Nicole watched her mother's entire demeanor slowly begin to lighten. She lifted her head and her brown eyes grew wide. "Is that true?"

Kira nodded. "It is. Not only did Luke do most of his traveling on Davenport's dime, ten years ago, Sinopia stock was worth pennies. His superiors at the agency most likely laughed behind his back, thinking they were getting the far better end of the bargain. But Luke was a geologist and, being on the ground and knowing many people in the oil industry, he was aware of facts few others were. Peers talk to one another. Luke must have heard about the team Sinopia was a.s.sembling-geologists from Amoco, Exxon, and investors from families in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. I'm only guessing here, but I conjecture Luke must have determined the company would one day become quite successful. One of the first purchases Sinopia's board approved was a deal with the Republic of Guinea for oil exploration rights along the country's coast."

Nicole remembered Guinea was once a French colony. Many still spoke the language. Was that why her father had been practicing those Pimsleur tapes? Had he taken a trip to the country himself?

"The company didn't do much with those rights," Kira continued, "at least not until about two years ago when oil prices began skyrocketing and crude was in great demand. That's when someone from Sinopia's West African offsh.o.r.e drilling team hit the mother lode, a well with an estimated three million barrels of oil and twenty-three billion in gas. So you see, Jane, everything is legitimate." The room was quiet for almost a complete minute.

"I can hardly believe this." Nicole saw there were tears in her mother's eyes. "I've done a great dishonor to Luke's memory."

"And there's cash too," Nicole said. "Back at the bank, in his safe deposit box. Maybe another hundred grand."

One of the doors was suddenly thrust open, surprising them all with the force of the action.

It was Bogie. Cool and calm, he poked his bald head into the room, found Kira, nodded and said mysteriously, "They're ready for you."

Kira spoke directly to her mother. "Nicole has been instrumental in an investigation we've been working on. Very soon, we might be able to identify the individuals responsible for your husband's death and hold them accountable in a court of law. We still have quite a few loose ends to tie up, so if you'll please excuse us, both Nicole and I are needed at a debriefing being conducted here at the hotel this morning. Jim will explain everything to you about the stocks, as well as clear up some confusing issues pertaining to your taxes and other matters."

Everyone's attention shifted to Nicole.

Her mother, though still clearly baffled by the revelation of the stocks and their worth, and looking a bit peaked at the mention of taxes, was suddenly beaming at her proudly. She could tell that her sister could hardly wait to get her alone, no doubt to interrogate her about Kira. And for once, Liz's husband, Ted, no longer looked bored.

Nicole grabbed her bag up off the floor, then ran around the table and gave her mother a big hug. "I love you so much, Mom. Everything is going to be okay."

"Thanks to you. Oh, Nicole, I'm so proud of you," her mother gushed affectionately. "You saved me, saved our house." She looked toward the door pensively and Nicole followed her gaze. Kira was making a silent exit. "And it looks you're not done yet. You'd better go. You don't want to keep Hillary waiting!"

Out in the hallway, Nicole had to run to catch up to Kira. She was already halfway down the corridor, walking at a brisk pace in her heels.

"So when were you going to tell me that my father was working undercover?"

"I only just learned the full truth about that last night." Kira said this without even a sideways glance in Nicole's direction. She checked her watch but kept right on walking.

"Oh, while I was pa.s.sed out unconscious?"

Kira said nothing.

"You're not even going to deny that you drugged me?"

"I had no idea Shevchenko was going to slip you one of her sleeping concoctions," Kira replied, almost apologetically. "She believed you needed to rest, thought you were too wired to do so without an artificial intervention. She thought she would give you a good two or three hours of sleep, not knock you out for the night. If it's any consolation, she's been disciplined and warned in writing never to do anything like that again. Know that she cares a great deal about you, Nicole, and never meant to harm you."

And what about you? Nicole longed to ask. Do you care anything at all about me? Instead she said, "And what are my sister and brother-in-law doing here?"

"I told you at the airport. We needed to ensure everyone was safe. We feared that if Rhyse Taylor's people couldn't get your mother, they'd simply abduct some other family member and use them for ransom. So we grabbed all three of them. You and your mother never have to work another day in your lives. You should be ecstatic, so why are you in such a bad mood? Have you eaten any breakfast?"

Nicole shook her head, realizing she'd missed yet another meal. Her stomach growled on cue. Loudly.

