Shadow Woman: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

smart, he wouldn’t have been workingwith them in the first place. Not that he didn’t trust his own people; he did, up to a point. Beyond that point, he trusted only himself. He was surprised they’d kept him in the loop this long, but then, he was intimately involved, and he wasn’t someone they wanted to piss off. He had friends with power, and even more dangerous friends with skills; he didn’t know which one of the two had more influenced the decision to keep him informed, but as long as it worked, he didn’t give a fuck why.
    Still. They watched her; he watched them, and made certain what they reported was what he already knew. And because he already knew, they were careful to keep the status quo going. They couldn’t withhold information, or give him the wrong intel. What he couldn’t control was if they initiated an action without there being a trigger, if someday someone in power simply decided the risk was too great to let the situation continue.
    That was where he trusted his gut instinct, honed to a lethal edge by all the action he’d seen. The day that instinct whispered to him was the day he acted.
Mutual assured destruction
, a fancy way of saying “Mexican standoff,” was a fine concept when it came to keeping the peace.
    At the moment, he was reading about the state of the euro—not that he was any kind of financial guru, but then, he wasn’t reading for investment information. Money drove everything in politics, in national security—hell, it drove everything, period. Desperate nations did desperate things, and a ripple in the monetary market could have him on a jet within the hour, traveling to God only knew where, to do whatever had to be done. Because he wasn’t available to oversee her all the time, he had a backup in place, to act if necessary. He tried to anticipate those times, predict when his services might be needed. While he was reading, he was also listening for anything the least out of the ordinary. So far, her routine had seemed to go as usual. Anything
un
usual would trigger a tidal wave of reaction.
    “Ten, twelve, one, forty-two, eighteen.”
    The whispered numbers grabbed his attention as abruptly and completely as if a shot had been fired. He set down his cup and swiveled his chair around, his head cocked, his entire body alert. Automatically he reached for a pen, jotted down the numbers.
What the hell—?
    Seconds later, she repeated the sequence of numbers, though this time in a slightly stronger voice.
    There was a pause. Then came sounds of movement, at first normal, then hurrying, followed by the unmistakable noises of prolonged and violent vomiting.
    Fuck!
He wished he had eyes on her, but the surveillance network had allowed her that privacy. Nothing she said, either on her house phone or cell phone or even her work phone, not to mention what she watched on TV or did on her computer, was private. Her car was constantly tracked by a GPS device. But video had been nixed; not out of any concern for her constitutional rights, which had pretty much been shredded and trampled in the mud, but because it had been deemed unnecessary. They didn’t need to see her go to the toilet, or take a shower, so long as they knew that was what she was doing.
    Surveilling her had been easy. She never deviated from her routine. She was calm, predictable—and now, it seemed, sick. But what the fuck were those numbers?
    He listened to a couple more episodes of vomiting. Definitely sick. Then came the signal that she’d turned on her cell phone. The name of her department supervisor at work, Maryjo Winchell, popped up on his screen.
    He’d cloned her cell, so he listened in real time to the call. What he heard reassured him. She thought she had a bug, she was throwing up—he already knew that—and had a splitting headache. Maryjo confirmed there was a stomach virus making the rounds, her kids had had it, blah blah blah.
    His tension had just begun to fade when Maryjo threw a grenadein