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Nineteen
Ian knew the second everything fell into place for her.
“No one,” she said. “I was supposed to call him is all.”
Beatrice eyed her closely but his wife didn’t so much as blink. “Who is he?”
“My therapist.” Vivi gave a short laugh that sounded forced. “Even I need help sometimes. Once a quarter I was required to check in with him. He’d been sanctioned by Homeland, although he wasn’t employed by them. He was—probably still is—a consultant. I would discuss anything bothering me and go through a check system about my health and stress levels. I was overdue so I made a note to contact him.”
“There’s no one else that raises a red flag?” Ian asked, taking the spotlight off this Dr. Crowe. He’d get to the truth of it as soon as Beatrice and Rory left.
She studied the codenames again. “Afraid not.”
“Vivi.” Beatrice returned to the other side. “What about the trip to Vegas? More than one of my employees has had, shall we say, unfortunate outcomes when visiting there. Ian mentioned you experienced an incident at a cafe.”
She sat back in the leather chair and rubbed her forehead. “That was nothing more than a morning-after freak out. Ian and I had put our careers on the line when we wed. Our original plan was to not take vows until he’d finished his last deployment and his term was up. My resignation was going to be harder to negotiate, but I had a back door that I felt was solid. I’d already signed every confidentiality statement they threw at me, but I was willing to do whatever NSA, Homeland, the President, you name it, required in order to make a clean break from my duties and assure everyone I would never become a threat to our country. I mean, I married a SEAL. Can’t get a better bodyguard than that, right?”
Ian winked when she glanced at him.
She toyed with the pen. “I had a written agreement outlined with my plan to create a new identity and check in with Homeland on a regular basis to ensure I was sticking to it.” Her gaze dropped to her desk, but he knew she was seeing the future they’d talked about. “Others had done it successfully. I was going to do it, too. For us.”
Her pretty eyes met his once more. All the hardship they’d endured in the past six months, all the self-loathing he’d stored inside him, believing he’d killed her, the trauma she’d gone through, dissolved in that gaze.
I will fix this. He would make it right. “You need rest. How about we get you back to your room?”
“Before you do,” Beatrice said, “I want the names—the real identities—of everyone on that list.”
“That would be a breach of doctor-patient confidentiality, but under the circumstances, I’ll share. I know you won’t let their names fall into the wrong hands.” She clicked the pen and began writing. “Again, I’m certain none of these people were involved.”
When she finished, she slid the paper to Rory. He placed it inside his bag. “And your mentor? You’re sure about him?”
She spread her hands wide in a supplicating gesture. “He’s a professor, an outsider to all of this. Impeccable background, of course, or they wouldn’t have let me see him. He never knew the specifics of my job, and I wouldn’t have shared them. I would’ve put him in danger if I had. He treated my father, another brilliant soul who was completely off his rocker in his later years. I trust Dr. Crowe.”
Rory gathered his crutches and stood, Beatrice walking him to the door and opening it for him. “If you think of anything else that can help us…”
Vivi nodded and yawned. “I’ll let you know.”
Once they were gone, Ian gathered her into his arms and held her for a long moment. “You didn’t fool any of us, you know.”
She drew back, meeting his eyes and giving him a grin. “Didn’t I?”
That’s when he knew he’d been had. Beatrice and Rory, too. “It’snotDr. Crowe?”
Breaking his embrace, she gathered her notebook and pen. At least she’d stopped rubbing her head as if it were about to explode. In fact, in the last few minutes she’d completely morphed into the confident woman he’d fallen in love with. “Oh, it is, but not in the way you guys suspect.”
“Are you going to fill me in?”
“On the way.”
He trailed her out the door. Thunder rumbled in the distance. “Where are we going?”
She paused at the elevators, glancing around to be sure Beatrice and Rory were gone. Lowering her voice, she leaned in as she pushed the bottom button. “Can you get us out of here without them knowing?”
A challenge to be sure, but when had he ever backed down from one? “What are you up to?”
“I got myself into this mess, and I’m going to get myself out. We are dealing with highly sensitive information and people who won’t think twice about obliterating all of us if they realize I’m alive and still walking around. Our government believes I’m a traitor; proving I’m not is possibly the most difficult thing I’ve ever done, but if I play my cards right, I’ll be free.You’llbe free. And there won’t be any blowback on Beatrice or SFI. Will you help me?”
The elevator dinged and the doors slid open as he stared at his version of Sherlock Holmes. She was more like Irene Adler, the woman Holmes was obsessed with. “Did you just bat your lashes at me?”