Kira rolled her eyes. They pa.s.sed a conference room; its double doors were open wide to accommodate a large metal cart on wheels piled high with tables and chairs. Inside the room, a silver bowl filled with ripe bananas and green apples sat atop a table alongside trays of mugs and plates. A hotel employee was busy removing the tables, unfolding them and arranging them into a U-shape.

Kira grabbed one of the bananas, smiled, and asked the boy, "Would you mind?"

"Eat up." Kira handed it to Nicole. "Maybe you won't be so cranky with something in your belly." There was the ghost of a smile teasing the curve of her lips.

"Where are we going?" Nicole peeled the banana, breaking off a piece at a time and popping them into her mouth.

They reached the elevators. She dropped the banana peel into one of the polished bra.s.s waste bins. The lobby of the hotel was now practically empty. Music from the ceiling speakers, softly muted, could be heard above the hushed voices of the three women manning the front desk. "A room on the second floor." Kira sighed, a forlorn sound in the awkward quiet between them. "A debriefing with my superiors. I usually hate these meetings." She smoothed an invisible wrinkle in her slacks. "But I have hope today's will be different."

Kira stepped inside the elevator. Nicole wavered for a fraction of a second.

"Whoa!" She jumped in just before the doors slid shut. A shiny, smudgeless reflection of herself stared back at her from the gleaming elevator doors, reminding her just how inappropriately she was dressed. She looked down at her sandals, then at the fuzzy image of Kira's pressed suit mirrored in the metal. Turning, she was about to beg for a moment to run back to her room and change when she realized Kira had taken a step toward her.

"I have something to tell you." Kira's voice was husky and warm. Nicole's heart did a somersault inside her chest. Kira took another step closer, and it was suddenly difficult for Nicole to breathe. The smell of Kira, that distinct sweet jasmine and baby powder scent made her insides melt. Kira leaned in. "I need to-"

And then there was an electronic chime and the elevator doors opened. Kira retreated backward, her face showing her annoyance. "I need to tell you something before we go into that room." Her voice wasn't as steady as it normally was. "Stuart's going to ask you to join our team."

Nicole was forced to corral her thoughts and her weak-kneed legs.

"I don't understand." And she didn't. She was confused and disappointed. She'd misread Kira's intention. Again. She thought for sure Kira had not only been about to kiss her, but to say something far more poignant and personal.

"He's going to offer you a job, Nicole." Kira was back in control of herself, and reached out a hand to prevent the elevator doors from closing. "Stuart observed how you handled this situation with Rhyse Taylor and was extremely impressed. Bogie and Shevchenko think you'd make a great addition as well. But I doubt you'd be interested. Teaching is your calling, right?"

Nicole was speechless "C'mon, we're down the hall, on the left," Kira urged.

There was really no need for the direction. Bogie was standing outside a closed door, making their destination rather obvious. A big grin splintered the serious set of his face when he saw her, his tawny eyes filled with a secret excitement.

Could it be true? Might there be a job offer waiting for her on the other side of the door? And what exactly would she be doing?

She had absolutely no skills and still had another semester of school and a thesis to finish. The few pieces of banana she'd eaten felt like cement blocks in her stomach.

Chapter Twenty-six.

Bogie brushed the back of his knuckles against the panel of the door three times before a voice on the other side beckoned entry. When it opened, Nicole saw three men sitting around a large mahogany table, papers and files scattered all about its surface. The other side of the room contained a wet bar stocked with a bucket of ice, gla.s.sware, and bottles of water. Next to it was a sofa and two reading chairs with a gla.s.s table. The men all looked at her, curiosity in their gazes.

"Well, well, well," one of the three said in a booming Texas drawl, rising to his feet. "Is this the sa.s.sy little sprite I've been hearing so much about?"

Everyone else was in business attire, but he was dressed in a pale blue chambray shirt, jeans, and black Frye cowboy boots. For a moment, Nicole didn't feel so self-conscious about her own outfit. She turned toward Kira. There was a persuasive glimmer now emanating from her blue eyes, a gentle rea.s.surance in them (It's all right, I promise, they seemed to say). She would have much preferred a soft touch or a light squeeze to her shoulder. But Bogie gave her an enthusiastic thumbs-up before closing the door behind him, and that was enough to make her feel better.

"Nicole, this is Judge Jay Carper," Kira said, her manner formal despite Judge Jay's goofy smile and plastic mobility. He was tall, thin, and lanky, reaching out to her, energetically pumping her hand with both of his before pulling her into the room and closer to the morning light spilling though the room's only window.

