Worthy of Trust and Confidence

by Kara A. McLeod

  “She never would’ve done that,” I said, forcing myself back to the conversation. “And I don’t blame her for leaving. It’s not a big deal.”

  “It’s a huge deal. You wouldn’t have left her.”

  “Probably not. But she and I are very different people. I don’t hold her loyalty and dedication to her job against her.” It was actually one of the many things I liked about her.

  “Well, I do.”

  I chuckled. “Thanks. I appreciate that. I think. But could you maybe try to…” I wasn’t sure exactly how to ask for what I wanted.

  Meaghan rolled her eyes and threw up her hands. “Fine. I’ll try to be nice to your girlfriend. Happy?”

  “Very. And she’s not my girlfriend. Not technically.” At least I didn’t think she was. We hadn’t really clarified what we were to one another. Not officially. I mean, we’d said “I love you,” so maybe it was implied, but I wasn’t about to make assumptions. Not without talking to her first. And seeing as how I hadn’t heard from her since she’d left for DC the day before, I’d say she didn’t appear to be in a talking mood at the moment. I ducked my head self-consciously and examined all the paper circles dotting the floor around my desk, casualties of my three-hole punch. I suddenly realized I really needed to vacuum and wondered if Meaghan would see that for the distraction technique it was.

  “Why not? If she’s playing games with you again, I swear to God I’ll kill her.”

  I ignored the idle threat and considered my response. The question bubbling up behind my lips had been gnawing away at my insides for days now, and as much as I detested voicing my concern, maybe it was time to solicit a second opinion on the subject. And I sure as hell couldn’t talk about it with Allison. I took a deep breath.

  “It’s not too soon, right?” I asked, my voice a barely audible whisper. I didn’t lift my head, but I did peek at her from underneath my eyelashes so I could study her reaction. “You know, after…”

  Meaghan’s expression softened, and I could see sympathy in her golden-brown eyes. “Oh, Ryan. Is that what’s been bothering you?”

  I nodded and went back to studying my carpet, running my fingers through my hair and scratching my scalp. That wasn’t exactly a lie, either. That was one of the things that’d been bothering me. It just wasn’t the one that’d been bothering me the most. But my problems didn’t necessarily need to be tackled as a group. They could be managed singularly, so I didn’t utter the rest of my woes for the time being.

  “You’re afraid of what people will think if you’re with Allison so soon after Lucia’s death.”

  I flinched. It wasn’t so much what other people thought as much as my own feelings on the subject, and my own feelings were telling me I might be being disrespectful to Lucia in some way. “It just seems…discourteous somehow.”

  “You seeing someone else?”

  “Yeah. I mean, it’s only been a week.”

  “Well, didn’t Lucia break up with you?”

  “Yeah.” Despite the fact that Lucia and I hadn’t exactly been exclusive and that what I’d felt for her hadn’t held even a tenth of the intensity of what I felt for Allison, her sleeping with someone else and then dumping me had still stung. The blunt reminder landed like a sucker punch and made my breath hitch.

  “And it was about a week or so before…everything, wasn’t it?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you and Allison had started things back up again a few days before—” Meaghan seemed uncertain how to phrase it nicely.

  I smirked at her bitterly. “The incident?”

  “Is that what we’re calling it?”

  “It’s what headquarters is calling it, apparently.” My father had let that slip on his last visit to me in the hospital. The moniker had left me less than pleased.

  “Why am I not surprised?” She waved her hand dismissively and went on. “The point is, you and Allison started before that day.”

  I sighed. “Yeah, I know that, and you know that. But nobody else does.” And though it was irrelevant what anybody else thought or knew or when, it still felt borderline inappropriate. To me.

  Meaghan laughed. “Ryan, everybody else knows that.”

  “What?!”

  “Honey, you guys left the bar together after the wheels-up party—a party she shouldn’t even have still been in district for, might I add—and you showed up at work the next day with a hickey on your neck. It wasn’t too hard to figure it out. And you know how fast word travels.”

  I groaned and buried my head in my hand as my cheeks heated up. “Oh, God.”

  “Since when do you care what everybody else thinks? Screw ’em.”

  “Meaghan, you know as well as I do how this all works.” I was becoming extremely frustrated with her for being deliberately obtuse. “I refuse to throw the gossip sharks even the tiniest bit of chum.” Well, even more than I evidently already had. And I really hated that, by default, Allison had become rumor bait right along with me. I knew how much that bothered her. I would’ve shielded her from that if I could have.

  “Sorry, sweetie. I think that might be a little out of your control.”

  “Fantastic.”

  Meaghan laughed at my distress. “Come on. You should be used to it by now.”

  “I am. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

  “No. You don’t.” She hesitated for a bit, and I could see she was working herself up to something. “You wouldn’t…I mean, this isn’t going to…Uh, you’re not going to break up with her because of what people might or might not say about it, are you?”

  “What? No! Of course not. I love her. It’s just…been eating at me. That’s all. I’ll get over it eventually.”

  “Good. Because you deserve to be happy. And if Allison is the one who makes you happy, then…Just…Good.”

  I smiled at her and shook my head. “You need to work on your enthusiasm.”

  “And you need to go home and get some sleep.”

  “Ugh, Meaghan—”

  “Nope. I don’t want to hear it. Get out of here before I call Mark in for something.”

  I shot her my darkest look, unable to believe she’d threatened to sic the boss on me. “Low blow.”

  “Hey, I play to win.” She picked up the receiver to her landline. “Are you really going to make me do this?”

  I rolled my eyes and stood up with a huff. “No. But only because I’d hate for you to have to try to explain to him exactly why you summoned him. I’m a fantastic friend like that.”

  Meaghan grinned and set the receiver back into its cradle. “Yes, you are. Now get the hell out of here.”

  “You’re the reason why female agents have a reputation for being bitches, you know that?”

  “I do. And I revel in it. Now go. Take your drugs and get some rest.”

  “Okay.” I headed toward the hall but paused in the doorway. “Thanks for the talk.”

  “Stop stalling.”

  I shook my head and stepped into the hall.

  “Ryan?” Meaghan called.

  I stopped but didn’t turn around. “Yeah?”

  “Anytime.”

  I grinned and made for the elevators as fast as my aching body would carry me, praying to any deity who might be listening that I wouldn’t run into my boss on the way.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The second my feet hit the pavement in front of the building, I concluded there was no way in hell I was going home. Not yet. I had no idea what direction my thoughts would stray if I sat in my apartment with nothing to distract myself, and I had absolutely no desire to find out. I could only take so much wallowing, and after three days in the hospital, I’d already had my fill. Sure, I knew intellectually I was smack dab in the middle of slogging through the five stages of grief and some wallowing was to be expected, but what I really wanted more than anything at the moment was a break from feeling anything.

  I slipped my ear-buds into my ears and chose the playlist on my iPod I was most likely to
sing along to had I been at home alone or in my car and not out roaming the streets. The music did as much to soothe my angst-ridden soul as the warmth of the sunshine on my shoulders, and the dim protest of muscles too long underused was welcome.

  My first stop was the Verizon store down the block to replace the cell phone Lucia had shattered when she’d hurled it to the ground during her last precious minutes of life. I’d begged Rory several times during my convalescence to pick me up a new one, but she’d never gotten around to it. I couldn’t be upset with her for that, though. She’d split her time between her shifts at the hospital where she worked and visiting me, and even sleep—a normally precious commodity for her—had gotten pushed to the back burner. I couldn’t very well tell her I’d rather she run errands than spend time with me. Not when she’d gone so far out of her way to see me as it was.

