Out of Sight (Project Athena) Read online

  She tiptoed toward the Red Room, not looking down as she stepped over Rennie’s inert body. What had Kevin hit him over the head with, and would she hear it before it hit her?

  Inside the room, she stopped and listened, scanned the carpet for any indentations that might indicate the weight of a person. Nothing. She didn’t have Rennie’s sixth sense, but her gut told her Kevin wasn’t in the room. She eyed Rennie, knew he had a gun she might need. But she couldn’t pick it up as she was.

  She moved to the wall to Rennie’s right, blocking her from view by anyone who entered the hall outside the room. With a prayer that she didn’t get caught, she let the energy go and returned to visible form. Not wasting a second, she pilfered Rennie’s sidearm. She focused her energy again, hoping that she could disappear so quickly after reappearing.

  The seconds it took to change stretched interminably, and she sighed in relief when the transformation was complete. She stood still until she got past the worst of the lightheadedness.

  With Rennie incapacitated, how was she supposed to find Kevin? To get out, he had to pass through a door. She returned to the Center Hall where she could see two exterior doors and the entrances to several rooms. Unless he’d made his way out already, she hoped her vantagepoint would reveal Kevin’s whereabouts.

  Come on, come on, give me a clue.

  The faintest sound came from her left. She looked straight at the East Room. The room he’d spent a lot of time in, the one with which he was very familiar. She veered to her right, taking an indirect approach to the room. At the side of the door, she halted. How was she supposed to know where he stood inside the room? The door on the opposite side of the East Room opened a fraction, then closed.

  He’d made it across the room. She sprinted across the drop clothes still covering the floor, then halted to listen. She didn’t want to rush through if one of the cops or agents had seen the door open and come to investigate. Hearing nothing, she squeezed through the door. As it closed behind her, shouts rang out in the Center Hall. Someone had found Rennie.

  She couldn’t count on him waking in time to help her though, so she scanned the East Wing hall. The click of a door led her toward a supply room. That room had a window, and if he stayed invisible Kevin could possibly make his escape there.

  Not if she had anything to say about it.

  She hurried down the hall and rushed several feet into the dark room before he had a chance to react. The windows were still closed and there was no other way out. He was in here somewhere. Two invisible people in a small room, waiting each other out. This could take awhile.

  Jenna sensed him in the room, but she couldn’t pinpoint his location. She hoped Kevin’s abilities weren’t more evolved than hers. If he could only sense her nearness, they were on a similar playing field. If she couldn’t have a leg up, she liked level playing fields best.

  If he’d just give her a hint of his location, she’d make the next move. She was tired, aching, bleeding, itching from her trek through the woods, and she wasn’t about to stand in the supply room all night scanning for someone as invisible as herself. Not to mention her invisibility was already feeling taxed, and Kevin might be better at holding his together.

  She tried to picture the room’s contents. Dust mops in the far right corner. Replacement fluorescent bulbs on the top shelf in the middle of the room. Cans of spray paint a shelf below that. Spray paint. He couldn’t make the paint invisible without making himself visible first and giving her a chance to act.

  Before moving, she did her best to remember the precise positioning of the cans on the shelves the last time she’d been in the room. She squinted in the dim light filtering in through the windows and spotted what she sought — the solitary can of white spray paint that didn’t have a lid. He had a weapon of some type, so she’d have to act quickly. She’d only get one chance.

  With agonizing slowness, she crept forward and wrapped her fingers around the can. She took a deep, silent breath. Now or never. She pushed the spray nozzle and spun in a fast circle, ducking as she went. The room was small enough the paint would have to hit him.

  He grunted in surprise at the moment she tossed the can across the room and scurried to the opposite end of the shelving. In her crouched position, she couldn’t prevent the piles of supplies from raining down on her as the shelves crashed over on top of her.

  The attack surprised her, and she lost control of the energy that kept her invisible. She started to come back into view, but she refocused and forced herself to stay invisible. As she extricated herself, Kevin jerked the window open and used the overturned shelving to help launch him outside.

  He was not getting away!

  She dragged herself out a window for the second time that night just as she heard running feet approaching the supply room.

  When her feet hit the grass, she glimpsed a streak of white bobbing across the lawn in the moonlight. With a gun in her pocket and fury propelling her, she ran after Kevin.

  Her feet flew so fast, she felt like she might take flight. She caught up to Kevin in a garden close to the edge of the grounds. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

  To her surprise, he did. And then the white stripe turned. “Please don’t.”

  After all he’d done, was he going to pitifully beg for his life now?

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Because you’ll be condemning three innocent people to death.”

  “I see no innocent people.”

  “My sister and her two children.”

  “That’s pathetic.”

  “My sister’s name is Candie. Her daughter, Lilly, is seven. Her son, Jacob, is three. If I get caught, they’ll kill them.”

  “They?”

