Page 83 of The Lazarus Protocol

“We can stop for something after this meeting.”

“Yeah, the grocery store. I want sushi.”

He made a face. “Sushi in the morning?”

“Sushi is good anytime.”

Noah pulled into the driveway of a farmhouse—not that he could see it, but he’d looked up the street-view map online. Set back from the street behind a swath of tall oak trees, the grass all brown and dry. The gravel-and-dirt trail overgrown with weeds.

“This place looks uninviting. Kind of like my house in Albuquerque.”

“How many places do you have?”

“Five. No, six. The seventh is fluid and too complicated to explain.”

Noah turned the car left and parked in front of the house. “And you think I’m not going to want to ask any further questions?”

“Ask him questions.” Marina pointed to the ramshackle house. “Isn’t that why we’re here?”

Noah sighed and climbed out of the car. Getting to know her better was proving to be more of an exercise in frustration than anything else. She had gone beyond being hard to read. Though, he thought maybe he understood the range of her moods better now.

The two-story house had a porch that started halfway across the front and stretched right around the corner of the house, with the garage on the left. Peeling white paint with red accents that had faded to a peach color. Cloudy windows and white net drapes.

The unmistakable ratchet of a shotgun had him ducking down before he even realized what he’d heard.

“Find cover, Marina.” Noah slid the pistol from the holster on his hip and spied the open front door, the occupant of the house in shadow behind the screen. Holding a shotgun.

“What do you want?”

“My name is Noah Rourke.” He walked around the back of the car, moving slowly, motioning for Marina to get back in. “We spoke on the phone.”

Instead of doing what he’d told her to do, she tucked herself behind him, grasping his hips and moving with him.

“That supposed to mean somethin’?” the man inside said.

Noah stopped at the edge of the porch steps. “Years ago, you knew Elaina and Mitch Rourke. You worked with them, or you were friends with them, but they disappeared. Nearly twenty years ago now.” He froze, and for a moment it felt as if his whole life was riding on this conversation. “I’m trying to find out what happened to them.”

The man on the other side of the screen door said nothing.

“You’re Matthew Haserford, the CIA psychologist.”

“Did they send you?” he called out. “Are you here to kill me?”

Marina’s hands tightened on Noah’s shirt, gripping the material over his hips. Still behind him. Trusting him to protect her. He wanted to believe it was some kind of gallant, knight-in-shining-armor moment that could turn the tide of what wasn’t yet happening between them. But he was pretty sure it was more about the fact he was big enough for her to hide behind him—and he would be out an overwatch officer if he lost her.

He just needed her to not explore too much and discover the scars on his lower back.

“No one is killing anyone. We just wanna talk.” Noah lowered his gun. “Put the shotgun down. I’m not here to hurt you.”

“Got nothin’ to say. I’m not part of that world now.”

He hardly sounded like an Ivy League government psychologist these days, but maybe that was the point. Even psychologists had lives after the CIA. The further a person could be from who they’d been, when they were in their retirement years, the less they’d be a target of anyone turning over rocks they shouldn’t.

“I’m not interested in who you are now,” Noah said. “That’s not what this is.”

Kraus had given him this guy’s information. That meant the CIA knew he lived here. If Haserford knew anything about Noah’s parents, the CIA probably did as well or they wouldn’t have sent Noah. That meant the CIA weren’t looking for his parents, but they did know more than anyone had told him.

Question was, had Kraus sent him here so Haserford could kill them?