Undercover Accomplice. Carol Ericson

      “Is this your sneaky way of getting my cell? You could just ask, you know.” He rattled off his cell number and she entered it into her phone.

      Actually, it was just her sneaky way of keeping him away from her phone. She didn’t keep pictures on her cell, but she didn’t need Hunter looking at her text messages.

      She tapped her screen with a flourish. “There. The picture is on its way. Now, I’ll get to work on this phone.”

      She dragged a chair to the window and kicked up her feet onto the chair across from it. She powered on the stranger’s cell, which they’d turned off to avoid any tracking, but turning it back on couldn’t be helped.

      “This guy your type?” Hunter held up his phone with Jeffrey’s mug on the display.

      “Tall, dark and handsome?” She snorted. “You could say that.”

      Hunter brought the phone up to his nose and squinted. “How tall was he?”

      “Tall enough.” Sue eyed Hunter’s lanky frame stretched out on the bed, his feet hanging off the edge.

      With a smile curling her lip, she hunched over the cell phone again.

      Sue clicked through the phone to access a few of the backdoor methods she’d learned at the Agency for bypassing a password to get into a phone. These worked especially well for burner phones like this one—and she knew a thing or two about burner phones.

      She glanced up as Hunter swung his legs off the side of the bed, hunching over his phone, his back to her. Seconds later, his cell buzzed and he murmured a few words into his phone.

      He must’ve reached his secret CIA contact—one who hadn’t been suspended from the Agency. She just hoped he knew to keep her name off his lips.

      A few taps later, the gunman’s phone came to life in her hand. She slid another glance toward Hunter’s back and launched the man’s text messages and recent contacts.

      Hunter ended his own call and stood up, stretching his arms to the ceiling. “I’m going to grab a soda from the machine down the hall. Want something?”

      “Something diet, please.” Tucking her hair behind one ear, she glanced up and pasted a smile on her lips.

      When the door closed behind Hunter, Sue began transferring the data from the stranger’s phone to her own—contacts, pictures, texts and call history.

      When she reached the last bit of data, Hunter charged into the room, a can of soda in each hand. “Any luck with that?”

      She slumped in her chair, clutching the phone in her hand. “Not yet.”

      Then she tapped the display one last time to erase everything the man had on his burner phone.

       Chapter Four

      Hunter snapped open Sue’s can of soda and leaned over her shoulder, placing it on the table in front of her. The click of the aluminum against the wood made her jump and flush to the roots of her dark hair as she jerked her head around.

      “Did I scare you?” He dropped his hand to her shoulder briefly.

      “I didn’t realize you were right behind me.”

      “You were too engrossed in that phone.” He opened his own soda and sank to the edge of the bed. “It’s a bummer you can’t get anything from it.”

      She placed the phone facedown on the table and spun it around. “None of my tricks are working. Phones are getting more and more sophisticated now and harder to break into. I think the CIA needs to get its cyber division on this to come up with some methods to bypass the new security measures.”

      “Speaking of the Agency and security measures, my contact thinks he can run Jeffrey’s picture through face recognition. If he’s on the intelligence radar, we should get a hit.”

      “He?” Sue twisted the tab off her can. “Is he stationed here in DC?”

      “Oh no, you don’t. I don’t give up my sources, not even to other sources.” He leveled a finger at her. “And that should give you some sense of comfort.”

      She tucked one long leg beneath her. “Did you ever tell anyone about us? I mean our brief affair in Paris?”

      Brief? Had their affair been brief? He’d been so lost in Sue, lost in Paris that the world had seemed light-years away, and he’d felt suspended in time. Ever since then, he’d measured everything in terms of before Sue and after Sue. And everything before seemed to be a pale imitation of what came after.

      Under her penetrating dark eyes, he felt a flush creep up from his chest. “I did tell a few people—my Delta Force team. That’s all. It’s how Major Denver knew to task me with contacting you.”

      “I see.” She braced one elbow on the table and buried her chin in her palm.

      “Did you?” He held his breath for some reason.

      “No.”

      The word didn’t come out as forceful as the expression on her face. She had told someone.

      “Our affair was a mistake.” She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest.