by Cindy Gerard
A hundred thoughts raced through his mind while she sat down beside him, silent, still a little shocky, suffering but dealing.
He forced his thoughts to Ted, relieved to know he’d gotten out of the building and was expected to be okay.
Now they needed a miracle to help the boy.
He glanced at Talia, who’d grown gut-wrenchingly quiet. And though he’d fought it for six years, he finally came to terms with another truth he’d managed to suppress. Okay, refused to acknowledge. Today wasn’t the first time she’d saved his life.
“In Kabul,” he said. “When your boys took down al-Attar and his crew, they could have killed me. Instead, they tossed me into the street and turned me loose.”
She turned to him, and he knew she’d grasped where he was going.
“How much did it cost you to make that happen?”
Her gaze wavered, then lowered. With an unsteady hand, she reached for the energy drink he’d set out for her.
She had to have pulled in major favors to get him out of there alive. Navy SEALs, Special Forces, MI-6, or Mossad agents—operatives all went by the book. They’d minimize collateral damage if they could, but he hadn’t fallen into that category. He’d fallen squarely into the “loose ends” category that night. By rights, they should have killed him along with al-Attar and his men.
“What was the price of my life?” he asked again, softly this time.
She didn’t answer, so he said it for her.
“They booted you out, didn’t they? Suddenly, their hotshot operator had a weakness—me—so they cut you loose.”
She propped an elbow on the counter and lowered her head into her hand, as if she couldn’t bear the weight of it. “It doesn’t matter.” Her voice was ragged, weary. “Saving Meir is what matters.”
Yes, Meir was what mattered now. But for all these years, he’d refused to acknowledge that he must have mattered to her, too, back then. He must have mattered very much. And he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe he mattered even now.
I don’t hate you. I could never hate you.
He studied her profile and felt a swell of emotion he didn’t want to own. He fought to resist everything that made him want to react to her as a man who had once thought they had a future.
“Your team leader,” she said, abruptly changing the subject. “You said you talked to him. Said he’s a good guy. What kind of resources does he have or have access to?”
He felt relief that she’d waylaid his thoughts. He didn’t understand where this sudden bending of his defenses came from. It wasn’t that he could ever forgive her. It wasn’t as if what she’d done for him could ever compensate for what she’d done to him.
“Eat while it’s still hot,” he said gruffly. “And I’ll tell you what I know.”
She looked at the MRE he’d set in front of her. Then she shoved her damp hair over her shoulder and, on a resigned breath, picked up a fork. He watched while she took a bite. Knowing all that she’d been through today, the helplessness and loss she felt for Meir, he almost reached for her. Almost drew her into his arms again.
“Do you know anything about what I’ve been doing since you left Kabul?”
He wasn’t sure why he’d asked or why her answer should matter. Yet the longer her silence went on, the more it did matter. It was stupid to feel so tense, but it felt as if something important depended on her reply.
Something other than the pathetic hope that possibly, she had cared enough to keep track of him. A hope that he just now realized had always been with him.
20
Talia set down her fork. She wished she could tell him that she knew everything about him. She had wanted to know where he was, what he was doing, if he was well and even alive after all this time. She’d had sources with access to information, but she hadn’t let herself ask. Somehow it had seemed less painful that way.
“No,” she said honestly. “I don’t know what you’ve been doing.”
She wasn’t sure what to draw from his silence, but she imagined he felt the same blow she had felt upon discovering he’d had no idea she was no longer with Mossad. It hurt to know he hadn’t cared enough to keep track of her. And based on the little he’d told her about his team, it seemed he also had access to resources that could have helped him find out if he’d wanted to know.
More likely, he’d been so angry he’d simply written her off.
“So you’re not still with Fargis?”
He grunted, as if he found some cynical amusement in her question. “No. Not for several years. Seems we’ve both made some big changes.”
“But you’re still in the same line of work.” She was counting on that—desperately. She needed the Taggart she’d known in Kabul, the whip-smart, tough soldier she’d seduced. Meir’s life depended on him still being a warrior.
“If you tell me who you’re with, maybe I can network them into resources here in Oman, maybe even into the city, where we need help now. Right now. There’s no time for—” She heard the hysteria leaking into her voice and stopped herself cold. She couldn’t fall apart again. She needed to be the agent she’d once been.
“This team is deep-sixed into an abyss, Talia,” he said, picking up the conversation. “They’re the best at what they do. You’re going to have to trust me on this.”
“We’re talking about my son,” she said, fighting the anguish threatening to drown her. “I have a right to know everything. I have to know everything, and I don’t want to play twenty questions to get one simple damn answer. My son’s—your son’s—life depends on us. Depends on whoever you just called. I need to know we can count on them to be—”
“Count on them to be what?” he interrupted, his voice taking a hard edge. “To be who I say they are?”
“Yes.” She clenched her hands in her lap. “I need something to hang on to, someone to believe in.” I need hope.
