Free Double Agent by Lisa Phillips Page A

who was a few inches shorter than Doug, but no less wide. General Richardson was a formidable sight with all those medals pinned to his jacket. Sabine raised her chin as he met her eyes and said something to Doug that she was too far away to hear.
    Someone grabbed her arm. Before the threat even fully registered, instinct and training made her react with a spin, ready to strike back at her attacker.
    “Whoa, take it easy.... Elena Sanders?”
    The name brought with it a rush of memory and emotion, and Sabine lowered her hands. An attack in front of a bunch of armed military servicemen and servicewomen wasn’t likely.
    She blinked at the man in front of her. “Mr. Adams?”
    It had been years since she’d seen anyone from the days when she had trained with the CIA, and here she was, face-to-face with the man who’d given her a fail on her weapons proficiency test. She’d retaken it twice. The years had turned Steve Adams’s dark hair to silver at the temples and had deepened the lines around his eyes.
    A new wariness was there, emphasized when he scanned the area around them and leaned closer. “What are you doing here? You have a lot of explaining to do.”
    Sabine made a point to glance at his grip on her arm. There would probably be a bruise tomorrow. When he let her go, she backed up, ready to rip into him for manhandling her for no reason. “It’s a party. What do you think I’m doing here?”
    Doug stepped up beside her. “Everything okay, Sabine?”
    “Sabine?” Steve asked.
    She ignored the question. “This is Steve Adams, one of my training officers at the CIA.”
    Doug shook Steve Adams’s hand. The quick tightening around Steve’s eyes before Doug let go would have been a wince of pain in anyone else.
    “Nice to meet you, Steve.”
    “I’d like to say it’s a pleasure.”
    Sabine didn’t want to feel comfort from the touch of Doug’s tuxedo sleeve against her bare arm, but she did. It wouldn’t take much for one of them to reach out and take the other’s hand.
    Focus.
    “So, Steve...” Sabine cut through the tension between the two men. “What are you up to these days?”
    Steve’s eyes flickered again, a trace of confusion he allowed her to see. “I’m a director at Langley now. I have been for the past four years. You?”
    “Same old, same old. You know how it goes.” She smiled. He would know that she had spent the last few years doing what she did best: gathering intelligence on some of the world’s biggest crooks.
    “Unfortunately, no, I don’t know.” Again Steve glanced around the room. He was no doubt as aware as Sabine of the eyes watching them, the ears peeled. “Is there somewhere we can talk in private?”
    “I can show you to my father’s library.”
    Sabine trailed behind Doug across the ballroom with Steve beside her. What did this man, a man she at one time considered a mentor, want to talk about? He’d been so surprised to run into her that something strange must be going on. And why did it seem like Doug already knew what Steve was going to tell her? Probably it was CIA business. How had they even known she would be here tonight, at this party? The CIA kept track of its assets, but this was crazy.
    Doug opened the door to a room lined with bookshelves. There wasn’t a spare space that she could see. It was full, and yet the room didn’t feel closed in to her, just warm and open. Sabine would have loved to spend hours in here, lost to worlds of adventure.
    The door closed with Doug still in the room. He caught her look and shook his head, like she should’ve known he would include himself, and turned to Steve. “This room is secure. You don’t have to worry about listening devices. You can speak freely.”
    Steve’s eyebrow peaked. “Except that you’re here.”
    If the look on Steve’s face was anything to go by, Sabine was going to want Doug to be here for whatever was about to be said. Not that she would tell Steve that Doug was anything more than