Present Day

“THE DIRECTOR IS ON THE PHONE, Agent Venable.” Harley’s tone was hesitant. “He sounded a little-”

“Pissed?” Venable said. It didn’t surprise him. Dickson was not known for his patience, and Venable hadn’t been jumping through his hoops on this assignment. “I don’t want to deal with him. Tell him I’m-”

“It’s the third call,” Harley said.

“And you’re afraid he’ll shoot the messenger,” Venable said.

“I’ll give him whatever message you want me to give him,” Harley said. “But this time he asked me to give him Agent Ling’s cell number.”

Shit. “And did you?”

“I said I’d have to look it up.” He paused. “But he’ll get it.”

Venable knew that Hal Dickson, as Director of the CIA, would get any info he wanted if he went to the trouble. But the people who made him go to that trouble would suffer for it.

“Why does he want Agent Ling?” Harley said. “I told him that she was on another assignment.”

“And you think he cares? Some of those South American countries are on the verge of revolution, and the situation is getting critical. Catherine Ling spent several years serving in the jungles of Colombia and Venezuela. She has contacts, and people trust her all over South America. She can get information when no one else has a chance. Dickson knows that, and he wants her down there.”

“Are you going to order her to go back there?”

Order Catherine Ling? he thought sourly. He could ask her, but he hadn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of getting her to leave her son, Luke, whom she had just rescued from years of captivity. She’d tell him to go to hell.

Unless he could find a way to stall the director until he found a way to manipulate Catherine into doing what he wanted. At present, he had no hope because Catherine was on a private mission of her own, helping Eve Duncan find the body and the killer of her murdered daughter, Bonnie.