“Do you know how rich that is? Coming from you?” His tone was as sharp as a razor. “This is different from Kabul, Talia. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not playing you. I don’t want anything from you. I’m trying to find the boy. That’s all.”
She hung her head, fighting for control. Please, help me, God. We don’t have time for rehashing the past. But I need Taggart. She drew a shaky breath, forced herself to look up and meet his gaze. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“What if I hadn’t been here?” he bit out, interrupting her again. “What if you were on your own? Would you question an offer of help then?” He stood unexpectedly and stalked across the room. “I can’t believe this. I can’t fricking believe I was actually starting to . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head as if he felt like a fool.
“Starting to what?” She had to ask. Forgive her? Understand what she’d gone through?
“Never mind. What I can’t believe is that you have the nerve to question me. After what you did to me.”
Anger. He was so filled with it. She’d done that to him. And she deserved every bit of it. Yet suddenly, she needed him to understand. “Did I set out to betray you?” She shifted her gaze to the kitchen, away from him. “Yes. You were my mission. You were my avenue to get to al-Attar. So yes. I used you. I seduced you. I betrayed you, because the American government wanted him alive, and he needed to die for all the Israeli lives he’d taken.”
Feeling stronger now that the words were out, she turned around to face him. He stood with his back to her, fists clenched at his sides.
“I was Mossad,” she reminded him forcefully. “I volunteered for the mission, prepared to do anything necessary—including seducing you—to get the information on al-Attar.”
“Mission fucking accomplished.” Sarcasm dripped from each word.
She couldn’t let his bitterness stop her now. “But you . . . you were not what I expected. And I—” She stopped herself short of saying I fell
in love with you. He wouldn’t want to hear it. “I never planned on caring about you.”
“As you’re so fond of saying, what does it matter now?”
Oh, it mattered. It mattered to her. And although he wouldn’t admit it, she was certain it mattered to him. He wouldn’t be this angry if it didn’t.
Most of all, it mattered to Meir.
“You were right about the reason I’m no longer Mossad. I broke the code. I got personally involved with an assignment. And before I went into the operation, that’s all you were. You understand that, right? You of all people? You were a name in an action plan. An individual to target to accomplish a goal.”
She stopped again and composed herself. “After we became . . . close . . . I begged for your life. I pleaded with Mossad to spare you. And yes, it cost me.”
He turned around and glared at her. “We both paid a price, then, didn’t we?”
“I didn’t keep track of you after Kabul,” she went on, holding his flat gaze, “because I knew you would hate me. You had every right to. And I knew there would be no purpose, no good to come from attempting to contact you. So I did the only thing I could do. I forgot about you. At least, I tried.”
“Right,” he said after a long moment. “Must have been a little tough, what with you carrying my kid and all. A real bitchin’ bad place to be.”
Bitterness and vitriol. He was entitled to both. And she was entitled to get this all out in the open. “What would you have done? Ask yourself that. I didn’t plan to get pregnant.” She rushed on. “But it wasn’t long after I left Kabul that I realized I was. Did I have choices? Yes. I could have had an abortion. But I didn’t. I could have told you. But I didn’t do that, either.
“Think about it,” she demanded after a brief silence. “What would you have done if you’d known? What could you have done? You hated me. You hate me now. How could I bring a child into this world and introduce him to a man who hated his mother?”
He’d grown very quiet, his entire body tense.
“After . . . right after he was born, I came very close to looking for you. To telling you. But I was afraid you would try to take him from me.”
She dragged the hair away from her face, exhausted by the slow pulse of fear washing through her body. My son . . . my son . . .
“You were a soldier for hire,” she went on wearily. “Undoubtedly, you still are. How could I have risked losing him to you? If I’d told you and you’d wanted him, you would have taken him. I know you well enough to know that. To hell with a courtroom and the law. You’d have taken him in the night and made sure I never found you. And how could a child have possibly fit into your world?”
He turned around, his expression a flat plane of anger. “So because you couldn’t see a child in my life, you decided he was better off without me.” He tapped his chest with a tight fist. “When did I ever get to weigh in on that decision? Jesus, Talia. Did you ever even once think that I might have liked to have known about him? That I had a right to know about him? That I had a right to decide what my role in his life would be?”
She had no more tears to shed. “I’ve thought about it every single day. Questioned every day if I’d made the right decision. And now that I see you, now that I see the angry man you’ve become—”
“I am not an angry man!” he roared. “I am angry with you! And by God, I have every right to that anger.”
She lowered her head, because she couldn’t bear to see his rage and pain.
He was right. And she accepted now, as she should have all along, that he was still as lost to her as the day she’d betrayed him.“Please tell me the plan,” she said, ending not only their conversation but any hope that they could ever bridge the distance between them. “How are we going to get him back?”
A phone rang then, adding new anxiety to the brittle tension.
21
“Rhonda,” he said, his voice still tight, as he answered the SAT phone. “What have you got for me?”
