Her plan was simple, though its success was far from assured. She’d go back to Belyakov’s house, and she would ask him to invite her father over for tea.

* * *

• • •

Zack Hightower knelt between two garbage cans placed between two nearly identical McMansions across the street from Lucas Renfro’s larger gated property. It was two a.m., the street was as quiet as could be, and the CIA contractor’s threat assessment was that he could cross the street and get over the small fence and into the man’s home without being detected.

Renfro was home right now; this Hightower knew because he’d followed him here six hours earlier. He’d seen the man’s wife leave with luggage just after, he watched lights go on and off for a couple of hours, and then it all went dark.

The security cameras at the deputy director of Support’s house weren’t working tonight; this Zack saw when he used his laptop and the Wi-Fi password provided by Hanley to log into the system. He found it fortuitous that the security system was on the fritz: more evidence that the time was now to make his breach.

He also had all the details of the house, the keypad lock on the back door, and the alarm code, so he could simply punch it in and access the house.

It didn’t get any easier, Zack told himself.

The only thing holding him back was the fact that he knew Hanley and Brewer wouldn’t want him breaching the home at night while Renfro was there. That wasn’t the original plan, and neither Brewer nor Hanley knew Hightower was right here, right now. Theoretically, at least, this was obviously a higher-threat operation than penetrating during the day while the man was at work. But Renfro didn’t have a dog, his kids were grown, and Hightower had all the details to get into the house. He knew where Renfro hid his pistol, and he knew Renfro’s wife had already left to visit family.

Matt Hanley had told Hightower that he wanted him to put the fear of God in this man. What better way to do so than by showing up at two a.m. at the foot of his bed in a ski mask?

Zack rose from his prone position and started to leave his hide. Just then, a single muffled gunshot cracked in the night. Zack saw a flash behind curtains in a second-story window of Renfro’s house.

He knelt back down between the cans as dogs began barking.

Softly he said, “Uh-oh.”

He pulled out his phone, selected a contact, and put it through his earpiece. A few seconds later a tired voice said, “Brewer.”

“It’s Romantic. We’ve got a problem. I am not one hundred percent certain, but there is a decent chance Renfro just capped himself.”

Brewer woke up fully an instant later. “Capped? As in shot?”

“Affirmative. I heard a single handgun round pop off and saw a flash in his bedroom window.”

“Wait. Where are you?”

Zack breathed out slowly. He was going to get yelled at. “Outside his house.”

“At two in the morning?” When Zack did not respond, she said, “You were intending to breach, weren’t you?”

“I’d been thinking about it,” Zack admitted, ready for the fallout.

But no fallout came. “How do you know he wasn’t murdered?”

“Nobody coming or going since I got here. No other noises.”

“He’s married. Kids are away at college but what about—”

“Watched his wife leave. I checked; she was booked on a 9:30 p.m. flight from Reagan to Boston. Probably going to see their kid at Harvard.”

“Did he see you tonight? Did that cause him to shoot himself?”

Zack looked down at the phone with confusion. “Suzanne, I’d like nothing more than to think I have the power to make the bad guys kill themselves rather than face me, but there is no way he knew I was here.”

“Must have been your bumpering, and the shame of being outed as a traitor.”

“Yeah,” Zack said, still looking at the quiet house across the street. “In the end the fucker folded up like a cheap suitcase.”

“What’s your exposure now?”

“Somebody is going to call in that gunshot, and this looks like one of the neighborhoods where the police will come running when they do. I need to exfil.”

Brewer thought it over and agreed. “Get the hell out of there.” She then added, “If Renfro was the mole, and if he did, in fact, kill himself . . . well then, I guess this is a suitable outcome.”

Zack thought his control officer seemed a little unsure, but he couldn’t imagine why. “You kidding? It’s an outstanding outcome, other than the fact that he deprived me of the pleasure of helping him out with that.” He reached up to turn off his earpiece and said, “Okay, I’m exfilling the AO at this time. I’m out.”

CHAPTER 39

   Matt Hanley and Suzanne Brewer arrived at the home of Lucas Renfro at three fifteen a.m. There were no police cars out front, no ambulances in the drive. Apparently, no alarm had been raised by anyone in the neighborhood, because now, an hour after Romantic’s report about the gunshot, the street remained utterly quiet.

Hanley punched in the keypad code at a side door, then disabled the alarm with the same codes he’d given Hightower, and they entered the large residence.

Hanley was armed; he’d pulled his holstered .45 from his side table before leaving his house in Woodley Park, and now he held it at the low ready.

Brewer did not have a gun. She had been trained on them, but she wasn’t a shooter, and she thought Hanley looked ridiculous right now with his weapon: overweight, hair still slightly askew from his bed, wearing a raincoat though there wasn’t a hint of precipitation.

His weapon out in front of him like a jackass.

She knew he’d been a Green Beret, twenty-five years ago or so now, but he didn’t look to her like he’d used the weapon for anything more than a prop to make himself look tough since he’d left the Army, and she was not impressed.

Brewer walked behind Hanley as he stalked through the house, clearing from room to room. Finally they made it upstairs, worked their way through the bedrooms and bathrooms down a hall, and entered the master bedroom.

Suzanne flipped on the overhead light, then gasped.

Lucas Renfro lay with his feet on the floor at the foot of the bed and his torso back over the covers. Blood splattered the sheets, the pillows, and the headboard, and the man’s eyes were open in death.

A black steel revolver lay on his crotch, both his left and right hands positioned next to it.

Neither Hanley nor Brewer bothered to check for a pulse. A significant portion of his brain was exposed.