by Mary Alford
She nodded, fighting back nausea. She took a bite of the food.
He shrugged and went to work on his bowl of pasta.
Half way through, the food did the trick and some of the nausea evaporated. She decided not to push her luck and eat too much. As much as she needed food, she needed her medication more.
She cleared her throat. “Where are my pills?”
He glanced her way, thought for a second then said, “In my jacket. I’ll get them.”
He disappeared back into his bedroom and she closed her eyes. When he returned a few seconds later, she was still sitting with her eyes closed.
He sat the pill bottles in front of her. “Here, I’ll get you something to drink.”
Hannah took out the necessary medication while he cleared away the dishes and added more wood to the stove in the great room. Once the wood caught, it wasn’t long before an inferno blazed inside.
With nothing else to do, she joined him. She curled up on the couch and watched the fire rage through the glass door. She didn’t know what he wanted her to say. She’d told him everything she remembered about that night. He hadn’t believed her then. What could she possibly add to change his mind now?
He didn’t seem to expect answers right away. He grabbed his jacket and a cell phone. “I’ll be back. I need to bring something in from the truck.”
She continued to watch the fire without answering.
She heard the truck door slam. The engine fire. What if he left her there? He made no bones about his opinion of her. She remembered her purse was still in the truck, and she wasn’t sure where he’d stashed the additional phones. Probably someplace where she couldn’t find them.
After what felt like an eternity, the engine died and Jase returned, his jacket covered with flakes of snow. It had begun snowing again.
He shucked his jacket and warmed his hands by the woodstove, and Hannah went back to watching the fire.
“I need you to tell me what you remember about that night. Everything.”
She realized he was watching her again. She met his gaze without flinching. “I thought you didn’t believe me.”
“I don’t … I’m not sure,” he added hesitantly. Jase blew out a breath then pulled a chair up next to the stove and stirred the fire. “We’re out of options, Hannah. Time’s running out. I need answers. I need to know what you remember about Kate’s final mission.”
She cleared her throat. She’d seen plenty in her dreams alone, but being here with Jase at the cabin he and Kate shared, well, it was as if the familiarity of the place was drawing the memories out of her.
She closed her eyes. She needed to get the words out clearly. “The call came in on Kate’s secure line. It was from him. The Foreigner. His contact wanted to move the meet again. They’d already moved it up once, so a second move was odd, but he … well, he sounded normal. Unconcerned.” Hannah held onto the memory a second longer. That was right. The Foreigner hadn’t seemed worried. She opened her eyes. “Kate had no clue anything was out of the ordinary, Jase with the exception of changing the time of the meet until it was too late. Only it wasn’t … ordinary. Far from it.” Hannah shivered as she remembered the details she’d seen of that night.
“Go on,” he said quietly.
“She knew right away something was wrong. She had to scramble to make the new time. She was late, but so was he. The Foreigner never was late. You could set your watch by him. Something was off, but she waited. She couldn’t risk breaking radio silence and blowing the mission. Too much was at stake.” Hannah stopped long enough to take a breath.
“Two hours passed. The Foreigner wasn’t answering his phone. Kate tried to call in but the radio was jammed. She couldn’t get through. Then…” Hannah stopped. The memory was terrifying. She could almost feel Kate’s fear. “There were Humvees moving in. She ran toward the burned out building and…” Hannah had hidden those final moments away deep in her heart. The terror. The finality. Why couldn’t she see the face of murderer? The only face haunting her dreams had been Jase.
Jase leaned closer. “And?”
“And that’s it. I don’t remember anything more until you found me.”
Something wet dropped onto her clasped hands. Tears. She was crying again.
Jase touched the screen of his phone and then kneeled in front of her again. “Was this him? Was this the man who killed Kate?” He shoved the phone in her hand. On the screen was the picture of a man. A foreigner. Pakistani. She recognized him right away. It was Kate’s contact. The Foreigner.
She stared at the face of the man who had been the contact in the operation to find out who’d been selling weapons to Afghanistan insurgents, possibly even the Taliban and Al Qaeda for almost two years. “Where is he? Is he alive?” Against her will, Hannah remembered that disturbing dream she’d had. The Foreigner begging her to find out who killed him.
Jase took the phone from her and shoved it closer to her face. “Is this him?” he demanded.
She shook her head. “No. No, of course it’s not. Why are you asking that? He’s on our side.” She closed her eyes struggling to recall the one last memory that would name put a face to Kate’s killer. She could almost hear his voice … the voice of her killer. He knew her. “No, Kate’s killer wasn’t a foreign op. He was one of ours…” Her eyes flew open and locked with his. “Jase, he’s CIA.”
Jase dropped back away from her as if she’d struck him, taking the phone with him. “Impossible.”
But it was true. She stared at him. She needed him to believe her. “It’s true. The man responsible for her death was one of us.”
He got to his feet, grabbed his jacket, and left her alone again, the door slamming in his wake. Making his opinion of her and what she’d said crystal clear.
