Chapter 6

6

L eo loaded the dishwasher while Sasha washed the pots and pans he’d used to make dinner. Upstairs, Finn and Fiona were putting away their clean clothes. Fiona had decided they were old enough to do their own laundry. Leo was more than happy to hand over the task. Based on the squeals of laughter floating down the stairs in sporadic bursts, they were more than happy with the arrangement, too.

“What do you know about CEO?” Sasha asked as she scrubbed a skillet.

“The CEO of what company?” he stalled.

“Not a CEO. The organization. Citizens to End Oppression. You’ve heard of them, I’m sure.”

He eyed his wife’s back and considered his options. She always said she could never tell what he was thinking. But he didn’t want to risk lying to her, even though most of what he knew about CEO was classified.

“Yeah, I’ve heard of them.”

“Are they violent?”

“Anyone can be violent.”

“Does the organization have a reputation for violence?” she pressed.

“They’re not on the radar as a domestic terrorist group, if that’s what you’re asking me.”

She switched off the water and turned to face him, letting out a huff to let him know she was reaching her the limit of her patience. “What I’m asking is if they’re violent.”

“Why don’t you tell me why you’re asking?”

“Remember how I told you I’m representing Daniel? CEO, or a regional leader, more accurately, hired him to run a two-day hand-to-hand combat camp.”

His gut tightened at the idea of a group like CEO being armed with Krav Maga tactics, but he kept his expression nonchalant. “That’s kind of odd.”

“I thought so, too. Daniel wasn’t aware of who they were when he agreed to do the training. He only found out when they tried to pay him with their fake money.”

He snorted. “That sounds like CEO.” Then his laughter faded as he studied her face more closely, taking in her tense jawline. “Do you have any other reason to think they’re violent?”

“Maybe. For the past two days, I’ve had the feeling that I’ve been followed or watched. I think someone’s been in the office at least twice outside of business hours when I was there alone. And today, Ellie saw CEO’s attorney and another man lurking in the alley between our building and the antique shop. I doubt they were treasure hunting.”

Leo’s heart pounded and his face heated. He fisted his hands then shook them out in an effort to remain calm. “Did you confront the lawyer?”

She shook her head. “He was long gone by the time Ellie told me about seeing him. But I called his office. He claims he was in town for a meeting and just stopped at Jake’s for a coffee.”

“A coincidence?”

She twisted her mouth to the side. “So he says.”

A long, silent moment passed between them.

“I don’t like it, Sasha,” he said.

“I don’t like it either. If they think they can intimidate me, they picked the wrong attorney.”

“You need to be careful. Because even if CEO isn’t breaking into your office or following you, someone is.”

“I know. That’s why I caught a ride with Naya this evening. I made sure she, Ellie, and I all walked out together. I don’t want anyone there alone at night until I figure out what’s going on.”

He frowned. It was a start, but it wasn’t enough. “The kids and I can pick you up, you know. Just call.”

“Connelly, you don’t need to worry. I’m going to talk to Will about getting someone to do a security audit for the office. Anyway, you wanted to tell me something?”

He laughed shortly. “I don’t think this is the time.”

She dried her hands and stepped over to close the dishwasher, then she looked up at him with serious green eyes. “Part of not keeping secrets is not protecting me from news when I’ve had a bad day. Tell me how your meeting went. You got promoted, didn’t you?”

“Nope.”

“What then?”

He laughed bitterly. “I got fired.”

She stared at him wide-eyed for a wordless moment, then she turned on her heel and pulled down two Glencairn glasses. She opened the freezer door and dropped two oversized ice cubes into the glasses with a click. She pointed to the high cabinet where they kept their liquor out of the twins’ reach. But, of course, that meant it was out of her reach, too.

“Scotch,” she instructed. “You really got fired?”

He took down a bottle, cracked it open, and poured two fingers into each glass. “I really did. Hank, too.”

“What happened?”

He clinked her glass tipped his head back and let the amber liquid run down his throat, savoring the heat and the burn before answering. “They said it was a downsizing because of budgetary issues, but they made no effort to place us anywhere else.”

“So you’re not working for the government anymore?”

“Nope.”

“How long do you have?”

“What?”

“A month? Two weeks? When does your position end?”

“It ended at, uh ….” He checked his watch. “At 1:11 p.m. this afternoon.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. Hank and I were escorted out of the building.”

Her face went a shade paler and her green eyes popped. She took a sip of her scotch, and he watched her consider her next question.

“Since you don’t work there anymore, can you tell me what you did?”

He reached for the bottle again and shrugged. “Why not?”

She gasped. “Really?”

“Yeah, you’re right. There’s no reason to keep it from you now.”

This wasn’t strictly true. The position itself had been classified. But the rationale for that classification had been to protect the unit’s operations. But since he and Hank had been the entire unit, there was nothing left to protect.

“Plus,” she said, “I have spousal immunity if you ever get sued for telling me. They can’t make me testify against you if you get in trouble for it.”

“Spoken like the lawyer you are.”

She laughed. “Let’s move to the couch.”

They took their glasses into the living room. She curled up and, as was her habit, put her feet in his lap. He massaged her arches, as was his. The cat and the dog followed them in and took up their usual positions. Java in Mocha’s soft dog bed, and Mocha stretched out beside it on the floor.

“We really ought to get a second dog bed,” Leo said.

“I don’t know. I’m holding out hope that eventually Mocha will get the courage to crawl in there with the cat.

“If it hasn’t happened by now, I doubt it’s happening.”

“Hope springs eternal,” Sasha told him. Then she patted his arm. “So tell me.”

“Last year, Hank and I were approached by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.”

“Wait. You’ve been working for the FISC?”

