by Mary Alford
There was a very real chance my brother was now my enemy.
And I couldn’t share my fears with anyone—not even my husband.
The CIA hadn’t been able to make a single charge against Silvers stick. We couldn’t prove any of the allegations against him because he was good at making witnesses disappear.
All known intelligence reports pointed to Jeremiah Silvers being the actual man in charge of the FLA.
The Agency had been searching for years for some way to infiltrate the FLA, to no avail.
I’d memorized Jeremiah Silvers’ crimes, and yet in spite of all the evidence which seemed to indicate otherwise, I still didn’t want to believe my brother could be that monster.
I was determined to prove all of those reports wrong because there was no way the boy I’d loved so dearly all those years ago could have become such a cold-blooded killer.
Chapter Three
“Hey, it’s me. Are you there?” Roc’s husky voice drifted into my living room, reminding me of all the things I loved about him. I knew every pitch. Every enunciation. Every intonation. And the edge to it now told me something big had happened.
Please, God, not yet another assignment abroad, I prayed.
In light of what I’d uncovered recently and with the current unstable environment overseas, I wanted Roc close to me.
I grabbed the receiver. “Yes, I’m here. What’s wrong?”
“I can’t discuss it now. We’re meeting tonight, okay? You know where. Don’t be late, Lena. And for goodness sake, don’t pull another stunt like last night. I’m not sure my heart can survive another one, especially not with all the uneasiness going around.”
Two weeks earlier, I’d been busily reading through the latest chatter streaming across a website innocently entitled ‘Free America.’
The website initially came to The Agency’s attention when someone on the site referred to recent attacks believed to be associated with the FLA.
On this particular night, I’d been at it for hours. This type of work could be tedious at the best of times, but most of the languages used by the FLA were particularly difficult to translate because the group had come up with their own version of two languages. I’d spent almost a month trying to pin down the two specific languages. They were versions of Arabic and Hebrew, an odd combination considering those two languages represented people who had been at odds with each other almost from the beginning of civilization. Even odder considering the two languages in question were being used by an extremist group to plan precision attacks within the U.S.
I’d gotten about halfway through translating a post by an individual calling himself Legion, whom I believed was a FLA subordinate, when the content of the message became startlingly clear.
To anyone reading the message, the reference would seem innocent enough. But not to me. My heart kicked into overdrive the second I saw the word Anchor. It might mean nothing more than what it appeared to mean on the surface, or it might mean everything. You see, Anchor was Roc’s code name. As I continued reading the context of the note, I found references to each of the five team members of The Agency.
Roc had been away on assignment at the time, which was probably why I was working alone on a Friday at three in the morning. Of course, I had no idea where it was or what type of danger Ed might have placed Roc in, but the reference to our code names sent up all sorts of red flags.
I picked up the phone and called Mark right away. He arrived soon after we hung up. Once we’d managed to reach Roc on his secure cell phone, he immediately flew back to D.C. and out of harm’s way.
But if those references meant what none of us wanted to believe they meant, then the implication was clear. Someone had managed to access top-level security documents. Information that put all of our lives in jeopardy.
We were spooked. Everyone in the group looked to the others and wondered if there might be a mole among us.
The only person I fully trusted anymore was Roc. He was my closest friend. Roc would never sell out.
Because of this new danger, Roc called for an immediate blackout, which meant for all practical purposes, normal procedures went out the window. We were all on the highest alert possible. No one went unaccounted for any length of time. Work continued under restricted conditions. Most of us carried on our individual tasks from our home base.
Naturally, everyone was frustrated and on edge all the time, wondering if our cover had been compromised.
Which was why tonight’s meeting was important. I could count on one hand the number of times we’d met as a group since the blackout.
The computer repair shop off Nineteenth Street belonging to a friend of Mark’s had become the secure location for our group to meet until it was safe to return to headquarters.
I arrived a few minutes before being officially late and just in time to hear Becca Peyton voice everyone’s concern over the situation we now faced.
“It’s bad enough we have to meet in secret as if we’re the ones with something to hide. With everything going on right now, none of us are safe out there.” Becca actually looked pleased. She lived for drama.
I dropped my purse on one of the small desks and looked up in time to see Roc’s eyes fixed on me. He was smiling at Becca’s comments.
The sight of him stopped me dead in my tracks and literally knocked the breath from my body.
Roc Branson possessed the power to make me ache for him. All it took was one look, one smile. Roc was the handsomest man I’d ever met in that tall, dark, handsome, and definitely dangerous way of his. At six feet four, Roc’s hundred-and-eighty-five pounds were well distributed. I loved teasing him that he’d missed his calling—he should have been a model. The man could eat anything he wanted and never gain an ounce.
I couldn’t imagine my life without him. The very thought of leaving him made me want to abandon all the cloak and dagger games we played with each other and beg him to run away with me right now, before something terrible happened to one of us.
I saw the usual subtle change in his brown eyes as he read all of my uncertainties as clearly as if I’d said them aloud. Even though I never doubted his love for me, Roc could never abandon his first love—The Agency.