  “Haven’t they threatened your family yet?”

  Jenna inhaled sharply.

  “I’ve already lost one sister to them. I can’t let them hurt Candie and the kids.” His voice broke, and either he was telling the truth or he was an incredibly good actor.

  He was the latter. Hadn’t he convinced her he was an average Joe painter working to make home repairs to his grandparents’ old farmhouse?

  “I can’t let you leave. The president won’t be safe until you’re no longer a threat.”

  He didn’t deny it.

  Shouting rang out from the White House exit nearest the supply room. She glanced toward the Secret Service agents headed her way. How was she supposed to turn Kevin over with both of them invisible? Would they even know what they were seeing if the saw the white paint stripe? And if they figured it out, what would that mean for people like her? Too many questions sped through her mind, allowing Kevin time to turn and dart around a tall hedge. Damn it!

  She gave chase and spotted him again just as he was approaching the fence surrounding the property. She stopped and aimed. She’d deal with the risk to his supposed family later.

  “Stop!”

  He kept barreling toward freedom.

  Dear God, let him have been lying.

  She pulled the trigger.

  To her ears, the shot blasted through the night like a sonic boom. Kevin became visible as he fell. But before he hit the ground, a black SUV screeched to a halt on the street outside and two guys covered in black scaled the fence as if it were nothing more than a bed of geraniums. They effortlessly picked up Kevin and nearly threw him over the fence to two more similarly garbed men.

  This was something straight out of a Hollywood thriller.

  One of the men raised his mask. “Come on, Jenna. Let’s go!” Daniel. Her emotions raw, tears filled her eyes at seeing him alive.

  With the sound of the Secret Service nearing, she ran toward the fence, becoming visible in the process, and allowed the men to launch her to the other side. Before she could take a breath, they were all inside the SUV speeding away from the White House.

  She shook away the sudden lightheadedness and looked down at herself, fully visible now. “How?” Her head felt funny. Lingering effects of the drugs? Fa
tigue? Shock?

  “Call it a gut feeling,” Daniel said.

  She eyed Kevin. One of the black-garbed guys was holding a compress to the shoulder wound, but the cloth filled almost as soon as he placed them against Kevin’s injury.

  Her head spun. She blinked against the need to pass out, but it didn’t work. Daniel spoke her name, but he sounded so far away.

  When she regained consciousness, a bright light was shining in her eyes. She lifted her arm to block it. Where was she? A hospital?

  Someone walked up next to where she lay, his body blocking the light. She expected to see a doctor when she lowered her arm.

  Elliott stared down at her.

  She screamed.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Pegram licked Jenna’s toes as she read the paper, but she didn’t give him the attention he sought. She was too busy reading the latest details from Washington. It seemed so far away now, though the distance between her front porch in Tennessee and the capital was the same as it’d always been. And though a mere two weeks had passed since the chase through the White House, her time there seemed to belong to a different lifetime.

  She’d not heard from Daniel, though she understood why. He and his boss were most likely answering a million questions a day about how the intelligence had been so wrong, where the breakdown had been, and why the agency was sure there was an assassin in the White House and yet no one could find him.

  Pegram nudged her again, and she complied by pulling him close and scratching his neck. It was miracle he was alive, and she suspected she had Daniel to thank for that. When some personality-impaired government goons had shepherded her onto a plane at Reagan National a mere five hours after they’d scooped her from the White House grounds, she’d been in shock and possibly suffering some post-traumatic stress. When she’d arrived in Nashville and gone to claim her baggage, she’d bawled when she’d seen Pegram come gliding in looking at everyone with big eyes through the slits of his carrier.

  It was a testament to the power of the agency that not one hint of its existence had seeped into the media coverage. They’d played it all off as an elaborate war game, one even high level officials and Secret Service agents hadn’t known about. There had been questions about what agency had coordinated the test of Homeland Security measures, but the only response had been “It’s classified.” Jenna imagined all the government agencies speculating about each other and how pissed off they were at not being included in the planning.

  Pegram whimpered next to her, begging for attention. She placed the paper aside and patted her legs, prompting him to jump up onto her lap. He licked her face with enthusiasm, grateful for the love and attention.

  “Okay, okay, I get the idea,” she said to him and laughed. She hugged his wiggling body against her and closed her eyes against the sting of sudden tears. When would they stop? When would she be able to go back to the way life had been before?

  Never.

  How could she go through what she had without being changed? Since getting back, she’d not even contacted the department to let them know she was home, hadn’t wanted to. How would she explain her absence? Her briar-scratched face and torn wrists? She had no idea what the agency had told her chief, if anything, beyond the lie about the anti-terrorism class.

  Only Frank knew she was back, and he’d taken one look at her and known she needed time alone. She’d examined her feelings over and over again, and life on the beat paled now. She wanted to be mad at Daniel for making her dissatisfied with what had always felt incredibly important to her, but she couldn’t work up any anger, not even frustration.

