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  Following him home had been a stupid idea, but she was here now and didn’t want to give up so easily.

  “I really think you should hear me out. I can tell you that Corbit Upwood is not a good man, and he’s definitely up to something illegal.”

  Peter was on her in a split second, and his hand gripped her face as if she were an errant child. “I don’t deal in rumors and anonymous sources. If you don’t leave now, I’ll call the police and I’ll have the Secret Service launch an official investigation into you. I promise you don’t want that.”

  She wrenched her face from his hand and stumbled backwards. It killed her to let him have the last word, but this wasn’t going anywhere productive and she was going to make things worse if she didn’t go home and get some sleep.

  “Goodnight Agent Mercer. I’m sorry I followed you home.” With that, she turned and walked away, leaving him staring after her.

  Later that night in her apartment, she tossed and turned. Three Red Bulls and four cups of coffee were keeping her up. Propped up by pillows, she did a quick search for Peter. The internet wasn’t helpful. As far as she could tell he’d done a stint in the military and was recruited by the CIA.

  His CIA years were a mystery, and then a few years ago, he popped back up in the states where he went to work for the Secret Service. If he had social media profiles, they were locked down tight and she couldn’t find them. It would make sense that someone who was in the CIA and now worked in security would be protective of his privacy.

  There was exactly one photo of him that she could find. His military service photo. He was a handsome man but from what Carrie could tell, he didn’t smile too often. In a job like his he would have to be serious, but she got the feeling he didn’t smile much away from work either. That was a shame, because the glimpse of his smile she’d gotten earlier was delightful and made him that much more handsome.

  Where had his disdain for journalists come from? He didn’t strike her as the political type. Most politicians weren’t fans of the media no matter how much they claimed to love the first amendment. This felt personal.

  After a few more searches came up empty, she told herself she would use the resources available to her at the Post to do a deeper check into Special Agent Peter Mercer.

  A yawn overtook her, and she set the laptop on the empty side of the bed and laid down. Peter Mercer’s face stared back at her from the screen and she drifted to sleep reliving his lips on hers.

  • • •

  Blue eyes, soft lips, and hair that felt like silk. Peter reached for the pretty blonde that floated in front of him only to have her vaporize in his hands.

  His eyes flew open, and he glanced at the clock. Shit. It was already five. Normally he was up by four to get a workout and a shower in before he had to leave for work.

  Damn reporter, he thought as he rolled out of bed and stumbled to the shower. No workout today and his morning reading would have to wait too. Half an hour later, he was sitting at his kitchen island eating a bowl of oatmeal with his morning cup of coffee. It occurred to him to wonder how many cups Carrie Davenport had already had this morning. A smirk spread across his face as he swallowed a bit of oatmeal as he remembered watching her chug it yesterday. If she were his, he would break her of the caffeine addiction. She would fight it, but he would make it worth her while.

  Woah. Where had that thought come from? He was having Dom/sub fantasies about a damn journalist. Clearly, he needed to get laid. With a shake of his head, he rinsed his bowl and pulled on his gun and suit jacket. Time to head to the CIA building.

  When he arrived, Ellerman looked pissed off.

  “What’s going on Agent Ellerman? Your emotions are showing a little too much.”

  “Sorry boss but our protectee is a jackass if I may be so frank.”

  Peter chuckled. “He’s just resistant to the idea of protection. Go home, get some sleep. Is he in his office?”

  Ellerman nodded and Peter waved him away. With a quick knock, he opened the private office door and stuck his head in.

  “Good morning director. How was your night?”

  “Your crack team of agents insisted on rearranging furniture in my house and setting up snipers on my neighbors’ roof. I don’t appreciate all the disruptions,” Director Upwood said with a growl.

  Peter stood in front of his desk with his arms behind his back patiently listening to him complain.

  “I assure you Director, it’s all with your safety in mind,” Peter said when Upwood finished.

  An unintelligible grumble is all the director gave him, so Peter shifted the conversation.

  “Let’s go over your schedule for today so I can brief the team.”

  “My secretary can give you a copy. I’m sure you’ll tell me if we need to make changes.” Upwood turned and stared at his computer screen, clicking the mouse and pecking at keys. Peter was being dismissed.

  Without another word, he slipped out and asked the secretary for a copy of the director’s schedule. She happily provided it to him. Nothing out of the ordinary and only one trip out of the building. Sounded like a pretty simple day.

  The previous day, Peter had taken over a rarely used conference room as his team’s base of operations. He met with all but one of his men to go over the schedule and make a transport plan for Upwood before taking up a post outside the director’s door.

  As he stood watching people drift in and out of the office, his mind wandered back to Carrie’s words about Corbit Upwood not being a good man. Peter knew she wasn’t wrong about that, but he wasn’t at all convinced that he was up to something illegal other than maybe sexually harassing someone. But Carrie had made it sound like some sort of organized criminal activity.

  A part of him wished he had let her talk enough to find out what she was basing her claims on. Could something illegal be why someone wanted to blow him to bits? He shook his head. It wasn’t his job to question his protectee’s activities. Unless he witnessed something illegal, it was only his job to keep him alive. The only reason he needed to care if Corbit Upwood was up to something nefarious was if it was putting his men in harm’s way.