  I tried not to get mired down in memories of the spiteful sort of triumph that’d glittered hard in Lucia’s eyes as she quoted from memory an innuendo-laden text message from Allison right before she’d thrown my phone to the sidewalk. It wasn’t easy. The mean smile that’d twisted her lips was permanently seared into my brain. As was the look in her eyes as the life drained out of her body. Would there ever come a time when something didn’t remind me of the moments leading up to her death? It probably wouldn’t be any time soon.

  I chose a new smartphone as quickly as possible and held it in my hand as I ambled slowly back out to the street. My mind snagged on the idea of calling Allison and held there, making it impossible to think about anything else. I still hadn’t heard from her, but that wasn’t necessarily a surprise as much as it was a disappointment.

  My hands shook a little, and my heart galloped wildly as I typed in the number I’d never forgotten even after I’d deleted it from my phone to ensure I’d never be tempted to drunk-dial her after we’d broken up. I paused before hitting the call button. It’d probably be a good idea to think of something to say before I took the plunge.

  I started moseying down the street with no particular destination in mind, staring at the phone in my hand as I went. I could just call to say hi, right? Just because she’d gotten all upset the night before for reasons that were still a mystery didn’t mean I couldn’t act as if everything was normal, did it? Except it wasn’t, and I knew it, and my acting skills were nowhere near good enough for me to be able to pull it off. I let out a forceful breath and frowned.

  I supposed I could wait for her to reach out to me. But waiting for things to happen wasn’t really my style. I was much more proactive. And letting her set the pace and make the first move felt way too much like the way our last relationship had played out. I didn’t want to force her into anything, but I wasn’t about to take a completely passive role this time around, either.

  Guess who finally got a new phone?

  I texted her after several long moments of agonizing over what to say. It was a cowardly move, choosing not to call, but I managed to convince myself it was for the best, that she was probably working and couldn’t talk anyway. The notion made me feel marginally better about myself.

  The seconds dragged by with the same lack of urgency you’d find in growing grass, and my grip on my phone was tight enough to cramp my hand. I wrinkled my nose and huffed as I shoved my phone into my pocket. I wasn’t the girl who waited by the phone for her girlfriend to respond to her overtures. No freaking way. I was the kind of girl who—

  My phone buzzed, and my heart immediately soared. So much for not being that girl. Part of me was disgusted with myself but clearly not disgusted enough not to fumble for my phone immediately. I yanked it free and swiped hastily at the lock screen.

  Who is this?

  Was she freaking kidding me? What the hell?

  Joking. Congrats.

  I rolled my eyes and shook my head. Jesus, the woman was an epic pain in my ass.

  Very funny.

  Working. Sorry. Talk later.

  While I was glad my theory about her working had been correct, and that my choice to text rather than call was validated, I couldn’t ignore the emptiness that seized me. Feeling like the last unwanted deviled egg at a picnic, I resumed my wandering. My leg felt like it was being repeatedly prodded with a hot iron, and my back ached along the entire right side, but I was determined not to go home yet. I had less than no interest in returning to my quiet apartment to flounder in despair and self-loathing, and there was a greater-than-average chance of that happening if I went back there. Especially after that non-conversation with Allison. Shit. How the hell was I going to occupy myself?

  A brilliant idea struck me, and I stepped to the curb, holding my left hand aloft to hail a cab. I gave the driver the cross streets of my destination and sat back in the seat to idly watch the world go by.

  Not long before “the incident,” I’d been looking into a counterfeit case for my friend Sarah in DC. Initially, it hadn’t seemed like much. A man, later identified as Amin Akbari, had used a phony one-hundred-dollar bill to purchase a few small-dollar items in a grocery store in Maryland. We got leads like that all the time, and more often than not they turned out to be dead ends. Half the time, the people with the bills had no idea they were even counterfeit. And the other half of the time, the folks couldn’t tell us who’d sold them the bills because they had no other information for the contact who’d given them the fake notes other than a street nickname or a number that turned out to belong to a burner phone. Sarah and I had honestly both thought nothing would come of the Akbari interview and that’d be it. Case closed.

