The work wasn’t really abnormally dangerous, and she got to wear a gun. She liked that part. Especially when the assignments required her to be in close proximity to arrogant men with more testosterone than good sense. Those assignments were few and far between thankfully, but occasionally they reared their ugly heads. Then there were those assignments that just sucked. The ones that she knew were going to test her patience and her training. This was one of them.
She stared back at her boss and one of her dearest friends, dumbfounded, restraining her disbelieving laughter. This one was just too bizarre to be real.
“Could you repeat that?” she asked carefully, certain she had to have heard wrong.
Richard Decker’s thick gray brows snapped into an instant frown.
“You heard me, Kimberly,” he said with careful emphasis. “You will be assigned to Raddington’s team, despite the alert that your welfare could be on the line as well. You will stick close to Raddington, and the team will surround you for the duration of time it takes to ascertain if the threat is real or imagined. You’ll head out to the Raddington Farm tonight, and you will stay there until this assignment is over.”
Kimberly stood stiffly before him, breathing in carefully through her nose as she gritted her teeth with the effort it took to restrain her sarcastic reply. This was a farce if she had ever heard of one. How in the hell had it happened?
“Richard, I don’t believe this is a good idea…”
“It isn’t your place to make that determination,” he said coolly. “The order has come down from the Capitol itself. There is no other option.”
Another deep breath. Deep breaths, she reminded herself. She could control the explosion building at the top of her head; all she had to do was breathe. At least, that’s what that arrogant, soft-spoken martial arts expert had told her.
“Then I’ll resign.” It wasn’t a threat. It wouldn’t be the first time she had resigned from an agency, and she doubted it would be the last.
“You could do that.” Decker nodded his head slowly, watching her dispassionately as she stood before him. “You’re a big girl, Kimberly, you can do whatever you want to. If you want to keep running. Or, you can face the fact that there will be times you’ll have to knuckle down and accept the inevitable. Especially if your father is chosen as the vice presidential hopeful in the next election as is rumored.”
So the rumors were true. Just what she needed.
“I don’t consider it running…”
“Well I do, dammit,” he growled. “I put my ass on the line to hire you, if you remember correctly. I didn’t think I was bringing on a damned quitter.”
She almost flinched. He didn’t raise his voice, but Richard Decker didn’t have to, his dark brown eyes could slice you in half when he felt the need.
“It’s a trick,” she argued, dropping the pretense of subordination as anger fed the resentment that had been building within her for weeks. “It’s not his first, it won’t be his last,” she said as she spoke of the father she had given up on years before.
She shook her head, fighting the need to confide in the only person who had reached out to her in years.
Richard Decker wasn’t just her employer; he and his wife had become friends of hers. They had supported her need for independence from her father, and had provided her a quiet, peaceful retreat in their home when she had needed it. Turning him down ate at her soul, but the risks were too great.
“If you walk away from this assignment, then you can kiss your future in security work goodbye. You’ll never get another decent agency to hire you. And you know it.” He leaned back in his chair, his arms lying comfortably on the sides as he regarded her. “Is that what you want?”
She resisted the urge to clench her fists. “You know it isn’t,” she said heatedly. “But this is insane, Richard. There’s no more a threat to Raddington and myself than there is to you. It’s another of his asinine little plots, nothing more.”
“And we can’t be certain of that,” he retorted. “Until we are, you will take this assignment Kimberly, and you will do it to the best of your ability. If for no other reason, than for me. I really don’t relish the ass chewing I’ll get from my boss if you pull out.”
Emotional guilt. She hated that and he knew it. He knew it and he was using it against her anyway.
“That’s low,” she snarled.
“But effective.” He leaned forward once again. “You’ll take Matthews, Adams, Lowell and Danford with you. They’ll take shifts patrolling the main grounds while you stick close to Raddington. Stay with him. Just until we’re certain.”