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comm.
    Jonas answered within seconds. “Ready to go, Director?”
    She shook her head. “Almost. I want a trace on Simon Wells’s comm at all times.”
    Silence filled the line for a long moment. Then, slowly, “Ma’am? You what?”
    “Crack his comm frequency, Mr. Stone.” Parker sank back into her chair, fingers tapping on the desk as she glared at the door.
    And the memory of the bare, muscled chest that had filled it.
    “I want to know who he talks to, for how long, about what. I want every message transcribed, am I clear?”
    Jonas cleared his throat. “Sure, Director. I’ll, uh. I’ll get right on that. If you hang on, I can tell you where he is now.”
    A muscle in her temple throbbed. “I know where he is right now, Mr. Stone.” In the middle of her operations floor, drawing too damned much speculation. “Just keep me posted on anything he does out of the ordinary.”
    “Right, then.”
    “Good. I’m headed out to meet your informant now. I’ll be in touch.”
    “I’ll have your list compiled when you get back.”
    She disconnected, set the comm on the desk, and stared at it while she mulled her orders in her mind.
    Impetuous? Yes. She couldn’t argue that.
    But he was hiding more than she could allow. Suspending him, removing him from the Mission offices would either put a hole in his espionage plans or free him to do whatever else Sector Three might want him to do. If the former, score one for Mission Director Adams.
    If the latter, then Jonas would be able to track him. And she could gain more information than she currently had.
    One way or another, she’d draw his secrets out.
    Until then, she had an informant to meet.

 
    C HAPTER F OUR
    S he’d suspended him. Demanded his gun and kicked him to the curb.
    Surprising as hell. And too much fun to worry about the consequences of it. He didn’t even bother reporting the sentence to Kayleigh; what did it matter? She’d made it clear she had other eyes and ears in the Mission.
    Eyes and ears he’d have to ferret out, eventually.
    Simon knew he should be less obnoxious, but watching Parker turn into a twitching mass of nerves with every calculated touch made him feel human in ways nothing else could.
    Which was as much a problem as anything else.
    Feeling human was the last thing he needed to do.
    The drive along the New Seattle byway gave him plenty of opportunity to consider his options. Suspension wouldn’t fly for long. Sector Three wouldn’t allow it, and Parker was going to hate that.
    He couldn’t blame her. Nadia Parrish’s ill-conceived plans had shoved too much of Sector Three onto her turf.
    And Director Lauderdale wasn’t giving up the ground he’d already gained. Not without a fight.
    The conspiracy—because it was exactly that—would only get worse with time. If it hadn’t already. Two months of closed-door meetings had shifted the balance of power subtly in the wrong direction. Kayleigh didn’t know half of it, but she’d learn what he only suspected.
    He didn’t envy her when she did.
    Simon leaned against the sodden brick wall outside the lower-street diner, one foot planted on the rough surface. High above, too far to get more than funneled echoes, thunder boomed and clashed.
    The storm rolled in only an hour or so ago. If summer patterns held, it’d stay for another few hours and dissipate into a fogged mist. Which would settle into the depths of the city, infiltrate the streets, and turn them into humid pits.
    While the upper echelons cooled off with whatever breeze ghosted along at those heights, these poor bastards trapped below the sec-lines would swelter in a heat made of damp and rot.
    It didn’t get hot in New Seattle. Not really. Some days were warmer than others during the summer months, but the sun didn’t reach far enough to heat the streets. It just got sticky and wet. Skin-clinging, sweat-gathering, pore-saturating wet. Exactly the kind of weather that turned a man lethargic and slow.
    Simon