* * * *
“This is crazy,” Jase muttered to himself as he started walking in the direction of the woods behind the cabin. It was pitch black out and snowing. Coming here had been a mistake. A major lack of thinking on his part, mistake. He should never have brought her here. Never have kissed her. If he had any sense at all, he’d avoid her like the plague.
He covered a quarter of a mile trek into the thick spruce trees when he realized he’d made another mistake. At the very least, he’d left a witness alone and in danger yet again. At the very most, he’d let a possible terrorist see the identity of one of their most valuable and missing operatives. All but guaranteeing his death, if he wasn’t dead already.
Jase stopped walking. He needed to collect his thoughts. Find his normally cool head again. He couldn’t afford any more mistakes. He’d had Travis jump through hoops to send the photo of The Foreigner, Kate’s contact, to the cell phone. As far as he knew, Kate was the only one who’d had any physical contact with the man. She’d refused to tell him how the Pakistani had come to be her contact in the first place. Kate was good at what she did. She protected her contacts like a mother hen.
He glanced back at the cabin, its windows glowing in the darkness like cat’s eyes. He and Kate had jokingly called this place their hideaway. They’d come here only a handful of times. Kate was the one who’d dragged him up here the first time and forced him to admit he loved everything about it. Jase had bought it right after their last trip here about six months before her death. The owner had passed away and the relatives wanted to sell it quickly. The asking price was next to nothing. The plan was to surprise her on their next trip. He’d tried to tell her how he felt about her. When he’d talked to her about the ranch in New Zealand, he’d hoped she tell him she wanted to come with him. He was hoping, well, it didn’t matter. That never happened. Jase knew he should put the cabin back on the market. Without Kate, there was nothing here for him, yet something kept him from doing so.
Kissing Hannah had killed an itch, he told himself. He was attracted to her.
He turned and headed farther into the woods. He had the truck keys in his jacket. She wasn’t going anywhere, and he’d made sure no one followed them.
She could wait. He needed to clear his head and get her out of it before he could decide what to do with her next.
Chapter Ten
He’d been gone for half an hour when she really started to worry. She knew Jase … no Kate knew Jase. She didn’t know him at all. He hadn’t liked what she’d told him. He didn’t believe her. Not that she could blame him. It sounded crazy to her as well.
Hannah grabbed a blanket and went out to the glassed-in porch. The cabin’s owner had installed a small woodstove in the corner there as well. She carried wood from the great room and made a fire. It was pitch black outside. The glass reflected back the room and its sparse furniture. A sofa, a couple of miss-matched chairs, a small coffee table. She’d be a sitting target if someone dangerous were lurking outside, but at this point, she didn’t much care.
In the past, Jase and Kate had spent hours out here, watching the snow as it fell. Sometimes talking. But never about what was important. What they should have discussed. Mostly they talked about the job, the people they worked with. It had been a total shock for Kate to learn Jase wanted out.
The front door opened and she closed her eyes. Jase was back. Hannah had never felt so vulnerable.
She could hear him moving through the cabin, looking for her, no doubt. He was probably hoping she’d disappear along with the problem she presented.
He stopped in the doorway and watched her. He smelled like the outdoors. The silence and the small space between them became claustrophobic.
When she couldn’t bear it any longer, she got up and started past him. He caught her arm, keeping her there.
“Let me go.” The words came out more like a sob. She couldn’t look at him. “Let me go, Jase.”
“I’m sorry. I know this is hard. I wish you didn’t have to go through it,” he said with so much sincerity that she believed him, but he didn’t let her go. Instead, he pulled her close, held her in his arms and waited as a dam broke inside of her. She couldn’t stop the tears even if she wanted to.
He didn’t say a word, he just held her until there were no more tears left, and then he let her go.
Hannah took her former place on the sofa and watched Jase pace away his nervous energy. It sparked a memory of another time when they’d worked a difficult case such as this one. This was Jase at his best. It was how he worked his magic.
“Maybe we’re going about this all wrong. For the moment, let’s put aside my relationship with Kate.” He held up a hand when she would have protested.
“Look, every time we try to discuss it things become … emotional. I think we should put it on hold until we can figure out who is responsible for taking her life.” She looked into his eyes but didn’t see any sign that he believed her.
She didn’t say a word as he continued. “You tell me it was one of our own. If that’s the case, and I say if, because I can’t believe it, then we’d better figure this out soon because we’re sitting ducks here.”
What else could she say that would make him believe her?
Please, open his eyes… she prayed with all her heart.
“I’ve been thinking, maybe we should work our way back, start with the things you do remember about that night and go backward. Maybe something useful will come of it. Something Kate didn’t consider important at the time because she had no way of knowing the outcome of that night.”
Hannah thought about it for a second. It was worth a shot. Right now, they had nothing really. “Okay, yes, maybe you’re right.”
“Good. So, you’ve told me what you remembered about Kate’s last conversation with The Foreigner that led up to that night. What about the original call? The first time the meet was changed. Do you remember anything about it? What did he say exactly? Was there something in his tone that was off? Any unusual noise in the background?”