"Let me have a better look at you, little girl," he said, grinning. He was around fifty, his gray hair receding at the temples and his face drawn with lines of wear from the sun and age. When he opened his mouth, two rubber bands on both sides of his jaw stretched tautly between a netting of wires encasing the upper and bottom rows of his teeth. It took a second for Nicole to realize he was wearing braces.

"Luke Kennedy's daughter, that she is, eh, fellas? Not in the looks department, little lady, lucky you, not that Luke wasn't a handsome buck, but in spirit, you two are one and the same, that's for dang sure." He seemed about ready to slap her on the back in hearty acknowledgment but stopped himself, grabbed two folders from the pile on the table, and tucked them under his left armpit. His Texan charm seemed to turn everything he said and did into a compliment.

"You knew my father?"

Jay Carper shrugged. "Only met him about an hour ago. Pictures and archived computer files. But I could tell we were lucky to have him on our side. By the way," he turned toward Kira, "what's this I'm hearing, Anthony? Stuart said you don't want this pretty little filly on the team."

The judge's remark was aimed at Kira, but his eyes were on Nicole, gauging her reaction to his words. Nicole did her best to hide her response, but the comment stung. Because she knew it was probably true. Maybe that was what Nicole had been about to tell her back in the elevator: "Stuart will offer you a job, but I don't want you to even consider accepting it."

"Don't you have some place you need to be, Carper?" one of the two men at the table asked dismissively, tossing a pad of yellow legal paper with a bunch of doodles drawn on it down on the table. He had an exaggerated New York accent and a head of wiry black hair. His eyegla.s.ses were thick and black-framed. Fine dark hairs grew from his bulbous nose, his ears, and all along the back of his neck. Even his fingers were hairy. After straightening his red tie, he took a swig of water from a gla.s.s.

"Yup, you're right. Gotta get back to the dog-and-pony show," the judge said, a twinkle in his eyes. "The circus needs their clowns. Pleasure finally meeting you, Nicole. Maybe I'll see ya 'round." He winked at her and this time he did pat her on the back, but his touch was light and not in any way offensive.

"Good G.o.d, that buffoon will drive me crazy," the New Yorker complained after the judge left the room. "I apologize, Nicole." He ma.s.saged his forehead with two fingers. "That's terribly unprofessional of me to say. Judge Carper is chief judge on the FIS court and is an indispensable member of our team."

"He's still an a.s.shole, though," the silver-haired army man seated next him said in a quiet but gruff aside.

"FIS?" she asked timidly.

"FIS is yet another lovely acronym. Washington does like using them." Kira walked over to where Nicole stood and set an empty gla.s.s and a bottle of water down for her in front of a vacant chair. "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance. Jay Carper is one of eleven judges on the FIS court who determines whether or not we have enough cause to monitor individuals we suspect, either here in the States or abroad, of terrorism or espionage."

"Basically, the court grants us permission to spy on Americans," the man in the uniform stated candidly.

"Not how I would choose to word it, but that's how we were able to place listening devices in your house and your apartment," Kira admitted.

Nicole felt her face blanch. She sank into the proffered seat, offended by the fact she'd been a suspect, and a bit scared.

"We were following ghosts," the military man interrupted, steepling his hands over his belly and reclining in his chair. His faded blue eyes considered Nicole thoughtfully. "Dormant for a decade, but come back to haunt and torment us." He glanced at the Kira. "Never would have suspected Kohl," he muttered, shaking his head in disappointment and disbelief.

Kohl? Nicole couldn't recollect where she'd heard the name or why it was so significant. "Before we get completely off track, let's finish the introductions," Kira said, taking control of the room. "Nicole, this is Lieutenant General Joe O'Keefe of the United States Army." She turned to the New Yorker with the red tie and all of the curly hair. "And Stuart Lee. He heads up our team." The two men stood, reached across the table, and shook Nicole's hand.

Again, she eyed her sandals and capri pants dismally. She heard her mother's voice inside her head repeat, "Better to be overdressed than underdressed."

She would remember her mother's advice as long as she lived.

"I don't want you any more confused than I'm sure you already are, Nicole," Stuart Lee said kindly, smiling. "We're d.a.m.ned good at doing that. So I'll tell you everything that we now know. Feel free to stop me with questions at any time." He pulled open one of the folders sitting on the table. Nicole could see there was a photo of her father inside of it stapled to a sheaf of papers. "In the late eighties, your father, Luke Kennedy, was recruited to work for what was then a clandestine division of the CIA. The entire department has since been a.s.similated into what we now know as the Defense Intelligence Agency. Luke worked as a civilian undercover for almost twelve years until he was killed while on a.s.signment in Yemen."

