Calculated Risk. Stephanie Doyle

and poured two whiskeys straight. She handed one to Quinlan, even though she doubted he would drink it, and sat down in the delicate chair across from him, closer to the fire. Closer to him.

      “Do you think it’s so impossible that might be exactly what I want?”

      “You could have come to me. Years ago. I could have fixed things.”

      Sabrina laughed softly. “As if I would have asked you for anything back then. But I guess I know that if I had, you would have tried. You would have failed. I was fired, Q. And they were right to do it.”

      “There were circumstances,” he muttered, his eyes pinned on the glass in his hands. He did, in fact, take a sip of his drink.

      “Yep. But the broken heart of a nineteen-year-old seems pretty silly when you think about it in hindsight.”

      “What happened?” he asked, wanting the specifics of why she did it, she knew. He would have read about how it happened in her file. But the details didn’t matter anymore, just the reason behind them.

      “I got lost. You can’t know, can’t imagine, what it’s like to be ten paces in front of the rest of the world. It’s the scariest place on earth when you’re there by yourself, especially when you don’t know where you’re going.”

      She lifted the glass to her lips. The smell of the whiskey hit her and reminded her that this would be her third drink of the night. She set the drink down on the end table next to her and stood again, moving back toward the fire. She looked at the flames colored with hints of blue and orange rather than at him.

      “I decided I didn’t want to be that person, out in front, anymore. And it was so easy to give up. So easy to tell myself that I didn’t need the CIA. Too easy for them to say they didn’t need me. Then… I don’t know what happened. Maybe it was 9/11, maybe it was sooner. Somewhere along the way I grew up. I started to think about what I was doing with my life. What I was giving away. All my potential. That’s a hell of a thing. It began to piss me off. I was good at what I did. And I liked being good at it.”

      “You could have been the best.”

      She shrugged and tried not to think about what could have been, but what was going to be if she could pull this off.

      “So there’s your answer. It’s ten years later. The past is just that. Arnold gave me an opportunity and I’m taking hold of it with both hands. Yes, I contacted Kahsan. I told him everything. Because you and I both know that he’s the only other person who would want access to Arnold’s data as much as the CIA. Don’t you see? I’ve become the ultimate bait and when I deliver his head on a platter to the CIA…they’ll have to take me back. On my terms. You know they will.”

      She thought she sounded pretty convincing. Probably because most of what she’d told him was the truth. No, it hadn’t been her idea to go after Kahsan, but everything else she’d told him was dead-on.

      “Possibly,” he accepted. “But this isn’t tiddledy-winks. You’ve been out of the game a long time, Bri. What makes you think you can play with this man?”

      “I made you as a tail tonight,” she reminded him.

      A short nod acknowledged her victory. “How did you make me? I thought I had been rather careful.”

      “I heard your shoes.”

      “So you leaped to the conclusion that any man walking on the sidewalk had to be following you. That’s awfully presumptuous even given the circumstances.”

      “This is Stansfield, Pennsylvania. In the dead of winter,” she told him, “even the lawyers around this place wear boots.”

      He lifted his gaze from his drink and met her eyes. In the light of the fire his normally cold gray eyes didn’t seem as dangerous as she remembered. Instead, they seemed almost inviting, as though he wanted her to share a memory with him. But that wasn’t a place she could go. Not with him. Not again.

      He stood and set his half-finished drink on the mantel as far away from her ashtray as possible. “Your fighting was a little sloppy,” he mentioned. “And you were breathing hard after the chase. You’re out of shape. Could be the cigarettes.”

      “Yeah, well, you weren’t exactly operating at top speed, either, chief. Could be your age.”

      “Okay. For now I’ll buy your story. But this changes everything. I have to tell my superiors what you’ve done. I have no idea how they’ll react. But in the meantime you’re stuck with me. If Kahsan does bite—”

      “If? I would say it was more a question of when.”

      A snap of wood echoed from outside almost in response to Sabrina’s statement. It was a simple sound. The sound a cold, near frozen, branch makes when the wind hits a tree too hard.

      Or the sound a heavy foot makes when it steps on a board that can’t support its weight.

      Inside the house they froze, then stared hard at each other, no communication necessary for what they both understood.

      They had company.

      Chapter 5

      “W ho?” Sabrina mouthed.

      Quinlan’s expression was severe. “Who do you think?”

      But that didn’t make sense. If it was Kahsan and he was moving on her, why do it now when there were two of them?

      “No. It doesn’t work,” Sabrina whispered, shaking her head. “Besides, whoever is out there is making too much noise to be anything but hired help.”

      Quinlan held a finger to his mouth, the universal sign to shut up. Quiet descended. Then another creak. This time the sound of pressure on wood rather than an actual snap. Sabrina was even more convinced. Whoever was outside was trying to be more careful, but they weren’t quite cutting it. One more step and the board cracked. The noise was unmistakable. As was the surprised shout that followed. Whoever he was, he knew that stealth was no longer an option.

      Instantly, Quinlan reached for his semiautomatic Glock in the holster under his arm. He moved to the corner of the living room dragging Sabrina with him. His body pressed her back against the wall between the front door and the bay window to their right as they waited.

      The first shot that fired through the window wasn’t a surprise. Then came another. Then all hell broke loose. Together they crouched to their knees tucked as tightly as they could in the corner of the room, their bodies hopefully sheltered by the sturdy beams of the old house, while someone took aim at them from outside with what could only be an AK-47.

      Glass shattered inside the room as bullets ricocheted off the brick fireplace. From the foyer she could hear the glass surrounding the front door falling in chunks to the hardwood floor.

      “Damn it,” she cursed.

      “You hit?”

      “No. I used stained glass around the front door. Do you know how much that costs?”

      “How many shooters?” he asked.

      Sabrina counted the bullets leaving marks in her living-room wall. Then she estimated what was landing in the foyer. Applying that to what she knew a semiautomatic rifle could hold, she answered, “Two shooters, far enough away that I’m probably not counting the guy from the porch.” She shook her head. “This doesn’t make sense.”