by Wendy Byrne
A clumping of tall evergreen trees surrounded the house. The closest neighbor was far enough away to avoid detection. Ostentatious was the first word that popped into her head. The Alex she knew would have made fun of people lured into middle-class trappings like a gigantic house. He even made fun of her for setting down roots by buying a townhome.
She bit back the rollercoaster of emotions churning inside and pushed on. "I'm anxious to see your technique," she whispered.
As if he sensed the war going on within her head, he gave her one of his lady-killer smiles. The type that would make a lesser woman putty in his hands. "Watch and learn."
In less than a minute, he had the back door to the house open as they searched for the security system. They found it quickly, and he hooked up his device, getting the code with seconds left on the trigger alarm.
"What should we look for?" Why she asked such a rookie question she couldn't say, but the reality of confronting smoke screens set up to screw her over wasn't something she relished. She didn't want to believe Alex had set her up from day one.
"Anything that leads us to the real story behind Alex. Then we need to follow the logical course of action and see if his death has anything to do with your current troubles."
"Sounds good. You take the upstairs, I'll check out the downstairs."
She rubbed her shoulder, as the ache had become more and more pervasive ever since the encounter with the guys in the warehouse. Every move she made seemed to exacerbate the wound. At times it felt like there was fire burning down her arm. Right now she didn't have time for indulgences, although she'd love to take a painkiller—even over-the-counter would be a relief.
Uncertain whether she wanted to know Alex's secrets, she moved through the house with an instinct born of survival. Even with objectivity in the forefront of her mind, it was difficult not to think about the possibility of hidden secrets from a man she thought she knew better than herself.
Anxious to dispel the myths Jake might have about Alex and his background, she combed the house for clues. She started with the kitchen and scoured the cabinets, the empty trash, and everything in between.
Sterile would be the word she would use to describe the setting. Like a crime scene wiped clean by a perpetrator. Nothing was out of place. Nothing to give even the slightest hint that anyone had ever lived there.
Given the fact Alex had died nearly six weeks ago, she shouldn't be surprised at the sterility. She still had trouble swallowing the reality that he really lived here. The small slice of knowledge didn't bring about anything resembling peace along with it.
Only frustration.
She wandered from room to room, still with that sense of a staged presence, like in a model home. Everything was way too perfect. Like it was intended to illustrate some kind of point. Had he been working on some undercover operation he hadn't told her about? She absorbed the accompanying shudder. If this was his house. Wouldn't Jake look foolish if she proved this wasn't Alex's house after all?
With that triumphant thought, she roamed from the kitchen to the dining room to a massive family room and back to the living room and found nothing other than a sense of hopelessness and futility. Why did Jake think coming here would help figure this out? Why did she have this driving need to prove him wrong? Yep, she knew the answer to that question without even thinking much about it.
She reached a room toward the corner of the first floor and opened the door. Realization shimmied along her spine. For the first time since she'd walked inside the house, the presence of Alex seemed to bounce off the walls. He had lived here. If she let that door of awareness open in her mind, what else did she need to let in?
* * *
Jake took the stairs two at a time. Even though they'd gotten in easily, it didn't guarantee they had all the time in the world to search. Everything he did had to be methodical and based on what he knew about human behavior. Uncertain if they'd find something or even if this was Alex's house, he had to do his best to figure out what came next.
While Tessa was looking downstairs, he figured the real gems might be hidden upstairs. Most people who wanted to hide information never hid it in a place where someone could easily have access. They hid it someplace where no one would expect it to be. He could only hope his hunch was accurate.
One time when they were working for Petrovich, he'd sent them on a mission to recover what he classified as important documents from a man in Austria. The three of them easily got into the fortified home. It was determining where the man might keep his treasures that was the difficult part. Most times working with his siblings they'd engage in a healthy competition, if the circumstances allowed.
While his siblings focused on the mundane, Jake homed in on the oddball spots where someone might hide their possessions. Nine times out of ten it wasn't a safe. Way too obvious for those who had real secrets to keep hidden. Shoeboxes sometimes held valuable intel hidden underneath or concealed inside shoes. The age-old freezer trick was also one he found successful in retrieving data. And suitcases could hide anything and everything.
One time Jake had found the documents they were looking for in the bathroom trashcan. Beneath the plastic bag liner there was a stash of cash as well as the documents. After that, his siblings called him the treasure sniffer. His record remained unchallenged.
He couldn't help but smile as he drifted through the old memories and started his search in the first bedroom. Even though he suspected it would be a futile search in the unused room, he did a cursory inspection, opening drawers and shuffling through the contents, searching for hidden panels in the walls and closets. In the next bedroom he got the same vibe but utilized the same kind of precision, wasting no time in getting the job done.
He walked into the third bedroom and swore. It was decorated in a nursery theme complete with a crib and rocker, and it made him wonder about a possible child in the equation. He searched through the drawers in the dresser while he wondered what in the hell was going on. There weren't diapers or anything but a few baby T-shirts, which made him believe if there were a baby, it hadn't been born yet.
