Carolina Isle (Edenton 2)

“You can cut it out,” Bill said as he sat down behind his desk. “I have no sympathy for you, and even if I did, I couldn’t let you out of this one.” He picked up a folder, then looked across the top of it at Jared. “Most agents are glad to get out in the field. Why not you?”

Jared leaned back in his chair. “Where should I begin? With pain? I was in the hospital for three weeks after the last job. And life. I like living. And then there’s—”

“Got a new girlfriend?” Bill asked, his eyes narrowed.

Jared gave a bit of a grin. “Yeah. Nice girl. I’d like to see her sometimes.”

“She’s a reformed what?”

“Stripper,” Jared mumbled, giving Bill a sheepish grin. “So sue me. After a wife like Patsy—”

“Spare me,” Bill said, and once again he was the boss. “We need somebody to find out something, and you can do it. Remember that agent we found out had been a spy for the last fifteen years?”

“Yeah,” Jared said, bitterness in his voice. He’d worked with the man about ten years ago, and had filed a report saying that something wasn’t right about the guy, but he didn’t know what. No one paid any attention. A few months ago, they’d found out that the agent was a spy and that he’d been feeding information to his mother country for years. “So what did you find out from him?”

“Nothing. Suicide before we could get to him.”

“Please tell me that you don’t want me to travel to wherever he was from, go undercover, and find out—”

“No,” Bill said, waving his hand. “Nothing like that. The truth is that we can’t figure out what his last big project was. He knew we were coming about ten minutes before we got there, so he had time to destroy a lot of evidence. But we found disks hidden under the floors, and a list of names inside a lightbulb. He had time to get rid of it all, so why didn’t he destroy it?”

“But he didn’t,” Jared said, feeling the old wave of curiosity well up inside of him and trying hard to suppress it. Why? was the question that had caused most of the problems in his life. Even after a case was considered cold, Jared’s “why” often made him continue. “What did he do?”

“He wadded up several pieces of paper into tiny balls and swallowed them.”

“I bet somebody had fun retrieving them.”

“Yeah,” Bill said with a half smile. “We lost most of what went down him, but forensics managed to get a name and part of a Social Security number.” He pushed a clear plastic folder across the desk, and Jared picked it up. Inside was a small piece of paper that seemed to have some writing on it, but Jared couldn’t make it out.

“Eden Palmer,” Bill said. “That name and a few numbers were the only things the crime lab could recover.”

“Who’s he?”

“Her. As far as we can figure out, she’s nobody.” He pulled a piece of paper from the folder in front of him. “She’s forty-five, had a baby when she was eighteen, no husband then and not one since. She worked at one low-level job after another until her kid started college, then she went back to school and got a degree.” He looked at the paper. “A couple of years after she graduated, Eden Palmer moved to New York, where she worked in a publishing house. When we first heard about her, she didn’t know it, but an old woman she knew had died and left her a house in eastern North Carolina. The lawyer taking care of the case was looking for her, but we fixed it so he was delayed in finding her. We wanted to find out about her first.” Putting the papers down, he stared at Jared.

“So how did she get connected to somebody who’s been spying on the U.S. for umpteen years?”

“We have no idea.” He was still looking at Jared, as though he expected him to figure out something.

“Maybe it was personal,” Jared said. “Maybe the guy was in love with her. Or is she too ugly for that?”

Bill unclipped a photo from the file and pushed it across the desk.

“Not bad,” Jared said, looking at the photo. It was her driver’s license picture, so Jared figured she was actually three times that good looking. He studied the picture and the information. She was short, only five three, her eyesight was good, and she was an organ donor. Limp, blondish hair with a bit of curl in it surrounded blue eyes, a small nose, and a pretty mouth. She looked tired and unhappy in the photo. Probably had to wait in line for three hours, he thought. He gave the picture back to Bill. “So where do I come in?”

“We need you to find out what or who she knows.”

Jared blinked a couple of times. Bill had said that only he, Jared, could do this, but this was a job for a rookie, not a senior agent. They could bring her in for questioning and find out what she knew. Probably something that she didn’t know she knew. That wouldn’t be too difficult. Where had she been in the last few years? Carried any packages for anyone? Jared almost smiled at the last thought, then he glanced at Bill’s intense stare. What was he missing?

It hit him all at once: they wanted him to seduce the information out of her. Cozy up to a lonely spinster, then ask her what she knew. “Oh, no, you don’t. I will risk my life for the agency, but I don’t kiss for it.”

“But James Bond—”

“Was a made-up character,” Jared said, ignoring Bill’s smirk. “James Bond doesn’t really exist. He—” Jared ran his hand over his eyes, calmed himself, then looked at Bill. “I respectfully request that I not be given this assignment. Sir.”

Leaning back against his chair, Bill folded his hands over his well-toned stomach. “Look, Jared, old friend, this case has us baffled. We don’t want to haul her in here and scare her into telling us whatever she knows. If she knows anything, that is. And, as you said, maybe this was personal. This woman lived in New York for a while, so maybe she met this guy”—he glanced at the paper—“Roger Applegate—good American name, huh?—in New York. Maybe he met her, liked her, maybe they fell in love. Maybe he was planning to retire and marry her. Maybe when he knew that he’d been found out, his only thought was of protecting her name. He didn’t seem to care if we investigated the criminals whose names were on the disks, but maybe he did care that we didn’t involve the love of his life in something sordid. On the other hand, maybe this Ms. Palmer had no idea this man had a crush on her. He was a mousy-looking little thing who nobody noticed, so maybe Ms. Palmer was the secret object of his affection and she never knew about his great love for her.”

“Or maybe she knows everything,” Jared said tiredly. “And maybe you want me to find out one way or the other.”