gray clouds that would make the day dreary but wouldn’t deliver any rain. It wasn’t until the meteorologists started yelling storm watch that Los Angelenos considered grabbing an umbrella. Twenty percent chance of rain always meant eighty percent chance of nothing.
Heavy on the nothing.
“There’s plenty of sunshine in other places.”
“Florida has bugs.”
The annual struggle of living in Southern California always included a discussion of sunshine versus humidity versus snow.
Although he didn’t mind the snow.
Not when there was someone to share it with.
Damn, he missed her. He dug down into his Catholic roots and prayed to whoever was listening that Olivia was alive and safe. He also asked that she contact him soon. He and Neil’s team needed something more to go on.
Apparently, when you were a retired assassin, the entire world was your office space. And Olivia had told the team nothing about her past. Making it impossible to track her.
Except there was one critical detail she’d told them years ago.
The man who’d hired an innocent girl and made her an assassin had recorded her first kill and held it over her.
Leo wondered what he’d done to make her take that first shot. Maybe he convinced her the head on the other end of the scope was evil in human skin.
Leo didn’t know how it played out. What he did understand is the woman he’d fallen for was nothing like the killer Sasha and the others described.
“Okay, what the hell is going on in your head?” Fitz asked.
“What?”
“It’s that woman, isn’t it? Janie.”
Even he knew to stick as much to the truth as possible. “I spent two months with her. So yeah . . . I’m worried about her.”
“How did you spend those two months?” she asked, her eyes on him and not the stopped car in front of them.
“The house was filled with people.”
“Ah-huh.”
“And cameras and microphones. Seriously, there was no privacy.”
“If teenage kids can figure it out, two grown adults can . . .”
He blew her off. “It’s not what you think.” It was so much more.
“I’m not Brackett, all right. I don’t care who you sleep with.”
“I never said I slept with her.”
Fitz smiled and turned her attention to moving traffic. “You just did.”
He moaned at her conclusion but didn’t deny it.
“I’m sorry it’s complicated and couldn’t work. You deserve someone in your life.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
“Follow me. I’ll show you where we collect the soiled laundry.”
Olivia thanked him and kept her step just behind him. Her disguise added thirty years to her appearance, a longer nose and short salt-and-pepper hair. The glasses were an added distraction.
Checkpoint Charlie was Richter’s version of a butler and hall monitor.
She glanced at him as they walked down the stairs. The man didn’t seem to age. She remembered assuming his age to be in his sixties, but now that she was older, he still looked in his sixties. He spent most of his time at the front entrance to Richter as a literal doorman. Though he always had time to make it to the doors since there was a gate, keeping people out or announcing them when they arrived.
He was kind.
When students didn’t have a family to celebrate a milestone with, he was always the one who offered something as a gift. Sometimes that gift was turning the other way when he saw something that would have gotten them in trouble with the headmistress. On Olivia’s eighteenth birthday, he accidentally left his locker open, where he occasionally put a bottle of liquor or wine and made sure she knew it. He did that for a lot of students. Especially those that were truly stuck there.
Charlie opened the laundry room door and stood aside as she walked by.
“Danke,” she said and looked around.
“It appears your colleagues beat you to it.” Charlie spoke in English and closed the door with the two of them inside.
Olivia turned and found him staring.
She knew her jig was up.
If there was anyone who had the finger on the pulse of a home or business, it was the maid or the butler. And Charlie was bright.
“Why are you back?” he asked, his eyes searching her face as if trying to place her.
Olivia stood taller. “Do you know who I am?”
He moved his head from one side to the other. “It’s a good disguise, but a bit thin, if you ask me. A man who watches you grow up always pictures what you will look like when you grow old.”