Effective immediately, p.3
Effective Immediately, page 3
part #3 of The Agency Files Series
Why he said it, Keith couldn’t have explained—even to himself. He swallowed hard and sighed. “A girl is dead. That won’t be better by Saturday, but thanks for the prayers. The S family could use them too. They don’t know Jesus, as far as I know.”
With those words, and a failed attempt at a smile, Keith waved and strolled up the jetway. By the time he reached the doors that led into the travel hub, he’d decided. He’d go to Erika’s. He’d laugh about crazy things that people did that day in the coffee shop. He’d laugh and forget that he’d just failed his job. He’d forget that on Monday he wouldn’t have a job. I wonder if Erika would hire me. I could be the Kaylee of the coffee shop. Live sermons that maybe, just maybe, will soften her heart to Jesus.
The thought of what Erika would say if she could hear him made him grimace. One can dream, anyway.
Chapter Three
Keith pushed open the door of the Mayflower building and swiped his badge. All the way up the elevator, past offices where employees thought he was an actuarial analyst—or at least that’s what he thought Mark had told him—and down the corridor to The Agency suite, he practiced his speech. I appreciate all you’ve done for me. I know this is a risk of the job, but it’s not one I can live with, and we both know I’d go nuts on nerve cases. I’d be making up fake threats to kill the monotony. Even as he thought it, Keith shuddered. Nerve cases equaled good money and kept skills sharp, but no one liked to be a glorified babysitter when there was no genuine threat.
A woman sat at a small desk in the ante room—a woman Keith had never seen before. “Hi, I’m here—”
“You’re Keith Auger?” She held out her hand for his ID. Keith hesitated before pulling out his wallet and fishing out his driver’s license. If she insists on the Mayflower card, I’m outta here. The woman smiled as he handed it to her. “Thank you, Mr. Auger.” She swiped it in a card reader. The door to the main conference room swung open. “Mark and the others will see you, now.”
With each step toward the conference room, Keith’s throat became drier. He riveted his attention on Mark, but his boss’ icy blue eyes gave away nothing. Karen, Greg, Marty, Monica— He stopped mid-stride. “Wha—oh, no you didn’t.” One look at Mark’s face proved that yes, they had. “Who knew?”
A man on Mark’s left side stood and offered his hand. “Fergus Duncan.” If the Scottish brogue hadn’t given the man away, his name would have. “Only Mark from your team knew anything—well, and Claire.”
Mark spoke up. “Now that we’re all here, Claire?”
Monica bounced out of her seat and rushed at him, throwing her arms around him. “I can’t believe I fooled you. I told them I couldn’t. That was so fun!” He stiffened and backed away, shaking his head.
The voice—not Monica Sheridan’s voice at all. “Claire?”
As if a bad scene from an even worse movie, Claire pulled off a wig and tried a one-handed mask peel. It failed. “Ugh—it’s not as easy as it looks.”
A woman next to Fergus stood to help. “Work it gently from back here…”
He stood there, dumbstruck, as his cousin’s face appeared from behind the mask. “It’s so weird how I kept comparing her to you the whole time. I thought, ‘Claire isn’t like this. Claire would listen. Claire is about her size and half the trouble.’” He crossed his arms over his chest and stared down at her. “I may have to rethink that last one.”
“Sorry, Keith. There was no way I wasn’t going to try to fool you.” Her eyes searched his until she found what she expected. “Where’s your letter of resignation?”
“In Mark’s inbox as of…” He checked his watch. “About now.”
Mark’s tablet chimed in unison with Keith’s words. “I trust I can delete this?”
He hesitated—apparently too long, because tears filled Claire’s eyes. “Nooo… you can’t. I’m just getting the hang of this. I need you.”
“I didn’t say no. Let’s do this debrief and then we’ll talk.”
A man in the chair next to him held out his hand as Keith sat. “I’m Spencer Kane—shooter.”
“Congratulations.” Keith tried to keep the disgruntled angst from his tone, but he suspected he’d failed.