Jake had to still consider the possibility that Tessa was lying to him, but he couldn't make that fit in his head with what he already knew. He gave up trying to choose between the lesser of the two evils and went on to the room at the end of the hall.
Upon reaching the master bedroom, that Shaw itch crawled up his back. Still, nothing seemed out of order. But at the same time, he knew imminent danger lurked close by. The Shaw itch should never be ignored.
Like the other three bedrooms, this one contained top-of-the-line furnishings. From the four-poster bed and silk coverings to the matching dressers with marble tops, the room had to cost a small fortune. Between the mattress and the box spring seemed like a good place to stash something, but somehow he knew that wouldn't house anything of value.
Instead, he started with the drawers. Finding both women's and men's clothing added to the possibility of a marriage or at least a live-in situation. After finding nothing, he went to the closet. A set of custom-designed suitcases made by Henk Travelfriend, which averaged twenty thousand a pop, were stacked along the top shelf along with the requisite Louis Vuitton travel bags. But nothing was inside.
He started with the clothes, checking pockets, purses, shoeboxes—anything that might be used to conceal. Finally he hit pay dirt. Rummaging through the pockets of a men's navy-blue topcoat, he found a small key. It could be an office key or maybe something within the house if he were lucky.
Letting Tessa know he possibly found something tickled at the tip of his tongue, but he fought off the urge. That had been a habit when he'd worked with his siblings whom he trusted implicitly—not a stranger who might somehow be involved in this whole mess of a cover-up.
He examined the key. It was too small to be for a house. A key to a safe would be his first guess. He examined the walls of the closet then felt them with his hands, looking for imperfections that might lead to a
hidden opening.
Nothing. He stepped inside the luxurious bathroom, which had a two-person Jacuzzi tub and a steam shower larger than most New York City apartments. Copper sink vessels topped a rich marble counter. If what he'd read were true Alex came from money, so the extravagance in the home wasn't too surprising. Would it be a reach to believe Alex had been involved in something unsavory to continue the lifestyle he'd become accustomed to?
While Jake let that thought simmer in his mind, he opened drawers of the large cabinet below the sink, finding jewelry and other mundane objects inside. Though frustrated by his lack of progress, he still somehow knew he was close.
Then he spotted the overly large picture above the tub, and something pinged inside his chest. The first thing that struck him as odd was the placement of an enormous abstract painting of peonies. Everything else in the room—in fact in every room—reflected classic details, no modern splashes of color, but this was like an eyesore compared to the rest. It didn't fit in with the design aesthetic for the rest of the place, so it had to be there for a reason.
Adrenaline pumped through his veins even before he removed the painting from the wall and spotted the safe carved between the studs. His fingers trembled as he turned the key. The notion that this might be pivotal to the case loomed large in his mind.
Was she? Wasn't she? Those were the questions circling around his brain until he wanted to scream to make them stop. He had to know, but would he want to know the real answer? So much for his belief that nothing of importance was ever stashed in a safe.
Stacks of money guarded the entrance, almost as if a decoy or distraction for anyone who managed to ferret out the spot. While he didn't bother to count, he'd guess there might be well over a hundred thousand dollars cash. He brushed aside the money and spotted an unassuming-looking file folder in the very back, nearly obscured.
His breath seemed to constrict inside his chest as he flipped through the contents.
Pictures. A hell of a lot of pictures.
Of Tessa.
This wasn't good.
* * *
Tessa walked inside the small office as a sense of familiarity rumbled through. Everything about this space spoke of Alex—from the position of the desk and the selection of books housed in shelves along the wall to the CIA coffee cup situated in the middle of the desk. She sucked in a breath and could have sworn she caught a whiff of his aftershave embedded in the room. It was hard to mistake his presence.
A shiver traveled down her spine. She shook off the odd sensation and started on the desk, shuffling through drawers and looking for clues to Alex's very existence as a starting point. After all that had happened, she questioned everything she'd thought was real.
Beneath a stack of computer paper in the bottom drawer she spotted the corner of what looked like a picture frame and pulled it out. Her heart stopped. The picture of the smiling couple encased in an expensive crystal frame had to be recent, based on the small scar cutting through Alex's right eyebrow. He'd given various explanations as to how he'd gotten it, but it was less than six months old.
There was no arguing with Jake any longer about whether or not this was Alex's house. Living proof stared back at her. The beautiful woman with dark hair and eyes standing next to him with her arm wrapped around his waist looked eerily familiar, but she couldn't place from where or when.
Clearly a girlfriend at the very least. But there seemed more in the picture than a simple pose.
She couldn't say how long she stared as the significance of the discovery tunneled deep inside her brain. This wasn't only about Alex and their sham of a friendship. She had little doubt that whatever transpired in Afghanistan and afterward had all been an elaborate lie. The validity of the thought set up as a solid block of truth inside her gut. Memories floated around her head like fireflies. She needed to get a grip.
