Hard to Trust

by Wendy Byrne

  She moved her hand from the table to the gun she kept strapped to her leg. A tingle settled in the curve of her spine, setting off a series of pinpricks up her skull as she removed her gun from its hiding spot as discreetly as possible.

  The winds once again whirled, making the sides of the tent reverberate, like the prop department had suddenly turned back on the industrial-sized fan. Sand blew into the tent, swirling about in the confines. Maybe there was an uptick in Amir's skittishness. Because despite the mundaneness of the moment, something set off her radar, and she launched herself over the table, bringing Amir to the ground with her. Seconds later a bullet tore through the side of the tent while she and Amir wrestled for control along the sand-covered floor.

  She fought for control of her emotions before she continued with her story. "Next thing I know, I'm wrestling with Amir for my gun. A guy rolls inside the tent, barking off orders in Farsi. That's when the shit hit the fan."

  "Was he there gunning for Amir, or wrong place wrong time?"

  She tried to temper her racing heart as she held the gun to Amir's head, still knowing the threat was futile. He'd happily die for his cause if necessary. Martyrdom seemed to be the soup du jour around these parts.

  "Amir." The man's commanding voice made Amir visibly shiver.

  Heck, it made her shiver too. She stilled her racing pulse through sheer willpower. Jittery hands and guns did not mix. Choosing to take a stand before the inevitable happened, she came out of her crouch to a standing position, holding Amir's bicep in a grasp so tight it threatened to cut off the circulation in the tips of her fingers. Where the hell was the cavalry? Why weren't they rushing to her rescue?

  She cleared her throat. "I assumed he was there to bring us down. There were five of us thereColton, Eli, Nick, Alex, and me. Since nobody came to my rescue despite the gunfire, I figured…well…I thought everyone else must have…"

  The words didn't want to come. Saying them out loud was a line she hated to cross. To his credit, Jake seemed to sense her discomfort and raised his hand in a halting motion.

  "That had to suck. When did you get shot? Did you make a run for it? I sure as hell would have."

  The man bit off a sinister laugh. That kind of laugh crossed all sorts of cultural lines. There was no mistaking the vehemence behind it. Yep, it sure sucked to be her right now.

  She steeled her spine, pulled up her big-girl panties, and made peace with the fact she was on her own. This guy had probably trained since he was a mere babe. But her stubborn streak chose that moment to pop to the surface. She wasn't about to go down easily despite the fact she had less than ten rounds in her gun, her knife was a distant memory, and she was outnumbered.

  "The guy—I think it was Behrang—shot Amir between the eyes right next to me."

  "Intimidation, pure and simple. He wanted you to know he meant business." Jake shook his head. "More than likely he didn't figure out you were a badass."

  "That's when he shot me in the shoulder. Luckily he guessed wrong and shot my right shoulder, not knowing I'm left-handed." She drew in a shaky breath. "I squeezed off two shots, grazing him enough to distract him, and booked it out of there."

  "Holy hell. How did you get away from him?"

  "I was already feeling a little woozy and fell about fifty feet away from the tent. He grabbed my ankle and started to pull me toward him. I kicked at him with my survival boots and then grasped one of the tent posts."

  His smarmy smile and hideous laugh brought the hairs on her arms to full attention. Sweat unlike any she'd ever known made the sand stick to hair, face, and arms, the blood congealing on her clothes.

  He was playing with her for his own amusement. Revulsion clogged her throat. Now was not the time to think about that.

  Survival. That was the only thing she thought about.

  "Somehow I don't think that would have deterred him."

  She heard the gun cock even as she scrambled and waited for the kill shot. Thoughts of her dismal life played in her mind like a tribute film at her funeral. No family. No real close friends. A home that never felt like a home.

  Click.

  Nothing.

  How could she tell him she agreed with his assessment? If not for the missing piece, she'd have the answer herself. "He aimed his gun at me, but it jammed. My shoulder was pumping out blood, and I felt dizzier than hell, but somehow I ran. I had to find help."