  As far as he could tell, that wasn’t the case. And Carrie Davenport was probably barking up the wrong tree. You didn’t become director of the CIA by doing “illegal shit,” as she put it. Maybe some morally and ethically ambiguous shit, but not downright illegal.

  After so many years, Peter was immune to the moral ambiguity of Washington politics. He didn’t like it; he just didn’t concern himself with it unless it affected him or the people he was protecting.

  Still, he’d read more of Carrie’s work last night before going to sleep, and her pieces were well researched and backed by irrefutable facts. If she was poking into Corbit Upwood, she had a reason. That didn’t mean she was on the right track, and she hadn’t printed anything about him so it would likely lead nowhere.

  A voice squawked in his ear breaking him out of his thoughts. “I’ve got someone not on the schedule asking to see Upwood. The receptionist says Upwood wants to see him, but he’s not cleared.”

  Peter straightened, setting all thoughts of Carrie Davenport aside. “What’s his name?”

  “Dino Carranza. Seems like an asshole.”

  “Hold them until I get back to you.”

  Peter knocked on Upwood’s door.

  “Director, I’ve got a Dino Carranza in the lobby asking to see you. What can you tell me about him?”

  Upwood never looked up from his computer. “I already told my secretary to have the receptionist send him up.”

  “The problem is, he wasn’t on your schedule and he’s not on the pre-cleared list.”

  Now the director looked irritated. “So search him and send him up. I have business to discuss with him.”

  “Is he intelligence or law enforcement?”

  “That’s not your concern,” the director said.

  Peter closed his eyes for a moment willing himself to remain patient.
“Anyone who has access to you is my concern, Sir.”

  “Just send the man up.”

  “I need you to tell me a little more about him first.”

  “Again, that is not your concern.”

  Peter moved closer to the desk to make sure he had his attention. “If you don’t tell me who he is and what he wants, I’ll be forced to turn him away until we can run a background check.”

  Peter crossed his arms and looked down at the older man.

  “I’m calling Director Higgins. This is ridiculous. Get out of my office,” Upwood hissed, his face red as he reached for his phone.

  Peter just nodded and stepped out. He had resumed his post just in time to hear Director Upwood’s voice come through the secretary’s intercom. “Tell Dino Carranza to call me this afternoon.”

  Interesting, thought Peter. It either wasn’t important enough to warrant putting his visitor through a deep background check or there was something Upwood didn’t want the Secret Service finding. He sent a text to the agent downstairs with his service issued cell.

  Initiate a background check on Dino Carranza. Quietly.

  After getting acknowledgment, Peter began to prep the team for transporting the director to his morning meeting at the White House. Once transport was started, he could go to his desk at the Secret Service building for a few hours to file reports and make detail arrangements for the rest of the thirty-day rotation. As lead agent on the detail, he didn’t stand guard as often as the rest of the men thanks to all the paperwork he had to do.

  When he was back in his office, he began to do some searches with department resources looking for information on Dino Carranza. The initial background check would be a day or two. As much as it irritated him, he also wanted to do some quiet digging into whether there was any merit to the things Carrie was saying. Not that she had given him much to go on. Still, he could poke around and try to see what she had been up to herself. By checking into her, maybe he could get a handle on whatever she was investigating.

  A few dozen searches later, he was getting nowhere, so he went back to department resources and put a search in on Corbit Upwood. So far, he hadn’t come up with a connection between him and the mystery visitor from this morning. Why was this bugging him so much? People got visitors in their offices all the time and Upwood was in the spy game. It would make sense for him to be getting odd visitors. Something about the way Upwood was acting about this particular visitor rubbed him the wrong way.

  As he was clicking out of the search results, determined to focus on his administrative reports, his cell phone rang.

  “Agent Mercer,” he answered.

  “Mercer, why the hell are you digging into Corbit Upwood?”

  “Director Higgins. How did you know what I was looking into?” He was a little surprised at being questioned. It wasn’t unusual for the service to look into their protectees.

  “Upwood is our second most important protectee right now. I stay on top of anything involving him. Your search in the system triggered an alert.”

  “Yes Sir, I thought it would be good to be up on who I’m protecting. Plus, he got an unauthorized visitor today and Upwood wouldn’t tell me who he was, or why he was visiting. I thought maybe I could dig up a connection.”

  “Well do me a favor and leave it alone, agent. Just focus on your job, which is to keep Upwood alive. I can assure you that Dino Carranza is no threat to Upwood’s life.”

  “Understood,” Peter said, despite the fact that he did not understand at all. There was definitely something fishy going on and now Peter wouldn’t stop until he got to the bottom of it.

  Chapter Six

  “Are you sure it’s safe for you to go back there knowing what you know?”

  Tom’s voice came through the phone Carrie had propped up on her bathroom counter as she applied a thick coat of mascara.