Instead of getting derailed, she took in each and every detail and committed it to memory. Alex wore a dark suit and tie, while the woman wore what appeared to be an off-white tea-length dress.
It almost looked like…a marriage photo. Had Alex married and not told her about it?
Pictures spoke a thousand words, or in this case, more like a million. The connection between Alex and the woman was unmistakable, their closeness not faked for the camera. The ease of their mutual smiles, the intimate touch of their hands on each other.
Okay, so he'd committed a lie of omission. Given their closeness that pill was difficult to swallow, but she could deal with the concept intellectually.
She wasn't in love with Alex in a romantic way and had never been attracted to him in the physical sense. The idea of the two of them getting married was rolling-on-the-floor laughable, but still the pain of this kind of betrayal cut deep. Why hadn't he shared such an important milestone in his life with her? She examined the photo more closely as if that might give her some clues.
Familiarity collided with reason in her brain. She'd seen that woman before. But where? Maybe there was a valid reason why he might not have told her.
Even while that nagging sensation made her want to stare until the time and place came to her, right now that wasn't practical. She'd already found what she'd set out to find, definitive confirmation that Alex had been hiding things from her when he died. What else might he have been hiding? Suddenly the idea of Alex's family circumstances seemed more real to her.
The moment in the desert when she vacillated in and out of lucidity, she could have sworn it was Alex's voice that thundered in the group of men surrounding him, and Behrang had the gun pointed at her head.
Do not kill her.
He'd saved her even while risking his own life. But why would they listen to someone they had captured? That was the real question that she didn't have an answer to. Jake wasn't too far off in his assumption that one untruth snowballed into several. That meant there was more she didn't know about Alex.
She started with the desk, searching through the drawers to see if she might find something of value. Outside the mundane stationery, business cards, and pensnothing.
Energized now, she moved on to focus on the bookshelves. Alex loved gadgets. Certainly there was something hidden among the shelves that might make everything clearer. She rummaged through the books, coming up empty.
She wanted to know everything. Had their friendship been real or a means to an end as Jake had speculated? She slid the photo out of the frame and stuffed it in her pocket, returning the frame inside the drawer.
Maybe they were barking up the wrong tree. Thinking about her and Jake as some kind of weird team made her blood boil. Over the course of the last couple of days she'd become way too reliant on his help. And that nonsense had to stop.
Immediately.
Sharing information with him was not in her best interest, regardless of what he'd said or how innocent and charming he seemed. Sniffing out trouble in people with agendas was what she did best. Just because he had saved her neck did not mean he didn't have his own self-interest at heart. Thinking anything else would be naive. He was making a fortune off this assignment. Being paid to protect somebody didn't seem like the most motivating of reasons.
Guarding herself should be her most important job right now. Getting to the bottom of this mess and figuring out how to fix it, her number one priority. She was a smart woman. Top of her class at Virginia Tech, which led to her recruitment.
Figuring this out should be something she could do in her sleep. But why was somebody out to kill her, and what did it have to do with Alex? She couldn't assume there was a connection. It was Jake that planted that seed.
Facial-recognition software might come in pretty darn handy about now.
* * *
Jake's heart beat in fits and starts as he rummaged through the file. There were some emails back and forth between Alex and some person named Reddog implicating Tessa as a double agent. It seemed like the plan was to trap her for what she'd done while on the mission in Afghanistan.
&n
bsp; Alex had laid the groundwork and orchestrated how the process would work. Her friend. The one person she thought she could trust had worked to see her exposed. Was it because he was being a good American, or was there something else behind his mission? He couldn't decide which was more despicableAlex playing both sides of the game to expose her or Tessa's duplicity.
There were pictures to back up his claims. Photos that told a damning tale of her alleged misdeeds. Then there was a photo of her with a gun aimed at Eli. Photos never told the whole story, but these were still damning, and it was hard to think anything other than the fact she'd killed a fellow agent.
His brother had nearly died under the same circumstances. A woman he'd trusted had sold out to the highest bidder and set Jake and his siblings up for murder. He knew all about being in that position, worried when the other shoe was going to fall and wondering if the three of them would spend the remainder of their lives in prison.
The memory of that night sent a shiver clear through his body. Even the possibility that Tessa did something similar sickened him. He forged through the memories and did what he'd come there to do.
He took pictures of the emails with his phone, but grabbed the envelope and shoved the worst of the pictures inside the pocket of his jacket. When he touched the envelope from Trevor Lang's widow, still there, he stopped. He couldn't go there now.
If there were any questions, he needed the photos implicating Tessa. But he had to wonder…if the photos were taken while she was killing another agent in cold blood, why didn't somebody stop her? Unless they were done automatically through cameras hidden as part of the operation. But if that were true, how did they get in Alex's possession after his death? Why didn't the CIA have them?
