Hookup? What, was I nineteen again? No.
Paramour? I wasn't even sure what that meant.
Significant other? Oh, hell no. That was too contemporary for me.
There weren't many options for appropriate terms that didn't feel juvenile or strange. I knew only that April was a woman I was seeing, and one I hoped to continue seeing. In particular, I wanted to see her naked from sunset to sunrise.
"Uh, well," I started, but was interrupted by a happy shriek. Abby—thank God for that kid—chose that moment throw a fistful of blueberries at me. It sent her into a fit of infectious belly laughs that kept all of the attention on her.
Once the blueberries were eaten or flung to the far corners of the kitchen, Shannon pushed back from the table and retrieved Abby from her seat.
"We're getting changed," she said to the infant. "And then we're going to the beach. Isn't that right, little lady?"
"I'll be down there in a bit, peanut," Will said to Shannon.
She looked between me and Will, and it was clear that it was now time for the business portion of this breakfast. She nodded, and leaned into him when he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. He whispered something that had her rolling her eyes, and I returned to the remaining pastries on the table.
Will peered at his watch when Shannon was out of the room. "This seems like the right time to talk about Renner," he said.
I shook my head. "Probably not."
"Try again," he said.
With a sigh, I leaned back in my chair, my legs stretched out and my fingers laced over my belly. "I don't have much to tell you," I admitted. "Like I've said, I walked in on Joss and Renner when I got home from Riyadh. I had my apartment swept immediately. Advanced security protocols were initiated. The team found a few bugs."
"A few?"
I rolled my shoulders, stalling. Will and I didn't keep secrets. We didn't have time for that brand of bullshit. But there was something about being infiltrated—and infiltrated with the assistance of my ex-girlfriend—that was humiliating. None of the objective measures of success in this business mattered when a competitor could pull it all out from underneath me.
"Quite a few," I said. "We don't know what, if anything, Renner netted."
Will's brows arched as he absorbed this information. "Is it possible he has something to do with the resignations?" he asked. "I liked those guys. They were good guys. I'm pissed about them leaving."
"Me, too." I shrugged. "But I don't know if Renner was involved with that. It's possible. Most of our turnover comes from guys leaving for another security and military contracting firm, or local law enforcement, but I haven't heard anything around town about him expanding his teams."
"And what about Venezuela?" he asked. "I'm fucking furious about Venezuela. That mission was perfect. Everything was in place, and then it all went to shit. I'm convinced there was something else at play. Another operation, or something." He picked at a cinnamon knot. "If the Agency was down there and didn't give us a heads-up, I will personally burn Langley to the ground."
"Please don't do that," I said. "Our relationship with the CIA is strange at best, and adversarial at worst. Arson wouldn't help matters."
"Fine," he said around the muffin. "But whatever it was, it slipped past all of our intel and surveillance work, and that drives me insane."
"And you thinkI'mnot fucking furious?" I asked, slamming my palm on the table. "You don't have to explain this to me. I watched that mission fall apart, and I don't need to have a wife or daughter to understand the stakes."
He grabbed Shannon's abandoned coffee and downed half of it in one gulp. "It's time to play out the worst-case on this situation. Did you take any calls about that operation from home?"
Running my fingers through my hair, I groaned. "Fuck, no. I rarely work at home," I said. "When I do, it's only slide decks for pitch meetings. Not much that could jeopardize a mission there."
"Then where does this leave us?" he asked. "Venezuela was one intel failure and asshole parade after another, then we lost an entire team of operators, and now Renner's got ears in your apartment. None of this is coincidental, Kaisall."
"You think I don't recognize that?" I challenged. "I have all of our best people working on new security protocols and twenty-nine extra layers of encryption on everything, and I know you're analyzing every minute of Venezuela to figure out where it went wrong. What else can we do right now? If we sound the alarms, we'll effectively notify our clients that we can't handle this game."
"Fuck," he murmured. "Fuck."
"My sentiments exactly," I replied. I scrubbed a hand over my face, groaning. "As much as I'd like to put a team on hacking Renner and the rest of the Stillhouse shop, I'm not interested in taking that route yet."
"Why the fuck not?" Will asked. "Aside from the fact you're drowning in new pussy, give me one good reason why not."
Drowning in pussy.I snorted at that. It was a fair approximation of the wake-up call I gave April. "We don't play that way," I said, sobering. "Counterintelligence is one thing. Sabotaging the competition is another."
