Page 29 of The Saint

“And she’ll forget it.”

“Oh, come on. That’s bullshit. She knows what she knows, whether you confirm anything or not.”

“I have no influence whatsoever when it comes to the spin.”

“Your spin masters have agents asking questions like if she’s seen her sister. What kind of crap is that?”

“Like I said. It’s going to get ugly before it gets better.”

He’d learned all he could from meeting Beth. “Why the hell am I here? We could have had this conversation over a secure line.”

Beth studied him and lowered her gaze to her espresso, forehead pinched as though trying to work through calculus.

“What is it, Beth?” He laid his napkin on the table. “Because I’m done. Thanks for the great meal and all, but you’re holding back, and I’ve wasted my time.”

“If we tell her about her sister, it will change everything about their relationship.”

“Do you think Amelia cares?” He scoffed. “Hell, since when does the CIA care about emotional fallout?”

“I don’t know her, but for whatever reason, you seem to know what she thinks about. Care to explain that?”

Her accusation stopped him cold. He should push back and demand Beth stay in her lane. He could tell her to worry about the relatives of their agent, but that wouldn’t help Amelia. Shewanted answers, and he wanted them for her. “She deserves to know.”

“If she learns about Hailey, Amelia will open herself up to a world she didn’t know about. To dangers she’s otherwise inoculated to.”

“I think she wants to find her sister and doesn’t care if you pull back the curtain on whatever seedy, sketchy situation you’re so worried will sully her worldview. Give the woman an opportunity to handle the information instead of gaslighting her with a bullshit cover story?”

Beth gave a small shrug. “Again, none of this is my call, but I will pass along your thoughts.”

He smiled flatly.

“Are you going to see her while you’re out here?” Beth asked.

“No.”

His answer surprised them both. Beth eyed him expectantly and cupped her hands around the espresso. “Stick around for a couple days. We may need Titan’s help closing up loose ends with the Dumont investigation.”

“Aye, aye, captain.” But Camden didn’t take marching orders from the CIA. He would follow whatever directives Boss Man handed out.

CHAPTER NINE

Amelia laid her cell phone on the coffee table and curled into a ball on her couch. She had punted her work responsibilities to her assistant–turned–business partner Veronica, just as Amelia had every day for the last week.Or has it been a week and a half?She hadn’t done a good job of keeping track. Events and Occasions was a small but successful operation. Veronica would keep the trains running.

The last item on Amelia’s to-do list was a conversation with Jonathan’s parents. They were distraught. No parent should ever bury a child. But they worried overher, as though they could handle their grief better than Amelia. That only made her feel worse. She wasn’t sure how much worse she could feel at the moment and decided to call them later.

The doorbell rang.Seriously?She couldn’t escape from the world. Mental exhaustion pulled her eyelids shut. Why hadn’t she hung a No Soliciting sign on the front door? Or she could have taped a piece of cardboard with “No” written in giant letters over the doorbell to warn away visitors. Either would have been loud and clear: Stay away. But she hadn’t—too tired, too devastated, too everything.

The doorbell rang again.

“Go away.”

Then her cell phone rang. Would this nightmare of a day ever end?

A loud, thumping knock banged on her door.

Good God. Come on.Couldn’t the world leave her to mope in peace? “Fine. Coming!”

Amelia wrapped the fluffy blanket around her shoulders and, clad in her pajamas in the middle of the afternoon, dragged herself toward the door. She glanced out the peephole, and her heart stopped, frozen with dread that cemented in her veins witha sick, nauseating despair. Police cruiser lights twirled behind Agents Fitzgerald and Bennet. Hailey had been found.

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