Quinton Mann is CIA through and through. Mark Vincent is WBIS for life. There is no way they could end up as anything other than adversaries -- and yet, Quinn takes Mark out to dinner on his birthday -- the one no one is supposed to know about -- and gives him one hell of a present in the restaurant's restroom. Mark, not to be outdone, has decided to escalate this game, because it has to be a game, right? There's no way it can be anything else.<br><br>But as the game continues, as Quinn shows up to a WBIS funeral, as a friend of Mark’s penetrates the CIA computer network to get information on Quinn, as Mark breaks into Quinn's house and gives Quinn a very interesting encounter, both Quinn and Mark realize that this is becoming the most real thing in their lives.<br><br>Can they find a way to do their jobs and keep this surprising, intriguing connection?

Houseboat on the Nile

I had dug up a series of cases that were languishing in the WBIS dead end pile, wanting to see how he would deal with them. These were jobs that had never been completed, for one reason or another, some because the CIA had actually gotten there ahead of us. None of those were mine, but quite a few seemed to be directly related to Sperling. When he got back from wherever the fuck he was, he’d have a lot to answer for.


Matheson was good. Using his expertise as a computer tech, he spotted things other agents had overlooked, offering suggestions for a tangential line of questioning. I began to have hopes for him. He might even make a decent special agent, if he lived long enough and if he didn’t start questioning the death of his friend, Michael Shaw.


My trainee had stripped off his suit jacket. His shirt clung damply to his back. He wasn’t wearing an undershirt, and I could just make out the shadow of a scar. I knew how he’d gotten it—a training assignment that had gone wrong.


Chapter 94