He eyed her appraisingly “So that’s why you were brought on this case? Not just to keep an eye on me.”
“Yes,” she admitted.
“Would have been nice to know before now.”
Her face flushed and her lips trembled. “I should have told you that too, Puller. I know you were spinning your wheels trying to figure out the catalyst for all this. And I just sat back and said nothing.”
&
nbsp; “I’m not happy about it, Knox. But that’s water under the bridge.”
Knox looked relieved by this.
He continued, “And maybe we know the anonymous source now.”
“Who?”
“Niles Robinson.”
“Why?”
He gazed steadily at her. “I have my secrets too.”
She looked put out by this, but because of what she had withheld, it wasn’t as though she could press the point.
Puller was thinking that that must have been what Robinson had been referencing when he’d told Bobby that he had tried to make it right. He apparently had tried to make it right, by contacting INSCOM, albeit anonymously.
“Any idea who your mole might be?”
“Not a clue. But it’s really hampered everything we do. We’re not sure who we can bring in on something.”
“I can see that.”
“And we never even thought that they would plan to kill your brother at DB. If we had any inkling of that we would have taken steps to ensure his safety.”
“I believe you,” Puller said quietly.
“In fact, it was that attack that made us realize we had a problem in our own ranks. The leak had to come from our side.”
She fingered her last fry, looking uncomfortable. “So do you bring all the girls meals like this?”
“I haven’t been associated with that many girls.”
“That’s pretty hard to believe.”
“Okay. Only the ladies in hospital beds for bomb-related injuries get this kind of special treatment.”
That brought a brief smile to her lips.
She popped her last fry into her mouth. “I am sorry I didn’t tell you.”
“In your heart you’re a spy plain and simple. And they just can’t let it all hang out. Now finish your burger. But hands off my fries,” he added when he saw her greedily eye his untouched pile.
CHAPTER
58
ROBERT PULLER WAS sitting in his pickup truck watching her. The Kansas plates had seemed to stick out here, so he had replaced them with D.C. plates he’d lifted from a car sitting in a D.C. impoundment lot.
Susan Reynolds was eating dinner at a table in the front window of a restaurant on trendy H Street. She looked like she didn’t have a care in the world, but looks could be deceiving. And he wasn’t going to underestimate the woman. Not again. He had gone back through her professional history multiple times, focusing on parts he had skimmed before. He had taken all of this and built it into a new mosaic, which had presented some interesting possibilities.
She was dressed to entice tonight, that was clear to see. The skirt was knee-length but tight, and the starched white shirt with the two top buttons undone was suggestively revealing. The shoes were long spikes and the stockings had seams down the backs.
And yet Aust looked quite engaged with the woman, and Puller started to wonder if it were simply personal on his part. Reynolds, despite what he believed she had done, was very attractive and smart and held an important position in a field that mirrored Aust’s own interests.
As he watched they clinked glasses and Reynolds leaned across the table and gave him a peck on the cheek. The look on the man’s face–which Puller could see through his optics–made it clear that Aust wanted far more than a brush of the lady’s ruby red lips against his skin.
This might get interesting.
It was then that he glanced in the truck’s side mirror and saw the man. He was about four car lengths back and casually smoking a cigarette while leaning against a building. He had looked away, only not in time.
The watcher is being watched. I’ve been made. But I don’t think they realize that I know that. At least not yet.