Read Online Risk of Exposure (Alpha Ops Book 6) by Emmy Curtis - Free Book Online Page A

when she sat on the armchair under which her gun had been stashed.
    He knuckles were white around the remote control she was holding.
    “Let’s start with that,” he said, nodding toward her hands. “What is it?”
    She sighed. “It’s a ground sensor.”
    He waited for more information; none seemed to be coming. He sighed and leaned back on the sofa, ready for a long haul of questions.
    “What does it sense? Water? Radiation? Earthquakes?” he asked calmly.
    “Movement,” she said, still perched at the edge of the chair.
    He hoped it wasn’t alerting her to the fact that he’d put a movement sensor under the carpet in front of her door. That couldn’t be it.
    “Where is it alerting you to movement?”
    She raised an eyebrow and held up the remote. “Here?”
    “Don’t be such a bloody child. If you want my help—”
    “When did I ever say I needed or wanted your help? You’re nothing but a momentary distraction. Something I have to deal with before I can get to work. I don’t even know what you’re doing here, and frankly I don’t care.”
    And then everything went dark.
      
    Awesome. Just fucking awesome. She took a deep, steadying breath. “You really think the roads are impassable now?” she asked, trying to eke out a plan from her tired brain.
    His voice was calm. “We could get out on foot but not in a vehicle. Unless you have a snow machine in your bedroom.”
    “I knew there was something I forgot to order…,” she said weakly.
    He did her the honor of not forcing a laugh at her lame joke.
    The darkness pervaded throughout the room. With no light outside, not by the moon nor streetlights, her eyes could only barely make out his silhouette across the room from her. He hadn’t moved, still sitting motionless on the arm of the sofa. She had to tell him what she was doing there.
    She’d been at the CIA for nearly ten years, recruited before she’d completed her first semester at college. She’d told no one. She just hadn’t felt close enough to her older brothers, nor to her father. Although he was another problem entirely.
    But in all her years, the one thing that had been beaten into her brain day after day, month after month, was service before self. She might be worried about losing her job for telling him what she was doing there, but if she didn’t, she would certainly not complete her mission.
    Mission before everything.
    “I don’t work for Aide Internationale,” she said.
    “No fucking kidding,” he said, getting up off the arm and resettling on the sofa. Obviously he had the idea that this was going to be a long story. But it wasn’t.
    “Well, I do actually work for Aide Internationale. They pay me, but I’m CIA. I’m here to keep watch on the border. The Russian analysts at Langley think that all the Russian posturing at the G20 meetings was a distraction for them invading Ukraine.”
    He was silent for a few beats. “I was there. For the G20 shenanigans.”
    She didn’t really want to think about that. “Anyway, this sensor was placed by my predecessor. These ones are placed ten klicks inside the border on the Russian side.”
    “He had balls of steel on him to do that,” Malone said.
    “Yes, she did.” Abby couldn’t help smiling as she said it. She had some big shoes to fill.
    “So what makes you think a farm tractor didn’t trigger it? Or a malfunction?” he asked in the darkness.
    “Who uses a tractor in the middle of the night in a snowstorm?” As she said it, she realized that it was possible. A stranded animal in a snowstorm? A tractor might be the only way to get to it.
    “How many sensors do you have?” he asked.
    “I can’t tell you that,” she said. There were thirty along the border ten kilometers inside the Russian border and another ten or so in the acres behind the orphanage. The theory being that they wouldn’t want to cross the border on roads where they would be seen, filmed on some kid’s cell phone, and posted on YouTube, with