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She sent a quick reply using her ankle as an excuse to put off visiting for a few more weeks. She didn’t have the emotional energy to face Salim’s parents and tell them the truth about what had happened to her, but she also knew there was no way she could see them and not tell them.
They were the closest thing she had to parents, and with the loss of their son, she was the closest thing they had to a child.
She wanted to keep that relationship for all their sakes, but she didn’t know if she could live with the condemnation she would see on their faces when she revealed she’d looted a site in Jordan.
Also in her inbox was a summons from Dennis Gardner, the man who’d set up the grant with the university in Jordan to fund the dig and her work there. It was a very authoritative summons, saying he was in DC on business until Tuesday, staying at the Mayflower. They needed to discuss her work in Jordan. She was to be at his hotel today at one p.m.
She glanced at her watch. An hour and a half from now.
Gardner didn’t inquire about whether or not the timing worked for her. His time was clearly more important, and she needed to accommodate his schedule.
If Chris were here with his car as he’d offered, they’d have time for lunch and she could leave the crutches in his vehicle. As it was, she didn’t have time to return to her condo and so would have to strap either cane or crutches to her backpack as she took the Metro to Farragut North.
It irritated her that she didn’t have a doctor appointment or any other valid reason to refuse the summons. But the truth was, this was a meeting she’d been dreading, so it would be good to get it over with. It was probably better that she didn’t have too much time to mentally prepare. If she tried to reschedule, she’d just stress about it and it would be worse when it finally happened. At least now, she’d have it behind her by the end of the day.
She sent a reply saying she would be there, then texted Morgan informing her of the meeting and location, including Gardner’s hotel room number.
No way would she meet with anyone to talk about Jordan without letting Morgan and Freya know where and when. These kinds of meetings could easily be a trap.
Chris wasn’t exactly sure why he was in the FMV office waiting room, but when Morgan and Freya requested a meeting, he couldn’t resist the opportunity. Rand might consider them friends, but given everything that had happened to Diana and the way she was being used by the Intelligence Community, he was feeling less charitable toward them today than he had last night when he first arrived at Morgan’s birthday party.
He was the one who’d fucked up in questioning Diana’s memory, but they were the ones who’d put her in the situation to begin with, right down to feeding her a deck of cards that included a man who’d been taken off the most wanted list nearly two years ago.
Was it possible FMV had set Diana up somehow?
Of course, he couldn’t begin to see what purpose that would serve, but when the CIA was involved, he knew to be wary.
The FMV admin, a man Chris had met at the party last night, apologized for the delay again and let Chris know that they were just waiting for one more team member before their meeting could begin.
Chris hoped the person they were waiting for was Diana, only to be disappointed when a brown-skinned woman with glossy black hair entered the office in a flurry of energy. She took one look at Chris and said, “You must be the lieutenant. Sorry I’m late. My daughter is sick and not at school, and I needed to wait for my sitter to arrive, but the sitter got stuck on the Metro. I just need a minute to catch up with Freya then we’ll be ready for you.” She nodded to the admin then was off down the hall before Chris could reply.
“That was Amira,” the admin said. “She wasn’t at the party last night because her youngest got sick yesterday. Her husband is deployed, so she’s on her own right now.”
Chris knew what that was like. He wondered if she’d be on her own with the kids through the holidays. Still, it was hard to be separated from a spouse for long periods no matter the season, and especially so when one had kids. It had been a major reason he and Pam had decided to hold off on having children.
Now Pam was pregnant with a different SEAL’s child, and Chris had just signed the papers an hour ago that dissolved their marriage, leaving her free to marry her baby daddy if she wanted.
He didn’t love her anymore, and he certainly didn’t miss her, but he wasn’t quite to the point of being able to congratulate her and raise a toast to her happiness. He hoped to get there someday—he didn’t want to be bitter, and he’d loved her deeply once upon a time—but he had no idea how he’d find that path.
At least now that the divorce was final, he wouldn’t have to deal with her anymore. He gave thanks to the god of family planning and birth control that they weren’t facing shared custody. Someday, he might want kids again, but not with Pam.
After ten more minutes of waiting, he was led into a comfortably appointed meeting room and officially introduced to Amira Ripley and again shook hands with Freya Lange and Dr. Morgan Adler.
If any of the women knew what had transpired—the good and the bad—between Diana and him last night, it didn’t show on their faces, and as far as he could tell, only Freya was trained to hide her thoughts and emotions.
“You know, of course, that I’m not at liberty to share any details of the op to save Dr. Edwards with you, regardless of your involvement and security clearance.”
Lange nodded. “We’ve already extracted what we could from Rand.”
He smiled at the word she chose, imagining Rand being grilled by the former SAD operative and slowly doling out what he could like teeth removal.
“When was that?” He didn’t see Rand happily going to Morgan’s party after being subjected to questioning.
“This morning,” Morgan said.
“I’m sorry I missed it,” Amira said. “Too bad we couldn’t Zoom.”
Chris snorted. No way could any of these conversations be conducted online. He wouldn’t be surprised if the CIA had the offices under constant surveillance. There was a law that prevented the CIA from operating on American soil to surveil American citizens, but the law stopped at former CIA employees. Those they could investigate. They were required to have probable cause and all the other legalities covered, but they were CIA. Breaking laws—foreign, not domestic—was the backbone of how they gathered intelligence. Illegal surveillance was fundamental to their business model, like teaching first graders to add and subtract so they could move on to multiplication and division.
