Read Online Top Hook by Gordon Kent - Free Book Online

shoulder.
    â€œOne more thing. There’s talk, so watch your step.”
    â€œTalk? What—last night—?”
    â€œThat, and—you know the boat, everybody cooped up. There’s just talk about you taking over the det on such short notice. They say you got bounced from another assignment.”
    Alan’s face went rigid. “I did. And no reason given.”
    Rafe patted his shoulder. “Guys talk. Just let ’em.”
Langley, Virginia.
    George Shreed was leaning on his metal canes by his office window, watching a hot wind blow fast-food wrappers through the CIA parking lot. He wasn’t seeing them; he was only turning his eyes on them, occupying his vision, while his mind, numb, could not shift his focus from his wife’s death. He thought of himself asa hardass, but he wasn’t hard all the way through; somewhere in there, he bled. He had prepared for the death, had used the word, had said it would happen, must happen, was unavoidable—and now he was as devastated as if it had come as a surprise.
    His door thumped under somebody’s knuckles.
    â€œYes.”
    Ray Suter came in, first his head, then a shoulder, then half his body. “You want to be by yourself?”
    â€œCome in, come in.”
    â€œI wanted to say how bad I feel. All of us feel.”
    â€œThank you.”
    Shreed hadn’t turned around. He could see Suter’s reflection in the window, beyond it, the trees bowing in the hot wind of a June day. Tonight there would be thunderstorms, a cold front, a change. Even in his grief, he found himself thinking that Suter looked different today.
    â€œCan we do anything?”
    It was the kind of question that Shreed usually pounced on: What did you have in mind, resurrection? Did you want to hold a seance in the canteen? But the acid had gone out of him for a little while. Instead, Shreed said, “Maybe somebody could plant a tree someplace. No flowers.”
    â€œRight, right. I heard that. The Cancer Society, right. There’s a collection—the girls are taking it up—”
    Shreed’s back moved, straightened. Was he going to make some comment about the futility of collections as an answer to death? He exhaled slowly. “Thank them for me.”
    â€œSure. Absolutely. Can I do anything for you? You sleeping?”
    Shreed turned, made his way to his desk and leanedthe bright canes against a spot he had used so long that the varnish was worn from the wood. “Pick up the slack on the five-year report, if you will; I’ve dragged my feet there. Yeah, I’m sleeping okay.” He never slept much, anyway. “There’s a memorial service Thursday. You might let people know.”
    â€œRight. Right, absolutely.” Suter stood there, well into the room now but still somehow not of it—keeping himself separate. “I feel so helpless.” Yet he didn’t look helpless to Shreed; he looked— gleeful ?
    Shreed shot him a look. Suter’s eyes looked funny—was he perhaps hung over? They were too bright, too—excited. For an instant, a bizarre thought flashed across Shreed’s mind: He knows. Then it was gone, the idea that Suter could know about his spying too ridiculous to consider.
    â€œI’ve got a task for you,” he said when he had sat down. “One that won’t make you feel helpless. Something you’ll enjoy, in fact—screwing an old friend.” He grinned. “Alan Craik.”
    â€œNo friend of mine!” Suter cried.
    â€œOld enemy, then. What’s the difference? Craik’s wife is under investigation. Security violation on the Peacemaker project.”
    Suter scowled. He had been on the Peacemaker project, too, and had in fact tried without success to get Rose Siciliano into bed.
    â€œI want you to make sure the word gets out that they’re security risks. Both of them—where there’s smoke there’s fire, that sort of