"But back in Kenya," Nicole looked questioningly at Kira, "you said my father might have been involved in something criminal with Rhyse Taylor."

Kira unscrewed the cap from a bottle of water and took a small sip.

"We only just found out about your father's employ with the DIA," Stuart answered. "Someone purged all his records from our databases. Only last night were Shevchenko and an IT team finally able to retrieve some of those doc.u.ments. But others are lost to us forever. Rhyse Taylor made it look like Luke Kennedy's murder was the act of some random anti-American religious group. With his personnel file and any reports he submitted deleted, Luke Kennedy became just another American citizen in the wrong place at the wrong time." Stuart pushed himself from his chair and shuffled his weight toward the door. He stood to the side of it and jammed his hands into his slacks. "Except they didn't delete everything. There was one handwritten report. Most likely, some type-A administrative bee found it at the bottom of a file cabinet and scanned it into our hard drive back in," he waddled back to the table, lifted one of the papers in the folder up to his face, and squinted, "late 2005. Your father had been dead for five years at that point. Unfortunately, that report wasn't very detailed. It simply linked your father's name to Major Rhyse Taylor of the U.S. Army. There was a blurb in it about the suspected sale of military weapons but not much else. But that one file was all we needed."

"As I already explained to you, Nicole," Kira found her voice, "I was researching past car bombs for a link to bin Laden. When I began looking into the bomb that killed your father, I entered his name into our system, and it was that one handwritten file that popped up, triggering the start of this entire investigation."

"Someone had to have a pretty high security clearance to delete all my father's files, right?"

A look pa.s.sed between Kira, Stuart, and the general.

"Ca.s.sandra Kohl." The general said the name as if it was a curse. "She was your father's go-to at the agency. Unbelievable. She's worked for us for thirty years."

Stuart was still standing. He fumbled through the stack of files until he found the one he'd been searching for. He opened it, pulled out a photo, and pushed it across the table. Nicole picked it up and examined the woman in the photograph. The picture had obviously been taken for a badge of some sort, and looked to be fairly recent. Ca.s.sandra Kohl was an elegant woman in her early sixties. Her strawberry blond hair was cut into a fashionable bob and her green eyes looked sharp. Yet as Nicole stared at the picture, the grandmotherly features began taking on a more sinister look. Now she remembered the name. Kohl. She'd seen it scrawled upon the back of the computer paper she'd found inside the safe deposit box at the bank.

"This is the woman who killed my father?"

"Rhyse Taylor was the one who planted the car bomb but it was Kohl who ordered it," Kira confirmed. "Back in the day, when Kohl believed herself untouchable, she had her team of IGOs doing her dirty work, searching out Sunni extremists willing to pay large sums of cash for weapons. She and Taylor were quite the team. Kohl drummed up customers and Taylor shipped the weapons he'd been skimming from the military's surplus inventory through an intricate system of sh.e.l.l companies they'd set up. Your father Luke must have figured out their scheme."

"But we know all this now," Stuart said. "When we first came upon that lone PDF file, we had no idea the can of worms we were about to open." He pushed his heavy gla.s.ses up over the bridge of his nose. "We set Shevchenko up with access to the mainframes at the Pentagon to see what she could find out about Luke Kennedy. Who was he? Was he a chance victim? A whistleblower? Then we had Bogie look into what Rhyse Taylor was up to these days. You can imagine our shock when Shevchenko informed us Kohl had been using her security clearance to conduct searches for bank accounts in your father's name and Bogie told us that Rhyse Taylor's daughter had just moved into an apartment with you."

"They were both looking for the stocks," Nicole deduced out loud. "But why now? Ten years after they killed my father?"

Stuart paced the room. "Sinopia only recently became a name in the news when they hit that well off the coast of Guinea. Almost overnight the company became the sensation of the stock market. Their stocks went from three dollars a share to sixty-five dollars. I'm sure it was quite a memorable event for Kohl when one of her IGOs asked to be compensated in the form of a bearer stock. The name Sinopia must have stayed with her all these years. As his immediate superior, I can only surmise she had somewhat of a close relationship with your father and knew he was h.o.a.rding the stocks in a safe place. But ten years later, she probably had no idea if those stocks were still out there, sitting somewhere waiting to be discovered or if your mother knew of their existence and had already cashed them in. But Kohl was determined to find out. She most likely understood if they were still floating around, they were now worth millions. And she knew your father was clever. The stocks could be anywhere. So the first thing she did was rekindle her relationship with Rhyse Taylor. Together, they used his daughter Danielle to do their dirty work."

