Free All the Queen's Men by Linda Howard Page B

by seeing the way she had furnished her house.
    "The kitchen is this way." She led the way, turning on the overhead light. She loved her kitchen. The room was long, with a bank of windows on the right wall. A long, narrow island topped with a mosaic of blue and terra-cotta tiles provided a wonderful work area for any cooking project, no matter how ambitious. Small pots of herbs grew on the window sills, lending their fragrance to the air. The far end of the room was a cozy breakfast nook, the small table and two chairs flanked by lush ferns.
    She began making coffee, while Medina went to the windows and closed all the blinds. "Doesn't it get old?" she asked. "Having to always be on guard?"
    "I don't even think about it now, I've done it for so long. And you should close the blinds anyway." Hands in his pockets, he strolled around the kitchen. Pausing in front of the block of oak that held her knife set, he pulled out the chef's knife and tested its edge on his thumb, then returned it to its slot. His next stop was the back door, the top half of which was glass; he closed the blinds there too and checked the lock.
    "I usually do. I don't believe in inviting trouble." As soon as the words were out, she realized her own lie. Trouble didn't come any bigger than John Medina, and inviting him in was exactly what she had done.
    "You need a stronger lock here," he said absently. "In fact, you need a new door. All anyone has to do is pop out one of these panes of glass, reach in, and unlock the door."
    "I'll see to it first thing in the morning."
    The dryness of her tone must have reached him, because he looked over at her and grinned. "Sorry. You already know all that, right?"
    "Right." She took down two cups from the cabinets. "The crime rate in this neighborhood is low, and I
do
have the security system. I figure if anyone wanted in, they could break any number of windows and get in through them, not just the ones in the door."
    He pulled one of the tall stools away from the island and propped one hip on it. He looked relaxed, she thought, though she wondered if he ever truly was, given who he was and what he did. She poured the coffee and set one cup in front of him, then faced him across the tiled island top. "Okay, now tell me why you drove me home, and don't say it was for old time's sake."
    "Then I won't." He seemed to be lost in thought for a moment as he sipped his coffee, but whatever distracted him was quickly gone. "How undetectable is this new bug you've developed? Tell me about it."
    She made a face. "Nothing is totally undetectable, you know. But it doesn't cause a fluctuation in voltage, so an oscilloscope can't pick it up. If anyone swept with a metal detector, though, that's a different story."
    "Frank seemed excited about it."
    Niema was immediately wary. "It isn't that big a deal, because like I said, it's good only in certain situations. If you know how someone routinely sweeps for surveillance devices, then you can tailor the bug to fit. Why would he even mention it to you?" The bug had useful applications, but it was far from being an earth-shattering discovery that was going to change the face of intelligence gathering. Why would the deputy director of operations even know about it, much less call her to a meeting at his private residence?
    "I asked how you were doing. He told me what you've been working on."
    Her wariness turned into outright suspicion. Okay, it was feasible that Medina would ask about her, but that didn't explain why Vinay would know anything at all about her, much less anything about her current project.
    "Why would the DDO know anything about me? We work in totally different departments." The vast majority of CIA employees were not the glamorous operatives of Hollywood fame; they were clerks and analysts and techno nerds. Until Iran, Niema had craved the thrill of fieldwork, but not now. Now she was content to work on the electronics side of intelligence gathering and come home to her own