by Tracy Brody
A familiar longing sucker-punched him in the chest when Mack showed Carswell pictures of his daughters and new wife, Kristie. Finding a woman who understood and supported guys in their line of work was rare. Most bailed when reality didn’t live up to their romanticized versions. Too many, like Mack’s first wife, couldn’t handle the danger. Then there were those, like Carla Ciancio, who couldn’t be trusted to stay faithful during a deployment.
Angela hadn’t been fazed by his dangerous career when they were undercover together—though they’d both been playing roles. They were together for a purpose, not because they wanted to get to know each other. But maybe things could be different now.
“What happened with the security job?” Mack’s question pinged Tony’s brain.
He hadn’t seen Carswell—who’d come up with the name for Bravo Company—since he left the Army for the big bucks that private security companies paid to lure operators away from Special Forces.
“Things were going pretty well. We were working with the CIA in Afghanistan when they nabbed one of al-Shehri’s couriers. Best lead in years, only he wouldn’t give up anything. So, the Agency tasked us to bring in the courier’s daughter as motivation to talk. I mentioned the assignment to one of the CIA agents. She went ballistic—I didn’t think they’d be keeping secrets from one of their own, you know—and she went off on her boss. Wanted to question the courier and try to get intel without involving the kid. The Agency sent us out anyway, then I took the heat when their agent got her panties in a wad and quit, and I got blackballed over a little pillow talk.”
“You two were, uh …” Tony interrupted.
“Hey, you’re not married when you’re overseas.” Carswell raised a closed hand for a fist bump.
Tony wasn’t a prude. Far from it. But marriage was a commitment. A covenant. Some tenets of the Catholic faith were still engrained in him. He left Carswell hanging.
“Anyway, bitch of it all,” Carswell continued, “is the whole thing was a setup. Guy didn’t have a kid. We drove into an ambush. Lost one guy and two of us were airlifted out and sent stateside. After I rehabbed, I joined the Bureau. Spent a year in Cincinnati before being promoted and landing here.”
Typical Carswell. Like a cat, he always seemed to land on his feet. He could walk through a pile of shit, and it wouldn’t stick to him. Something about the guy drew others to him, but Carswell liked living on the edge. Too close to the edge for Tony’s comfort. If he had to pick who to follow into battle, he’d pick Lundgren’s level-headed leadership style and the way he looked out for the guys on the team above himself any day.
“I’ve got to get to a meeting. Told my staff to take care of you. Let them know if you need anything.” Carswell gave a two-finger salute, then strode out the door.
The brunette junior agent eyed the men. “Can I get you gentlemen more coffee?”
“The other gal just brought us some, but thanks.” Lundgren rubbed the bridge of his nose.
Juan Dominguez groaned when she set down another armful of documents on the conference table. “What are we? Grunt labor?”
“To stay involved, we agreed to help with whatever they needed,” Lundgren reminded the group after she left.
Devin Grant flagged a page and set it aside. He reached for another document, jostling Tony in the process.
“How do you do that, man?” Mack flipped his hand at the pile Grant had already gone through, outpacing the rest of the team.
“Speed-reading. You look for the keywords.” Grant’s head moved left to right as he turned pages at a dizzying rate.
“We can’t all be geniuses. And the more he reads means less for us,” Dominguez said.
“It’d help us all if you didn’t whistle while you read, Dominguez.” Porter fixed him with a pointed stare.
Tony shook his head. Eight action-oriented Alpha males crammed in a conference room reading over the files from Hakim’s computer was hardly an ideal situation. It’d only been four hours since they started, but the constant interruptions and movements distracted him. Plus his thoughts kept wandering down the hall.
He rose and made a show of stretching. “Be back in a few.” Someone snickered, and he overheard Dominguez whisper Angela’s name the second he turned out of the doorway.
