Secret Agent Affair. Marie Ferrarella

three sheets on her spotless desk and flashed a broad smile at him.

      He wondered what she’d say if she knew the only reason the position he was applying for had opened up was that certain people had persuaded James Dulles, an orderly in excellent standing with the hospital, to take an extended vacation in another part of the country. That was because he needed this position, needed an excuse to be on the hospital premises in a capacity where he could slip in and out without actually being noticed.

      No one really noticed orderlies in a hospital unless there was a mess to mop up. Otherwise, they could move around like shadows, having the run of the place. Since they had the grunt work, no one questioned their presence no matter where they were found—other than perhaps the ladies’ restroom.

      The Company intended to place two or three more of their operatives, men he’d worked with before, at Patience Memorial Hospital. Placing them as the “vacancies” that would suddenly come up in the next couple of days. But he was the center of this. It was his operation to pull off or screw up. So far, his track record was perfect and he intended to keep it that way.

      The woman who headed Patience Memorial’s Human Resources Department smiled at him. He smiled back. It would be interesting to find out her reaction to the fact that he knew more about Carole Reed than she knew about him. He knew she was divorced, currently between boyfriends and didn’t like being unattached. The way she gazed at him told him she was considering him as a possible candidate, someone to dally with as a bridge between the significant others.

      Carole looked down at the form. “Says here you worked in two different hospitals in L.A.” She raised her eyes to his face. “Tell me, why’d you decide to settle in New York?”

      He knew she was a California girl herself. Knew why she’d picked New York. “I like the change of seasons,” he told her. “And having everything I could need within walking distance.”

      Her eyes brightened and she nodded. She came very close to saying, “Me, too.” But instead said, “Good enough. Well, your references are impeccable and you sound like you’ll be a good addition to our little family.” Little was a whimsical term, seeing as how the teaching hospital was one of the larger ones in the city. Carole reached out across her desk, her hand extended. “Welcome to Patience Memorial.”

      Rising slightly in his seat, Kane took the offered hand and held it a beat longer after he shook it. His smile was warm, charming. Inviting. As befitted the persona he’d assumed.

      As always when he was on a job, he was performing. He found that he preferred it that way. When he was someone else, he could do whatever was needed of him without a second thought.

      The baggage he carried around only materialized when he was being himself.

      “Thank you,” he replied heartily, releasing her hand with just a trace of reluctance he knew the woman would appreciate.

      Carole tossed her head. Long, straight blond hair floated over her shoulder. “You start tomorrow, bright and early at seven.”

      It had taken him every shred of time, morning and night, to get everything in place. He was eager to get going. “I could start today,” he told her.

      The woman laughed lightly, as if he’d told a joke. “Tomorrow will be fine.” Taking a square of paper from a green dispenser on her desk, Carole wrote a room number down for him. She handed it to him before she got up from her chair. “Report to this department tomorrow. Raul will show you the ropes. He’s a little snippy in the mornings,” she warned, “but he doesn’t mean anything by it. Try not to get on his bad side—or to take anything he says before noon too personally.”

      “I try not to get on anyone’s bad side,” he told her, and for the most part, that was true. Getting on someone’s bad side meant getting noticed and his goal had always been the exact opposite, no matter what the situation.

      Carole rose slowly, like a model who knew that every set of eyes in the room was trained on her. In this case, there was only one set to look at her, but an audience was an audience.

      “That’s a very good philosophy,” she told him brightly. And then, Carole escorted Patience Memorial’s newest employee to the door of her office and once again smiled invitingly just before he left.

      He could have had her, he thought, walking away from her office. Probably right then and there on her desk if he’d turned up “Dolan’s” charm a notch. The physical coupling would have satisfied the gnawing hunger that the woman who’d bandaged him up had aroused. But again, it would have drawn too much attention his way and he couldn’t afford that now. Not if his assignment was to have a successful resolution.

      He would have to put up with the damn gnawing.

      The details of his assignment were nebulous and sketchy at best. Over the last three weeks, their specialists monitoring the Middle East had picked up international chatter, a lot of it, focusing on a possible terrorist threat occurring at Patience Memorial. The probable target in that case would be the Jordanian ambassador’s daughter, Yasmin. The twenty-two-year-old woman was arriving at some unspecified date in the near future to undergo a delicate operation. She had a tumor that had intricately woven itself through her brain.

      Two of the country’s foremost brain surgeons were going to perform the surgery. One was flying in from the west coast, the other had been on the staff of Patience Memorial for over ten years.

      Whether the threat came in the form of a kidnapping—something he highly doubted because of the ambassador’s contingent of bodyguards—or a bombing, he didn’t know. No one did. That only meant he had to be ready for anything—which also included the very real, frustrating possibility nothing would happen.

      The enemy enjoyed playing their little war of nerves, enjoyed planting chatter to unnerve the opposition. They made sure to plant enough rumors so that everyone was in a hypervigilant state. There would be so many false rumors until the real one came and if the public had gotten blasé about the rumors, it would turn a deaf ear to the chatter just when it should be listening closely. Much like the old fable about the boy who cried wolf.

      But all that was for the movers and the shakers to sort out and deal with. He was just a foot soldier on the front lines, determined to remain alert to any and all threats. He was there to dismantle the bomb if necessary, to defuse possible volatile situations whenever possible, regardless of the personal consequences.