Page 12 of Shadow

Peter held up the box of surveillance equipment he’d brought with him. “Let’s start by keeping her safe. I’ve outfitted her truck with a GPS tracker that I can monitor. No, you can’t have access to it, so don’t even ask.”

He smirked. Peter knew him well.

“We can put a camera on the back door and front door. She’s already got a solid alarm system that my company monitors.”

“Bless you. Thank you for watching out for her even when she left Exposure.”

“We’ve been trying to talk her into coming back. Even if she doesn’t admit it, she misses it.”

Ripley let the conversation drift to small talk about the major events that had happened in the last four or five years, while they got to work installing the cameras and adding extra motion sensors. Hopefully, all of this was overkill and the arson at her bar was a random thing, but Ripley had a feeling it was more than that. He had no evidence and no real reason to believe it was more than a random act of violence, but his gut told him this was targeted.

“I hear Brian Doran is on his way to being CIA director,” Peter said as he mounted one of the motion detectors in the living room.

Ripley snorted. “Yeah, that’s what he’s hoping for anyway. If I hadn’t been ready to leave, I might have fought it a little harder. Lord knows we both have enough dirt on that man to bury him.”

“He’s got his fair share of enemies, so I wouldn’t count it as a done deal just yet. Speaking of CIA directors, Carrie got a summons to appear in court in a few months. It sounds like our boy Corbit is appealing his case again.”

Ripley rolled his eyes. “I got one too. It doesn’t surprise me. But the evidence against him is airtight so I don’t know why he keeps trying.”

“Men like him can’t handle not being in power. He’ll do anything to get out of prison.”

A few minutes later, Peter declared their work complete, and packed up his equipment. “Let me give you a ride home.”

“I can just call a car. It’s not a big deal.”

Peter jerked his head toward the window. “Sun is coming up. I already told Carrie I was heading into the office for a little while before Olivia needs her truck back. It’s not a big deal.”

“If you’re sure it’s no trouble, then I’ll take it. I’m staying at the Four Seasons. I can catch you up on the latest shenanigans at the NSA.”

They climbed into the truck, and Ripley regaled him with stories for the duration of the thirty-minute drive. When they were sitting in the parking lot of his hotel, it hit him that he wasn’t going to bed with Olivia. Spending his first day back alone was not how he imagined things.

“If you need anything, let me know,” Peter said when Ripley opened the door to climb out of the truck.

“I’m going to stay awake as long as I can and try to beat the jet lag. I’d hoped to be falling into bed with Olivia, but obviously that didn’t happen.”

Peter gave his shoulder another squeeze. “Just remember what we talked about. And if you get bored, check out the gossip pages from about a year ago if you want a little insight into her recent history.”

He leaned across the console and hugged his friend. “Thanks, man. I appreciate it.”

In the lobby, Ripley checked in and asked to have his belongings brought to his room. He’d had them shipped earlier in the week once he knew where he would be staying. Inside the suite, he looked around and thought about the last apartment he’d had in town. It was technically a government safehouse. So, he’d been forced to give it up when he left his job. It had never really been a home, though. More like a place to crash between assignments. Not like Olivia’s house, which was well decorated and inviting.

The way it hurt to see her living life without him was unexpected. But he had time to fix it now. And he would start by fixing her laptop. When he was done with that an hour later, curiosity got the better of him, and he had to see what she’d been up to in his absence. He sat at his computer and pulled up the browser, where he typed in Olivia’s name.

The images at the top of the search results made his gut churn. She stood with a smile on her face next to a man he recognized as a celebrity chef. She wore a cream-colored wedding gown and clutched a bouquet of purple roses. Olivia hated roses. That much he knew. The marriage was doomed to fail from the beginning. He chuckled at the memory that led to him discovering her hatred of roses. She’d thrown a bouquet—vase and all—at his head when he’d been trying to apologize for going so long with no contact at all.

He clicked through more links and found the engagement announcement, video of the wedding, and footage of them at a nightclub on their honeymoon in Ibiza. A few months later, the gossip turned a little dark. Was he abusing her? Were they into extreme S/M play? All the speculation was there, and reporters caught Olivia in long sleeves and sunglasses. She stopped showing up at the conventions she loved to cosplay at and withdrew from the people around her. Including her friends at Exposure.

And then one day everything stopped. She wasn’t mentioned in the media anymore. The chef’s show was canceled because he was retiring and moving out of the country, and he was no longer trying to take Olivia to the cleaners in the divorce. Instead, he gave her a nice lump sum of money and the judge signed off on them never needing to speak again. Likely Peter’s doing.

But Ripley still wanted to tear the man to pieces for having touched his girl. Olivia was his and had been from the day they met.

Was it this chef who tried to burn her bar down? He switched to a different machine—one with more protection from hacking—and searched for any sign that Mario DeBarr had been in the D.C. area lately. At first glance, it looked like he was still in the UK. He’d opened a restaurant there, and it was thriving. But Ripley didn’t trust anything at first glance. He was going to get to the bottom of this and find out who burned down her bar. And she was going to let him.

Within an hour, he had the man’s financial records in front of him as well as travel records and several police reports from previous relationships. Mario DeBarr was definitely an abusive bastard. Even if he didn’t start the fire, Ripley wanted to kill him.

His eyes were blurry by the time he’d finished combing through the data he’d accessed. There was some missing, and he knew it would take some work to get it, but he would do it. For now, he had to track down coffee and another shower. The one he’d gotten at Exposure was overpowered by the smoke at the bar.

In the shower, he leaned against the wall and thought about his last mission overseas. He wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that he’d walked away. It wasn’t entirely by choice, of course, but he was at peace with it.

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