Integrity, p.16
Integrity, page 16
She squeezed my fingers, but didn’t say anything further.
The restaurant was about a third full, and I did the very gross thing of slipping a twenty into the hostess’s hand and indicating in a low voice that a table away from everyone else would be perfect thankyouverymuch. If I was about to come clean, well…clean-ish to Sophia, the last thing I wanted was to be overheard. Nobody had looked up when we’d entered the restaurant, and upon my scan of the space, none of the patrons seemed out of place. Maybe we’d get through dinner without interruption.
Once we’d been seated, met our server, and ordered drinks and appetizers, I opened my mouth to explain…kind of, but Sophia beat me to it. In a low voice she said, “I’m starting to think your job is a lot more important than you let on.” She nervously fiddled with her napkin.
“It’s more involved, yes.”
She glanced around the room, the movement of her eyes so quick I wouldn’t have noticed if I wasn’t so focused on her. Apparently she saw nothing that concerned her, if she’d even know what that concern might look like. “Can I ask you something?”
“You can ask me many somethings and I’ll answer as best I can.”
Sophia exhaled loudly, clearly relieved. “Thank you.” She paused, and it was obvious she wanted to press forward but didn’t know how. After almost a minute of our mutual silence, she said, “Your friend who gave you the hard drive. Are they part of this work evaluation?”
“In a way, yes. They’re a resource. Like a hotel or car or change of clothes.”
“Right. I know you said you can’t tell me everything, but I’m curious. And kind of…not scared, but…weirded out by it.”
I pushed down my concern. Weirded out didn’t mean on the verge of bailing. She was still with me. I smiled gently at her. “Because now you’ve stopped to really think about it?”
“Yeah.”
“Understandable. It’s a little more complex than I first told you, but I didn’t want to pile on any more than I had to.” I kicked myself for not thinking of this before, because now it felt like a tacked-on “Oh, hey, whoops, silly me to forget this important detail.” I tucked my hands between my knees, and leaned toward her. “To ramp up the stress, make the evaluation feel more ‘real-world,’ I have a problem to solve. Before I started, I was given an intelligence file that I have to investigate and uncover the truth from. But I don’t have the usual tools I’d have if I was at work, so I have to find workarounds to solve the puzzle.” I patted the backpack I kept wedged between my feet. “That’s where my friend Mr. Hard Drive comes in. Utilizing people I know to get tools I need was step two in the treasure hunt.” I smiled up at the server who approached with our drinks and set arancini and bruschetta on the table before he politely asked if we were ready to order entrées.
After a frantic menu skim, we ordered and once we were alone again, Sophia asked, “Why would they make you do that?”
“Because sometimes we’re left out in the cold, cut off for one reason or another, but still have to produce results, so we have to improvise. It’s easier to improvise if you’ve practiced improvisation beforehand, have set up networks of people to assist you.” God, I should write a book.
She bit off an impressive mouthful of bruschetta, licking a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic from her lower lip. “When are you going to solve this puzzle?”
“Whenever I can around us having a vacation-ish time.” Between the hours of midnight and five a.m.
Her grin was lopsided, like only half of her wanted to cooperate. “So, like…most of the day, the way you’ve been glued to your laptop so far?”
It wasn’t a reproach by any means, yet I still felt the sting. But I’d told her I’d be doing work during this “vacation.” A little work, I corrected myself. I cut into an arancini ball, and after eating a forkful to buy myself a moment, I said, “It’ll probably be much the same as it has been ’til now—bit of work, bit of vacation, an overabundance of caution.”
That made her smile. “I’d classify it as an abundance, not overabundance.”
An over-overabundance, but I’d managed to keep most of it hidden from her. Guilt gnawed at my insides, again. “Sophia…” I reached over and took her free hand. “If you don’t wanna spend time cooped up in a hotel for most of the day, watching me working on this, then the offer to fly home is still there. It’s always on the table. No questions, no judgment. I want you to stay with me, but I’d understand if you’d had enough.”