Nicole flinched. She'd completely forgotten about Danielle. What had happened to her?

"When they came up empty-handed, they went to Plan B. The threatening letters your mother received back in the spring from the IRS, her mortgage company, even the school district, looked authentic because they were." Stuart opened another folder. "These are mug shots of all the hackers Kohl and Taylor bribed or hired. Some of these morons actually had fairly decent jobs with the treasury department or school district. Benefits and 401(k)s. Idiots." He closed the folder, a look of disgust pinching his brows together. "Kohl figured if mounting financial pressure didn't force your mother to cash in the stocks, she was throwing in the towel. And that's what happened. When money didn't magically appear in your mother's bank account to cover all the bills that began arriving at her house, Kohl wiped her hands of it. Told Taylor she was done. That was about two months ago. Taylor too had given up the chase. But again, we didn't know any of this. We only knew you and Danielle had been living together. And suddenly you're booking a flight to Nairobi. We were confused. Maybe the wiretaps hadn't picked up all your conversations."

"I didn't know about Danielle. And I really did go to Kenya to teach."

"We know that now, Nicole," Stuart replied pleasantly. "Coincidence can be fate working in mysterious ways."

"Remember in Nairobi when you were stuck sitting on the bus, waiting for the driver?" Kira asked Nicole. She nodded, slowly recalling the oppressive heat and her fatigue.

"You were actually waiting for me. I was in the ticket office on a conference call with Stuart and General O'Keefe and a few other fun-loving bureaucrats. We were delayed, waiting for one of the higher-ups to approve our method of interrogating you. I knew you wouldn't sit on that bus much longer, so I hung up and took the risk."

Nicole raised her brows. Red tape wasn't easy to navigate around in any organization, never mind one involving an agency of the United States government. If things had not worked out as they had, Kira Anthony would have been the fall guy in all of this.

"There's one thing I don't understand," Nicole said, frowning. "When I met Rhyse Taylor at the airport, he seemed almost too eager to implicate Kohl in all of this. At the time, I thought he was referring to Kira. He even went so far as to tell me my father had been working undercover."

"You called Danielle." Stuart heaved his body into a chair and dabbed at his unibrow with the tip of his tie. "You told her you'd been kidnapped by someone from the government. Taylor thought Kohl was double-crossing him. I'm sure he was in a rage when his flight landed?"

"Now that you mention it, yeah, he was."

"But now he knew where the stocks were. He was determined to get them before Kohl. He hired three goons to kidnap your mother, then run you and Danielle off the road. And now here we are."

The room was oddly quiet. "So that's it?" she asked warily. "Kohl and Taylor are in jail?"

"Yeah, for about three minutes," Stuart replied. "Taylor's already got himself a date with a judge this afternoon requesting bond. Kohl might be in the clinker till Monday, but she'll be out."

"But they're murderers!" Nicole was aghast.

"And traitors," the general chimed in, rocking back in his chair.

Kira took a sip of water, then said dejectedly, "We're charging them both with murder and treason, but we've got zip to go to trial with. We've no evidence, physical or circ.u.mstantial, tying either one of them to the car bomb that took your father's life. Shevchenko and her IT guys had little luck resurrecting deleted files. They found a few, but none supplying us with anything to substantiate our claims. In the span of ten years, the mainframes' operating systems have been updated about four times and cleaned and purged about three million."

"And there's a bunch of crooks still out there," the general carped, leaning forward and impaling Nicole with a piercing blue stare. "Kohl and Taylor didn't manage the arms deals by themselves. They needed a team of insiders to move the shipments, fabricate inventories, et cetera, et cetera. The nameless sc.u.mbags are probably sitting back collecting a pension and veteran benefits or, for all I know, maybe they're still serving. h.e.l.l, I probably placed a few medals on their lapels. Or maybe they pinned a few on mine."

Nicole's mind raced. She recalled Kira's constant questioning about the contents inside the safe deposit box. Only now did Nicole understand it hadn't been the stocks she'd been seeking. In her mind's eye, she saw the names written in her father's familiar scribble. Kohl and Taylor. She was having difficulty drawing air into her lungs as the realization of what she possessed slowly dawned upon her.