Read Online Burned (Vanessa Pierson series Book 2) by Valerie Plame, Sarah Lovett - Free Book Online Page B

tiptoeing verbally so that he looked up, frowning. She could no longer put off the subject of Bhoot’s phone call.
    “I already know I won’t like this.” He gave her another look, brown eyes narrowed to slits. “Shit.” He pulled something from his pocket—the blue-beaded amulet on his key ring. It provided protection against evil, according to his Greek
yia yia
, grandmother, and Chris’s philosophy was, Why not cover all the bases?
    He said, “Go ahead.”
    Vanessa quickly topped off the bourbon in her mug. She shot it back, almost inhaling down the wrong pipe, coughing to recover. She pulled the notepad from her back pocket, set it down, tapping the shorthand notes she’d scrawled there.
    Chris shook his head when she held up the bourbon, the offer of another pour. “C’mon, Vanessa, now you’re stalling.”
    Her fingers had contracted into fists and she relaxed them with effort.
Already in too deep.
    She dug into her hip pocket and pulled out the phone she’d wrapped in her scarf. “I wanted to trash this—but maybe, just maybe, Hays can work a miracle and get something off it.”
    “What is it?” Chris asked.
    She carefully placed the phone on the table, locking eyes with Chris as she mouthed,
Bhoot.
    She stood and gestured to the French doors to the apartment’s balcony. “Come on outside, I need a smoke, and I don’t want to stink up such a beautiful safe house . . .”
    Physically bracing himself, Chris shook his head.
What?
    But he followed her outside onto the balcony.
    She tapped one from the pack, picked up the lighter, and clicked to flame.
    “I thought you quit,” Chris said, tone quizzical.
    “I did.” Vanessa inhaled like a diver coming up for air. She held the smoke in her lungs for seconds before she exhaled slowly. “I do. Regularly.” She reached under the neck of her sweater to her upper left arm, nudging the edge of a Nicoderm patch and ripping it free.
    “What the hell,” Chris said, “I’ll have one, too.”
    Ignoring Chris’s request, she leaned close to whisper to him.“Bhoot contacted me.” She mimed putting a phone to her ear. “Three hours ago.”
    “I can’t believe this, Vanessa!” Chris slapped the wrought-iron railing with both palms. “I expect the unexpected from you, but Christ . . . how the hell?”
    “At the site after I went back with Fournier.” She kept her voice quiet. “I was leaving and a kid handed me that phone, said it was for me.”
    “And you didn’t run like the devil?”
    She stared at Chris, her head tipped, waiting for him to catch up to her reasoning. She’d known he would react strongly to this news. For CPD’s primary target to contact an ops officer directly for a chat was unheard of. Not to mention very dangerous.
    Chris’s fingers tightened around the iron railing. “What did he want?”
    “He says he is
not
responsible for today’s events—”
    “And you believe him?”
    “I didn’t say that—I don’t believe anything he says—
but I don’t know
. Just listen for a minute. He referenced that our government damaged his interests. But then he said that someone else has taken what belongs to him, that he’s been betrayed. And he said True Jihad—their bombing—is a diversion.” She sucked in a breath, a stolen moment to reorient. “So, Chris, my takeaway is this—the nuclear prototype we believe Bhoot smuggled out of Iran before the bombing?
Someone stole it from Bhoot.
”
    “Holy shit,” Chris whispered.
    “Uh-huh.” She tapped her cigarette against the balcony railing and ashes fell into darkness.
    They both stood in silence, considering the possibilities, the what-ifs—none of them good.
    After a long minute, Chris said, “Let’s go back to the phone call. What did he want from you?”
    “Okay . . .” Beginning a different conversation, Vanessa knew, about Bhoot’s motivations—and possibly her own. “He wanted to enlist me,” she said, slowing down to move with her thoughts.