians speak Russian. And English is gaining. You'll get by. Or you can get yourself some Armenian lessons."
I let out a sigh, raking a hand down the stubble on my face, rolling a crick out of my neck from the never-ending plane ride next to someone with a wet, hacking couch who didn't know how to cover his mouth when he sneezed either.
I didn't, almost as a rule, get sick flying like many did. My system was simply too immune to it.
But I still wanted nothing more than a cold shower and a change of clothes.
And here Allen was, giving me the goddamn runaround.
"What is the job?" I demanded, feeling itchy at the idea of not knowing what I was supposed to be looking out for, who I was supposed to be pretending to be.
"You are there to turn a target."
I spun around at that, catching my face in the mirror, seeing the confusion there, the uncertainty.
"You want me to create a new agent?"
"Well, we want you to find someone, gain their trust, and get them to work for us. Whether or not they will become an actual agent is to be seen."
"Who is it? What do we need from them?"
"Ever hear of IDEcon Bank?" Allen asked, the clink of an ice cube hitting a glass making me stiffen before I remembered that drinking on the job was an old habit, one maybe Allen hadn't broken yet.
"No. Should I?"
"It's the sixth largest bank in Armenia," he informed me.
"And that is likely why it's not on my radar." Who the fuck cared about the sixth largest bank in a somewhat small country?
"If you'd shut up for a minute, I would get a chance to explain that we think they're laundering money."
"For who?"
"For who else?" he asked, and while I had never seen the man, I knew that in that moment, he was rolling his eyes, ones I pictured as beady for some reason. Maybe because of his somewhat nasal voice.
He didn't need to explain.
In this post-attack world we lived in, and in the middle of wildly unpopular wars, there was only one thing that mattered to the United States.
