CHAPTER TWELVE - STRAIGHT SHOOTER

"Hey, Mrs King, I've been looking for you," said Leatherneck Nelson as Lee and Amanda entered the Georgetown foyer on Monday morning. Traffic on the bridge had been terrible and they were barely on time. Amanda had been up three times in the night with Jamie, who'd had nightmares from a movie he and Phillip had watched at Joe's while Joe had run to pick up dinner after go-karting. Her eyes felt gritty and swollen, and she wondered briefly if her usual morning perkiness was as grating to Lee as Leatherneck's was to her right then.

"Oh?" she asked, though she knew why.

"Yeah, I tried to catch you on Friday afternoon but you weren't here. You missed your practice time on the range but I got you a slot this morning."

"I missed my practice time?" she asked, and immediately, silently, cursed herself. Beside her, Lee smirked a little. Answering a question with a question was her tell — he'd told her that once — and she'd done it without even thinking.

"Yeah, so eleven o'clock, okay? You need to finish the allotted hours before you can take the exam, and you're behind the rest of the crew by four."

Amanda cleared her throat. "Okay, Leatherneck. Thanks."

"She'll be there at eleven," Lee said, his hand on her elbow as he steered her toward the stairs. Amanda nodded and gave Leatherneck her warmest smile, though inside she was bracing herself for the lecture she knew was coming as soon as they got upstairs.

Sure enough, the second she closed the door to the Q-Bureau, Lee turned to her with a stern expression on his face. "What's the deal, Amanda? You can't blow that stuff off."

"I didn't blow it off," she said. "I went to the library to read about Bert Bellingham."

"You blew it off." He crossed his arms over his chest, leaning against the edge of his desk. "What's going to happen if we're out in the field and you have to fire at something?"

"Then I'll fire at it, I guess," she said, feeling a tickle of anxiety run up her spine. "Lee, I already know I have to pass, so I'll pass. I'll go down there today and put in my practice time, and then I'll catch up with everyone else this week."

"Uh huh." He looked as if he didn't believe her, and she felt her cheeks flush.

The phone rang and she almost leapt to answer it, desperate to get out of their conversation.

"Mrs King," Marshall Warren said. "I need to see you right away."

"Mr Warren!" Amanda exclaimed. Her eyes widened and she saw Lee look up from the file he was reading. "Right now? Lee's just going into a meeting and he'll be there an hour or so."

"I can't wait that long."

Amanda drew in a deep breath. "All right. Well, I'll come right away, then." She hung up the phone and sighed.

"What's Mr Warren up to?"

"He wouldn't say," Amanda said. "Just that it's urgent."

Lee made a skeptical face. He glanced at his watch. "I can't get out of this meeting. Think you're okay to handle it on your own?"

"I'm sure it's fine," Amanda said. "Maybe he has another hunch he wants to talk through."

"You'd better get moving if you're going to make it back by eleven."

Amanda sighed. "Yeah. I know. What's on the agenda for your meeting?"

"Don't even ask," Lee muttered. "It's not tea with a millionaire."

"Can I take your car?" she asked. She hadn't planned on going anywhere on her own that day — she'd left her mother the car and relished the thought of bookending her day with a few extra, solitary minutes with him.

"Yeah, of course." He fished his keys out of his pocket and handed them to her. "Back by eleven."

"Okay."

"Say it."

"Back by eleven," she repeated, rolling her eyes. "We can't possibly have that much to talk about, anyway. What could he want to talk about?"

Warren wanted to talk about the blonde in the parking lot.

Amanda wasn't sure why Warren felt it couldn't wait until Lee was there, too, but she sat patiently at the wrought-iron table on the sunny patio, sipping what she had to admit was a perfectly made cup of coffee, and listened as the older man poured out his story.

She had called him, he said. Around ten o'clock the night before, a woman had called the house and asked to speak with him. When he'd come on the line she'd talked as if they'd been together again that afternoon. "And not to play cards, if you know what I mean," Warren said. Amanda wondered if he'd have put it so delicately if he were talking to Lee or Dr Smyth.

"She made it sound like you're having a — a thing," Amanda said, stumbling over the word.

Marshall Warren laughed. "Yeah. A thing."

"Well that's — I mean — " Amanda hesitated. "What did you say to her?"

"I told her she was full of it," Warren said. "I'd been in a meeting that afternoon and no one would believe we were together. People had seen me at the office, for God's sake."

"And how did she respond to that?"

"She laughed at me and said she didn't need blind-as-a-bat Bert Bellingham to see us together in order to get the word out. If you get my meaning."

"I get your meaning." Amanda shifted in her seat. "Do you think someone was listening in on your conversation?"

"Possibly, sure. I mean the lines are swept pretty regularly but they could have rigged something up, I suppose. That's why I said what I did."

"And what did she say?"

"Well, then she said something weird. She said 'I'm tired of waiting in the marble room.'"

"The marble room? What is that?"

"I wish I could tell you," Warren admitted. "I've been thinking about it since two in the morning."

"Two in the morning?" Amanda said. "I thought she called you at ten?"

"Well, she did, but —" Warren looked uncomfortable, then. "I did something that may have been a little rash."

Amanda's eyes widened and she set down her coffee cup. "What?"

"I went to the motel she said we were at that afternoon. When I hung up, I got in my car and drove over there." Warren looked away from her then, fiddling with the handle of his coffee cup.

"Mr Warren, you know that was probably a terrible idea."

"I'll say," he admitted. "When I got there, she was dead."

Amanda set down her coffee cup without taking a sip. "What? Are you sure?"

"I've seen a body before. She was dead as a doornail."

"What did you do?"

"Got the hell outta there. I don't know if anyone saw me. I ran an evasive pattern on the way home — haven't done it in years but I can still remember how to shake a tail. Took me over an hour to get back here."

"So I can assume you didn't tell Dr Smyth about this," Amanda said. Her voice squeaked a little when she spoke. She cleared her throat.

"Well, that was probably my second mistake." Warren huffed out a breath. "No."

"Oh Mr Warren. Why not?"

Warren gave her a knowing look. Amanda bit back a smile, even though her stomach was turning somersaults at the idea of him walking in on a murder scene.

"What if someone called it in after you left?" she said. She straightened in her seat. "We need to call it in now."

"To the DC police?"

"No, to the Agency. To Dr Smyth. Sir, you have to tell him what happened."

"He thinks I'm a paranoid fool, just like your partner did the other day."

"Lee doesn't think you're paranoid," Amanda said quickly. "And we've already got people looking into those bank accounts, and they are suspicious. We know something is going on. But we really do need to let the Agency know what's going on. We can't help you otherwise."

He studied her, silent.

"I'm going to call him either way when I leave here," Amanda said. "I have a phone in the car and his number in my purse."

"You're not afraid of him, huh?" he said, amusement mixing with the obvious worry on his face.

"No," Amanda said. "He's just a person, same as anybody else."

Warren chuckled. "Not what he'd like you to think, but yes, that's true."

"But you don't think he believes you," Amanda said, folding her hands on the table.

"He says so, in that roundabout way of his," Warren said. "Always was too good at cryptography for his own good, and now he speaks in riddles."

Amanda smiled a little. "Well, sir, he must be worried about you a little. He's been very insistent about us working this case as quickly as possible."

Warren made a scoffing noise in his throat. "Well, anyway, you seem like a straight shooter. I like that." He nodded at her. "Phone's on the little table in the hallway. Go ahead. Make your call."