Page 17 of Nothing to Fear

The father wheeled back, eyeing him as if his presence was an invasion of his territory.

“Down the hall.” Willow put a meal in the microwave. “Second door on the left.”

“Don’t nuke that,” Mr. Harper said. “Order a pizza. Or make waffles. I’ll eat those.”

“Breakfast for dinner again?” Her voice dipped low and turned pleading. “Not while I have company. Please, eat the tortellini.”

“I’ll eat it without a fuss if you give me some whiskey to wash down the unpleasantness.”

As Willow fought with her father, holding her own against the ornery old bulldog, Gideon headed down the hall. He poked his head into two bedrooms, both outfitted with the basics of spare rooms. Bypassing the bathroom, he ducked into what appeared to be the master. Pill bottles lined the low dresser and an oxygen tank sat in the corner. Her father’s room.

He eavesdropped on the chatter in the kitchen. Willow mentioned putting a movie on for her father. Gideon had a little time, but not much. He darted down the stairs into the basement.

Hopper windows partially illuminated the space. The walls were a warm white with a touch of beige. It had a bright, refurbished look of a modern apartment. He hesitated to walk on the plush cream carpet with his boots, but he didn’t have seconds to spare removing them.

He trod lightly to the desk at the opposite side of the large room. Three computer monitors sat side by side. Papers piled in untidy heaps were the first sign of any mess in the house. She probably had some order in the apparent chaos. He tapped a button on the keyboard.

A prompt on the middle screen awaited a password. He inserted the cloning flash drive and hit the Enter button, activating it. A red light blinked. The download was in progress.

He fingered through a stack of magazines. Clean Eating, Simple and Delicious, Cooking Light. He shifted his attention to the loose sheets of paper. Programming code, algorithms, grocery lists, questions to ask doctors about her dad’s health.

A file cabinet drawer was closed but unlocked. Noise from upstairs sounded as if she’d turned on a television. He flipped through folders of recipes, medical information about her father, and hospital bills. Her world revolved around work and her dad—innocent enough, even heartwarming—but she had a mountain of debt. Money was a classic motive. Opportunity for her to access classified data without detection had already been established.

But Willow wasn’t a murderer. No way she’d killed Novak.

A green light popped up on the USB drive. He ejected it, shoving it into his pocket. Turning, he noticed a full-sized bed made neater than a pin in the next room. He palmed the door open wider. Her tight bedroom only had extra space for a dresser and nightstand.

He went in, opened the bedside table drawer, and found a leather-bound book.

Diaries always led to trouble. Any secret worth keeping shouldn’t be written down, not even shared with a trusted friend. People were fallible and could be compromised.

He leafed through the pages. Doodles. Algorithms. A circular pattern of intricate lines repeated—a maze with a bull’s head drawn in the center. Words on one page stayed his hand.

Briarwood

Bridge of Sighs

Symphony

The Ghost

Names of previous ops over the last three years that’d had hiccups. All due to their mole?

The Ghost, Aleksander Novak, had confirmed the leak. In exchange for immunity, Novak had agreed to give details about an information broker who bartered secrets using a global network of spies. One name—the deadly spider controlling a funnel-web of traitors. But they’d failed to keep Novak alive long enough to talk.

Their team had pored over previous ops, looking for a link to their insider, any indication other missions had been tampered with. But they had no idea how far back to look. No clue how long they’d had a traitor among them. Gideon turned the page and his breath stalled.

More mazes drawn around a single word. Babel. A code name for the operation to kill Daedalus, one of Gideon’s solo missions. He’d volunteered for it to get distance from the problems smothering his marriage. Less than twenty-four hours after he’d returned, Kelli had been killed in a car accident. Guilt still weighed on him.

A keen analyst would connect the dots between compromised ops, searching for a pattern, a common thread tied to the leak. But this list of classified missions in an unsecured place violated Protocol 101. It could also be notes of someone looking to wrap up loose ends. That’s how Ares or Alistair would see it if either of them got their hands on it.

Except evidence left in a notebook in a bedside table would be sloppy, too careless for a traitor who had, thus far, been pathological about covering their tracks.

Why had she written Babel? Nothing had gone wrong on his op to terminate Daedalus.

“It’s only fair for you to go through my stuff after I looked through your glove box.” The angelic lilt of her voice made his pulse spike.

He didn’t turn at once, taking a beat to decide on his approach, and looked at her. She sauntered toward him with a guileless smile. There was nothing flirtatious about it. She moved divested of the surety of purpose she carried in the office, now seeming uncertain and unguarded.