Page 31 of Stuart Woods' Golden Hour

It wasn’t that she didn’t like other people, she just didn’t understand most of them. Isolating herself was always her preference.

Her computer dinged with the arrival of an email from her boss, Mr. Lawrence. In it was the list of people he’d told her to look into, along with several outside contacts he thought might help her.

She read the list. It consisted of twelve names, four of which were highlighted in gray. She sent her boss a message asking what the highlighting meant.

Instead of messaging her back, as she would have preferred, he knocked on her door and stuck his head in.

“You can ignore the highlighted ones,” he said. “They’re deceased.”

“Oh.”

“Concentrate on the others, find out their locations, and whatever else Mr. Braun may need of you.”

“Got it.”

“Jillian, I can’t stress what an excellent opportunity this is for you. You play your cards right, and you could be moving up very quickly.”

“I see,” she said. Then she tentatively added, “Thank you,” when he seemed to be waiting for her to say more.

He smiled. “Be yourself and you’ll do fine. And get cracking on that list. Mr. Braun will want results soon.”

He exited and closed the door behind him.

She stared after him, confused.

She’d been hired by BLS straight out of university. One of her professors was an acquaintance of Lawrence’s, and when he heard the man was looking for new talent, he’d recommended Jillian.

At the time, she’d thought herself lucky as she’d been dreading looking for work. Imagining all the interviews she’d have to go through had made her skin crawl.

Now, thanks to overhearing the conversation between her boss and Braun, she was beginning to wonder if maybe she hadn’t been so lucky after all. It almost sounded like the results of the work she’d been assigned would be used in unethical ways. And what was that bit about the Russian she’d located?

She almost googled him on the spot to see if there was any news but stopped herself. She was being paid very well to do something she was good at. She couldn’t just throw that away.

Besides, Lawrence had been right when he’d said shewasn’t a people person. Which likely meant she’d misread Lawrence and Braun’s conversation.

That had to be it.

Feeling slightly less anxious, she focused back on the list. The first name was Danielle Verde.

She copied it and began asearch.

11

Teddy arrived at the meetlocation just before 5:00 a.m.

It was a restaurant on a narrow side street, not far from Piazza Navona. When he tried the door, he found it unlocked.

He had made the decision not to let Rogers know that Teddy Fay was still alive and had transformed himself into a bland-looking middle-aged man, with graying blond hair, before leaving the hotel.

This also helped him evade his CIA minders, as he preferred that they concentrate their efforts on keeping his friends safe. Besides, he didn’t need them watching his back. He had Vesna for that.

He removed his pistol from his shoulder holster, then eased the door open and stepped inside.

There was just enough light from a nearby streetlampcoming in through the windows for him to see that the room was unoccupied.

He crossed to a set of swinging double doors at the back. Each had a dinner-plate-sized window in the top half, through which dim light streamed into the hall.

He peered through one of them.

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