How many times had I wished I could turn time, back to before I fell in love with Roc? If I’d known the heartache awaiting me back then, I would never have let him touch me the first time.
At least that’s what I tried to tell myself. But the truth was, nothing would have stopped me from loving him. I wasn’t sure I possessed the strength to leave him. So where did that leave me? I couldn’t go on living in our dark world and yet I couldn’t get out without losing the man I loved.
I closed my eyes and tried to be strong. Roc and I had to be careful at all times, even with the people we trusted the most. Especially now.
Stevie, the last to arrive. When he came in Roc nodded. “Now that you’re here, Stevie, let’s get started. We have a lot of new intel coming in so this could be a long night, folks.” Roc’s gaze lingered on mine,
I loved that look, but tonight my heart was far too vulnerable to be alone with Roc. If I stayed with him again, we’d end up having yet another argument about our future. It seemed like lately that was all we ever did.
“Mark received some disturbing intelligence earlier today which seems to indicate Jeremiah Silvers is right here in D.C. Coupled with the incident a few weeks back, I’d say this is a bad omen. But what I want to know is how this could happen right here under our very noses? Why didn’t any of us have some inkling this was coming before now?” Roc’s announcement was met with a flurry of astonished remarks, excuses, and questions. He answered as many as possible before turning the floor over to Mark.
Although The Agency had originally been Roc’s brainchild, Mark had been a huge part of its success. Mark was The Agency’s intelligence guru and a virtual genius when it came to computers. He knew how to work the system along with his snitches to get valuable information.
“When did he arrive?” Stevie demanded in his usual blunt way. “And excuse me for being the one to point this out, but isn’t it intelligence’s job to find out these things before they actually happen?” At this expected jab, Mark threw Stevie a look that made his reaction to Stevie’s position perfectly clear.
“This is all our responsibility. One of us should have picked him up before now,” Roc interrupted before the usual argument could ensue.
“Well, how do we know this isn’t just one of Mark’s snitches trying to steer us off what’s really going on inside the FLA?” Stevie seemed to want to get a rise out of Mark.
As second-in-command, Mark was in charge when Roc was away on assignment. Stevie always resented this. He believed Mark lacked the proper leadership qualities Roc possessed.
“Like it or not, the threat is real enough. And every one of us dropped the ball on this. There’s going to be trouble when Ed gets wind of it.” Mark looked directly at Roc who only shook his head. Ed Peyton’s temper was notorious when something didn’t go his way. Ed hated looking bad in front of his superiors. This certainly wasn’t going to be a shining moment for him or The Agency.
“And it has been confirmed. This isn’t a mistake. We’ve had surveillance on Silvers for quite some time now, but he gave us the slip a few days ago. We just picked him up again here in D.C. earlier today. It’s definitely Jeremiah Silvers. Somehow, he’s managed to penetrate what was supposed to be an unbreachable line of defense. Anyone want to venture a guess as to how that happened?”
“He would have had help getting in. We all know most of his people were trained by our own military,” I said, trying not to show the team how the mention of Jeremiah Silvers’ name rattled me. I was terrified for my brother, if in fact, he turned out to be the notorious terrorist, but the worst would be yet to come if someone from the team ever connected me to Justin a.k.a. Jeremiah.
My heart raced as I addressed the room. “Someone who knows all the tricks of the trade, and who knew exactly what we’d be looking for. How to get beyond our security, and get Silvers into the city undetected. Probably the same person who cracked our security defenses earlier.”
“That’s what we’re starting to believe,” Roc confirmed. “This has all the makings of an inside job. Someone with high-level security clearance, who knows exactly how we’d go about tracking Silvers’ movements.” Roc paused for a second, looking directly at me. Did he suspect something? Did he know about Justin? “Mark, you continue to work on figuring out what Silvers is up to here in D.C., and Stevie, see what the other agencies are saying. Maybe someone knows something they’re not talking about yet.”
I tried not to overreact to Roc’s new orders. Ordinarily, Roc would never pull Stevie off his hunt for who was supplying the FLA with its weapons, even for someone as important as Jeremiah Silvers. This kind of interagency information gathering usually fell on me. So why wasn’t it now? Could this really be because of what happened last night? I tried to read some vibe into Roc’s glance, but he wasn’t giving anything away. Apparently, no one else seemed to think it strange that Roc went to Stevie instead of me. Maybe I was just being paranoid.
“You want me to have him picked up? A few hours of interrogation and I’m betting he’d be willing to talk. At least he’d know we’re watching him,” Stevie asked.
“He knows we’re watching him already. Don’t sell Silvers short. He’s known all along that we’d pick him up once he hit D.C. Clearly, he’s not worried. Why should he be? We haven’t been able to make a single charge against the man stick in the past. He’s too good at covering his tracks.”
“More like killing off all witnesses. I say let’s shake him up just a little, Roc. I mean, we are the CIA,” Stevie said.
“As much as I might want to agree with you, Stevie, we can’t afford to just yet. We need to find out what he’s up to. Besides, you’d never get him to crack, even under force. He’s too good. I’ll have someone keep an eye on him. With any luck, maybe this time we won’t lose him again.” Roc didn’t bother to state the obvious—that hopefully, one of our own hadn’t tipped Jeremiah off to our surveillance already. “Let’s see if we can find out what he’s really up to in D.C. before it’s too late.”