  It surprised her when she had to sniff to keep the tears at bay. "I spotted Alex getting dragged away by a group of men. Then I saw Colton with his throat slashed and Eli shot in the head. I couldn't find Nick. And then I passed out."

  What she saw next she didn't share. Because it couldn't have been true. It had to have been a figment of the delirium.

  * * *

  "Holy shit. It sounds like a complete cluster-f—CF." She was holding back, but Jake wasn't sure what that was all about. Yeah, he didn't know her well, but he still itched to know the pieces she left out.

  She shook her head. "It's all fuzzy. I'm not sure what I dreamt and what really happened. A couple days later, they showed film of Alex's execution." Her eyes misted over again.

  "Did you and Alex have a thing?" Call him a jerk, but he needed to know. Maybe it fit in somehow—if Alex had a new woman in his life and she was jealous—or maybe it was morbid curiosity on his part.

  She smiled, even with the hint of teardrops hanging from her eyelashes. "Alex, Nick, and I bonded going through"—she did air quotes—"Farm training. It was hellacious, intense, and all those things you've heard about it. They tried to confuse us. Analyze us. Pit us against each other. And everything in between. Somehow we all survived. We were tight, even though we were shipped to various parts of the world on any given day. It was weird the three of us were sent into Afghanistan together on this last mission. That had never happened before."

  "What are you saying?"

  She shrugged. "I'm not saying anything, but I do have to wonder in retrospect why they put us together like they did. People who knew each other normally weren't assigned together in the field. Sometimes it happens, but for the most part, we operate separately."

  "You're avoiding the question, but that's okay."

  She rolled her eyes. "I'm not sure why you need to have that information, but Alex and I were only friends. As for Nick, okay, that would be too weird, like some kind of kinky ménage à trois. Is that all you men think about?" She shot him a look. "Yeah, that would be a hell to the no. Beyond gross." She shuddered.

  "I didn't even think of a ménage à trois, so you're the one with the dirty mind, not me." He smiled before adding, "For a change."

  "Okay, guilty as charged. But I still don't get your comment."

  "It seemed like Nick's death didn't hit you as hard as Alex's, that's all. I saw something in your eyes when you mentioned Alex's name."

  She smiled. "Everyone loved Alex. He was off-the-charts bright, spoke more languages than I could even think about, and had a way about him that was endearing. He was kind of like a big brother and a best friend rolled into one. We spoke often on the phone, texted or emailed each other every day, where Nick and I kind of drifted apart. Not that we weren't still friends and it didn't hit me to see him dead, but in some ways I kind of expected it."

  "Expected? Why?"

  "He'd been acting like a tool for a couple of years. Always starting fights with people. Some speculated he'd gotten hooked on drugs. I'm not sure what it was, but he wasn't fun to be around. That's for sure. I tried to get Alex to talk about what was going on with Nick while we were together in Afghanistan, but I came up with nada. He kept saying that Nick was going through some issues but didn't elaborate. There was some talk that he got so bad he was released from the agency after the whole thing in Afghanistan. But nothing that I could confirm. As far as I know, he was still on leave when he died."

  Jake tumbled the whole thing through his mind and thought about the possibility he was barking up the wrong tree. "I know this sounds c
razy, but are we looking at the right thing? Is it possible that all of this happened because of your initial training or one of your other missions? Did something else happen that prompted this whole fiasco we're in the middle of now?" If he was supposed to ferret out the truth, he had to look beyond the superficial that was presented to him. Digging deeper would be the way to go about that. That would be assuming she'd be forthcoming.

  "That was eight years ago. I barely remember last week." She flipped her braid onto her shoulder.

  "Think. Maybe there's something you can connect. Okay, if not all the way back to The Farm, what were your last couple of assignments? Anything unusual happen? What was your assignment before Kabul?" He needed some kind of thread that made sense in order to justify the fact she was the only one of the three of them alive.

  "I was in Istanbul."