She shrugged, snuck a taste of my arancini, then scooped up one for herself. “If I go home, I’ll just be working, and I can do that here, with you, which is more pleasant than being at home alone. For many reasons.” The raised eyebrow conveyed exactly what reasons she was referring to.
That look twisted my insides. Being with her was so easy. And also so hard. The intimacy and our connection was incredible and unlike anything I’d ever experienced before…but it spread my concentration thin, took my focus from the big picture. “Okay then,” I said. “I’m very glad you want to continue our weird little vacation-not-a-vacation.”
“Me too…” Sophia loaded bruschetta onto my plate. “How long do you have? To solve your puzzle.”
“Not as long as I’d like.” I turned my glass around on the table, smearing the circles of condensation. “I’ll have to get creative, because I can’t approach it the way I would if I was at work with everything I need right at my fingertips.” Good thing I was flexible. “And, I have to do it alone.”
“Unfortunate. I’m excellent at that sort of thing. You know,” Sophia mumbled around a mouthful of arancini. After a quick swallow, she continued, “This is quite possibly the weirdest series of dates I’ve ever had.”
“Dates?” I almost choked. “Oh these aren’t dates, trust me. When we go on dates, you’ll know about it.”
“We’ve totally had dates.” Her expression was comically convincing and broke some of the tension churning inside me. “We had coffee and sweet stuff, then dinner, then our late breakfast and totally unexpected but incredible sex”—an eyebrow bounce—“then the road trip, staying in hotel rooms, more incredible but now expected sex, meeting your hard-drive person, beach visits, meals, running from that guy who was trying to get to you, beyond incredible sex, and now here we are.” She gestured expansively with her fork. “Dates.”
“I’d like to politely disagree. I’ll give you the first three scheduled ones, but the rest of those events have just been…getting to know each other. Trust me, when I take you on a date, a real date, you’ll know about it.”
She feigned being taken aback. “Will I now?”
“Mhmm.” All I had to do was make it out of this a free woman so I could show her exactly what I meant. “I am going to date the heck out of you.” It’d come out as an attempt at wordplay but the moment I realized what I’d said, I also realized the implications of it. And that I’d meant it exactly as it had sounded.
Sophia’s teeth brushed her lower lip as her eyes held mine with contact so intense I thought she might be looking into me and seeing my deepest desires, my deepest fears. Her expression softened, as if she understood exactly what she’d seen. “Lexie, I really, really hope you do.”
Our new hotel came with the glorious auditory backdrop of crashing waves, spacious rooms, a cheerful front-desk clerk, and free buffet breakfast. Win. Henceforth, Sophia was in charge of booking all accommodation. She’d also booked us a studio room, with a small functional kitchen. After checking out the room, and declaring it clean and clean, I carried most of our stuff up the internal stairs, mentally reviewing each floor’s exits on my way.
Sophia unpacked with the same loving care as always, then dragged me into the bathroom to take a long, hot shower with her. It was just that—a long, hot shower together. She soaped my body, turning me this way and that to rinse me off, gently kissing my shoulders, my back, my neck, as we stood under the spray. But that was all. Her attention felt more like loving care, rather than foreplay, and I gave in to it and let myself enjoy being cared for.
I was trying to figure out a way to tell her I wanted…needed to get to work on my puzzle when she told me she’d had an email from her client. “I should probably do some work,” she said, in a way that made me think it wasn’t actually that urgent, but she wanted to give me an excuse to work as well. Trying to act like I wasn’t going insane doing nothing was apparently not going so well.
“Sure,” I said calmly, though inside I was doing happy backflips. “You okay if I work too?” It was barely seven p.m., which meant I had a massive block of time in front of me where I could make some real progress with Hadim’s intel before we’d have to venture out to boredom-bust tomorrow.
“Of course.” She peered around the room, which, while spacious, only had one desk. And a small-ish one at that. “You want the desk or table?”
“You work wherever you need to and I’ll just fit in around you.” I nabbed my backpack from where I’d set it on a chair at the table in easy view. “You want the table? More room?”
