Face Off

CHAPTER 40

THE MOMENT SHE walked into the restaurant, Laura knew that Fallon Moor had been there before. The host greeted her by name, and several other staffers offered professional smiles as they passed. Being alert around DeWinter was a given, but now she had to contend with a roomful of people, too.

As they settled in at their table, a waiter poured water. No one spoke during the brief seating ritual as both Laura and DeWinter surveyed the room with vague smiles. She chuckled.

“What?” he asked.

She flipped open the wine menu. “Nothing, really. I was noticing how we both checked out the room with a fake look of enjoyment on our faces in case someone was looking at us looking.”

“You’re not enjoying yourself?” he asked.

She didn’t look up. “That’s not what I said, Adam.” She put a dismissive, unconcerned tone in her voice. On cue, he chuckled, too. She allowed herself a smile. If there was one thing she had figured out—without Fallon Moor’s help—it was that Adam DeWinter liked to play verbal games and did not like a woman who rushed to explain herself. “What about a bottle of the Bogle cabernet with dinner?”

“I didn’t know you liked wine,” he said.

She laid the wine list down and picked up the dinner menu as another waiter arrived. “We can do shots before dinner if you like.”

“The usual, ma’am?” he said.

She grinned up at him. “Of course.”

She leaned on her elbows and peered over DeWinter’s menu. “What are you having?”

He handed her the menu. “I can’t decide. You pick.”

She took his menu and scanned the list again. She suspected he was testing her. “What did you have for lunch?”

“Something chicken.”

She gave herself a moment to recall the personality profile InterSec had on DeWinter. “The osso bucco. The wine will go nicely with it. They can swap out the salad dressing for something without nuts.”

He blinked, still smiling. “When did I mention I didn’t eat nuts?”

He had an allergy to nuts according to the profile. She feigned mild irritation. “I’ve never seen you eat them. I assumed you were allergic.”

The waiter returned and served two glasses of whiskey. Laura put in the dinner order for both of them, and the waiter left a bottle of Bushmills on the table.

DeWinter held his glass out. “To the endgame.”

Laura hesitated, then toasted. “To success.”

“You don’t like my toast?” he asked.

She flipped her hair back on one side. “It’s not the endgame, is it? It’s a step.”

DeWinter played with his glass, rolling the bottom edge in a circle on the tablecloth. “You’ve been acting strange.”

She hid her apprehension at the remark by sipping the whiskey. “More than usual?”

He pursed his lips. “How much of that is you and how much is an act?”

“I am exactly what you see,” she said.

DeWinter snorted. “Now, that I don’t believe.”

She lowered her brow to appear concerned. “Something’s gnawing at you, Adam. I’m not sure I want to keep dancing like this.”

She also wasn’t sure if she was pushing something in a direction she didn’t want to go. For whatever reason, DeWinter was acting suspicious of her. Her impersonation of Moor on such short notice wasn’t the best persona she had ever devised. It had worked so far, but that was because she avoided conversation as much as possible.

DeWinter shrugged. “You haven’t been around much lately. It makes me wonder about your commitment.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Really? After everything I’ve done, you wonder about my commitment?”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Tell me about Dublin . . . Allison.”

She didn’t panic that he had exposed Fallon Moor’s past. Given his former life in the CIA, DeWinter’s digging into the background of one of his key players didn’t surprise her. What she didn’t know was if Moor had discussed it with him. She decided to be flip instead of annoyed. “It’s the capital of Ireland.”

He maintained a pleasant expression, but she noticed a tightening of his jaw. “That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. I understand why you didn’t tell me your real name. What I don’t understand is why you’ve become cryptic around me.”

She sighed and leaned forward. “Adam, you know how this works. Whatever you know about Dublin is what you know. I’ve shared what I want to share. If you expect me to confirm or deny things you suspect about me, then someone’s going to be asking about twelve million dollars. Do you want to go there with me? I have nothing to hide.”

He waited while the waiter placed salads in front each of them. “I needed the money because I saw an opportunity to increase the chances of success with our acquisition,” he said.

All that told her was what she had already assumed. DeWinter had bribed someone to do something. He still wasn’t tipping what it was for. “The airport bombing was an accident,” she said. “The bombs were supposed to end up on planes, but one went off prematurely. I got out in the confusion.”

Quid pro quo. Except for the bit about the accident, everything else she said was known to security-industry insiders, and DeWinter had more than a few of them as contacts.

“This isn’t what I wanted to talk about,” he said.

Laura picked at her salad. “How about lost rocket launchers?”

“Fallon . . .”

“Yes?” She made a show of continuing to eat.

DeWinter lowered his gaze and toyed with his fork. “We haven’t been together in over a week.”

The comment surprised her. Despite finding out her real identity, DeWinter’s real issue was personal. Laura reached forward and caressed his hand. “I’m sorry, Adam. I completely misread what you meant.”

He shrugged and smiled. “I was having fun. I thought you were, too.”

She grasped his hand. “I was. Am. It’s just . . . things have been busy. When things get like this, I prefer to”—she tickled his palm—“heighten the anticipation.”

“It’s heightened,” he said.

She finished her whiskey with a slow slide of her tongue across her lips. “Well, I’ve accomplished one goal at least.”

“Seriously, though, where have you been?” he asked.

She refilled their glasses. Moor liked her whiskey, though Laura didn’t care much for it. “Without going into details, I’ve been putting some plans into place for after . . . ours.”

His smile was patient. “We have the same goals, Fallon. I would hope by now you trusted me.”

She pursed her lips. Moor continued to refuse to give any more details about her relationship with DeWinter. Laura couldn’t be sure if he was baiting her or not. His voice held tones of subterfuge, but that was as much a factor of his cryptic manner of speaking as it was truthfulness. She couldn’t risk assuming Moor had told him more about herself and her plans than he was letting on. “Not all our goals are the same, though, are they?”

“I would think taking down the monarchy was a big enough goal for anyone,” he said.

This conversation she knew how to have. She had been among antigovernment people in one form or another for most of her career. “What happens to the fey after the monarchy is gone? Not everyone agrees with us, Adam. Even if—when—we succeed, democracy isn’t going to break out. There will still be a lot of work to do.”

“I might be able to help with that,” he said.

She shrugged in a thoughtful manner. “I guess what I’m saying is that even now our goals aren’t precisely the same. You want to prevent the monarchy from expanding and infiltrating your government. I’m already living your fear. Eliminating the monarchy solves both our problems, but they’re not the same problems.”

“Maybe that’s when we leave things to someone else,” he said.

He surprised her. She felt a sense of honesty in what he said. Moor’s silence about him and hearing him talk about her like this made her wonder if they had true feelings for each other and not a relationship of opportunity and convenience. The idea gave her pause, as much for the unexpectedness of it as her cynicism that hadn’t even considered it. “And then what? We retire to a nice cottage with a picket fence? We’re not the type, Adam.”

Still pleasant, he looked resigned. “Why don’t we talk about this when the operation is over?”

She slipped a gentle smile over her face and held up her glass. “Let’s make a date.”

He raised his glass. “Next Tuesday. No excuses. That will give everything a chance to cool down, and we can talk about other things.”

She tapped his glass. “Tuesday it is, then.”

She leaned back as the waiter arrived with their dinners. At least she had managed to get a time frame out of him. Whatever Legacy was planning would be executed in the next few days. Maybe Terryn was right, and it was about Draigen, who would be gone in the same time frame. Even so, she wanted harder confirmation than intuition. The data drive waited in her bra. With any luck, she would piece together what the plan was and end it before it began.