Blindsided (25 page)

“And why, and by whom, exactly, was Miss Idyllis detained?” she asked, her evenly modulated voice not hiding the hint of breathlessness.

Teigan looked back at Willis, silently telling him to pick back up the ball. Despite Teigan’s current displeasure with Whitesman, he was still a loyal servant to his country.
His
lips were sealed on this matter…but Willis’s weren’t.

Willis moved forward, drawing Bonnie’s attention back to him. “Well, that is hard to explain without giving some background information first.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What sort of background information.”

“Does the name Viadal mean anything to you?” Willis asked her.
 

It took her a minute to place the name. But when she did, she didn’t even try to hide her excitement. She pulled her bottom lip between pearly white teeth and panted, actually panted. “Oh yes. Fifth grade Speculative Biology. But I don’t see what this has to do with Miss Idyllis.”

“Well then, perhaps you would like me to start at the beginning.”

“Oh, please do.” She patted the chair next to her, inviting Willis to sit down. “Please do.”

***

2799 21
^st
Rd S, Arlington, VA: Just over 13 hours later

Whitesman dragged himself up to a sitting position and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, his feet hitting the hardwood floor with a thump. Every morning this got harder, the feeling of lead that ran through his veins making the task seem as insurmountable as climbing Mount Everest. Maybe he could lie back down and catch a few more Z’s. A forceful prying of his eyes open and subsequent glance at the corner of the wall screen where the time was displayed, told him it was actually quite late: 08:00. Two hours later than he normally got up. It had been a long night after an equally long day, and today didn’t promise to be any better.
 

First thing this morning, he was going to have to find and drag Teigan’s ass in and rake him over the coals. He hadn’t decided what he was going to do with his rogue agent. Prudence told him to suspend the man who’d tried to pull one over on him, but damn, he hated to lose a good agent, and Teigan wasn’t just good, he was the best.

He’s also the only one that can pull off this mission.
 

Whitesman grumbled, pushing aside the little voice in his conscience. Teigan had lost his objectivity. The feed he’d watched of his agent comforting that
thing
in her cell had been enough to prove that. In fact, it wasn’t too much of a stretch to believe John was right: His best agent had fallen in love with the enemy.

Disgusted, he stumbled into the shower. The jets came on full blast and steaming hot, just what he needed to start the blood flowing. Ten minutes later he was buttoning up his last button as he went in search of some fortitude for the day.
 

He entered the kitchen where his beautiful wife, already dressed in the suit she’d make her charity rounds in today and the most adorable frilly apron, stood mixing something in a bowl at the counter. As enticing as both the view and the contents of the bowl might be, there was only one thing on his mind.

Coffee, I need coffee.

“Too much coffee, not enough sleep,” Bridget chided, brushing his cheek with a kiss when he shuffled past her to the table. The woman’s ability to read his thoughts, or maybe she just knew him too well by now, always amazed him.

He grunted and plopped down in the chair. “One of my best agents might be compromised. I have to bring him in for evaluation today.”

“Oh, poor darling,” she said with true sympathy as she placed a mug of steaming coffee before him, then moved back to the stove. He’d gotten her a Happy Home range, but she still preferred to override with manual settings and make the eggs herself. She cracked an egg, humming as she ground a little salt and pepper on the sunny centers before gently flipping them over. In the background, the under-counter screen buzzed with some morning entertainment news story. Whitesman was too busy taking in the scenery as he sipped his morning coffee to care.

Bridget riffled through the cupboard unit, came up with two plates, deftly slid the eggs on without breaking the yolk, topped it off with some pre-warmed bacon alternative on the side and Happy Home toast—she didn’t mind the range for that domestic task it seemed—and slipped the plate in front of him.

“There,” she slid in the seat across from him. “Eat up before the yolks go cold.”

“You’re the best, Bridge.”

She threw him a glowing smile. “I know.”

The smile hit him as it always did, like warm sunshine breaking through the clouds on another dreary day. The story of his life. God he craved this woman. He reached out, engulfing her hand with his and gave her a good hard squeeze. “Have I told you lately how much I love you?”

Her eyes widened, her lower lip trembling slightly, making him immediately realize that it had been far too long since he had.
Probably around the last time you played a round of golf on the greens out back, you idiot.

He gazed on her, hoping the sincerity of his adoration was reflected there. “I do, you know. Love you. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“—raised with no choices, no rights—” the volume of the reporter’s voice on the screen rose, momentarily distracting him.

Bridget’s hand fluttered up to her heart, a warm smile crossing her face. “Oh, Vernon.”

His attention was jerked away again. “—imprisoned in care facilities when the high levels of stress and violence became too much—”

“That’s the sweetest—”

“Shh!” he interrupted Bridget, no longer thinking about sunshine and happiness. His attention was firmly rooted on the under-counter screen.

“And now the government is holding
citizens
without providing any proof of criminal intent.” An image of Aria popped out of the screen.
 

Bridget glanced over her shoulder at the screen in the breakfast nook. “Isn’t that…”

“Isn’t that, what?”

“Isn’t that the record heiress?”

Whitesman didn’t have to answer; the newscaster did for him.

“Miss Aria Octavia Idyllis, beloved daughter of Bruce Idyllis and current owner and CEO of Idyllis records was detained yesterday morning by members of an unnamed government agency. Under coercion of force, despite the fact that the blind CEO didn’t resist arrest, Miss Idyllis was taken into custody and no word has been heard of her since.”
 

