She smiled. “And the first time I saw you I thought you were some kind of pervert trying to pick me up for nefarious activities.”
Max laughed again then sobered and clasped his hands together in his lap. “Don’t forget, it was your stunt work that brought you to the attention of the agency.”
“I know.” She frowned thoughtfully. It hadn’t just been her stunt work alone that had brought her to the attention of SPACE. She’d just finished the police academy and was enrolled in criminology courses at the community college when a man from SPACE had contacted her about working for them.
“So when do you start?”
She stood once again. “I haven’t decided if I’m going to do it yet.”
“Yes, you have.” He smiled, the smile of a man who knew her too well. “If you hadn’t already decided to work with the agency, you wouldn’t have told me about any of it.”
He was right. She walked over to the sliding glass doors that led out onto a tiny patio. Beyond the patio was a tall wooden privacy fence.
She stared at the fence for a long moment as she contemplated going back to work for SPACE. She knew the kind of calculation that went into each assignment the agency made. If they had tapped her it was because they believed she was the best agent for this particular job.
She was a cop, sworn to protect her community and this was even bigger than her community. How could she turn her back and walk away? The possibility that she might discover something about her mother and brother’s whereabouts would be a nice by-product.
“Kane thinks it’s possible Adam Mercer might have information about my mother,” she finally said.
“Is that possible?”
She turned from the sliding door to face Max. “I suppose. We know that ten years ago she left California and came back here to her roots. We also know that she was arrested on possession charges here in Kansas City. But no one has heard from her since. I’d say it’s quite likely she and Adam Mercer could have crossed paths at one point or another, though. It’s also a rumor that Mercer keeps records of all the addicts he helps.”
“Then you have to do this, Cassie,” Max said. “You might finally get the answers you’ve been seeking.”
“Maybe.” She knew better than to get her hopes up. She’d gone into police work in the first place in the hopes that the job might help her find her missing family. She needed to know that they were okay, especially the baby brother she’d adored.
She’d hired a private investigator just last year to try to find her mother and brother, but his search had yielded no results. Even though she was angry with her mother’s choices, she needed to know why she’d been thrown away.
“You’ll never be completely at peace until you resolve the issues from your childhood.”
“Have you been watching Dr. Phil again?” she teased.
“You need to heal the wounds of your inner child.”
“Okay, enough already.”
“You also need to resolve your feelings where Kane is concerned. You need closure on several levels,” Max finished.
Cassie wanted to argue with him, to tell him that he was espousing a bunch of psychobabble. But his words shot straight to her heart, to all the wounded areas that existed inside her, and as much as she hated to admit it, she knew he was right.
Chapter 3
Cassie compared the address on the slip of paper Kane had left her to the one on the front of the downtown brick six-story building. The addresses were the same although the sign on the building proclaimed the establishment on the ground level to be Eddie’s Employment Agency. The floors above the employment agency appeared to be empty.
The building was in an area of Kansas City that hadn’t yet seen the efforts of revitalization of the downtown area. The buildings on either side appeared abandoned, storefronts boarded with plywood that sported the usual colorful and obscene graffiti.
The street was relatively deserted considering it was just after noon, but she wasn’t surprised that SPACE would choose this kind of area for a mobile base.
During the four years that Cassie had worked with the agency, she’d frequented a number of “fronts” in a number of cities used for conducting business. They
were usually set up in areas where there was little foot traffic and where it wasn’t unusual for stores to appear and disappear in short time.
It had been explained to Cassie at her recruitment that because much of what SPACE did pertained to national security and many of the agents found it necessary to work outside of the law, the agency was top secret.
The agency had been dealing more and more with domestic matters following 9/11, while other agencies like the CIA and FBI focused more on terrorists.
Cassie didn’t know where the home office of the agency was, but she suspected it was somewhere in Washington, D.C. She’d always worked out of mobile offices like the one she had just left.
In truth, she knew very little about the agency, although Kane had once told her part of the history. It had begun in the mid-eighties as one of many covert agencies run by the government to deal with problems both foreign and domestic that might need special handling. The agents didn’t have to worry about the restrictions that often bound the hands of law enforcement and were highly trained both physically and mentally for all circumstances.
Cassie wasn’t sure how their recruitment ordinarily worked. She’d come to the attention of somebody because of her stunt work in several movies. Apparently an extensive background check had been run on her and they liked what they saw. It didn’t hurt that she had no family. In fact, Kane had told her the agency preferred their operatives to have no families.
Ancient history and in a few minutes she would be back in the fold of the agency she’d left behind.
She remained in the car for a long moment, staring at the old brick building. It wasn’t too late to change her mind, to turn her car around and forget everything that Kane had told her the night before.
She could go back to her ordinary life, arresting bad guys, bickering with her cantankerous neighbor and having breakfast with Max.
All she’d have to worry about were the nightmares that would plague her as she thought of the danger hitting the streets in the form of a deadly drug.
In truth, she had no choice. She hated nightmares.
She got out of her car and approached the building, aware that once she opened the door and walked inside the relatively peaceful life she’d built for herself would be transformed into something much different.
The interior looked like a hundred other employment agencies. Plastic orange chairs lined one wall, a table provided a place to fill out applications and a water cooler occasionally gurgled from its position in one corner.
A receptionist at a small metal desk looked up from the magazine she’d been reading. “Hi, can I help you?”
“I’d like to fill out an application,” Cassie said.
At that moment a door behind the receptionist’s desk opened and a tall gray-haired man stepped into view. “Cassie, it’s good to see you.”
“Hello, Greg.” Cassie smiled at Greg Cole, the man who had recruited her into the agency years ago.
“Why don’t you come on back. I’ve been hoping you’d show up.”
A sense of déjà vu filled Cassie as she followed him down a long hallway and into a private office. He motioned her into one of the two chairs that faced a large, mahogany desk.
She