Snowbound With The Secret Agent. Geri Krotow

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СКАЧАТЬ made herself down an entire quart of kefir. The protein was necessary to keep up her strength, and she missed the tang of her mother’s homemade drink.

      The thought of her mother, gunned down next to her brothers and sisters and Papa, brought tears to her eyes. She viciously swiped at them. No more. After this mission, she’d be free and have the funds to go wherever she wanted. Not back to Russia—never.

      Using the tactics ingrained into her by the former KGB official who trained her, she shoved her worthless emotions aside and focused on what the rest of the day would look like. First a stop to the library. Then find the librarian and eliminate the worry of her testimony, no matter how unlikely.

      “What do you mean you were almost hit by a train? I thought you were working the ROC distribution network case?”

      Silver Valley PD detective Josh Avery looked at Kyle as if his colleague was a new recruit. Kyle’s liaison with SVPD was a necessary part of working an op targeting criminal activity in Silver Valley. ROC was a menace to Silver Valley and instead of eradicating the crime ring’s reach with the takedown of a human trafficking ring, they’d found themselves looking down the barrel of ROC setting up Silver Valley to be its epicenter of heroin distribution in central Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of New Jersey. Several of the SVPD detectives and officers were cut into Trail Hiker ops on a need-to-know basis, and often a Trail Hiker agent was paired with a single point of contact at SVPD to minimize leaks and maximize both law enforcement agencies’ ability to solve cases. Kyle came into SVPD to debrief Josh, after he was sure Portia was okay and being taken care of by the EMTs. Again, his focus was too heavy on the Portia side for his agent liking.

      “I was. I am.” Kyle weighed what to say next, even though Josh was his SVPD liaison for this particular Trail Hiker case. But they were working as a team. “I was conducting surveillance, the same kind you do every day, on the library’s back entrance. Another agent had the front door covered. When trouble showed up in the way of an intruder—Markova—trying to pry open the locked exit-only door, I paid attention. I never expected the librarian to take off after the assailant, though.”

      “It’s not like we can warn civilians about top-secret ROC details, not if we want to keep our covert ops secret.” Josh’s face revealed his concern.

      “That’s the double-edged sword of this work, isn’t it? Providing safety for all by tracking the bad guys we can’t talk about.” Kyle leaned back in the chair across from Josh’s desk, in the detective’s office. “Who knew a librarian could run that fast?”

      “I haven’t seen the official report come across yet. Are you sure it was the head librarian, Portia? Or one of her assistants?”

      “It was Portia. And we’re lucky Markova didn’t knife her on the spot at the library.” No sense pretending he didn’t know who Portia was. “You know Portia?”

      “She’s my fiancée’s best friend.” Josh grinned. “Don’t get sucked into any librarian stereotypes. Portia doesn’t take crap from anyone.”

      Two strikes against his attempts at staying unseen today. He avoided public venues with any law enforcement agencies, or LEAs, as much as possible while doing his initial surveillance of Markova and ROC. But both Portia and Markova had seen him on the railroad tracks. Portia might believe he was a simple Good Samaritan, as could Markova. But a former FSB agent operated on the belief that there were no coincidences. Chances were that Markova suspected she’d been marked. His days in his undercover guise as a homeless man were numbered now, because Markova was as good as an enemy agent got. She’d put him with his disguise with little trouble. “Hell. Can’t one go anywhere in this town without running into another connection.”

      “It’s not that bad. We’re bigger than you think, not just because we’re over twenty thousand last count. And you could run into the same people in a city of millions, especially in our profession. It happens.”

      “But it’s not supposed to. Not if I’m doing my job right.” Kyle’s mission was to stay under the radar of a casual observer. He knew that Portia probably hadn’t noticed him in the library. He wore various disguises whenever he went there, to keep himself free to be himself during off-hours. He should have worn a disguise this morning, too, but with daylight surveillance, he wasn’t as worried—it was easier to pass off someone as inconsequential, normal, during busier working hours.

      Josh nodded. He got it—he was an SVPD detective, yes, but also a Trail Hiker Agent as needed, per case. Right now they were using all agencies and means available to eradicate the crime through which ROC had infiltrated Silver Valley.

      Kyle happened to have drawn the case of the stolen freight shipments, which amounted to millions of dollars of lost high-end technology goods in the past six months. Televisions, luxury audio systems and scores of top-of-the-line computer systems had been stolen. It’d blossomed into more when he discovered that heroin shipments were part of the ROC clandestine network, too. “I’ve narrowed down the place where they exchange possible hits and heroin drops to the library. I just haven’t spotted them doing it yet.”

      “You still think it’s with the library’s computer internal system?”

      “I did. But now, I’m not so sure. I’ve sat surveillance on Markova and the library for almost three weeks with no new leads.” The lack of movement on the case had given him too much time to think about Portia.

      He wondered if she’d needed stitches, if she was released from the ER yet.

      Not your problem.

      Josh shook his head. “This is the hardest part. Waiting out the losers to make a wrong move so that we can put all of us out of our misery.”

      “Yeah.” Kyle didn’t know Josh that well but knew that he’d recently been involved in a big sting against ROC. “How long did you wait before you saved all those Ukrainian women?” He referred to the human trafficking ROC had conducted in Silver Valley last year. Josh had also been instrumental in helping the wife of a notorious ROC operative get out of a domestic violence situation. He’d told Kyle about it in one of their many liaisons like today’s.

      “It felt like forever but it came together quickly, once things started falling in place. You know the drill—hurry up and wait. And then be ready to go full throttle.”

      “Hmph.” Kyle tried to review the work he’d done the past weeks, most of it surveillance, but he couldn’t stop the image of Portia’s big brown eyes watching him earlier. If he weren’t committed to remaining single, putting his career first, always, she’d be...no. He couldn’t go there. If he did decide to date someone, as he’d been considering, it couldn’t be Portia. Portia was too dangerous, because he barely knew her and couldn’t shake her.

      “You’re still thinking about Portia, aren’t you?” Josh’s grin rankled Kyle but not as much as his uncanny ability to read him. Few could.

      “Why do you ask?”

      “I think it’s the same expression I had on my face, oh, about six months ago. When I realized Annie was more than a childhood friend.”

      “Doubtful. I don’t know anything about Portia DiNapoli except that she’s the town librarian, and also volunteers a lot of time at the Silver Valley homeless shelter. I can only hope she doesn’t recognize me the next time I’m there. She’s making my job more difficult.”

      Josh slapped him on the back. “You are so full of crap. You had to have done a quick background check on Portia СКАЧАТЬ