Compromised (2 page)

Present day

S
imon Tennant did a mental double take when he saw Sadie. He wasn't unprofessional enough to actually physically look at her again, but he ducked into a neighboring tourist shop to buy a postcard so he could take a breath and walk out and reassure himself that his brain must have been playing tricks.

Because there was absolutely no fucking way he'd just walked past his ex-fiancée, in fucking Athens, making out with another man. One who looked to be half Simon's age. Okay, maybe not half his age, but quite a few years younger. His fists clenched at the thought.

He walked past them again, reading the blank back of the postcard he'd just bought. Sure, her hair was shorter and lighter, but yeah, that was Sadie. Was she on vacation? What the hell was she doing there?

His brain struggled to get itself around the clusterfuck this whole trip had become. His assignment was supposed to be watching the Russian finance minister—keeping notes on whom the man met with and where he went. But most of Simon's intel so far was all about the guy's love life. He was having multiple freaking affairs and was trying to move around the city for his little rendezvous without being spotted.

And now, complicating things even more, Sadie was here too?

Well, okay then. She'd obviously moved on, and why shouldn't she have? He'd been a shit fiancé. Every time he'd needed her, she'd been there for him, and the times she'd needed him, his country had needed him more. Maybe he should have fought for her—he'd spent the best part of the past year wondering if he'd let go too easily—but he'd still have been in the same position: needing to defend his country. Calling off the wedding on the actual day had been a mutual agreement.

Okay, actually it had been her decision.

Then why haven't you moved on?
He was concentrating on his work—that's what he'd been doing for the past year or so. He'd been promoted once and had been taking on more and more missions for CAG—what people usually thought of as the US Army's Delta Force.

Normally the missions were in war zones. Maybe 80 percent of the time. But sometimes something needed to happen on foreign soil that had to be able to be disavowed if the shit hit the fan. This was one of those occasions.

While Simon was keeping tabs on the Russian finance minister and getting the lay of the land, the rest of his team was gearing up. A four-man unit, they were virtually invincible. With the shorthand they'd developed, they barely needed to speak at all when the mission was hot. They'd worked with each other for so long that no one had to guess how the others would react to anything. It was the most comfortable he'd ever been.

Except for when he'd been in Sadie's bed. And heart. And…Fuck this shit. Nope. He wasn't concerned at all what she was doing here or whom she was doing it with. She was out of his head. Out of his everything.

Yeah, right.

When he stopped kissing her, Platon touched the front of her T-shirt with a smile. He loved her in it, which was why she'd been wearing that particular T-shirt—the one her father had banned her from wearing when she was sixteen—when she'd picked him up. Frankly, she was just happy it still fit, albeit a little tighter than it had been on her adolescent body.

“What are you doing tonight?” she asked him after taking her first sip of cold beer.

His eyes slid away from her. “Just meeting my friends. I should be free later if you want to get together.”

Hmm.
She smiled. “It depends how late it is…I have no idea what you do with your friends that takes so long.” She pouted gently. She knew exactly where he would be. He'd be attending a meeting at a house in the Exarcheia neighborhood. The area was widely known as a hotbed for Greek anarchists. And it was her job to keep him close.

But Platon wasn't a regular anarchist—at least his group wasn't. As soon as the details of the G20 meetings had been released, along with the hotel where the dignitaries would be staying, Platon had applied for a job. The United States had picked up copies of all the new applications and profiled them. She had been part of the profiling team, working from her desk at the fake construction company she told everyone she worked at, but something had stuck out about this young man. Something had been off. The subjects he studied at school, the fairly high-paying jobs he'd had before he applied to be a security guard. It had tingled her “Spidey-sense,” which is why she had made herself interesting to him.

She'd dug out her Hello Kitty T-shirt when Platon had spent half an hour in a Japanese manga store. She'd dyed her hair lighter when she'd seen him gravitate toward blondes. And donned glasses when she saw him do a double take at a girl in the street who wore a similar style. In short, she'd made herself perfect for him. Men were so easy.

