Page 26 of No Stone Unturned

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because I’ve never invited you for coffee. I guess I should have. That’s probably what friends do to keep in touch.”

She laid a napkin across her lap and regarded me, perhaps with a little exasperation. Maybe that hadn’t been the right thing to say. “I just saw you at your engagement party, so it’s not like we’ve been strangers. Besides, it’s my day off and I can’t think of a better way to spend it, having coffee and—” she looked down at her plate “—this amazing-looking Bavarian crème éclair.”

I licked chocolate frosting off my fingers, not wanting to waste a smudge on a napkin. “I appreciate it. I just didn’t give you much lead time on this one. That’s socially inappropriate, right? How much lead time do you generally prefer when being invited for coffee? Basia usually needs three hours to get ready if it’s going to happen on the same day, but I know you’re busy and often work on the weekends, so what’s good for you? I’ll add it to my spreadsheet and then next time I go to invite you to coffee or conversation, I will give you the appropriate amount of lead time.”

Gray picked up her fork and knife and neatly cut the éclair in half. I looked at my fingers and the mashed éclair on my plate and felt like a barbarian. But we are who we are.

“I’m here, Lexi, so obviously it wasn’t a problem. I’m pretty spontaneous, so just ask when it’s convenient for you. What’s up?”

I really liked Gray and not just because she showed up to see me on her day off. In addition to her smarts and excellent analysis abilities which were well-utilized at the CIA, I was especially impressed with her research skills. We’d been through a lot together on one of my foreign assignments for X-Corp—surviving an insanely intense and life-threatening experience that had bonded us in a way that transcended normal friendship. Not that I had a lot of experience with friendship, but those I had were special, and Gray counted among them. Even with all of that in our favor, I still needed courage to work up to what I wanted to ask her.

“Slash had to take an emergency trip to Rome.”

She paused with a bite of the éclair millimeters from her mouth. After a moment, she returned it to her plate uneaten. “I see. Does it have anything to do with the firecracker show at your party?”

I wound an end of the napkin around my finger, my anxiety surfacing. “Yes, that’s part of it. Also, the church is denying his younger brother Giorgio’s request to get married in the church, and someone sent me a threatening statue from the Congo.” As her eyes widened, I gave her a quick rundown on all that had happened.

“Slash didn’t like any of it, so he went to Rome to sort it out,” I continued. “He thinks someone is trying to get to him through me and he isn’t having any of it. But—”

“But what?”

“I need to ask you for a favor. One I’m not entirely comfortable doing. I don’t like asking for help, even from friends. It’s hard for me. But I need assistance and if you can’t do it, please say no. I will totally understand.”

“Lexi, just tell me what you need.”

I swallowed, hesitating. Wow, this was a lot harder than I thought it would be. There was also the mortification factor—the knowledge I couldn’t handle this on my own. Forcing myself to ignore my insecurities, I pushed forward. “Would you be willing to take a look at what the Vatican has been doing in the Congo, going back, let’s say, six to seven years? Nonclassified sources only. I’ve already done an open-source search of my own on this topic, but I don’t know what I’m looking for. International affairs, diplomatic negotiations and the subtle language that accompanies those things—it’s not my skill set. I want to know if something seems off to you or if there’s anything that stands out as being overly unusual or dramatic, or makes you wonder if there’s more to the story than is officially out there.”

She studied me carefully. “The Congo? The Vatican? Lexi, why don’t you just ask Slash? This is totally his area.”

“I know.” I glanced down at my hands. “But I can’t.”

“Because?”

“Because he doesn’t know I’m looking into this. Frankly, I’m not sure he’d approve. He wants me to stay out of his past, but there are things going on that have me really worried about him. I’m only looking for information at this point. I haven’t decided what, if anything, I’ll do when, and if, I get it. You may not find anything of interest. I want another set of eyes on my hunch. Something about the Congo is key here. Your eyes and analytical skill in this area are the best I know, so that’s why I came to you.”

She leaned both elbows on the table, rested her hands beneath her chin. I could tell she had a lot of questions and the thought of having to answer one, or any of them, was stressing me out. But I’d asked her for help, and it was only fair she knew what she was dealing with. “Are you ready for what you might find?”

It was a logical and good question that gave me cause to examine my motivations for my search. Why did I need the answers? For Slash? For me? For both of us? Things began to get murky when I really thought about it.

“Honestly, Gray, I don’t know. But right now,notknowing is worse. It’s a conundrum for me. On the one hand, I’m worried I’m overstepping an imaginary boundary by trying to help Slash. I mean, if this was an NSA job-related issue, the boundary is clear. Unless he asked, I would keep my distance and respect his work. But this is a personal issue—possibly a threat—which, by extension, is a threat against me, too. We’re supposed to be a unit, right?”

“Right.”

Feeling validated, I continued. “I know he’d respond the same way if our roles were reversed—and he has done, in the past. But here’s the thing. I don’t want to set an unusual precedent for our relationship. It’s not in my nature to force people to confide in me. Most of the time, I sincerely hope theydon’t.However, a threat to him is a threat to me, and I can’t fight or help him if he won’t let me in. He can be so stubborn sometimes.”

A look of understanding crossed her face and I realized she probably had some of the same issues with her Navy SEAL boyfriend. Between his job and hers at the CIA, there was bound to be secrets. So how did they deal?

“I totally get that, Lexi. When Hands has a planned mission, meaning one of the rare few he knows about in advance, he often gets pissy a couple of days before departure.”

“Pissy?”

“Yeah, he’s grumpy and pushes me away. At first I didn’t get what the problem was. Then I figured it out. He’s putting space between us. He needs to do that to focus. But it’s more than that. It’s important for him to know I’ll be okay in his absence. He needs to know I can take care of myself, and that he doesn’t have to worry about me when he’s gone. To him, that’s a certain kind of peace that can allow him to focus on getting the job done.”

I thought about the gun Slash gave me for Christmas, the GPS-locator earrings he’d given me so he could track me if I got into trouble, the shooting range lessons and the Krav Maga self-defense moves we’d been working on for several weeks. Suddenly, things began to make a lot more sense.

“I still don’t understand why he doesn’t trust me with his past,” I said. “If it’s bringing danger to him or me, aren’t I entitled to know?”

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