JET II - Betrayal (JET #2) by Russell Blake Page B

took it in his, giving it a shake. She noted that he had large hands, the nails relatively clean; he wasn’t a laborer.
    “So, Alison, who’s waiting for luck to walk through the door, and what brings you to this part of Virginia?”
    Virginia? She racked her brain for her mental atlas. Virginia was somewhere on the east coast. She had last been in Nebraska. A long way away. Then she remembered. Langley, the CIA headquarters, was in Virginia. Of course, they would have transported her there. Where else?
    “I’m headed to New York. I have some friends who invited me to come stay for a few weeks, to see if I like it.” She shrugged and took a sip of her beer. “You know. Have a little adventure in my life in the big city.”
    “New York, huh? That’s full of adventure, all right, but it’s dangerous as hell, too. And really expensive.”
    “I’ve heard. But sometimes a girl’s got to take a chance, right?” she said and then glanced at her watch.
    “Who are you waiting for? Boyfriend? Date?”
    “No. One of my friend’s buddies who lives somewhere around here. She said to look him up…”
    “Well, if he’s not going to show, looks like I’m buying,” Jim announced.
    She threw him a long, appraising glance then smiled and held her beer up in toast.
    “To unexpected new friends,” she said.
    “I’ll drink to that.”
    Fifteen minutes later, they emerged from the bar arm in arm, and he led her to his black Dodge crew cab truck. Jim was divorced, thirty-seven, an electrician working on commercial buildings, and had a small house only four miles away. He invited her to come over to watch a movie or something, which she correctly interpreted as meaning drink too much and have sex with him, and after she finished her beer and he had knocked back two more of his favorites, they arrived at an unspoken agreement.
    The big engine started with a roar, and he gunned it as they pulled onto the road, leaving a spray of gravel behind it as he let the wild horses run free. She looked out through the side window and smiled again – this was a perfect cover. A couple, in a local truck, smelling of alcohol, on their way home…she reached next to him on the seat and picked up an orange baseball cap with CAT stenciled on the front and pulled it on, reaching up to study her reflection in the rearview mirror as he drove.
    “Looks good on you, baby.”
    She beamed at him. No wonder he was single.
    He turned off the main road, and she saw a convenience store near a huddle of closed shops, its neon sign proclaiming speed and economy in blinking red and blue.
    “Pull over, Jim. I need to get some stuff,” she said, pointing.
    He obliged and swung into one of the parking stalls.
    “I’ll just be a minute. I wonder if there’s a pay phone?”
    “Don’t know. Maybe,” Jim offered, sounding distinctly unenthusiastic at having his party interrupted.
    “Be back in a few. Don’t take off without me. I still need you to take me back to get my car at some point,” she said, the implicit promise that it would be much later obvious by her tone.
    His mood perked up. “I’d wait all night. But don’t make me,” he said, delighted that things seemed back on track.
    She walked into the store and performed a quick scan. There was a rear exit by the storeroom. She approached the old man at the register and gave him her most winning smile.
    “I hate to bother you, but do you have a bathroom I can use? It’s kind of an emergency…”
    He looked her up and down with cynical eyes, and then his expression softened.
    “Emergency, huh? I would tell you to go down the road a quarter mile and use the gas station’s, but it’s pretty grim. Wouldn’t wish that on a pack of starving dogs.”
    “Please? I’ll only be a minute. I would really appreciate it…”
    He pointed a gnarled finger at a doorway leading to the rear of the store. “Second door on the left. Don’t take forever,” he growled, then resumed reading his