“Tonight…might be difficult. I think it might be late by the time I finish. Too late for you, my hardworking girl.” He smiled. “Unless you want to stay up all night and play hooky tomorrow. Is that what you call it? Hooky?” He pulled her closer to him and nuzzled her cheek.

God, she hoped he was right and wasn't confusing “hooky” with “hooker.” “I wish I could, but you know my boss would fire me.” She took a chance. “Stupid American.”

She hadn't specifically told him she wasn't American, but she had a Canadian flag on her backpack. “He's American?” Platon perked up a little, interest percolating in his eyes. “That explains why he works you so hard. Americans, they rely on slave labor, right? All over the world.”

Ah. A typical anarchist talking point. She didn't answer him but leaned in to kiss him on his mouth. He groaned lightly and held her head to him as he slowly rubbed his semi-open mouth over hers. Teasing her, she supposed. She smiled against his mouth and let him kiss her again.

All Sadie's attention was on Platon. “Why don't we get together after your meeting?” She nuzzled his neck, feeling his pulse quicken beneath his skin. “Or maybe you can take me there? I want to share things with you, Platon. Don't you want to share things with me too?” The tip of her tongue flicked his earlobe.

His voice cracked under the suggestion. “Maybe. Maybe next time? I'll ask.”

“You can tell them all about me…I don't mind,” she said. She really wanted him to tell his friends that she was in the construction industry. No industry except arms dealing had more access to explosives than the construction industry. She thought that might make them interested in her.

“Maybe you can meet me outside this time?” His hand strayed to her thigh as he shouted something to their waiter.

The aproned man arrived with a piece of paper and a small pencil. Platon dashed down an address, different from the one she'd followed him to before. “Meet me here at ten tonight. I'll take you dancing after.” His voice got husky, and she wondered if he was planning regular dancing or horizontal dancing.

She looked at her watch. “Okay, sweetie. I'll see you in a few hours. For dancing.” She grabbed her bag, planted a kiss on the top of his head, and giggled a little as she squeezed out of their table. Her butt brushed against his arm as she slipped by him and she felt him lean into it.

As she walked away, turning and waving like a good girlfriend would do, she wondered how long and how far she could lead him on. She had to wait until she'd been at a meeting before she could turn him into an asset. He had to have something to lose. And that would be vouching for an undercover CIA officer at a meeting—her. From what she understood, the anarchist group he was into was less like a true political group and more like a motorbike gang—lawless and for hire. She was sure Platon had been placed inside the G20 hotel to wreak some damage to the meetings and the dignitaries attending them.

She needed to see her station chief.

L
ook, sweetheart, every CIA field officer rookie thinks they have a lead on some terrorist. Every single one. You're all fresh off The Farm, eager to make a difference, but ninety-nine percent of the time, you're just plain reaching.” Director Lassiter bit down on the end of an unlit cigar, then made a face and pulled some tobacco from his mouth and grunted. “If these are Cubans, I'm fucking Fidel Castro.”

Sadie Walker took a breath and wished she wasn't still wearing her Hello Kitty T-shirt. Nothing like a tiny pink T to confer gravitas and trustworthiness. “Sir, I'm not reaching. I've been talking to a man who is part of the security team at the hotel where the president will be staying, and—”

“Ms. Walker. You're here as a favor to your father. Don't make me regret that. By the way, is he coming over to visit? I have a few things I want to show him.” For the first time that day he looked positively alert and eager.

Damn him. Damn her father, and damn the CIA. “Of course, sir. I'll be sure to ask.” Sadie quietly turned on the plush carpet and exited her boss's office. There was no point even trying to get through to him. And half of her wondered if her father, the director of the CIA, had asked her boss to keep her in an office somewhere out of the way. She wouldn't put it past him. He seemed supportive of her career change, but who really ever knew what he was thinking? He didn't become the director of the CIA by being easy to read.

