Objekt 825 (Tracie Tanner Thrillers Book 9)

He started laughing as she punched him again. “Hold on there, Mighty Mouse. I seem to recall you promising me a drink.”
“I don’t recall that at all. I do remember you demanding one.”
“Tomato, tomahto,” Marshall said.
“Fine.” Tracie climbed off his lap and turned toward her tiny kitchen. “I suppose you’ll be expecting the good stuff, too.”
“Well, I am worth it.”
You sure are, she thought, before answering, “The joke’s on you. I don’t have any good stuff. It’s all rotgut.”
“No, the joke’s on you,” he shot back instantly. “I wouldn’t know good stuff from rotgut, anyway, so just bring whatever you have as quickly as you can, and then get back in this seat.” He patted his lap with his hand, flashing a wicked grin.
“Oh, no,” Tracie said, glancing out the window toward the parking lot.
“What?”
“The weather’s taken a turn for the worse.”
Marshall craned his neck to look outside. “What are you talking about? It looks beautiful out there.”
“No, it’s bad. I don’t think you should risk driving home until it clears. Looks like you’ll have to spend the night here. Maybe several nights.”
“Ohhhh,” he said. “Yeah, I see what you mean. Whatever are we going to do with all this time on our hands?”

8
 
June 21, 1988
6:30 a.m.
Washington, D.C
 
The phone won’t stop ringing. The phone won’t stop ringing. The phone won’t stop ringing.
The words kept repeating themselves, over and over, running through Tracie’s head on a continuous loop as she morphed gradually from fully asleep to reluctantly awake. Marshall lay still and apparently asleep next to her, unfazed by the racket coming from her kitchen.
She blinked, yawned, and then blinked again, making no move to answer the call. She’d been sidelined indefinitely by Aaron Stallings, and the only other person she could think of who might plausibly be calling was lying next to her in bed, so her plan was to ignore the damned phone and wait for whoever was on the other end of the line to realize the call wasn’t going to be answered and hang up.
So far, the plan wasn’t working. The ringing continued unabated, the only change being the steady increase in her annoyance level. As Marshall had so helpfully pointed out last night, she hadn’t been blessed with an abundance of patience even under the best of circumstances. And 6:30 in the morning, after being awake most of the night “passing the time” with Marshall, definitely did not constitute the best of circumstances.
Still unmoving, his face pressed into a pillow, Marshall mumbled something that sounded like, “Your phone won’t stop ringing. You should probably answer it.”
“You think?”
“Definitely. It’s driving me crazy.”
“You could always get up and answer it, you know.”
“Not my apartment, not my phone. If we were at my place, I would already have answered it, so as not to disturb my favorite girl’s sleep.”
Tracie snickered, her annoyance evaporating. Nobody else could handle her like Marshall; he seemed to have an innate sense of exactly what to say to smooth out the edges, no matter her mood. With the possible exception of her whirlwind relationship with Shane Rowley, she’d never been in love—not for real, not romantic love at least—so she had little against which to compare her feelings for Marshall.
I might just be falling in love with you, she thought to herself, simultaneously intrigued and horrified by the possibility. She said nothing of the kind to Marshall.
Instead, she said, “Favorite girl? I think you mean only girl.”
“Yes, ma’am. Only girl. That’s definitely what I meant.”
Tracie smiled and slipped out of bed. The phone had stopped ringing during their short exchange, but only for a matter of seconds. The caller had clearly begun redialing immediately after hanging up, the persistent jangle again immediately getting under Tracie’s skin. She supposed that was the unknown caller’s intention.
“Be right back,” she said, and stomped out of the bedroom.
Marshall, face still pressed firmly into his pillow, may or may not have responded, “Don’t be too mean when you answer.”
She turned the corner into the kitchen and snatched the phone off its cradle. “Do you have any idea what time it is?” she barked into the handset.
“Of course I do,” CIA Director Aaron Stallings said calmly. “I had plenty of time to examine my watch while waiting for you to answer your goddamned phone.”
“I was trying to get some rest,” she shot back. “My boss told me to, and I always do exactly as he says.”
He snorted. “Give me his number, I’d love to interrogate him and find out how he does it.”
Despite herself, Tracie smiled for the second time since being awakened. “Why are you up so early on a Saturday morning?”
“It’s called work, Tanner. Maybe you ought to try it sometime.”
“I’m not allowed to work, remember?”
“Touché.”
“What can I do for you, boss? I’d really like to get back to bed, I didn’t sleep well last night.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. Stallings didn’t need to know she’d very much enjoyed not sleeping last night.
“Well, gee Tanner, sorry to disturb your beauty sleep. I was going to ask you to meet me in order to discuss an assignment, but never mind, then. You just go back to bed and forget all about the simmering shithole that is the world, ready to explode in about a dozen different places.”
Tracie rolled her eyes, wishing Stallings could see her do it.
“Just to be clear,” she said, “you sidelined me, remember?”
“Ancient history, Tanner.” She pictured him waving his hand as if shooing away a mosquito. “Do you think you can work, or not?”
“Of course I can work. Give me twenty minutes to shower and dress and I’ll be out the door.”
“I thought you might see things my way.”
“Damned right,” she said. “But