“We have.”

Her eyes widened. She opened and closed her mouth but seemed unable to find the words she was looking for. Then she shook her head. “What could you two possibly be doing for the court?”

He understood her confusion. The FISC, or the FISA Court, existed primarily to hear and approve the government’s foreign intelligence-gathering activities carried out under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, especially those that take place in the United States involving U.S. citizens.

“The judges on the FISC regularly review top secret/SCI. You know what that means, right?”

She wrinkled her nose. “It’s sensitive compartmented information, so they have to do it in a SCIF, right?”

“Right. And there had been a series of cases in recent years that didn’t raise any eyebrows or concerns in a vacuum. But when the court was putting together some statistical information for a big budget review, the data team found some irregularities.”

She took another small sip of her scotch. “What kind of irregularities?”

“The kind that required someone with SCIF access to clear them up. And Hank and I both have the necessary clearances.”

She looked at him blankly. “Okay. But don’t lots of people have those clearances?”

“They do. But since our agency was so small and didn’t really exist officially, we were the obvious choice.”

“That only makes sense if the court thought the intelligence agencies themselves were corrupt or compromised.”

He gave her a long, steady look.

After a moment, she exhaled sharply. “No.”

“It’s what the evidence suggested. So, to prevent anyone from learning what we were doing, the court created roles for us within their admin unit so nobody would ask questions. That also meant the FISA Court, and only the FISA Court, had oversight.”

“What kind of irregularities did the court find that got this ball rolling?”

“There were too many surveillance authorizations that didn’t yield any actionable evidence.”

“Isn’t that part of the nature of an investigation?”

“Sure, of course. But there was a pattern. There was a subset of these fruitless requests where the targets had extremely sensitive jobs—the types of jobs that gave them access to information that would definitely be of interest to a foreign power.”

“But none of them turned out to be foreign assets?”

“Not a one. And the court became concerned that the agencies might be compromised.”

“In what way?”

“Imagine if the national security and intelligence apparatus was seeded with double agents who are using our government resources to target citizens to gather the information for foreign powers.”

“Double agents,” she scoffed. “That sounds like something from a thriller movie.”

“It’s not as farfetched as it sounds.”

“There really are sleeper agents?”

“There were. The Soviet Union had a program decades ago. It’s largely been shut down, but I imagine some of those agents evaded detection. They might still be here, embedded into communities. They’ve had children and maybe their children have children.”

“Second or third generation sleeper agents?”

“It’s possible. Nobody would ever suspect. They could be anybody.”

“How would they pass a background check at a federal agency?”

“If they’ve been here long enough and their papers were good enough back when the trail wasn’t electronic, it could happen. I mean look at me. My dad was a Vietnamese gangster, and the government didn’t find him.”

She shook her head but said, “So the FISA Court believes the targets aren’t Russian assets but the investigators are?”

“Not just the Russians. Cartels, domestic terror organizations, foreign terror organizations, anybody could have agents working in our national security apparatus. That was the theory, at least.”

“And if this theory is correct, no existing agency could be trusted to investigate because you don’t know who’s compromised. So that’s where you and Hank come in.”

“It was,” he agreed, placing heavy emphasis on the was.

She screwed up her face and sipped her scotch. “So why were you fired? Didn’t you find anything?”

“We never looked.”

She tilted her head and blinked at him. “What do you mean you never looked?”

“I mean, we haven’t done anything. It’s been over a year and we haven’t gotten the green light to actually investigate anyone. We had regular meetings, but we never moved forward. Hank and I started to get antsy. You know we’re not desk jockeys. We’d rather be out in the field than pushing paper, but we weren’t even doing that. We were just waiting. We never got a first case.”

“Why?”

“They always had a different reason. Some of it, especially in the beginning, made sense. But as time dragged on, we got fed up and tried to bypass official channels.”

“That sounds like you,” she said with a knowing grin.

“And Hank. My superior was on board.”

“Is that why you were both fired?”

“I don’t know. Like I said, they told us it was a budgetary issue. But I suspect we went too far. We helped ourselves to some files under the theory it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission. Somehow the judges found out and had the court administrator set up a meeting—she said it was to give us the official go-ahead.” He barked out a bitter laugh. “While we were in the meeting, human resources terminated our access to the systems and disabled our IDs. We were locked out.” He drained his glass and placed it on the coaster with a quiet bang.

“I’m sorry it went down that way.” She put her hand on his arm. “But you never would’ve been happy in an environment that wouldn’t let you use your judgment. You’ll find something better.”

He frowned. “Maybe, maybe not. My skill set is highly specific.”

She thought for a moment. “You and Hank could make your cover official.”

“You mean open a private investigations agency?”

“Why not? You’re more than qualified.”

He considered the idea. “Maybe. Hank already had a vacation planned. We agreed to talk when he gets back.”

“Maybe this’ll end up being a good thing. Don’t you sometimes wish you could just start over, do something completely different?”

“No, never.”

“Really?” She furrowed her brow.

“Yeah, really. I love my job. Just like you do.”

She choked on her drink.

“Are you okay?”

She coughed, and nodded. “Yeah.”

“You do still love your job, right?”

“Mm-hmm,” she said in a tone that was anything but convincing.

Before he could ask any questions, she popped up to her feet again and clapped her hands brightly. “I know what will cheer you up.”

“What?”

“Getting your butt kicked at Scrabble.” She grinned at him.

“You think that would cheer me up?”

“I do.”

He grinned back. “Well, that’s too bad then. Because I don’t know anyone who’s capable of kicking my butt at Scrabble.”

“Is that so?”

“Yep.”

“Set up the board, big talker. I’ll get us some snacks.”