Page 4 of Deep Cover

“Keep us informed.”

The camera kept panning across the scene. Every flash of an FBI jacket hit Rivers in a place the bullet never had.

Is it her?

The question drummed under his ribs, over and over. For ten seconds, he couldn’t breathe right and his palms were damp against his knees where he gripped them.

“May.” He spoke before he could stop himself. “Hold there a second.”

The camera paused on another FBI agent. Brown hair, pulled back in a low ponytail, jaw turned slightly away from the lens. Rivers stared until his eyes burned dry, trying to build a face out of nothing but a jawline and the curve of a shoulder.

For one long second, he was sure—fucking sure. Then he wasn’t sure at all.

“You good, Rivers?” Cannon’s question broke his focus.

“Yup.” His voice came out steady. Being in a hospital bed taught him how to sound fine when every nerve in his body was screaming otherwise. “Fine.”

But if any of them could look past the mask he slapped on to cover what was underneath, they would catch his heart slamming against his ribs, trying to beat its way out.

* * * * *

Caryssa Lane had learned to read her boss’s footsteps coming before he even reached her door.

Today, he came down the hallway of the Washington, DC field office fast enough to have her looking up from her monitor.

Doyle didn’t knock. He never had, not in the three years she’d worked under him.

“There was a murder in New York.” His thin gray hair was standing up in the middle where he ran his hands.

She returned her attention to her screen. “Not newsworthy.”

Murders happened in New York roughly as often as taxis honked. If Doyle was standing in her doorway over a homicide, he’d need a better opener than that.

“They found a burner phone on the guy.” He stepped into her office and dropped a folder on the corner of her desk. “He had a government contract. His trucking company drove supplies to military bases.”

That got her attention. She leaned back in her chair and eyed him, too seasoned to let her surprise show.

“There’s an ongoing investigation,” Doyle went on. “Weapons stolen from a military armory have been turning up on the black market. Some have already been used in attacks by underground terrorist cells.”

Nothing like this had crossed her desk, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t buried deeper than her clearance reached. Some military units were buried deep enough that she wouldn’t know they existed.

Doyle’s eyes that matched his steel-gray hair pierced her. “I need you in Portland. You’ll be picked up there and taken to a secure location.”

She tilted her head. “What kind of secure location?”

“You’ll be briefed when you get there.”

Meaning either he couldn’t tell her or wouldn’t.

Before she could press, he continued. “We scanned the dead man’s phone. One of his calls traced back to Antonio’s Ristorante in Chicago.”

She didn’t need the file. She’d read it enough times, usually alone at two in the morning after promising herself she wouldn’t open it again. Four months ago, an agent she’d called a friend had walked into that restaurant undercover. His cover was blown, and he never walked out.

“Let me review the footage again,” she said, because that what a good agent would do. No matter what was happening two inches under her skin, she was experienced enough to keep her tone neutral.

Doyle continued briefing her as she pulled up the clip, feeling hollow. She peered at the screen and tried for the thousandth time to make sense of the grainy angle of a security camera that had seen better decades.

The footage wasn’t good—hell, it never was in these places—and she watched a shape move through the frame in a jacket two sizes too big, a hat pulled low. Nothing usable. Even the identity they’d eventually pinned on him had been wrong.