After making a pit stop in the restroom, he ambled further down the hall and paused in the doorway of the small office where Angela sat engrossed in a document. She glanced up from the printout in her hand and gave him one of those demure smiles that sent electricity coursing through him.
“Come on in. How’s it going down there?”
He rolled his eyes and chuckled. “I give it another half an hour max before someone goes looking for rope to string up Dominguez or rappel down the side of the building to escape.”
“Too much testosterone in the room?” she asked with a laugh.
“Not our typical workday. Close quarters and way too sedentary. People keep coming in every five minutes with more coffee or files that are all crap. Haven’t found anything useful.”
“They’re probably giving you guys the low-priority documents. Tech said there are thousands of saved files. Mostly inane stuff probably loaded to make it harder to find what we’re looking for. And you’ll likely keep getting offers of coffee—and more—based on the inquisition I’ve gotten from half the female staff already. You guys are way more interesting than agents investigating white-collar crimes. Becca, the brunette junior agent, is on the rebound, and she’s drooling over the redhead from the Texas op.”
“That’s Mack. He just got remarried. She won’t get anywhere with him or the chief. Now, the rest of the team, that’s another story. And you might want to warn them about Dominguez, who you knew as Carlito.”
“Really?”
“Trust me,” he warned, envisioning Dominguez disappearing into a supply closet with one of the junior agents. His gaze settled on the script of the top document on her desk. “Arabic? But you were speaking French with Hakim … Because you didn’t want him to know you can read or speak it.” Duh! He realized it after the words were out.
She winked at him. “He’s quite enamored with all things French. We used that angle to get him interested.”
“Speaking of languages, what are you doing out in the field again?” The Bureau putting a linguist undercover on something this big didn’t add up. Every time he tried to deduce their reasons, it interfered with his concentration.
“They had someone else working Hakim, but she wasn’t getting anywhere. Either not his type or he was suspicious.”
“And the Bureau didn’t have anyone else?”
“Weiss speaks French and Arabic, but he wouldn’t shave his legs and put on a dress. I was bored.” Her head and shoulders did a little dance.
Tony grimaced at the image of Weiss in a dress trying to entice the devout terrorist. Angela’s being bored didn’t explain it, and the curiosity that pricked his mind wouldn’t let him drop it. “They don’t typically send linguists into the field. Texas, I could understand because of your relation to Brock, but this is different. You are good—as if you were trained for undercover work …”
All traces of her smile disappeared. “Close the door.”
The command got his attention. Her giving him orders was also kind of a turn-on, which sent blood pouring into his groin again. He closed the door, then sat in the chair opposite her desk.
“Before this, I worked in a different capacity—for another government agency.”
Agency? “The Agency?” He held his breath.
She nodded.
“Wow. The CIA.” If she’d been an operative for the CIA, it explained why the Bureau would utilize her and her adeptness for undercover work. He and the team had never worked with a spook like her before.
“One of my professors at Northeastern thought I had skills they could use and arranged an interview. I was headed to law school on scholarship, so I passed on their offer.”
“What changed your mind?
”
“9/11.” Angela broke eye contact and took a deep breath in the silence that followed. “My fiancé was on American’s Flight 11.”
A sickening feeling rolled through Tony’s core. “The first plane to hit the World Trade Center.”
“Yeah. He’d come east for a friend’s wedding and stayed to spend some time with me. I drove him to the airport for his flight before my classes. When I first heard a plane hit one of the towers, I envisioned a tourist prop plane. When I went to the student union, it was on every television. One look and I knew it was something big. I watched the second tower come down. I didn’t know then … Dammit.” She swiped away a tear with her fingertips, leaving a wet streak across her cheek. “Anyway, a week later, I contacted the CIA. A week after that, I withdrew from law school to start training at The Farm.”
Sympathy swelled. So many lives damaged by 9/11. His cousin’s husband was a firefighter who died when the first tower collapsed. Everyone back home in Amherst knew someone who died that day. It obviously changed the trajectory of Angela’s life. That she’d decided to go after the sons of bitches responsible was appealing, too—not that he’d tell her that, especially now. Better to keep on track.