“I’m making a self-help website, Lexie. You’re practicing saving the world.” Sophia’s kiss was fleeting, but warm. “You take the table and spread out, I’ll take the mini desk.”
“Sure.” Saving the world. A frightening concept. But perhaps not inaccurate. While Sophia got organized with her laptop and portable second monitor on the desk by the closet, I unpacked my own hardware and Bink’s hard drive, setting them on the table and angling the laptops so the screens would open facing away from the middle of the room. Sophia set a glass of red by my elbow, then turned to leave. I lightly grabbed her wrist, pulling her back and kissing the butt of her palm. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Reflexively, she glanced at the laptops, both of which showed nothing but log-in screens.
That quick glance made my stomach drop. I gestured at my laptops. “I…you can never see any of this, Sophia. And I can’t talk to you about it. The test probably contains elements of real, classified intel that nobody without clearance can see.” I squeezed her hands. “Do you understand? This is a nonnegotiable thing for me. If you want to stay and play superspy with me, then this is probably my only rule.” Smiling to ease my school-principal lecture, I added, “Aside from always checking the coast is clear when we go outside.”
“I thought you said you weren’t a spy.” Apparently, it’d become a joke to her and I’d decided to let her keep joking if it kept her at ease.
I grinned. “Smartass.” Sobering, I reiterated in my best gentle-but-firm tone, “It’s really important. Beyond important. I can’t stress that enough. I’ll do everything I can to keep what I’m working on out of your sight, close the laptops when I’m away. But I’m working out of my usual zone, I’m tired and stressed about not screwing this up and I just…Like, I know you would never snoop, but in case you’re passing by and get the urge to take a peek. I mean, I would if I were in your shoes,” I added teasingly.
A flash of unreadable emotion crossed her face. “Okay. I will. Or I mean, I won’t. I promise.”
“Thank you,” I breathed. “Well, it’s time to practice saving the world, I guess.”
She raised her glass of wine in salute. “And time for me to help someone teach people to be the best versions of themselves.”
I exhaled a long breath, pushing out as much tension as I could along with the air. So far, so good. End of day three of being on the run, I now had what I needed to further Halcyon’s cause, and I had an incredible woman keeping me company and keeping me calm. I snuck a glance at Sophia, who’d settled at the small desk and was shimmy-dancing in her seat like she had an amazing bop playing in her head. I suppressed a wistful sigh. She was so cute. It would be so easy to fall for her. Bad idea. Not fair to her. I shook myself out, drank a slow mouthful of wine, and got to work.
Bink ran the cleanest system I knew—nothing made it to their machines unless they wanted it to—and I knew I could trust the hard drive to be free of malicious items. I downloaded Hadim’s files, the reports I’d started that fateful morning, and installed the graphics manipulation software they’d extracted from the agency’s servers. The laptop Halcyon had provided that I’d use to work with Hadim’s files was set up with multifactor authentication to access—a very secure password, facial recognition, and my fingerprint. Nobody was getting a look inside unless they hypnotized me for my password and then cut off both my finger and…oh, gross.
Puffing out a loud breath, I tapped my fingers on the mouse as I wrestled with myself. Go hard, or go easy? I decided to ease myself back in with the photographs instead of diving into the video. Ease was a relative term—everything about this event was disgusting, shocking.
All the pictures were good quality, considering they’d most likely been taken in haste, and with a phone instead of camera. Groups of people standing around corpses, trucks, machinery. But nobody in any sort of uniform. It was civilians, white masks on faces, likely to help with stench and stop the spread of whatever had killed those people. Judging by the fluids and excretions on the ground around the corpses, I’d have thought full-body hazmat jumpsuits would also have been in order. Given the soft daylight instead of the spot-lit darkness in the body cam video, these photos had been taken hours after the video had been filmed.
