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“That is not your concern. I don’t enjoy repeating myself, son.”

Peter moved closer to the desk to make sure he had his attention. “I’m not your son. If you don’t tell me who he is and what he wants, I’ll be forced to turn him away until we can run a background check.”

Peter crossed his arms and looked down at the older man.

“I’m calling Director Higgins. This is ridiculous. Get out of my office.” Upwood’s face was red as he reached for his phone.

Peter gave a curt nod and stepped out. He had resumed his post just in time to hear Director Upwood’s voice come through the secretary’s intercom. “Tell Dino Carranza to call me this afternoon.”

Interesting, thought Peter. It either wasn’t important enough to warrant putting his visitor through a deep background check, or there was something Upwood didn’t want the Secret Service finding. He sent a text to the agent downstairs with his service issued cell.

Initiate a background check on Dino Carranza. Quietly.

After getting acknowledgment, Peter prepped the team for transporting the director to his morning meeting at the White House. Once transport was started, he could go to his desk at the Secret Service building for a few hours to file reports and make detail arrangements for the rest of the thirty-day rotation. As lead agent on the detail, he didn’t stand guard as often as his men, thanks to all the paperwork he had to do.

The team led Upwood to the parking garage to pile into three SUVs. As Upwood was opening the door to one, a Hispanic looking man approached. “Director Upwood, we need to talk.”

Upwood stiffened and for a moment, Peter thought he saw fear in his eyes. But it passed quickly, and he faced the stranger. “I told you, Dino, I’ll call you when I’m done with the President, and we’ll reschedule our meeting. You have my word.”

“I’ll hold you to that. This afternoon or I’ll be compelled to pursue other avenues.”

Dino stared at Upwood and Peter let the stare-down go long enough to snap a picture of the man before he stepped in. “We really have to go director.”

When he was back in his office, he ran searches with department resources looking for information on Dino Carranza. The initial background check would be a day or two. As much as it irritated him, he also wanted to do some quiet digging into whether there was any merit to Carrie’s claims. Not that she had given him much to go on. Still, he could poke around and try to see what she had been up to herself. By checking into her, he could get a handle on whatever she was investigating.

After a few dozen searches, he was getting nowhere, so he went back to department resources and put a search in on Corbit Upwood. So far, he hadn’t come up with a connection between him and the mystery visitor from this morning. Why was this bugging him so much? People got visitors in their offices all the time, and Upwood was in the spy game. It would make sense for him to be getting odd visitors. Something about the way Upwood was acting about this particular visitor rubbed him the wrong way.

As he was clicking out of the search results, determined to focus on his administrative reports, his cell phone rang.

“Agent Mercer,” he answered.

“Mercer, why the hell are you digging into Corbit Upwood?”

“Director Higgins. How did you know what I was looking into?” He was a little surprised at being questioned. It wasn’t unusual for the service to look into their protectees.

“Upwood is our second most important protectee right now. I stay on top of anything involving him. Your search in the system triggered an alert.”

“Yes, sir. I thought it would be good to be up on who I’m protecting. Plus, Upwood got an unauthorized visitor today and he wouldn’t tell me who he was or why he was visiting. I thought I could dig up a connection.”

“Well, do me a favor and leave it alone, Agent. Just focus on your job, which is to keep Upwood alive. I can assure you Dino Carranza is no threat to Upwood’s life.”

“Understood.” But Peter did not understand at all. There was definitely something fishy going on and now Peter wouldn’t stop until he got to the bottom of it. Even if that meant spending more time with the journalist he couldn’t get out of his head.

7

“ARE you sure it’s safe for you to go back there knowing what you know?”

Tom’s voice came through the phone Carrie had propped up on her bathroom counter as she applied a thick coat of mascara.

“I appreciate your concern boss, but I’ll be fine. I don’t know much yet and that’s why I’m going back. To get a look around. See if I can figure out who RIP is.”

“Just no more getting arrested by the Secret Service.”

Her stomach fluttered. It was Monday. A full seventy-two hours had passed since Peter Mercer dragged her to the rooftop of his swanky apartment building and gave her one of the most mind blowing orgasms, and she could still fucking smell him. She’d taken a half dozen showers to wash the memories and smells away, but they stuck with her. In that moment it had felt like the best day of her life, but realizing it was basically hate sex and that she would likely never see him again had left her feeling ashamed and empty and she hated him for it, but she also couldn’t stop fucking thinking about him.

“I’ll be on my best behavior, Tom.” She was grateful they weren’t on video call because the outfit she’d chosen was skimpy and over the top.

Her mystery tipster said if she returned to the Doll House, they would know she was up for investigating this story. It was the sort of thrill Carrie couldn’t turn down. And after Friday she definitely needed a different kind of thrill.

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