“So, how’d you end up working as a linguist for the Bureau?” Based on his experience, the two groups didn’t exactly mesh, and the Agency would’ve given her a better opportunity to get payback against Al-Qaeda for 9/11.
“We may be at war, but there are certain lines that shouldn’t be crossed—especially when it comes to innocent civilians and children. It makes us no better than the terrorists we’re after. I couldn’t condone some of the methods they used. So, I resigned. The FBI was a good fit for my linguistic skills.”
“And yet you still venture into the field.” Compared to being a CIA operative, he could understand how confining and boring—and safe—her job could be. “Arabic, French, Spanish. How many languages do you speak?” He switched the topic to a less dark subject.
“Fluently? Seven. My Pashto is passable. I’m proficient in sign language, and I’m learning Mandarin. Based on my forays into Chinatown, though, my Chinese pretty much sucks.”
“Still”—a gruff laugh escaped him—“that’s impressive.”
“I also have a list of keywords and phrases memorized in another seventeen.” She gave a subtle shrug, but the corners of her mouth curved up for a moment.
Holy shit. His fluency in Italian, Spanish, and French, and limited ability to communicate in Pashto and Korean sounded average now. He shook his head. “Were you a child prodigy?”
“No, the environment I grew up in. My mom was Louisiana Cajun, and I was born near New Orleans, so I grew up speaking English and French. My dad is an engineer in the oil industry. We went where the work was. We lived in Venezuela, Brazil, and the United Arab Emirates before I was twelve. I came back to the States with my mom for a while. Later, I lived with my dad in Germany, until my stepmother decided a foreign-exchange program in France seemed like ‘an excellent educational opportunity.’ So, voilà. Here I am.”
“I can’t imagine living in that many places.” His parents lived in the same house where he’d grown up. He’d gone to school with all the same kids from kindergarten to graduation. Until he’d left for basic training, he’d never been out of the Northeast, though he’d been to Canada a few times to see Niagara Falls and hockey games.
“I lived in some interesting places. There were some benefits to always being the new kid. Drawbacks, too.”
Based on the way she averted her gaze, he’d picked another touchy subject. Great.
She closed her eyes and exhaled audibly. “After a while, my mother didn’t like the moves. The money was great, but even that couldn’t keep her in the Middle East. She left my dad and brought me back to the States with a roughneck she hooked up with. That didn’t last, and she went from one bad relationship and crappy job to another until she ended up with Ronnie. Stepdad of the year.” Disdain accompanied the shaking of her head.
“Brock’s dad?” He knew about her stepbrother from their prior mission with the Coyotes gang; however, her reaction whenever he came up roused his curiosity on the degree of their relationship. The tug in his gut made him push. “You and Brock were close?”
She sighed again. “I wouldn’t say we were close. I mean, we lived under the same roof, but I was rarely there. I tried to avoid home as much as possible.”
Tony waited, allowing her to drop it or change the subject. To keep her secrets. Why should she trust him enough to open up? He was just some guy she worked with for a few days. A virtual stranger. Someone she’d have dinner with, and based on the earlier looks and innuendo, she’d have sex with. Hot, up-against-a-wall-then-in-the-bedroom-and-later-in-the-shower sex. Unless he blew it. Which he was on the cusp of doing. Typically, he didn’t dig into a woman’s past. Angela, however, wasn’t the typical woman.
“Home wasn’t a safe place.” She talked without looking at him—her voice flat and her face devoid of emotion. “People coming and going. Drugs. Sex. Guns. I stayed at school or the library. People knew my family. I was guilty by association.”
She met his eyes finally, seeming on the brink of a major disclosure. He should interrupt. Avoid the responsibility of shared secrets.
