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Moe sauntered in. “How did you find out about the watch?”
Lori glared. “I told your boss outside that I wasn’t going to talk about this with anyone except her.” She pointed at Parker.
It took everything he had to muster a cocky grin as he went to the fridge and pulled out a sports drink. He poured it into a glass and took it to the table, setting it down in front of her. “Jett’s my commanding officer.” He saw her lick her dry lips, considering the beverage. “How about we all take a deep breath and you tell us how you know Lydia. I’ve seen her dossier, and it’s quite impressive, but I don’t remember a Lori mentioned in it. Is she your girlfriend? Lover? How did you meet?”
Lori sipped the liquid. “It was a long time ago, and none of your business.”
Parker absentmindedly tapped a thumb on the table. “They were partners in Europe, running joint missions for the U.K. and America in the early 90s.”
The glass stopped halfway back to the table as Lori went rigid. “How do you know that?” Then it seemed to dawn on her and she plunked the glass down. “Gus.”
Parker nodded. “He had quite a few things to tell me about you and Lydia. Sounds like you made a great team. If she’s in trouble, we can help.”
“You can’t. What’s done is done.”
Moe got up and began fixing Parker a fresh cup of tea. He needed to play this right. “What could’ve possibly happened all those years ago that’s so important now? And what does it have to do with RING?”
She didn’t answer. He put the kettle on and stuck a fresh teabag in a clean cup. He barely glanced at Parker but assessed that she was questioning his renewed interest in being domestic. He let her and Lori sit and wonder as he made their prisoner a sandwich. “Relationships are hard, whether in the field or personal. You do your best, but sometimes stuff goes wrong. You say the wrong thing, don’t do what they expect, or are simply blind to what they need, and the next thing you know,poof. You’ve blown it.”
He could feel their mutual gazes on his back. Neither commented, and he let his theory hang in the air while he finished slapping cheese and lunch meat between two slices of bread. His stomach grumbled, anticipating he was about to chow down. Returning to the table, he once again slid the bribe in front of Lori. “I always think better after I’ve eaten.”
She just stared at him, keeping her hands in her lap.
He shrugged. “Suit yourself. Looks like we might be here a while.”
“You might as well just kill me.” Her gaze flicked to the watch. “Kill me and destroy that thing. Please. I’m begging you.”
“Are you protecting Lydia, or someone else?” Parker asked. “You and she must be very close for you to sacrifice yourself for her.”
Lori leaned in. “It’s not just her. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of people who could be affected if that information is ever made public.”
Moe studied her, turning her words over in his head. “Here’s what I know. You can’t make a good deal with a bad person. Lydia has done that. That watch is a prototype, and while the CIA believes RING was hired by a state sponsor to kidnap the tall, lanky fellow out there”—he jerked his head toward the porch and Emit—“it seems to me that’s a smokescreen. Your friend stole that prototype and possibly the information hidden on it for her own purposes, but either way, the Ringers won’t stop until they have the watch, or something better, to take to whoever’s banking their payroll. They come back empty-handed, they end up dead.”
The sandwich was calling his name, but luckily, the kettle whistled, and he shot up from the chair and away from the temptation before he could snatch it for himself.
“Even if I explain it all to you, you’ll never understand,” she said.
He kept silent, pouring water and watching the steam rise. “Help us help you. No more games, no more tricks. Lydia currently has the entire U.S. Intelligence community in her face and RING ready to kill her the moment she walks out of her interrogation. You can change that.”
The tea steamed as he handed the cup to Parker. Was that gratitude he saw in her tired, pain-filled eyes? He winked and picked up the watch. “I don’t give a shit what sort of dark secrets this thing might hold. There’s probably nothing on it. Maybe all Lydia was attempting to do was sell the prototype to our enemies. I’m happy to crush it under my boot to prove to you that we have no interest in exposing you or her over what happened thirty-some years ago. But if I do that, I want to know the truth. It won’t go any farther than us.” He motioned between himself and Parker. “You have our word.”
The gratitude on Parker’s face evaporated. She was not on board with that, but this could take the entire day if he didn’t do something extreme. While he wanted Lori to believe they had all the time in the world, they didn’t. Beatrice was right. As soon as the CIA caught wind of the value of the watch, they’d be breathing down their necks.
Lori ran a finger around the edge of the plate, then scrubbed a hand over her face. Her attention turned to Parker. “Is he a good person or a bad one?”
Parker blew on the steaming liquid. “I think you already know that.”
Moe dropped the watch on the ground and raised his foot over it. “Give us something.”
She made a stop sign with her hand. “When they tag-teamed me with Lydia, our handler was a former MI6 operative named Bryant Maddox. He’d been injured on a mission and left fieldwork for a desk job. We completed over fifty missions for him, but I…I fell in love with him along the way. We had a fling—clandestine, of course, like the rest of my life at that time.”
Moe frowned. “And?”
“Lydia was the only one who knew. She feared it might compromise our partnership and begged me to break it off. She was a rising star and had big plans. I didn’t want to end things, but I suspected I was going to be shipped home soon, anyway. I thought, stupidly, that he might leave his position for me. He made it clear he wouldn’t. I was devastated. I returned to America, and wouldn’t you know it, I was pregnant. I left the Agency, got a normal job, and debated whether to tell either of them.”
Moe lowered his foot, picked the watch up, and placed it on the table. “Did you?”
“I returned to England when I was six months along, met with Lydia, and she guessed who the father was. I wanted to tell him, believing a child might change his mind about marrying me and creating a life together. She was furious. She said she knew him better than I did, knew what would happen if our love affair was ever revealed. I was torn, but she convinced me to keep quiet while we made a plan. He’d moved on, according to her, and was involved with another of his agents. Lydia was trying to get dirt on him to take to their superiors about some off-the-books ops he’d been running, but all the missions we’d worked while I was sleeping with him would be called into question and her job put in jeopardy for not speaking up. The CIA encourages relationships between its employees, but not with members of other intelligence services, even those who are allies. SIS is the same. She begged me to keep quiet, even though I was devastated, and insisted that she’d help me figure out a way to take him down without revealing our relationship. She fed me, clothed me, and made sure I had proper medical care. Right before the baby was due, she was shipped off to Russia on a new assignment with no warning.”