Well too bad, Daddy.
She'd just have to figure it out herself
.
Amass enough information that someone would listen to her, even if it wasn't Director Lassiter.

Until the previous October, she'd been an analyst at Langley, spending her days poring over documents, intercepts, and emails—trying to make links that would give field operatives around the world vital leads. But after her wedding had been rudely aborted by a gunfight at her father's house, she'd wanted to make a big change. Bigger than a new haircut, which she opted for when she realized she and Simon were over.

With an uncharacteristic disregard for her father's feelings, she'd applied for and been accepted into the training program at Camp Peary, the place CIA recruits call The Farm. She wanted to understand Simon, even though they'd broken up. Wanted to understand the clandestine, black-ops side of him that she'd only seen on the day of their wedding. Wanted to see how he could love his job but still want to marry her. It had been a mystery to her. An annoying, heartbreaking mystery. CIA clandestine ops were not usually dangerous, but the job would give her a front-row seat at how the black-ops side really worked. And maybe she would end up as strong as her brother's now wife, Beth, who had protected them all during the wedding-day assault.

Her first assignment posttraining was Athens, what some of her fellow recruits called a “soft” assignment. Which it was, no doubt. But this was the year that Greece was hosting the G20 meetings, which meant a constant yearlong rotation of politicians, bankers, scientists, economists, all with their differing agendas, and all with their differing protesters and threats. Bombs had already gone off, people killed, and the Russians were up to something involving a “new vision for Europe”—scary in itself, she thought. A tension had pervaded the city, taking no prisoners and leaving everyone on edge.

On edge, and reeling from the extreme heat wave that was washing through the city like a tsunami. Except, it seemed, her damned boss, who didn't seem to care about anything other than his golf swing. But following last week's series of bombs, an attempted murder of an American citizen, and not to mention the accidental assassination of a Russian minister by his own intelligence agency, Sadie's gut told her something was going on in her city, and her blood pressure rose every time she caught Director Lassiter reading
Golf Digest
on a conference call or taking the afternoon off to “slip in a quick nine” with his golf buddies. It was like he was running a scout troop instead of an intelligence-gathering organization, and it made her madder than hell.

When she'd been given an encrypted thumb drive by an asset the previous week, she'd given it to him, and he'd just thrown it into an in-tray on his filing cabinet, exactly where Sadie had found it five days later, with coffee requisition invoices and a reservation printout for a golfing holiday on top of it. She'd taken the drive back and he hadn't even noticed. Anger started rising in her chest again as she thought about it. If the stupid man paid half as much attention to his work as he did to golf, acquiring cigars, and asking when her father was coming to visit, he might be a useful person to have around.

She went back to her desk and started packing up for the day, wondering if the director was right about her and Platon. Maybe she was just being a rookie. Her job in Athens was to develop contacts in all parts of society. She'd made one. Platon. She'd forced a meet with him at a touristy bar in the Plaka area of the city, and they'd spent the evening flirting and talking about their jobs.

Sadie, of course, had told him only about her cover job—a low-ranking executive at a multinational construction company—and he had told her about his new job as a security guard at the G20 hotel. But she was fairly certain he was involved with a local group of anarchists who had firebombed some local American companies in the city. She intended on finding out exactly what was going on with him, hopefully way before the president of the United States had feet on the ground in Greece.

She'd followed Platon for two weeks, seeing where he went at night, whom he talked to, and on the fourteenth evening, she'd dressed exactly the same as the girls he was usually hitting on in the bars, and ensnared him. And that was how female field officers often had it easier than men.

In the two weeks since then, she'd been available, but not too available, and interesting, but not too interesting. She thought her refusal to sleep with him was keeping him eager enough for now. She'd been trained to do that at The Farm, but it was a fine line to walk.

A line she had no intention of crossing.