  Her words thudded inside his chest. "When?" The simple word seemed stuck in his throat.

  "About two and a half months ago." She scrunched her nose. "Why?"

  He shook his head. To say the connection was tenuous stretched it. "Was Alex there with you?"

  "I came in on the tail end of his assignment. He and Nick were leaving, I was coming in. We never saw each other except in passing at the airport."

  "Why were they leaving?"

  She shrugged and stared at him. "Sometimes those things happened. Sources run dry, and there's a need for new blood."

  "But you didn't stay long?"

  "Only a month or so, then I got pulled into the Kabul situation. There weren't many of us who spoke Farsi, and Alex had a great lead, so I agreed to take a little trip."

  Jake muddled through the situation in his mind. It didn't make sense, but at the same time, it kind of did. "Anything happen in Istanbul?"

  "Not really. I was barely starting to make contacts when I got pulled out to go to Kabul. That's when the trouble started, and my life turned into one giant Die Hard movie."

  He chuckled despite the machinations going on inside his head. In his world, coincidences were never coincidences, but she hadn't mentioned a woman in all this, so maybe he was being paranoid. "That it has. Except I don't want to be the dumb sidekick, okay?"

  She giggled. It was the first time she seemed to relax a bit. "It's agreed. We'll both be Bruce Willis. And Bruce always saves the day in the end, so I expect nothing less from either of us."

  "How about your trainers when you were at The Farm? Anything remarkable about your training exercises, that kind of stuff? Did all three of you have the same trainers?"

  "Of course we had the same trainers. That's how it worked." She seemed miffed, either because he asked the question or because she hadn't thought of it herself.

  Maybe she was angry at his probing. Maybe she was annoyed. Maybe she'd try to kill him in his sleep if she was a double agent and thought he was onto her.

  "Somehow the three of you are tied together in this. Maybe it's not from The Farm. Maybe you had the same informant working for you at some point. Maybe it had something to do with Istanbul that caught up with you somehow in Kabul. I know most times you flit in and out of assignments, never lasting more than a couple of years. Can you mull that over in your mind without biting my head off?"

  She eased out a smile. "Ah, big bad tough guy is all of a sudden Mr. Sensitive."

  "For the record, I'm a retrieval specialist. If somebody gets kidnapped, I'm your guy. The SEALs"—he flexed his fingers toward himself and rolled his eyes—"have nothing on me. They're kindergartners compared to my mad skills."

  She laughed. "Okay, now you're getting a little too full of yourself."

  "Impossible. I'm the man." He laughed. "Just don't tell my sister. It will get ugly between the two of us."

  "Your older brother doesn't work for The Alliance?"

  "Naw, he's gone Hollywood. He's a financial whiz and puts his talents into Wall Street as a hedge fund manager. I've got to say, he's made me a wealthy man."

  "Did you mention helping your sister out a couple of months ago?"

  "Yep—even if the FBI took the credit for it, since we're supposed to fly under the radar. We helped her take down a guy who was dealing in sex trafficking, so Max does dabble occasionally in what we were trained to do when family's involved. The difference is that with Petrovich, we were to kill others at his directives. He always insisted they were bad guys and deserved their fate. At first we acted on blind faith, but then we started to question how they got to be on his list. Then something happened on our last assignment. We, err…" Did he really want to go there? "Let's just say Max was nearly killed. That did it for all of us. We escaped to the US the next day."

  Why he told her so much, he couldn't be sure. If it got her to trust him a little more, it would be worth it in the end. It was all about getting the job done, no matter the cost.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Tessa couldn't sleep. All the near misses over the last few days had come piling up on her, and she couldn't help but ponder some of the things Jake said. Were Alex, Nick, and she somehow connected in a way she didn't see? In a way that made them into targets? He seemed to be more than a little interested in the Istanbul assignment for some reason. She had to wonder if maybe they had come across the same people, which put them on some kind of weird trajectory together. The idea sounded far-fetched, but in her current world everything was within the realm of possibilities.

