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John Edmunds from Marissa’s team on the South Africa zee bomb mission, intercepted her and slung an arm around her shoulder. He lowered his head and whispered conspiratorially, “Thank fucking Christ you’re here. Some of us were contemplating knocking Viktor unconscious because he was in a shit mood the past few days.”
“AGS did get attacked and you’ve lost a couple of people,” Marissa pointed out. “I wouldn’t be in a chipper mood either.”
“Viktor can compartmentalize stuff like that. But his woman missing? Unchartered territory,” Edmunds murmured. “The only reason Burns still has his head is because Viktor has become more sympathetic lately. The loss of Holly has hit all of us hard. We’ve noticed changes in him, Ms. Cole. He seems almost human, and we know it’s because he has you. But hell, next time you two have a falling out, don’t take the entire world with you.”
“Duly noted,” Marissa responded. She knew Edmunds wasn’t blaming her, but was simply reiterating the consequences of their relationship.
“Marissa!”
It was Maia. The redhead came up to her and tucked herarm in Marissa’s, pulling her away from Edmunds. “Thank God, you’re back.”
Marissa exhaled in resignation. Somehow, she knew she would be getting the third-degree about disappearing again.
“I don’t like the plan.”Viktor paced the length of the briefing room. Marissa was in a chair getting a makeover from their CIA cover specialist who had just taken off the cast from her face.
“You already agreed to it,” Marissa replied, picking at the residue from her skin. She hated this part of the process, but the CIA destroyed facial casts after each mission, so she had to do this all over again. “Stop vacillating.”
They hadn’t found Owen Reed, but they’d gone through the list of members of his unit that were dishonorably discharged for the Afghanistan massacre. Henry Logan lived in Bluefield, WV near the abandoned mine where they had found Jack. Logan disappeared with no forwarding address the day after Jack was rescued. Two of the other men from the unit, Garett Fletcher and Morris Tyrell, owned a dive bar in Chesapeake, WV, near the capital of Charleston. Satellite images showed a small town with rows of houses amid acres of grassy land. The AGS tandem of Manning and Edmunds ran separate reconnaissance missions in the past two days disguised as truck drivers passing through the I-64 artery. There was a truck stop near the bar, which made it a popular watering hole for locals as well as transients.
“You think you can pull off this disguise,” Viktor scoffed. “You were a primary target. Owen Reed will make you in no time.”
The cover specialist, only known as Dolores, snorted. “Your confidence in the CIA is quite charming.” TouchingMarissa’s head of glossy, dark brown hair, she said. “I’d hate to frost these strands.”
“You are not touching her hair,” Viktor barked.
Dolores glared at Viktor, and her man glared right back. “If she’s going to pull off skanky waitress at a dive bar in West Virginia, she needs streaks of awful highlights and big hair.”
Turning back to Marissa, Dolores added, “We’re going to change your nose a bit.” She looked down at the cast. “Make it a bit thicker. We’ve gone through makeup on how to make this all blend in, right?”
“I’ve done this before,” Marissa assured the cover specialist.
Dolores took out a needle and syringe and brought it near her upper lips. Viktor was a blur of motion as he knocked the apparatus out of Dolores’s hands.
“What the hell are you doing?” Viktor thundered.
“That’s it!” Dolores screeched. “Either you tell this big oaf to step out or we do this at Langley.”
Marissa massaged her temples, feeling the onset of a headache. “Give us a minute, Dee.” The CIA cover artist glowered one last time at Viktor before exiting the room.
“I could send in a different agent,” Viktor said before she could get in a word. “I’ve got two who can pull this off. When we talked about altering your appearance, it was prosthetics, makeup and contacts. Getting lip injections wasn’t part of the plan, and neither was dyeing your hair.”
Marissa waited patiently for Viktor’s tirade to end. “First of all, I’m not dyeing my hair. They’re called highlights. Second, the lip injections we use don’t last. So I get nice, big pouty lips for only two weeks.”
“Dye, highlights, they’re all fucking the same to me, and I like your lips the way they are,” Viktor argued. His face mottled with rage. “And I’ll be damned before every drunk Tom, Dick, and Harry take a look at your plumped-up kissers imagining them wrapped around their cock.”
Marissa’s jaw slackened before it snapped shut. She was finally getting an idea of where Viktor’s head was. “Let me get this straight, big guy. Are you against me going undercover because Reed might recognize me or because you’re jealous of guys who are imagining my mouth on them—”
“Or pinching your ass,” Viktor finished.
She eyed him contemplatively. “If we have to work together on this, Viktor, I can’t have you interfering.”
“That sounds like an ultimatum, sweetheart,” Viktor said quietly, his face draining of emotion. Blank mask. She had not seen that for a while, but every time he went all stoic, it was like going two steps forward, one-step back. But she had to nip this in the bud. This wasn’t the first time he’d manipulated their mission, so he could watch her back. And Yeager was starting to notice, so she volunteered to go undercover in the dive bar in West Virginia.
“Take it however you want,” Marissa retorted. “Now. I want Dee to be comfortable and I need to get this shit done. So I’m asking you to leave the room, and send Dee back in here. I’d appreciate it if you’d leave us alone.”
Viktor’s eyes turned glacial, and his jaw worked convulsively as if he had something more to say. In the end, he nodded slightly, turned around and stalked out the door.
“Two Coors Light, Jerry.”Marissa hopped on the lone empty seat at the bar, smiling at the bartender before casting a furtive look at the new customers who just came in. It had been four days since she had started at Fletcher’s Bar and Grill and she had not seen hide nor hair out of Garett Fletcher or his friend Morris Tyrell. So much for being hands-on owners. What Marissa discovered from Fletcher's girlfriend, Sheila, who happened to be the manager, was that he took off suddenly for a week. Getting a position as awaitress wasn’t serendipity. It was a precisely orchestrated scheme. After doing reconnaissance for two days, Edmunds and Manning figured out which waitress would hurt the operations of the bar if she disappeared. So they took her into custody. Marissa walked in all dressed up in tight jeans, low-neck t-shirt, and cheap tall boots and applied for the job.