Talia watched and listened, not wanting to, unable to help herself, as his features and his voice slowly softened. An instant ago, his jaw had been clenched, his brows rigid with rage. Yet this woman—Rhonda—had wiped out his anger with “hello.”
Was she someone on his team? Someone in his life? Both? It would be naive to assume he wasn’t involved with someone. A man like him, a man who looked like him, who loved like him.
Even though Taggart mostly listened and paced, head down, phone close to his ear, the conversation was clearly about Meir. For that she was beyond thankful.
His major contributions to the conversation were short and clipped words between long pauses. “Got it . . . Yeah . . . Copy that . . . Yes . . . Understood.”
Not knowing what was being said made her crazy, so she eased off the counter stool and limped into the bathroom in search of the first-aid supplies. She’d cleaned and bandaged her arm, but she hadn’t yet taken care of her feet. The pain she could take. An infection that might put her down she couldn’t. She had to be able to find Meir.
Taggart’s team might be on the way, but she couldn’t wait. It was close to nine thirty; those barbarians had had her baby for three and a half hours.
She fought anxiety and shaking hands as she gathered peroxide, cotton balls, antiseptic cream, and bandages, then carried them to the living room, where she had more room and more light to work on her feet.
“Yes, babe. I’m okay,” Taggart said, actually smiling into the phone, and God, it hurt to remember that he’d smiled that way once for her.
It also hurt that he had the nerve to flirt with Rhonda when her child—their child—was in unimaginable danger.
“I’ve got a little bump on my head. Other than that, I’m good. I promise. Look. I need you to get on that for me ASAP. Call me back when you’ve got things arranged, okay? Yeah. Love you, too.”
Talia tightened her jaw.
“Make sure you tell your husband I said you’re way too good for him.”
If it wasn’t one kind of guilt she felt, it was another. How petty. How outrageously unacceptable for her to feel relief that Rhonda wasn’t a lover but the wife of a friend.
She set out the medical supplies. Nothing about her feelings for Taggart should be in play here. It shamed her that even for a moment, she thought about herself, not about Meir.
“Part of your team?” She started folding squares of gauze, then ripping lengths of tape.
“Rhonda’s our computer hacker techno wizard. And she already has information for us to go on.”
Every cell in her body shot to attention. “A lead?”
He continued to pace the room. “When I called Nate earlier, I filled him in on what we knew. That Hamas was responsible for the bombing, that you were their target, and that when they realized you were still alive, they kidnapped Meir.”
It all sounded so surreal, as if it were happening to someone else, when he said the words out loud in such a detached, matter-of-fact way. But it jolted her back to reality. She had to start functioning as if this was a mission happening to someone else.
She needed to divorce herself from her fear and love for her son and attack the problem as an operative would. As she’d been trained to do. Logically and systematically. If she kept letting her emotions come into play, she wouldn’t be any good to
Meir.
“Back up a second, please. Nate—he’s your boss?” she asked as calm settled over her.
“Yes. Earlier, I sent him the pictures of our four dead terrorists. He forwarded them to Rhonda. She’s in the process of running the photos through our database. While she’s waiting for results, she went ahead and accessed NSA files.”
“NSA?” That stopped her in the middle of applying the antiseptic cream to a nasty cut on her heel. “You have access to the NSA’s digital files?”
“Sort of,” he said, heig
htening her curiosity about his organization. “Rhonda ran a check on al-Attar’s background. Family. Friends. Partners in terror. Whatever. Al-Attar has a son, Hakeem. Did you know about him?”
“He was in his teens, I think, when . . .” She trailed off and went back to work on the bandages.
“When Mossad killed his father,” he said, finishing the thought for her. “He’s twenty-something now, and he’s on a terrorist watch list along with al-Attar’s older brother, Amir. While no ironclad cases have been made against them, in addition to numerous bombings and attacks, both are suspected to be connected to the Mossad agents’ deaths.”
She let out a long breath. “That pretty much confirms that this is about retribution. If I’d known about the deaths earlier, Meir and I would have been gone before this ever happened.”
“But you didn’t know. And all the self-recrimination in the world isn’t going to change that.”
Her head came up. She was surprised to see that the anger in his eyes had been replaced by a look of purpose. He, too, had shifted into operative mode. His focus, his intensity, all geared toward finding Meir.
“I wonder how they found you out,” he said pensively, and she could tell it had been bothering him.
“That makes two of us. No one outside of Mossad knew the photojournalist job was a cover. They never would have leaked it.”
“I knew,” he said, watching her face intently. “What makes you think I didn’t leak it?”
Probably a good question. He’d figured out she was Mossad immediately after she’d betrayed and left him. But she knew it wasn’t him. “There’s a difference between anger and evil. You’re not evil.”
The set of his mouth told her he wanted to be indifferent to her trust. His eyes told a different story.“I’ll probably never know how they connected me with Mossad. I saw no need to change my identity when I went to work for the State Department. It was a natural transition.”
He pinched his lower lip between his thumb and finger, still not satisfied. But it didn’t matter how they’d found out; the damage had been done.