As if he didn’t notice—or perhaps because he hadn’t, Keith couldn’t tell—Spencer continued. “Man, when I heard I was up against you, I thought for sure I’d lose.” He lowered his voice, “Okay, so I tried to convince myself it was an easy win, but I knew better.”
Fergus held up a pen. “Can we get started? This could take a while, and we’re on a plane in four hours.”
Claire sighed, making Keith roll his eyes at her. She stuck out her tongue, crossed her arms over her chest, and leaned back in her chair. Keith nodded, as did several around them. Mark punched a remote and said, “Please be advised, we’re now recording audio and video.”
Fergus passed around timeline sheets and pens. “Just correct any false information, add times, observations—anything you have to offer.”
A woman across from Keith spoke first. “Any reason we’re not using the tablets?”
“Mark is a paper guy. He wants everything shredded and burned—no trace physically or digitally.”
“Except for the recording,” she muttered.
“That’s his decision and you’re out of line.”
Keith could have sworn Claire sighed again. He sent a withering glare at her and began writing. Mark isn’t giving away his reasons. Interesting.
As usual, Karen finished last—with two extra pages added. “Done.”
“Let’s get to work then.” Fergus swiped his finger across his iPad and nodded. “We’ve identified three weaknesses in your response to the drill.”
“Drill that messed with my head all weekend,” Keith groused.
“Good.”
His head snapped up. “Excuse me?”
“It’ll make you even sharper next time. Spencer can give pointers on little things you could have done, but I doubt you’d make the same mistakes again. In fact,” Fergus leaned back in his chair. “Tell me one thing—just one—that might have saved her life.”
“Duct tape.”
Fergus’ team stared at one another before breaking out into laughter. Still peeved that he’d been duped—and by his own cousin—Keith fumed. His pen snapped in his hand before he could control himself. The group laughed harder. Fergus waved a hand at him, covering his eyes. “We’re—we’re laughing at ourselves, Keith. That’s not one that any of us thought of, but you’re right. If you’d used duct tape, we might not have heard her with everyone crashing through the underbrush.” He consulted his screen. “Anyone else on Mark’s team want to take a stab at it—anyone but Claire, that is?”
Karen spoke first. “Well, since we don’t know where the breaches occurred, we can’t tell if it’s something Keith could have done, Mark could have done, or if it was something even as simple as you guys watching the helos and following those in a car or small aircraft.”
“She makes a good point,” Fergus agreed. “Let’s go with each person then, what else could you have done, Keith?”
This part of debrief—Keith hated it. Every movement he made from the moment he heard of the case until he’d cradled what he thought—no pulse and all—was a dead girl in his arms he analyzed to the minutest detail. “If I decided where I went, when I got her, how I got her there, no one but me knew anything, maybe I would have had a chance. Maybe.”
Claire shook her head. “Nope.”
“Why? What stupid error did I make?”
“Underestimating the stupidity of your client and the genius of your cousin—though that last part really isn’t your fault, since you didn’t know I was there.” Claire grinned. “It was so easy. The minute I had the assignment, I knew exactly what I’d do.”
It took everything he had not to roar his protest when Fergus diverted to the flight patterns of the helo pilots and the direct path that Keith had taken from “Monica’s” house. He talked about education of the client en route and recommended the use of an effective gag. “I know it’s customary, but you let your guard down because it wasn’t an involuntary extraction. That was a huge mistake. Tell him why, Claire.”
“My cellphone.” She grinned as understanding slowly filled his mind until he thought he’d explode. “Yep. I hid it in my bra. You didn’t pat me down. Dumb move.”
“I’m not in the habit of groping my clients! I’m not a police officer!” He turned to Mark. “Is this what you want from us now? You want us to feel up our clients for contraband?”
“Did you ask her if she had a phone?”
His eyes slid to Spencer. “Yes. Basic stuff. I may be a failure, but I’m not stupid.”
“Keith…”
“What, Claire? Seriously? I got you killed—over a phone—in a manner of speaking. If that’s not failure, what is?”
