The Cardinal Rule by C.E. Murphy

Author:C.E. Murphy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-61317-157-8
Publisher: Miz Kit Productions
Published: 2020-03-18T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Sleep had claimed her somewhere in the midst of memory, and morning came too early. Strains of Beethoven's Fifth startled Alisha awake, and she answered the phone without opening her eyes.

"God himself couldn't have made a thicker wall of red tape," Erika said.

For all that she was flat on her back in bed, Alisha sagged, feeling as if she'd dropped another few inches through the mattress. She lifted her hand to press fingertips against her still-closed eyes and let out a long sigh. Legitimacy. A dead end of red tape was a kind of legitimacy for Brandon's story, and far beyond anything Alisha had thought she might fine. "Tell me more."

"Well, you know, the file follows him all over the place, meandering, after he left the Agency. Then a little more than three years ago—"

Energy surged through Alisha, propelling her out of bed and into motion. The Roman sunlight poured in as she yanked her hotel room curtains open, and she squinted into a view that caught a distant corner of the Colosseum. She pulled a camisole out of her suitcase, sliding it on as she held the phone to her ear with two fingers, listening avidly. "—it all turns red," Erika went on. "Everything on top of it says they lost him, that he went totally underground."

"Which is in keeping with what I know," Alisha said. The satin was cool against her skin, soft brush of fabric making her breathe deeply to feel its caress. She dragged a pair of jeans out of the suitcase and went into the bathroom alcove to brush her teeth, phone pressed awkwardly between shoulder and ear.

"So you sent me looking for stuff you already knew?" Erika let out a "hnf" of air, and Alisha all but heard her follow-up shrug. "Anyway, scratch a lawyer, get a liar. There was a phrase in his paperwork that struck me as funny, I don't remember what it was—"

"Baloney," Alisha said around her toothbrush. "Maybe you can't tell me what it was, but I don't believe you don't remember it."

Erika laughed. "Whatever, Ali." It was as good as a confession: Erika's security clearance was different from Alisha's, and Alisha had no doubt Erika was aware of key phrases and sentence structures that would tell her worlds of information that Alisha herself would never recognize. "The point is, beneath the dead end I found red tape."

"And beneath the red tape?"

"I would never break into secured CIA agent files to find something called ‘prodfac one' located in backwater Beijing," Erika said, sounding hurt, innocent, and totally culpable all at once.

"Made in China." Alisha leaned on the counter, head dropped. "Go figure. Who's handling him?"

"There are only a handful of reports buried under this tape, Alisha. Assuming your boy—"

"My boy," Alisha protested. "You're the ex."

"I'm not the one digging up files on him." Erika fell silent. "I mean, I am, but you know what I mean."

Alisha grinned at the sink and pulled her jeans on as she put her toothbrush away.

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