  “I appreciate your concern boss but I’m sure it’s fine. I don’t know much yet and that’s why I’m going back. Just to get a look around. See if I can figure out who RIP is. I promise I’ll be careful.” She was grateful they weren’t on video call as her outfit tonight was particularly skimpy and over the top.

  Her mystery tipster had said if she returned to the Doll House, they would know she was up for investigating this story. It was the kind of thrill Carrie couldn’t turn down.

  Tonight, instead of just talking to the girls, she was going to pay extra attention to the men who came through the club. She hoped she would see Corbit Upwood and was disappointed with herself for not noticing him last time.

  It was kind of early for a strip club, barely five in the afternoon, but some of the timestamps on the photos from the package were from early in the evening. It would make sense to conduct nefarious business during hours when the club was less crowded.

  While she loved riding the metro, she would take a cab tonight to avoid the pig-headed men who would whistle, and cat call her just because she was wearing revealing clothes.

  When she arrived at the Doll House Cabaret, she gave a flirty wave to the well-dressed bouncer who just shook his head and grinned at her. She would like to think they’d struck up something of a friendship during her visits here.

  Inside, it was mostly empty, but two girls were on stage performing for the meager crowd of three or four men that were watching and not doing much tipping.

  She spotted a waitress she had befriended and ordered a vodka cranberry and settled in at the bar to watch the women dance. The stage was entertaining enough, but the real show happened in the dark corners where the girls probably made their biggest money doing things that were skirting the line of legal.

  Savannah, who had just exited the stage, came and gave her a hug, thoroughly coating her in glitter.

  “I knew you couldn’t stay away honey.”

  Carrie grinned up at the pretty redhead. She’d always had a weakness for red heads. “Carla makes the best drinks in town,” she said raising her glass.

  “Pshhh. You know you want to get up on that stage. You’d make a killing being a short tiny girl.”

  Carrie giggled and took another sip of her cocktail. Savannah was convinced that Carrie secretly wanted to be a stripper. The scantily clad woman straddled the barstool and leaned forward on her palms. “Really though, I thought you said you had what you needed.”

  “I did, but I want to confirm a few things and sometimes before I write a piece I like to just sit in the environment and get in the zone.”

  Savannah nodded as if she understood, and it’s likely she did. They had bonded over Carrie’s multiple visits and she had revealed that she was a novelist at heart. Stripping just paid the bills until she found a publisher.

  “Well I’m glad you’re here. I gotta get back up there. It’s a slow evening but it should pick up soon. The big shots are all leaving their offices and will be ready to drown their sorrows between my tits,” she said, shaking her rather ample breasts dramatically.

  Carrie grinned and shook her head, turning back to her drink. As she turned, her eyes stopped at the entry to the club. “I’ll be damned,” she muttered. Peter Mercer stood at the entry talking to the bouncer. He looked annoyed. A moment later, Peter and two other agents, one of whom had handcuffed her the other day stepped through the door. CIA Director Corbit Upwood was with them and Carrie immediately perked up. This is why she’d come here.

  So far, she had spotted no one who seemed like they were sending her anonymous packages, but then what would such a person look like? Was it one of the strippers? Was it a patron? Carrie had no idea. Now that Upwood was here though she could focus on who he was meeting and what he was up to.

  The posse of secret service agents and Upwood took over a large booth in the back corner of the club and Carrie kept her head down. The last thing she needed was Peter Mercer spotting her.

  A few minutes later, another man showed up and sat at the table with Upwood. It was the same man Upwood was meeting with in the photograph. To Carrie’s eye, it lo
oked like Agent Mercer tried to object but Upwood insisted on talking to the man.

  “Carla,” she whisper-shouted across the bar to the woman slinging drinks.

  “What’s up babe?”

  “Who is Corbit Upwood meeting?” Carrie asked when Carla got close enough for her to whisper.

  Carla glanced at the booth and back to Carrie. “I wouldn’t go poking around there if I were you honey. Nothing but trouble.”

  “Carla,” a man barked. “Quit talking and get back to work.”

  The bartender jumped and quickly picked up a glass and moved away from Carrie. As she did, she said, “I mean it honey, don’t go poking your nose into things. It’s dangerous.”

  Bingo. There was no way Carrie wasn’t going to look into this now. Turning on her stool she scanned the room looking for someone else to talk to that might answer her questions. Savannah was stepping off the stage again, so she ordered another drink from Carla. The bartender was much less friendly this time, but Carrie didn’t have time to analyze it because she wanted to get to Savannah before she found a customer.

  “Hey sugar, did you like the show?” Savannah asked, slinging an arm around Carrie’s shoulder when she approached.

  “You know I did,” Carrie said with a wink.

  “Hey, I have a weird question. See that booth over there? I’ve seen them in here several times, but they never interact with the girls and they always drink water. I know the one is the Director of the CIA but who is the guy he’s talking to?” Carrie asked. She didn’t actually know that they always drank water since she hadn’t noticed them before but decided to go with her gut hoping to get more information.

  One girl Savannah had been talking to backed away shaking her head. Savannah leaned in and whispered, “his name is Dino Carranza, I’d stay out of that can of worms if I were you.”