“Okay, Claire,” Mark began. “Let’s hear this from your perspective. What could Keith have done about the phone?”
“I made myself act like I’ve seen my friends act, and he missed clues because he wasn’t watching me. He was focused on making sure there was no one in the area that shouldn’t be, getting me out of there safe—everything. He asked about the phone, and I said, ‘Mark said I had to leave it behind.’ If you had looked at me, you would totally have known I was lying.”
The truth of her words knocked the wind out of him. “I—”
The discussion continued as he grappled with the realization that it all boiled down to one fatal error—his. Minutes later, as he replayed that scene repeatedly in his mind, Mark’s voice broke through his concentration. “—Keith!”
“What?”
“Claire just finished up with something I think you need to hear.”
His cousin smiled at him—that smile that he’d fallen in love with when she was two and thought he was the greatest thing ever. Not much changes—even if it should.
“I just said that we’ve all missed one important point here.”
“What’s that?”
“I knew how to bring it down in a way that a client wouldn’t.” She waited for her words to sink in before she continued—a move she’d learned from him. Keith smiled and nodded. “I knew that if I called any one of half a dozen numbers and told them where I was and that I might be hard to reach for a while, Mr. Duncan’s team would win—and since I was on that team and my job was to try to help them win, I won. A client wouldn’t know that. A client probably wouldn’t, even if you didn’t ask about the phone, call the exact people that their enemy might be watching.”
He nodded. “That’s some consolation.” One thing had bothered him—one unidentified thing throughout the entire debrief. At that moment, he realized what it was. His eyes flitted from Claire to Fergus and back to Claire again. “I held you—smelled the blood. Felt no pulse. How—”
“Blood was from a blood bank—had to be destroyed, so we warmed it up and had it ready to go,” Fergus explained.”
“And her pulse?”
“A drug—experimental they said.” Claire beamed as if taking experimental drugs knocked off yet another item from her bucket list. “It mimics the toxin from like puffer fish or something. Slows down respiration and heartbeat. They gave me an epinephrine shot after. Whoa that was freaky!”
“And dangerous! Mark!”
“She’s an adult, Keith. She can decide which options she wants to choose, and their insurance isn’t going to allow anything likely to get them sued, so I imagine it’s safe enough.” Mark nodded at Fergus. “Is that right?”
The man nodded. “Exactly.”
Team Fergus slowly rose and shook hands, calling it a “good game.” Spencer paused and murmured, “If I’m ever in danger—can’t trust myself to protect myself—I want you watching me. You have great instincts. Crashing the car into the tree—genius. It’s what kept her from getting killed in the car.”
He stood leaning against the street light post outside Erika’s apartment, Spencer’s words reverberating in his mind. “I want you watching me. You’ve got great instincts. Genius. Kept her from getting killed in the car.”
As soothing as the words were, one discouraging fact remained. Yeah. She died out of the car, but she still died—so to speak.
“What’re you doing here?”
He smiled. “What a way to welcome a guy.”
“Thought you were on assignment.”
Defensiveness rose up in Keith before he could stop it. “I never said that.”
“You don’t have to. I’ve been there. I know how you ge—what’s wrong? Something’s off.” When he hesitated, she tugged his hand from his jeans pocket and led him around the corner of the house and down the steps to her apartment. “Let’s get you inside, and I’ll go see if Mr. Moretti has enough for both of us.”
“No, Erika. I can’t—I can’t deal with company tonight.”
Her eyebrows drew together and she ran a hand through her hair, spiking it even more than it had been. “What’s wrong?”
Keith waited until he collapsed onto the couch before he answered the question. “I lost a client—”
“Oh, no! I’m so sorry!”
He winced at the sympathy in her tone. Where was “snap out of it” girl? “—sort of.”
“Excuse me?”
There she is. Keith couldn’t help but smile. “Training exercise—our team just didn’t know it.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” A second later, she shook her head. “Actually, that’s genius.”