  Of course being a street cop was important, but it just didn’t seem like enough anymore.

  She still didn’t want to work for the government, particularly for the still unidentified man at the agency. But she had unfinished business.

  Jenna reached into her T-shirt and pulled out a picture of her and her father in his full Army gear. She’d been seven, and he’d just returned from some overseas mission. She tried not to speculate what that mission might have been. She stared at their faces and noticed again their identical smiles. How much else did they have in common?

  Her father might be as dead as she’d believed him to be only weeks ago, but then he might not be. Someone, somewhere might be forcing him to do things the way the agency had her. She had to find out.

  Having gotten his fill of petting, Pegram scrambled off her lap and ran off to play with the other dogs. Jenna picked up the Post and began reading where she’d left off. As was the case in such situations, opposing opinions were flying. One set of Washingtonians praised the test of the security at the White House while others criticized the secrecy about what agencies were involved.

  The sound of popping gravel at the end of her driveway made Jenna look up. A familiar red sports car rolled into view.

  The car came to a stop in front of the house, and still she was unable to pull herself up from the Adirondack chair. Daniel stepped from the car, and remnants of the giant goose egg and bruising still showed at the edge of his forehead.

  She was done with the trusting business, but it was good to see him alive and well.

  “I see you’re hard at work,” he said, the cocky grin back in place.

  If nothing else, she knew that part of him was real.

  “Taking a welled-earned vacation.”

  “Me, too.”

  That surprised her. She’d never thought of the agency as one to allow their agents time off.

  “How are you, Jenna?”

  “Okay.”

  “Sorry I haven’t called, but I thought it best to let things die down.”

  She shrugged. “You don’t have to explain.”

  “I know, but I want to.” He climbed the steps and sank onto the top one. “I’m sorry you were jerked out of D.C. so fast. The agency doesn’t have much of a bedside manner.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “No, but I’m sorry just the same. I heard about what happened in the lab.”

  “You mean me waking up and proceeding to scream to wake the dead?”

  He smiled. “Yeah.”

  “Can’t say waking up and finding myself staring up at Elliott was the highlight of my stay in Washington. Even if he was patching me up instead of cutting me open.”

  “I know what you mean. I don’t intend to have Elliott that close to me with sharp objects ever again.”

  “How’s your head?”

  “Sore as hell, but healing. You? You were pretty banged up when I saw you last.”

  “Getting better. I think I’ve slept more in the past two weeks than I have in the past year. My days have consisted of eating, sleeping and news.”

  “You’re safe. We fed Patti a story that your mother was struggling with therapy after her accident, and you decided to move back to Georgia to help her.”

  Jenna pointed toward the newspaper. “I know what I’ve been reading is only the surface. What’s really going on?”

  She half expected him to refuse to tell her, but this time he surprised her.

  “We’re still piecing it together.”

  “Who was the guy I saw talking to Tumeri?”

  “Galen Forbes, a fifteen-year agent. Seems for about thirteen of those years, he’s been brokering illicit deals in several countries for drugs, weapons, oil, you name it. Countries that were on the president’s list of corrupt regimes.”

  “To line his own pockets?”

  “To some extent, but it’s looking like most of that money went into agency coffers. Seems we’ve been partially financed with dirty money for a long time. Forbes said we couldn’t do the work we do without those funds, and having the extra cash that’s not tied to government purse strings gives the agency more freedom to do what’s necessary.” With each revelation, Daniel sounded more disgusted. “They pretty much had carte blanche, and we still probably don’t know half of what they did.”

  “They? How many agents are wrapped u
p in this?”

  “We’ve found four so far, but we’ll likely never know the full scope. So much was done anonymously and off the books.”

  “How will you know they won’t make another attempt on the president?”

  “We won’t for sure, but we’re keeping an eye on things. And Kevin is giving us information.”

  “He’s alive? I thought for sure he was going to bleed out.”

  “As far as anyone knows, he is dead. It’s safest for his family that way.”

  “His family?”

  “They’re fine, under protective watch until we’re convinced anyone who might be a threat to them is no longer a threat.”

  Jenna swallowed hard. Her shot could have signed the death warrants of an innocent mother and two children. “I wasn’t sure he was telling the truth.”

  Daniel looked up, seeming to look for answers and reasons that made sense in the heavens above. “Unfortunately, yes. He had another sister. When he refused one of his first missions, Cheryl disappeared from her home and washed up on the shore of Lake Erie three days later with her throat slit.”

  Jenna’s own throat tingled at the image. “Do you think...there will be others?”

  Daniel sighed. “I’m afraid so.” He looked like a man trapped by circumstance. “I know your family was threatened, but I honestly believed that was a scare tactic. The threats against us, those are real. The agency will do whatever it has to do to keep its identity secret.”