I made a note to follow up on the method of dispersal, and if it was strictly contained to one form. Could the chemical make secondary transfer through bodily fluids, or was it strictly an inhalation/ingestion/absorption deal? Given I didn’t know what the chemical actually was, I really needed Hadim. But the email address I had for him was burned and I had no others. Forget the movies where spies duck into Internet cafés and shoot off a dozen emails and engage in a vigorous instant-messaging conversation with zero regard for online security. If Hadim had cut ties, for whatever reason, I was adrift until he saw fit to throw me a rope again. If he saw fit.
After an hour zooming in and focusing on every area of these photos, I needed a break. Just like on Friday, I’d spotted nothing in the still images that struck me as useful—nothing to indicate where exactly it was, no identifiable faces, dead or alive, nothing to tell me exactly what had been used for this mass murder. Just horror. The photos were useful, part of the bigger picture, but my gut feeling was that whatever Halcyon needed had to do with the American. I saved my reports then loudly closed both laptops. I needed a break.
Sophia twisted around in her seat. “Saved the world yet?”
“Almost.” I stood and walked over, stopping by the wall where I couldn’t see her screens.
“You’re allowed to look at my work,” she laughed. “Nobody from the government is going to leap out and drag you away for seeing something you shouldn’t have here.”
The innocent, facetious statement made my heart trip. “No? Phew.” I rested my hands on her shoulders. The website layout reminded me of a rainforest, earthy and soothing, and I let it calm me. “You drew…made all of these graphics?”
“Mhmm. All my sites are full-service. Every bit of graphical design on them is made by me.”
“Wow, that’s incredible. Do you like art?” It was a dumb question, but my brain was apparently incapable of creating engaging inquiries.
She smiled patiently up at me. “I do. Drawing is my jam. I started off with ‘pure’ art in college then moved into graphic design.”
“Will you draw me something someday?”
“Sure. I’ll draw you something right now.” Sophia reached for the plain lined notepad to her right, and quickly sketched out something while I kneaded the tops of her shoulders. She ripped the page from the pad and held it back to me, smiling like a kindergartener handing a parent their first drawing.
I held it up proudly. She’d drawn a stick figure with a cape streaming out behind her, one hand on her hip and the other balancing the Earth like a basketball. “Wow. It’s beautiful,” I said earnestly. “I can see why you went into art.”
“Thanks,” Sophia said, fluttering her eyelashes. “It’s you, Super Lexie.”
“I gathered that from the SUPER LEXIE you wrote underneath it.” Cupping her face gently in my palm, I leaned down and kissed her, slow and deep. Staying close, I asked, “Need anything while I’m up?”
She shook her head, smiling lazily and maybe a little wine-ily. Her gorgeous, smiling mouth was too tempting to resist, so I kissed her again.
“We both have work to do,” she whispered when we broke for air.
“We do…” I agreed. And she made doing that work a little easier. Those all-too-brief moments of connection buoyed me enough to make another dive deep into human depravity. I set the drawing on the table where I could see it with the slightest turn of my head. “Super Lexie,” I whispered to myself as I opened both laptops.
Before I delved into the video and audio files again, I made sure the headphones were snug in my ears. I couldn’t let Sophia hear anything, even just an accidental snippet.
I didn’t want to listen again.
I didn’t want to look again.
But I did. I listened to the audio file and sat through that awful footage twice, suppressing the nausea that grew stronger with every minute I endured of watching innocent civilians struggling for the last minutes of their lives. Though the video was just over ten minutes long, it was so intense, so awful that it felt like watching a full-length horror film. And it was made worse by the warm hotel room lighting which added an almost disorienting feeling to the video. I remembered how I’d stupidly hoped, on that ordinary morning at the end of last week, that it would get easier with subsequent viewings. I was wrong. So wrong.
My job would be so much easier if I could somehow desensitize myself to things like this. But then…maybe I wouldn’t care as much as I did. And caring about the people behind these events got results. I had a special mental compartment for horrors, but it wasn’t airtight. Some of my emotion always managed to mix in. But this wasn’t just about following Halcyon’s directive now. I also had to follow my personal need to get to the bottom of this, to have someone held accountable, no matter the cost. To ensure this would never happen again. Stupid personal integrity.