What kind of flawed individual got a hard-on going head-to-head with an enemy, but broke out in a cold sweat at the mere notion of revealing past hurts? God, no wonder he sucked at relationships for anything beyond casual sex. She probably thought he shook his head in response to her tale of woe instead of self-deprecation.
“One night, a biker came looking for a fix. Ronnie and my mother were out somewhere—who knows where. The guy didn’t believe I didn’t know where their stash was, so he decided to get his high another way. My screams woke up Brock. He pulled the guy off me. The fight didn’t last long, but the biker spent a few days in the hospital after surgery to sew him back together.
“That served as a wake-up call to my mother. She’d always relied on someone else to provide for her needs, only she wasn’t the twenty-year-old beauty anymore. She was doing the best she could, but when she saw what it was doing to me, she sent me to live with my dad in Germany. I wouldn’t have gone if I’d known they’d charge Brock. He was defending himself. Trying to protect me.” She paused, her mouth pinched with emotional pain. “But he had a record, so they sentenced him to prison. When I came back for college, I found out he’d gotten out and was riding with the Coyotes.”
“It’s not your fault.” Tony read it on her face, in her tone: the guilt, the blame.
“If I’d been here, I could have testified.”
“You were what? Seventeen or eighteen?”
“Sixteen.”
His hand balled into a fist, and he swallowed the lump of rage cutting off his air supply. Sixteen. And she still blamed herself for how much of it? That had to fuck up her ability to trust people. With her background and no close family, no wonder it made her a perfect candidate for the CIA.
“It wasn’t fair. Brock deserved better.”
Tony didn’t know the “right” thing to say. If her hands were closer, he could have reached out to her, but he doubted she would appreciate him coming around the desk to give her a sympathetic hug.
Instead, silence settled like a cold, wet blanket.
“They ever find out who killed him?”
“No one was ever charged. Not sure anyone cared enough to work that hard.”
He was saved from not knowing what to say again by a knock on the door. The brunette agent cracked the door and peeked in.
“Singh found more documents the program couldn’t translate and asked me to bring them to you.” She eased into the room and handed a few pages across the desk.
Angela’s eyes narrowed, and her mouth pursed as she scanned the top printout. “Thanks. Oh, and Becca, the redhead in the conference room is newly married. He’s off-limits.”
The young woman’s eyes went wide, and her body stif
fened. Tony witnessed the quick jerk of her head in his direction.
“And, uh—he is, too.” Angela pointed her pen at him. She smiled but kept her gaze fixed on the junior agent.
“I’ll, um, make sure that’s, uh, understood.” Becca backed into the doorframe, then fumbled for the doorknob.
Tony raised a hand to his mouth to cover his amusement.
Angela shifted her gaze to him and leaned back in her chair. “She was talking about you, too. I figured I’d be more productive if she wasn’t flirting with you.”
He mentally pumped his fist. Dinner was still on—and the after-activities that would require his mother to light a candle on his behalf. If his mom could read his mind right now, she’d scurry down to St. Benedict’s and light a candle for every dollar she had in her purse.
Did Angela have a clue what a turn-on her smile was?
“I guess I better let you get back to work,” he said before he forgot why he was here and indulged his graphic imagination.
“You get any sleep last night?”
“A little. We traded off.”
“Well, if you need a power nap, come on back. It’s not the Ritz,” she motioned to the two office chairs across from her desk, “but it’s quiet.”
“I won’t distract you?” he asked, unable to keep from teasing her.
“It’d be a welcome distraction.”
Great. He was definitely walking back in the conference room with a full-on boner.
Eight
“I think something’s going on.” Tony used his chopsticks to pick another piece of chicken out of the box. He craned his neck to see out the doorway into the area filled with cubicles.
“Why? ’Cause the gals haven’t checked back to see if we need drink refills in the past twenty minutes?” Mack smirked.
“What’s up with that anyway?” Dominguez’s eyes drilled Tony.
He ignored Dominguez. “There’s movement and raised voices.”