Claimed by the Secret Agent. Lyn Stone

Claimed by the Secret Agent

easy to dupe. He seemed an all right guy, at least on the surface, so she hoped he didn’t get into too much trouble for losing her.

This probably canceled any chance of her working for COMPASS, but so what? She liked the job she had.

She had been procrastinating on a response to the offer anyway. It would be an excellent move professionally, she was flattered they wanted her and she probably would have accepted. But the European assignment had been really exciting so far and she hated to give it up so soon.

The Company would reassign her to another post, and she’d carry on, attending parties, searching, listening and mentally recording, playing the featherbrained innocent overawed by the powerful who surrounded her.

In what seemed no time at all, Marie reached the exit leading to the village where she’d been stashed. When she got to the town, she slowed and parked on the sidewalk in front of a small row of shops.

She slipped her weapon into the back of her belt, pulled her shirttail down over it and got out to join them.

The village was a bit larger than she reckoned, and it took a while to locate the building from which she’d escaped.

The alley adjacent to the building was deserted. Marie walked around to the entrance. The door was unlocked, even standing open a little. She pulled her weapon, hesitated, listened and heard nothing. Quietly, she edged it open a little more and slipped inside.

It was fairly dark, dank smelling and apparently empty. There was a chair, a bare cot and a table near a door to what she figured must be her former cell. That door, too, was cracked open a few inches.

Carefully, she approached, gun out and off safety. She kicked it fully open and shouted, “Polizei!”

“Bang. You’re dead,” a quiet voice declared in English. He sat, hands linked over his stomach, leaning back against the wall in the same straight chair she’d used to break the window.

“Dammit, Tyndal! I almost shot you!” She lowered her weapon and shook her head. “How’d you get here before I did?”

“Shortcut,” he drawled. “What took you so long?”

“What do you mean? I flew!”

He rocked forward and got up. “Not fast enough, either of us. Our boy’s gone already. I just found this in the other room, though.” He held out a scrap of paper with a few words scribbled on it. “It’s in Dutch, I think.”

She examined the paper. “Yeah, it’s a supply list. So he’s probably either from the Netherlands or had Dutch parents. That must be his mother tongue. He used it to make a list, and I heard him curse in it. Not much of a clue to his whereabouts now, though.”

“It’s all we have so far.”

Marie looked up at him and grinned. “Did you just say we?”

He shrugged and nodded, looking resigned.

“Not your decision, I take it?”

He shook his head. “Mercier said to watch you. So, show me what you got. If it’s good enough, I guess you get the job.”

“I have a job right now—getting this guy. One thing bothers me. If he intended for me to escape, maybe he meant for the authorities to find that,” she said, staring at the paper as she spoke.

“You think he let you go?”

“Sure made it easy enough. And he let me overhear him speaking in Dutch.”

“Let you, huh? Maybe he thought you were still out from the drugs. I don’t think we can assume—”

Marie interrupted. “So what do you think? False leads?”

“I don’t know. I found the paper right before I heard you coming and haven’t had time to examine it. Give me a minute.” He turned away, holding the scrap between his palms.

It was a full minute before he answered. “No. He took something out of his pocket, dropped this accidentally.”

Marie didn’t appreciate the humor, but she laughed anyway. “Thanks, oh, great swami. Did you divine anything else?”

Oddly enough, he didn’t laugh with her. “I’m psychic.”

“Well, excuse me for not recognizing that. Your ears aren’t pointy like Mr. Spock’s.”

“A skeptic. Well, at least my luck’s consistent today.”

“You’re serious,” she guessed. “You really think you can…”

“I really know I can, and I don’t intend to debate it with you right now. I thought maybe since you have a photographic memory—something very few people possess and some consider strange—that you’d at least have an open mind about it.”

“That’s why COMPASS wants me? So all that stuff about the team having unique powers isn’t just some outlandish rumor?”

“Hardly. But it’s not up to me to convince you. Mercier can do that if you come on board. If not, it’s just as well you retain your disbelief. We don’t need it advertised.”

She cocked her head and pursed her lips. “So, how’s it work? Your gift, I mean. And how well does it work?”

If she expected defensiveness, she didn’t get it. He pocketed the paper and answered matter-of-factly, “Only works with touching things, not people, which we figure might be an early developed defense mechanism on my part. Or it could simply be a limitation. Accuracy’s about 80 percent in my case.”

“Oh, so you admit that sometimes it doesn’t work?” she asked politely.

He nodded. “It depends on how much energy was expended on the object that was held or used and for how long it was exposed. Our boy obviously put some thought into making the list. Got more than I figured from it.”

“Okay, let’s hear it. What did you get?” She asked, humoring him while trying not to view him as a crazy she ought to run from.

After a pause, Tyndal added almost reluctantly, “He’s working for somebody else.”

Marie avoided his eyes and gave a succinct nod, not wanting to make him angry by questioning this ability. Psychic mumbo jumbo aside, he had access to a number of enforcement agencies and therefore more resources for investigating this than she had.

She needed him, crazy or not. Now how could she make him need her?

Chapter 4

“If I give you a picture of him,” Marie offered, “you could have it run through Interpol?”

“Sure, but how—”

“Art major. Worked my way through LSU doing sidewalk portraits around Jackson Square.”

“That’s not in your file.”

“Don’t tell the IRS. I worked for cash only. I’ll need charcoal and a sketch pad.”

She pushed past him and returned to the outer room. Have you checked out the rest of this place. Maybe he dropped something else.”

He followed. “Because of you, we have breaks in the case now, you furnishing that likeness of the perp and this, the location where he held you. None of the others that lived have been able to provide any information. They were drugged the entire time, then dumped in a public park, either alive or dead. Forensics hasn’t gotten anything, either, but this time, we’ve lucked out.