Roc ignored Stevie’s obvious disappointment and turned to Becca. “You were running a check on those reported funds being transferred from a known terrorist-friendly bank in the Caymans to a local institute here in D.C. Did anything come of that?”
As our accounting and financial specialist, Becca knew terrorists relied heavily on financial support to buy weapons as well as bankroll their missions. Becca was very good at her job. She knew how to find the money. But even though she’d been with the team longer than I had, she didn’t have a great deal of training in the field. In some ways, Becca was a liability to us all.
“Right. As it turns out, this wasn’t the first time this has happened. There were a couple of other incidents in the past, but the amounts were small enough not to attract any attention.”
For months now, thanks to Mark’s intel, we’d been expecting something to break. All the signs were there, if Mark’s sources were to be trusted. He’d been predicting it would be major due to an unusual increase of interesting chatter among the terrorist cells. I’d seen evidence of this on the sites I monitored.
Over the years, Mark had developed his own method of gathering valuable intel from various sources, or deep diving as it was called in The Agency. He cultivated quite a few snitches within the terrorist groups in the U.S., with the exception of the FLA. I guess loyalty didn’t mean much with these people. Mark told me once there was nothing more accommodating than a terrorist down on his luck.
Roc knew he used these people—we all did. Roc didn’t approve of Mark’s tactics, but in our line of work, the end usually justified the means.
“Okay people, we have our work cut out for us, so plan on meeting back here at the end of the week. Hopefully, by then we’ll have some clue as to why the CIA’s number one terrorist is right here in our very own city,” Roc said.
It was well after midnight before the meeting ended. With so many disturbing thought racing through my head, I tried to make a quick escape. But as I headed for the door, Roc’s voice stopped me cold.
“Lena, hold up a second.”
I waited while the rest of the team filed past me.
“How are you feeling?” he asked once we were alone.
I tried to smile. Did he suspect the truth? “I’m okay. Why?”
“Why? Lena, I didn’t want to get into this last night, but what did you think you were doing, going out alone like that? You of all people should know the danger out there right now, especially for us. None of us know for sure if our cover has been compromised, or by who, for that matter. We have to stick together on this.”
“I know,” I said. After all, Roc was right. “I know it was stupid, but I just needed to get out of the apartment for a while and we’d just had a huge fight, so I couldn’t come to you.”
“So this is my fault?” he asked with the beginnings of a smile.
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. Roc, I don’t want to fight with you. I messed up. Let’s just leave it at that.”
“Why are you in such a hurry to leave, Lena? Stay with me tonight?” He took a step closer. Even though he’d made no move to touch me yet, my resolve began to crumble. Roc was waiting for me to make the next move.
Tell him the truth, my heart pleaded. Tell him about becoming a Christian. Justin. The baby. But I couldn’t say any of those things because I didn’t know where I stood with Roc anymore.
I loved him so. Roc was the only man I’d ever dated who treated me like his equal. He valued my opinion and often times it ended up the source of our disagreeing. But somehow, we’d always managed to work beyond those disagreements, unlike all my past boyfriends who took my five-feet-three-inch height and short blonde curls to mean I was weak and defenseless, and might need a big, strong ma
n to tell me what to do.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t,” I said before reaching out to pull him closer to me. We were equals and I loved being with Roc, but I was restless again tonight. I felt as if I were searching for something just beyond my reach.
“Why can’t you?” he asked, stroking a strand of hair behind my ear in a gesture I would always associate with Roc.
“Because…” I didn’t even attempt to explain. How could I? I didn’t know the answer. I simply kissed him once and pulled away.
When I reached the door, I turned back for one last look. The hurt expression in his eyes had me wavering. It was hard to take. What was wrong with me? Roc was my husband and I loved him. What more was I looking for?
I’d known for a long time now that Roc was just waiting for me to say the word to keep our relationship going or end it entirely, but I couldn’t say those words.
I told myself I wasn’t ready for any major changes in my life yet. The work we did was too dangerous to get into a serious discussion about the future with him, but deep in my heart I understood these were all lies. What I really didn’t want to hear was what Roc’s answers might be, because I believed I could recite them all by heart.
Roc wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of the job. Not even me. The Agency would always be his first love, and someday soon I was going to have to deal with this. But I wasn’t ready to tonight.
“Lena, don’t do anything foolish tonight. Think about what you’re doing. Do you really think last night’s incident was just a coincidence? You’re not that naïve.”
“I’ll be fine, Roc. Nothing’s going to happen to me. I’ll call you in the morning, okay? Don’t worry so much.”
“Lena…”
I turned back to look at him one last time, blowing him a quick kiss before I closed the door softly on our uncharted future.
~
I got in my vehicle and drove away with tears in my eyes. Since becoming a Christian, I was doubting everything I once believed I wanted from my life. Of course, I knew the dangers just as I realized I was behaving irresponsibly by making light of them, but I needed to exorcise my demons more than I feared what secrets the night might hold.
