Beneath the Surface

“I think I’m going to recon the bar.” Rafe checked the pistol in its holster. When he thumbed the restraint aside, the weapon came free effortlessly. He opened the door and got out. The leg ached, but it moved easily and held his weight just fine. That was encouraging. Of course, that was with the leg brace—and the NSA wouldn’t have cleared him for fieldwork while wearing it.

“Getting antsy?” Allison asked.

“It’s been twenty-three minutes. Aren’t you?”

“Twenty-two minutes. And, yes, I am.”

Rafe pulled at the black beanie that covered his dark hair. Gold-lensed wraparound sunglasses covered his eyes. He’d left the semibeard he’d been growing the last few weeks. He wore jeans, boots and a loose gray chambray shirt over a Toby Keith concert T-shirt. Totally suburban ghetto rat. He blended into the neighborhood.

He tucked an expandable Asp baton into the holster on the left side of his belt. Closed, the baton was only seven inches long. Under his shirt it wasn’t noticeable.

“Be careful in there,” Allison cautioned.

Rafe smiled again as he crossed the street. “You’ve got my six. How much trouble can I be in?”

“The scary part is, I don’t know.”

Rafe thought about that. I don’t know wasn’t something often heard from Allison Gracelyn.

Chapter 2

Drago moved his hand up from Shannon’s neck and grabbed her chin. He turned her face up to his. She felt his breath hot against her cheeks. He stared into her eyes. Once again she was reminded how lizardlike his green eyes were. They were cold and incredibly clear, like the eyes in a taxidermist’s shop.

“You don’t have a clue who you sent me after, do you?” Drago asked.

Shannon didn’t answer. She hated to admit ignorance. The only reason people with secrets kept talking to her was because they wondered how much she knew of what they were hiding.

“It was somebody big,” Drago said. “And they’re buried deep within an infrastructure I couldn’t even begin to get through. And I’ll tell you right now that they don’t build firewalls I can’t get through. Not until this one.”

Excitement escalated within Shannon. Over the last few years her mysterious benefactor had supplied tips regarding political cover-ups, insider trading, blackmail and other problems involving political and economic leaders. Truthfully Shannon owed a big part of her career to whoever that person had been.

Had.

Shannon didn’t know why she kept thinking of the person in the past tense. There was nothing to indicate anything had happened to that person except for a months-long silence.

Until June, the contacts had been sporadic, but they’d been there. After weeks of wondering about it, and starved for a juicy story, Shannon had left New York City and taken a meeting with Vincent Drago. She’d hired him to investigate the traffic going on over her ISP. Shannon had covered stories about Internet tracking and the information that could be out there if someone knew how to look.

Vincent Drago was supposedly the best. The downside was his paranoia and violence. Scuttlebutt had it that he’d killed people.

He wasn’t the kind of man Shannon would have ordinarily wanted to deal with, but he’d seemed the best for what she’d needed done. Now she found out he hadn’t been able to track the messages either.

However, it was interesting that someone from the United States government—if Drago was correct—was involved. Her investigation was getting more fascinating all the time. She could almost see the consumer viewing points piling up. The story was going to be a good one.

If you live long enough to finish it, she told herself.

Drago’s eyes raked hers. “You didn’t know anything about any of this, did you?”

Shannon decided to go with the truth. “No. What branch of the federal government did you bump into?”

Drago laughed. “You don’t know that either? Damn, you’re not as intelligent as I thought you were, blondie. And I wasn’t thinking you were overly gifted in the intelligence department to begin with.”

Thanks for that. Shannon’s anger nudged at her fear. She hated being taken for granted, ignored and downplayed because of her hair color. She was smart.

“Look,” Shannon said calmly, “you don’t have anything to worry about where I’m concerned. I’m not here trying to trap you. I wanted to know where those e-mail messages came from. That’s all.”

“Why did you come to me?”

“They told me you were the best.”

Drago grinned, but again there was no mirth. “I’m flattered to hear that.”

“It’s not flattery.” Shannon knew her throat was going to be bruised for days to come. “I needed the best. I was willing to pay. I did pay.”

“You don’t have any idea who wrote you those e-mails?”

“No.”

Drago shook his head. “There’s a lot of juicy information contained in them.”

“I know.”

“Most of them tie to stories you cracked on the news channel.”

Shannon knew that, too. “I wasn’t able to prove everything.”

“Did any of the people you took down know about these e-mails?”

“No.”

“Did you ever stop to wonder where they came from?”

“Yes. All the time. I couldn’t get any information.”

“But you just kept using the leads.”

Shannon shrugged. “They were good. Why shouldn’t I? Those people I went after? They needed to be exposed.”

“But why?”

“Because the public deserves to know.”

Drago snorted derisively. “Save it for the sound byte on the autobiography, blondie. It doesn’t wash with me. Those people you took down, they could have paid blackmail for the information you were given. As a matter of fact, I’d be willing to bet my eyeteeth they were.”

Shannon had guessed that, too. She really wasn’t stupid.

Drago traced a forefinger along Shannon’s chin. “Do you know why a blackmailer would give up a cash cow? And most of these people were cash cows.”

“Because they stopped paying?”