“Genius—sure. I got my cousin killed.”
“Claire? So one of the team was killed too? Just ‘killed,’” Erika made air quotes. “Right? Not actually dead, dead.”
“She was on the other team. She was the client.”
“You were protecting Claire, but you didn’t know it was a drill. How does that even make sense? I don’t get it.”
It’s not her fault. It’s not her fault. The words bounced around in his brain, trying to stick, but he felt his ire rising regardless. “They had her disguised. Wig. Mask. Voice. I didn’t recognize my own cousin. That’s just wrong.”
“Whoa… they go all out.”
“And I’m all in.”
She stared at him—waiting, and then threw up her hands. “Oh, puh-leez. Grow up. You lost a game. This is you being a sore loser. I thought you were above that kind of pettiness.”
“And in my line of work, losing a game means losing a life. It’s not Stratego. It’s life and death—” Keith rolled his eyes. “Even though that sounds overly dramatic said aloud. Whatever.”
He waited for it—the comeback. Any second now…
But her expression shifted—unreadable. “You know, you’re right. I see your point.”
Disappointment filled him just as his ego said, Yeah! Not so dumb after all. He clenched his fists. “If Claire…”
“Okay, but she didn’t. And I think there are two things you need to remember.” She didn’t even wait for him to acknowledge her before she drove into her points. “First, Claire knows your business—maybe not as well as, say, Karen would have—or even Corey for that matter. But she knows enough to know how to thwart you in ways I never could have.” He raised his eyes in time to see her wink at him. “And I’m not exactly stupid.”
“No, you are not.”
“But also, you’re leaving out the god factor. You believe in god.” Erika waited for him to acknowledge before continuing. “He supposedly watches over and protects you—protects Claire. Or he sends his minions—”
“Angels.”
“Losing, last I heard.”
Keith stared at her, lost until he got it. “Way to ‘Dodge’ the subject.”
“Good one. Anyway, so he sends out these angels to protect when he’s taking a nap or on a trip to see what’s happening in Turkey.”
“Or sitting on the toilet.”
“What?”
This time, Erika sounded the slightest bit indignant. Keith grinned. “That’s what the Living Bible says when Elisha is mocking the prophets of Baal. Elisha asks why Baal hasn’t sent fire to their offering and taunts them with, ‘Maybe he’s asleep or out on a journey. Maybe he’s sitting on the toilet,’” Keith frowned. “Or something like that. I know the ‘sitting on the toilet’ bit is in there, but I might have the order wrong.”
“I’ll look it up later. Where?”
“Try Second Kings.” He thought hard. “Second half of the book somewhere—probably near the end.”
“So there you go. This was fictitious, so you didn’t have the god factor. If he’s real, don’t you think he might have been part of the equation that was missing? I don’t think you can make life-altering decisions based upon a game with a stacked deck. That’s just illogical.”
He could almost hear the seconds tick past as his pulse pounded near his temple. Erika watched him, irritation and compassion battling for preeminence in her features. She made a good point—one he didn’t really care to acknowledge—but honesty made him nod. “You’re right. I’m wrong. Hate to admit it, but it’s not like you’ll let me get away with that—”
“Da—” she flushed. “—rn right. I am. Don’t forget it.”
“Erika?”
“Yeah?”
“Think Mr. Moretti’s got dinner ready? I’m starving, and that smells like spaghetti.” Keith stood as she smiled. “Thanks.”
“Anytime. I’ll send—”
“Me your bill.” He resisted the urge to touch her cheek, hug her, hold her. Instead, he jerked his head toward the stairs. “I’d say ladies first, but…”
“Go on up. I’ll be there in a minute. I need to change—coffee all over me just before I left. I’m all sticky.” She tugged at the shirt. “Smart move with the chocolate brown uniforms, eh?”
As Keith climbed the stairs, a smile spread from his heart to his lips. She sat there, miserable, to talk to me first. She wouldn’t have done that a few months ago. That’s either great news or another way she’ll break my heart.
