Still, this went above and beyond duty to father, to country. This was a side to Tessa Abbot that he wouldn’t have thought existed.
A side that made him feel…
Riley refused to let the rest of that thought enter his head. There was no place for personal feelings here. Live and learn. He’d already made that mistake once.
“Don’t you dare question my ability to do this mission,” she snarled. Gone was the wavery voice and the uncertainty in her eyes. Now, this was a look he was familiar with. Agent Tessa Abbot, the gung-ho, pain-in-the-ass operative who put duty above all else.
The facade might have worked, too, if only moments earlier she hadn’t given him a glimpse of her heart.
“No questions or doubts, Tessa. Because it’s my guess you have enough of those for both of us.”
Tessa would have almost certainly denied that if the phone on the vanity hadn’t rung. She reached over and jabbed the speaker button. Her father’s image appeared on the small screen attached to the phone.
“Is this a good time to talk?” John Abbot asked.
“It’s safe,” Tessa told him. She paused only long enough to take in a breath. Probably so she could give the briefing her own personal slant. “We have a rendezvous time with our suspect. Per his instructions, in three days we’ll be taken to a clinic and then to another medical facility. Both are unspecified locations. By then, we’re anticipating you’ll have a way for us to transmit any information we might find.”
“There’ll be off-site video and audio-feed capabilities. That’s as much as we can risk with Fletcher’s security. And we’ll have a secondary team follow you to the locations for surveillance and backup.” Abbot paused. “We’re not sure if this is a problem yet, but Fletcher might have dug a little deeper in your records than we originally thought.”
That was not what Riley wanted to hear. “Are our covers intact?”
“Yes. From all indications, they are.”
But it wasn’t a hundred percent. Of course, in their business, nothing was.
“There are also some indications that Fletcher is setting up some thermal infrared equipment so he can scan the estate,” Abbot added.
Definitely not good. Visual eavesdropping. And a royal pain because there’d be few breaks from deep cover. In other words, it would require Tessa and he to touch. A lot. Or, at least, they’d have to be close enough to each other so they could pretend to touch.
Yet one more concern to add to Riley’s growing list of concerns.
“Until we’ve heard any indication to the contrary,” Abbot went on, “things will proceed as planned. Let me emphasize—your mission is to locate and retrieve evidence. According to Fletcher’s profile, he’ll probably keep detailed records in his personal computer or on surveillance tapes.”
“You don’t think he’ll still have the tape of Colette’s murder, do you?” Tessa asked.
“No. At least not at the clinic where he’ll be taking you. Elsewhere, perhaps. But it’s possible Fletcher will mention Colette, and there’ll be either a computer record or tape of that. He’s an arrogant man who likes to boast about his…accomplishments. That arrogance will almost certainly help us bring him down.”
Riley could only hope. And if Fletcher’s arrogance wasn’t his Achilles’ heel, then he’d find another way to get that evidence.
“Once you’ve completed the assignment,” Abbot continued, “and we have the two of you out of the facility, then the FBI will move in and make the actual arrest.”
Riley would have preferred to cuff the doctor himself, but he didn’t mind passing that honor along to his fellow law enforcement officers. As long as they nailed Fletcher, it would be a successful mission.
Too bad there was an if that threatened the success.
Riley waited a couple of seconds to see if Tessa would complete the briefing, but it soon became apparent she’d decided to leave out a critical detail.
“Do you plan to mention that part about Phase One of Project Ideal Baby?” Riley asked her. “Or should I?”
That earned him another of her lethal glares. However, her glare relaxed significantly when she turned back to the screen to face her father.
“Our suspect indicated that he’d be performing a routine, nonanesthetized procedure on me when we arrive at the first location.”
Man, talk about breezing right over the problem. “What Tessa’s trying to sugarcoat is that the doctor wants to inseminate her before he takes us to the second location.”
If her jaw tightened any more, she’d probably chip her pearly whites. “And what Riley and you both know is that there is no chance of my becoming pregnant. Without the insemination, we won’t be able to get inside Fletcher’s organization or gather evidence about the murders. In other words, our mission will fail.”
“I don’t want that any more than you do,” Riley firmly reminded her. “But your father needs to know what you’re up against. It’s still a medical procedure. And even though I suspect Fletcher’s whole operation is a scam, you have no idea what he might do to you, all under the guise of inseminating you. You’ll be at his mercy, and believe me, I don’t think you’ll care for Fletcher’s brand of mercy.”
“Is the operation a scam?” Abbot questioned.
Tessa nodded.
So, she’d picked up on the inconsistencies, as well. No surprise there. She was smart and probably better versed in fertility issues than he was.
“Evade the insemination if possible,” her father instructed. There wasn’t any change in his tone to indicate he was even slightly concerned about his daughter’s well-being. “If the suspect insists that it be done, then it’s your call as to whether or not to continue the mission.”
Your call. Translation? You’re a serious wuss if you wimp out because of an almost-nil risk. Even if “almost nil” amounted to something significant because Fletcher would be able to do pretty much anything to her under the guise of a simple insemination.
Tessa wouldn’t wimp out.
That full-steam-ahead, push-for-success mentality would have normally pleased Riley. But there wasn’t much that was normal or pleasing about this. That said, it wouldn’t stop him from doing this job, either.
So, the number-one solution was to avoid the insemination.
Somehow.
Even if it meant calling Fletcher and renegotiating the whole deal. Maybe he could convince the doctor that Tessa had a phobia about such things. After all, the Tates were supposed to be neurotic and self-absorbed, so he’d try to get some mileage out of that.
“Contact me with your situation report at 0800 tomorrow,” Abbot concluded, and the screen went blank.
“How did you know Fletcher was running a scam?” she asked Riley when she clicked off the phone.
“Lucky guess.” He waited a moment. “But yours probably wasn’t a guess, huh?”
“Not really. Fletcher’s procedure of flushing and then replanting an embryo is possible, though illegal in this country and most others. But the technology to genetically manipulate a human embryo doesn’t exist. So I doubt he’d bother with the former when he can’t do the latter.”
Riley nodded. That was his theory, too. “So, basically he just uses insemination to impregnate his clients and pretends to do his DNA manipulation thing. The women walk out of his facility with a lot less money than they had when they entered, and they’re pregnant with babies they could