Enjoy an Excerpt
Dangerous Decisions
from
Chapter One
Taking a day off from work would be difficult.
A week would be painful.
But a month? Brutal.
Angie Liu’s gaze swept over her tiny office. Each morning when she stepped into the lobby of the George Bush Center for Intelligence, her skin prickled with anticipation. This forced leave of absence was going to suck the life out of her.
Four whole weeks. Sleeping late, wearing pajamas all day, staring at the TV like the living dead. Her mouth went dry. No, thank you.
Movement beyond the glass wall of her office caught her eye. Henry, the only other Asian American analyst in the department, leaned around the doorjamb and stuck his head inside the room. “See you Monday, Ange.”
“Nope.” She shook her head. “I’m banished for the next month. Won’t be back until after the holidays.”
“Right.” A smirk played on his lips. “Man, what I wouldn’t give for a month off, especially this time of year. I could never accrue that much PTO.”
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Of course he couldn’t. He had a life. A family. They did things. Like a one-week vacation at Disney World last March.
Standing, she grabbed the box of gourmet candy canes a colleague had given her and took it around the desk. “Do you think your girls would like these?”
“Absolutely. They’re fans of anything with sugar.” He took the carton and looked inside. “I might snag the cherry for myself.”
“Go for it.”
Henry held up the candy. “Happy holidays.”
“Give my best to the family.”
He rapped his knuckles on the door frame, gave her the finger gun, and disappeared down the hall.
The ticking of the second hand pulled her eyes to the wall clock. Quarter-to-five on a Friday. Any minute now, colleagues would pour from their offices, eager to start the weekend. Sometimes she wished she could be more like everyone else. But any chance at a normal life fled when she was fourteen years old.
She returned to her desk and plopped into her chair. The kaleidoscope pattern surged and swelled across her monitor, a perfect representation of what she expected from this forced holiday. Her life for the next month was a screensaver. Repetitive. Compulsory. Endless.
A soft knock on the open door drew her attention. Gary, her supervisor and the closest thing to a friend she’d had in years, stood at the threshold. He was also the reason she’d been forced into six hundred seventy-two hours of paid leave.
He stepped into the room. His cologne—a fresh scent of citrus with a touch of musk—wafted in with him. “It’s nearly five. You should get out of here.” He hummed and mimicked a hula dance.
When she didn’t answer, he fell into the chair across from her.
Instinctively, her right hand reached for the manila folder on the corner of her desk. A classic subconscious defense mechanism. She regretted the motion the moment her fingers made contact. Gary’s gaze fell to her hand. God. She hated being so transparent.
He pursed his lips. “You need to let it go.”
She pushed her tongue into her cheek and shook her head. If only it were that easy. “How? It’s my fault.”
He leaned back and laced his hands behind his head. They’d had this conversation before. Many times. “Informants get burned. Sometimes they get killed. It’s an unfortunate part of the job. And this one might have been an accident.”
“It wasn’t, and you know it.” She wedged her thumb under the clip of a pen, remembering the moment she learned the plane had been found at the bottom of the Caribbean. “He was different.”
Gary tugged on his purposely windswept hair and scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “The only thing different is you made it personal.”
“He deserved better.” She tried to control the quaver in her voice. In her mind’s eye, she pictured Rick Hughes, with his graying temples, weathered skin, and kind eyes. She didn’t tend to interact with assets but had been drawn to Rick and his corny dad jokes from the moment they met. The agency psychologist would have plenty to say about that.
Gary leaned forward, forcing her to meet his eyes. “He was a criminal. Working with us kept him out of jail. Don’t get sentimental and start thinking he had some unselfish motive. He needed us as much as we needed him.”
“Except his crimes were years ago. For the last two decades, he’d been a model citizen.”
“A model citizen living under an assumed identity.”
“To protect himself and his kids.” No matter how many times they had this conversation, she couldn’t shake that useless feeling. She’d failed Rick. To everyone else, he’d been just another confidential informant. Only Angie remembered he was a human being. “We have to find out what happened.”
“You liked the man. His death hurt. I get it. But there’s nothing else for us to do.”
“How about investigating? Isn’t that our job?”
“Our allegiance is to the Constitution, not to an individual citizen. You know that.”
Her head throbbed. They could go in circles all day. “Don’t you have a happy hour to get to?”
Though past forty and graying, Gary was single and still garnered a ridiculous amount of female attention. On a typical Friday night out, women flocked to him like tourists to the Lincoln Memorial.
He pulled on the knot of his Space Invaders tie. “No concrete plans. Thought maybe you’d join me.” He hadn’t invited her to happy hour for a long time. Certainly not since he became the Task Force Commander.
“Thanks, but I’ve got yoga at the gym. It’s almost impossible to get a spot with this instructor.”
“Really? The gym on a Friday night?” He cocked his head, his gaze scrutinizing. “Angie, you need to get a life.”
“My life is fine.” She prepared herself for a rebuttal about her sad, lonely existence but got only a loud huff.
He reached forward to rearrange the Ironman 70.3 coffee cup she used as a pencil holder and her Ruth Bader Ginsberg bobblehead. He tapped the toy, sending RBG’s head into a happy shake.
“I’d hoped to tell you this after you had a couple, but since you’re not going to cooperate—”
She stiffened. What other craptastic news could he pile onto this already shitty day?
“It’s official. We got word today that the DEA is dropping the investigation in Jamaica. That means the inquiry into Rick’s death is over. As far as they’re concerned, he was a smuggler flying a plane filled with cocaine. The fact that he worked for them is irrelevant. It’s done.”
Angie chewed on her lip. A year had passed since Rick’s plane ended up at the bottom of the Caribbean. In truth, she shouldn’t be surprised the DEA ended the investigation. It was mostly for show anyway, but tanking the entire operation didn’t make sense. “Are you sure?”
He nodded. “The decision is final.”
So not only was she being told to drop it, but the DEA was done with it as well. She felt like a balloon about to pop. “But what about his family? They’re supposed to believe he was a crook?”
“The DEA recruited him. It’s their call.” He pressed his hands into the arms of the chair. “There’s nothing else for you to do.”
Was he right? Should she let it go? “I know the arrangement. Doesn’t make it okay.”
He leaned forward, and dammit, he looked sincere. “If I had the authority to let you investigate, I would, but this one’s above my pay grade.”
“I can talk to Claudia.” Surely the department chief could be made to see reason.
Gary shook his head and stood. “She’s signed off on it too. When you get back, you’ll have a new assignment.” He shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “I’ll see you four weeks from Monday.”
Angie watched him leave, her frantic heart pounding into her throat. They’d destroyed a man’s life. And for what?
Rick Hughes was the second person to die on her watch. The first had taught her that loving meant losing. The second? That she couldn’t keep anyone safe.