Page 67 of Cyn
Again, Cyn nodded though she was already distracted by more photos. Why those three young men felt the need to document every little thing was a mystery to her, although she was happy enough with the evidence they’d more or less provided against themselves.
Ten minutes later, they were pulling into her driveway, and she was calling in the reinforcements. It was close to eight at night, and MLK day was less than four hours away. Realistically, if an attackwasgoing to occur, it would be in the daylight hours, so they had a little more time, but not much.
Joe peeled off from her when she started up the stairs to her office, telling her he’d pull some food together for dinner, then meet her upstairs. With a nod, she continued. Within the next twenty minutes, Six, Devil, and Nora trickled in.
Cyn made copies of the USB drive for each, then she called Franklin and filled him in. She hadn’t spoken to him since returning from Djibouti, and he had more than a handful of things to say to her. She put the phone on speaker, then muted herself and continued to click through the pictures as Franklin went on and on about how he couldn’t do his job if she didn’t provide him intel and other such nonsense. It was as if he hadn’t been working with her for the past twenty-plus years.
The tirade was an old one, though, and she ignored it until he simmered down—not that Uncle Franklin ever got properly het up. Unfortunately, he waswaytoo British for that. “So you’ll sort the FBI out then?” she asked once he’d fallen quiet.
“Yes, I’ll clean up your mess once more, Hyacinth,” he replied. Nora, Six, and Devil each stifled a laugh.
“I could always leave the agency, and then you wouldn’t have to clean anything up anymore, Uncle,” she replied, layering her voice with sweetness. Her friends looked up at that comment. Well, maybe it wasn’t the comment but Franklin’s reaction to it that caught their attention.
“We’ll have none of that,” he said. “We discussed this already, and you’ve a commitment to uphold.”
“The commitment isn’t binding, we both know that,” she replied as Joe walked into the room with a tray loaded with food. “If I want to leave, I’ll leave.” It wasn’t quite that easy, but she could make it happen. Not that shewouldmake it happen simply because she was annoyed at Franklin and his uninspired reprimands, but shecould.
Franklin let out a put-upon sigh. “I will call my contact at the FBI. I’ll request that Agent Ricci be assigned.”
“Excellent. Thank you, Uncle Franklin.” She liked to call him that on work-related calls to irritate him. “Now, if you don’t mind, we have what we think is an imminent terrorist attack being planned for sometime in the next twenty-four hours, and I’d really like to get back to it if you don’t mind?”
Silence greeted her only-a-little-bit-sarcastic comment, then Franklin sighed again. “We will speak later.”
“I will try not to expire from the anticipation.”
Another sigh, then he hung up. Cyn looked up to find everyone watching her. She grinned. “He needs a little spice in his life.”
“Are you really thinking of leaving?” Devil asked as Joe made his way into the room and set the tray of food down. He’d made sandwiches and brought up finger foods as well—some cheeses, fruits, nuts, and even potato chips.
“Wine or water?” he asked.
She made a face. “Water.”
“Or better yet, coffee?” he asked.
“If you wouldn’t mind?”
He shook his head, then looked at her friends, silently asking if they’d like some as well. Each of them nodded, and he left the room again.
“Are you really thinking of leaving?” Devil asked again.
Cyn let her gaze drift to the pictures that she continued to click through on her screen. “We’ll all leave someday,” she said. “It’s not going to be tomorrow, but maybe sooner rather than later.”
Silence met her statement, and she could have taken it for disappointment, but she knew her friends better and knew that they knew that she wouldn’t be talking about this unless she’d given it some real thought.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with Joe, does it?” Nora asked. It was a fair question. Over the years of their friendship, none of them had ever had a serious long-term relationship. They’d never had any significant conversations about it, but they all knew that that kind of relationship was difficult to balance with the lives they led. It made sense that if she was contemplating that with Joe, she’d also be contemplating leaving the intelligence business.
She shook her head. “I talked to Franklin about it before I went to England more than a month ago and definitely before I met Joe. As I said, it’s not going to happen tomorrow, but it will happen eventually. I’d rather it be on my terms than theirs.”
Her friends all nodded in agreement at that. Leaving on an agency’s terms usually meant you’d been injured, outed, or made ineffectual—none of which sat well with any of them.
“Well, that sounds like a discussion for another day. A day with lots of tequila,” Six said. For being Italian, she had taken an unusually strong liking to tequila when they’d all moved to Boston for college, and she hadn’t grown out of it yet.
“Yay,” Nora said, her voice dry. “Let’s prevent a terrorist attack and then get drunk on tequila. Ah, the sexy life of international spies.”
“You mock, but you know it’s a date,” Six countered as she turned her attention back to her computer.
Nora let out a quiet chuckle. “Yes, unfortunately, I know it’s a date. I’ll prep some of my hangover cure.”