  We were partially right. Nothing had come of the interview itself. Akbari had more or less clammed up and denied everything. However, when I’d run routine database checks on some of the personally identifying information I’d gleaned on him through the Joint Terrorism Task Force computer systems, I’d made a startling discovery: Akbari appeared to have connections to subjects who were targets of terrorism-related investigations. I’d been sure I must’ve run the wrong phone number because no way could I have fallen headfirst into a case like that off a one-note pass in a grocery store. I’d had to ask Sarah to verify the number for me, to make sure I hadn’t written it down wrong.

  The day I was shot, I’d asked Sarah to send me copies of whatever documents she’d pulled the subject’s telephone number from so I could verify that I’d been running down the right information. I hadn’t received the records until a few days later, and the hospital stay had put a damper on any follow-up investigation I’d planned to conduct. Since I was out now, I figured I might as well go into my JTTF office—I was one of several USSS reps assigned over there—where the rest of the paperwork related to this case was stored and start unraveling the mystery. I didn’t need two good arms to follow paper trails.

  I managed to sneak into the office and make it to my desk without being waylaid too much. Most of my squad mates were already gone for the day, so I didn’t have to answer very many questions about how I was doing. That was a huge relief, as I wasn’t in the mood to talk about what’d happened. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure if I ever would be, although a small part of me was disappointed I wouldn’t be able to pump anyone for information about the investigation into who’d killed Lucia. Whatever. They wouldn’t have told me anyway.

  I accessed the FBI email account I’d been given when I joined the task force and quickly printed out the documents I’d forwarded to myself after Sarah had sent them to my Secret Service email account. Included in the email was a scanned copy of a frequent-shopper card application for the grocery store Akbari had passed the counterfeit bill in. That Sarah had thought to inquire if he’d filled out an application at all had been a fluke stroke of luck on our part and a grave act of stupidity on his because he’d slipped up and used a burner phone number for that application we probably would never have connected to him without that document.

  I frowned as I studied the printouts of the papers Sarah had sent me, and I highlighted the pertinent pieces of information I wa
nted to run for easy reference. Then I began the painstaking task of looking up telephone number after telephone number, following the trails of associations down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.

  The research process was slow and awkward, to say the least. I’d never thought about how proficient—or not—I might be with my non-dominant hand when trying to perform everyday tasks such as taking notes or using a computer mouse. If I had, I sincerely doubt I’d have imagined the situation to be even half as bad as reality was turning out. If I’d known this morning what I knew now, I might’ve reconsidered even showing up to work today. Maybe. Okay, probably not.

  Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on your point of view—the telephone number I’d investigated before I was shot had been the correct one. I hadn’t copied it down wrong, which meant we’d inadvertently stumbled onto something a lot bigger than we’d originally thought.

  Akbari’s burner phone—the one from the grocery store frequent-shopper application—had made several calls to another number the FBI database had associated with someone named Vafa Fallahi, including one about eight hours before the counterfeit bill was passed.

  Fallahi was intimately associated with Naser Golzar, who was currently under investigation for the material support of terrorism, meaning the FBI suspected he was funding an extremist group somehow.

  And Golzar was already confirmed to be a close associate of Mahmood Rostami, who we’d actually just arrested on that same charge a couple of months ago. I hadn’t participated in the interview following his arrest—though I’d been part of the arrest team, and, if I remembered correctly, Rostami’s apartment wasn’t too far from Akbari’s—but I obviously knew the guys who had. I emailed them quickly to ask them to hit me up when they had time to chat. I wanted to ask them a few questions.

  After several long minutes, I also obtained identifying information for the three people that Fallahi, Golzar, and Rostami had each contacted the most often, as well as the dates, times, and durations of all the telephone calls I was referencing to make my case. I added a note to my paper to make a pictorial chart to spell out the associations as soon as my right arm was out of its sling. I preferred visual aids whenever and wherever possible because they made it easier for others to follow along as I explained the case to them. And if I wasn’t mistaken, I’d need to enlighten a lot of other people soon.