  Jake was sound asleep on the other bed, so she opened up her laptop. Culling information had always been a specialty of hers, and she figured browsing through the account she kept in cyberspace would be a good use of her time. She decided to start with her notes from her Istanbul assignment to see if any pictures or names sounded familiar.

  The grainy photo she'd taken of the market was unclear. A man and a woman met at one of the kiosks, but their physical characteristics were unrecognizable. Why she'd chosen to take that picture, she couldn't quite remember. Something must have pricked her senses at the time.

  She was sent there to discover if rebels were plotting to destroy an American ship in the Gulf. But she'd only made brief contact with one of the informants and taken the bad photo and a host of notes, before she'd been pulled to go to Afghanistan. Wishing she had a magnifying glass, she once again looked over the photo with the same result.

  Time to move on. Jake's discussion had gotten her thinking about the past. She drew in a deep breath and thought about Alex. He'd been there for her when no one else was. They'd grown up in similar circumstances. Both were only children and had been recruited right out of college. He wasn't close to his mom, but never really explained why. Feeling a sense of empathy around him had gone a long way in soothing her ailing heart. He'd always said they were kindred spirits. Somehow his simple phrase made her feel more normal.

  In the end, he'd turned into her closest friend. So did she miss him? Hell yes. But he'd become more distant over the past year or so. It wasn't all that unusual for agents to crack under the strain. On more than one occasion, she'd encouraged him to take a breather from fieldwork. He didn't want to hear that.

  Alex was driven. He seemed convinced the information they'd gain in Afghanistan would be the key to getting him the promotion he so desperately wanted. As soon as she'd joined camp she'd felt an edgy vibe around him. He'd kept it in check when they hit the town to set the meet date with their informant. It was only afterward that things began to unravel.

  She replayed the film of his execution yet another time. Why had they taken him? They hadn't demanded a ransom. They had no real reason to take him.

  That vague memory she had of Alex commanding the men not to kill her…was that real or a figment of her imagination? Why would they obey his orders? It would seem rebels would do whatever the hell they pleased. Thinking Alex had some control over them had to be a hallucination brought about by the blood loss. They executed him. She'd seen it with her own eyes on the video they'd put up on the Internet. It had been validated by the CIA.

  Nothing made sense. Once a
gain she went through the video frame by frame examining each for a speck of information. The location was unrecognizable with absolutely no clues as to where or why he'd been held. The men surrounding him were covered completely, giving her no ability to recognize them.

  Next she pulled up the note she'd pieced together. She couldn't help but wonder what it meant. Why were they talking about him when he'd been dead for over six weeks? Of course there was always the possibility they were examining the video or the debriefing of the incident to learn any telling moments or to prevent it from happening again.

  Backgammon back in play. Loose ends taken care of…soon. Weaknesses…

  Knowing she wouldn't be able to figure this whole thing out now, she closed the laptop. It had been a hellacious couple of days, and a gal needed her beauty sleep. She couldn't help but smile at the memory of Alex saying that to her whenever they'd been up talking. The funny part about his comment was that he'd always been referring to himself rather than her. He'd always been much higher maintenance than she would ever be.

  * * *

  Once he heard the sound of even breathing, Jake slid out of bed and opened his laptop. She'd sent him the file of Alex's execution. At that point he'd probably seen the tape a few times, and each time he seemed to see something new and different. Not that it was anything big, but little things had a tendency to gnaw at him. It was almost as if the scene seemed practiced or rehearsed, but that could mean they'd done it many times before to different men under various circumstances.

  First they placed a drugged-out-looking Alex in a chair and, without warning, shot him. The impact of the bullet sent the chair bounding to the floor. But it looked different to Jake. Not that he was an expert in that sort of thing, but the timing was off. The sound of the bullet didn't seem to match up with the trajectory of Alex's chair falling backwards. He wasn't the best with physics and mass and velocity, so it might be a simple matter of him not getting it.