The pretty blonde reporter looked sadly into the screen, playing her audience for sympathy. “At the time of this broadcast, the government,” she waved her hand at the Whitehouse lawn behind her, “had no comment on Miss Idyllis’ current status. However, an unnamed source has confirmed that the Idyllis heir was brought in by an unnamed government agency for questioning regarding her family’s involvement with a well-remembered genetic scientist, Dr. Viadal.”

The newscast went on, but Whitesman couldn’t hear the exact words over the buzzing of his ears.
This couldn’t be happening.
But the bobble head on the screen giving a frighteningly accurate rundown on Viadal’s presumed works was proof positive that it was.

The slim hand shaking his arm finally brought him back to his current surroundings. “—Vernon, Vernon!”

“I’m sorry, Bridget,” Whitesman blinked, looking into her concerned face, “what was that you were saying?”

“Vernon, don’t tell me you had anything to do with that girl’s detention. Tell me that your involvement with anything associated with Viadal ended with his death.”

Whitesman drew his mouth into a tight line, holding back a snappish response. He knew what she feared. His own involvement in Viadal’s execution had brought them both into the lime-light for a while. And here he was, involved in what was quickly turning out to be another high profile Viadal case. Damn Viadal. Damn that Idyllis woman and damn Teigan.
 

“Oh Vernon,” she sighed when he didn’t answer. He could feel the weight of her disappointment settling on him like a black shroud. With awful clarity he remembered how close their marriage had come to ruin after the last round of Viadal sensationalism. Even though he’d never been involved in the decisions to fund Viadal’s experiments, Bridget had been humiliated to have her husband associated with the whole mess. For the duration of the trials she’d moved back in with her mother, only coming home again when all the media frenzy had finally died down.
 

“It’s a government issue, Bridget, nothing to worry your pretty head over.” He patted her hand, giving her a comforting smile. He’d get this back under control, for her sake, for theirs—Bridget was too important to him to think of losing again. “You know I can’t discuss this with you. But you know the media. They’re always spinning things in the worst possible light.”

She nodded, fiddling with her fork and making scribbly designs in her left-over egg yolk. Whitesman’s own appetite had curdled. He pushed up from the table, conscientiously bringing his plates to the sanitizer so she wouldn’t have to do it for him. In times of marital stress, it was often the little things that could make or break a man. He’d be on his best behavior for the duration of this fallout.

“It will probably be a late night straightening this mess out.” He gestured toward the screen where the newscast had already moved on to other juicy news.

She nodded again.
 

Resigned to spending the foreseeable future in the doghouse, he kissed the top of her head and went into the front room. Rain was on the forecast for later that day, so he pulled his raincoat and umbrella from the hall unit and slipped his shoe-skins into his briefcase. He was half way down the front steps, heading toward his Airlan in the drive, when the door opened behind him. He turned, half expecting to see his wife standing there with an apologetic smile on her face and a kiss to blow through the air. She loved him, knew this was his job, and had married him anyway, for better or worse. But there was no smile. Mouth pinched, hands wringing nervously before her, the look in her sweet blue eyes told him he wasn’t going to like what she had to say next.
 

Slowly, like a man taking the last steps to his hanging, he moved back up the stairs and stood before her. “What is it, Bridget?”

Chapter Seventeen

The Agency: Later that afternoon

Guess I can kiss any chance at career advancement goodbye.
Teigan pushed his way out of the crowded lift and into the confused chaos of level sixteen. Row after row of cramped workstations spread across a warehouse-like floor, the occupants of the uniform ergonomic chairs bent over their buzzing com links like drones, all working to the tune of The Man.
 

Teigan’s eyes drifted across the expanse to the glassed-off room that stood a flight of stairs above the busy hive. John, being the head of this sweatshop, had earned his own small office above the cells, looking down on his worker bees below.

As if I’d ever want to be in charge of this kind of mindless faction.
The thought eased his bubbling fury somewhat, and he struck out down the center aisle.

In actuality, the interview with Whitesman had gone better than he’d expected. Whitesman hadn’t canned his ass on principle. He was even letting him stay on the assignment. Of course, that might just be because using Teigan as the bait for drawing Byron out held a high probability that his rogue agent wouldn’t come away from the encounter whole. There was also another reason for postponing Teigan’s suspension until after this fiasco was over, and that was because he already had a rapport with one Miss Aria Octavia Idyllis. Aria was now going to be an integral part to the new plan, and in Whitesman’s mind, it made sense to exploit that connection. Which is what had Teigan in his current fury: There was no way in hell he was going to let Aria come within the line of fire. If Whitesman thought he’d be willing to roll over and play dead to appease the masters, the head director was about to have another thought coming.
 

Kiss ass, check, kowtow, check, but one thing he would not do was risk Aria’s life.

Propelled by his current mood, Teigan stomped up the metal grid stairs, unconcerned about hiding his approach. The door to John’s office was wide open so he didn’t bother to knock but barged into the room, and then was let down when there was no reaction. John didn’t bother to turn around to see who his visitor was. The Head of Systems sat facing away from the opening, his focus intent on the wall screen as he shuffled through a stack of storage chips placed precariously between a mountain of guts and innards from mutilated tablets and an array of nifty prototypes spread with equal abandon across the overflowing counter that lined the wall. Neat, John was not.

“You should see this.” The tech pushed off the counter, his chair rolling across to the center desk. He popped out the current chip and shoved the recently retrieved one into the slot. “They were both little geniuses, but get a load of this. Testing back in elementary school put her IQ at 185 while he scored a 173.”

“Bet that pissed him off,” Teigan said smoothly from his perch in the open archway.

John spun around, the blood draining from his face at the sight of Teigan leaning against his door frame. “Whitesman said he was coming down.”

“Whitesman got another call. He sent me on ahead.”