She closed her eyes and tried to shut out everything, especially the distraction standing close to her.
She remembered the call in question. Kate hadn’t thought much of it when the original meet time had been moved up. In the spy world, things moved quickly and it was imperative to be ready at a second’s notice, still … there had been something.
“What is it?” he asked. He’d seen it too.
She tried to capture the memory. The Foreigner had said something that at the time, she hadn’t thought much about it, but now, well, she was almost certain he’d been trying to tell her something? Alert her to the danger she was facing.
She opened her eyes and looked at Jase. “I-I remember something The Foreigner said during that first call. Something about not being late. He said, ‘The boss wouldn’t like it.’ Kate thought he meant the arms broker, but what if he was talking about someone on our side? What if he was trying to warn Kate about … something? Maybe that arms broker we’d been tracking was actually one of our own?”
Jase blew out a sigh. He didn’t break eye contact. “We haven’t determined that yet, but it’s something, I guess. Anything else? We need more to go on to prove your theory.”
“It’s not a theory, Jase, it’s what happened. Why can’t you believe me just this once? Forget the rest of it. What I told you about Kate loving you, I understand that’s hard for you to accept. I’m certain of this, Jase. The Foreigner didn’t have anything to do with Kate’s death. He’s being framed. We can’t let that happen. The man responsible for murdering Kate and those two agents is one of our people.”
When he looked doubtful she added, “Think about it. It makes sense. Who would know how the CIA worked and how to move around their strong points? Who they suspected? The best way to move arms from country to country. No one would suspect or believe it was true. Look at you, for example. You don’t believe me. It’s the perfect cover.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “You’re asking me to believe that someone I trusted to have my back, someone Kate trusted her life to is responsible for killing her. You don’t know what that’s like.”
“I do.”
“No, you don’t. You reacting to what Kate felt, but it wasn’t you out there. You weren’t there. We have to be able to trust our comrades. We put our lives on the line every day we’re in the field. We’re like a family out there. If you can’t trust your family, then who can you trust?”
Slowly, Hannah stood. She took a hesitant step closer then stopped. “I know this must be difficult to think about.”
He shook his head. “It’s more than that. It’s impossible. You’re asking me to suspend rational thinking and consider the supernatural. I can’t do it. I’m sorry, but I can’t. Look, it’s late,” he added gently when he saw her reaction. “You should try and rest. I’m going into town. We need food since it appears we’re going to be here indefinitely. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
She touched his arm when he would have left her. She didn’t want to let him go. She believed something she’d said had gotten through to him in spite of what he said. “Let me come with you?”
He attempted a smile. It didn’t quite reach his eyes. “It’s best if you stay here. I’ll be back soon. Don’t worry, you’ll be safe here.”
* * * *
Since he’d first met her, what he should be doing—namely his job—had gotten tossed out the window. Now she had him actually considering the possibility that one of the CIA’s own might be responsible for the unthinkable.
Jase grabbed the jacket from the back of the chair and trudged out into the night while trying to shut out everything about Hannah that got under his skin.
The “borrowed” truck sputtered to life, in spite of the cold. He needed time to digest what she’d said. Alone.
Was it possible that someone from their side, part of their team even was responsible for ending Kate’s life? He shook his head, unable to let himself believe it.
Hannah had been right about one thing though. If someone within the Agency was brokering the arms, then they’d certainly know how to maneuver around any of the CIA’s attempts at uncovering their identity. They’d also have
the contacts necessary to procure massive amounts of weapons, even nuclear weapons. If it was one of their own, and The Foreigner had discovered the truth, then the chances were he was dead and with The Foreigner’s death, whatever information he might have that would help them to solve Kate’s murder.
When The Foreigner didn’t show that night, Kate would have started to put the pieces together. She’d have figured out the clue The Foreigner had given her. There would have been no other option but to take Kate out. She walked into a carefully orchestrated trap that night. She hadn’t stood a chance.
It had been hours since he’d last checked in. He wondered what might be taking place in Langley. He dug out his cell phone and called Travis.
“Oh man, am I glad you called. I’ve been debating on calling you for the last hour. Things are starting to heat up here.”
“Hold on,” Jase told Travis as he barely swerved in time to dodge a pothole in the snow covered gravel road. He had a bad feeling Travis’ news wasn’t going to make this night any better. “What do you mean? Has there been word on The Foreigner?”
“No, but we have uncovered a virtual arsenal of weapons in a raid last night near Kandahar. We had a team ‘in country’ that coordinated the raid along with squadron of marines.”
Jase reached the edge of town. He pulled over into an empty restaurant parking lot and stopped the truck. “That’s good news, right? Maybe we’re getting close to discovering the person Kate was supposed to have met that night?”
The time it took Travis to respond answered that question and ramped up the uneasy feeling in Jase’s gut twofold.
Jase heard a sound in the background that could have been a door shutting. “Yeah, except I was the one who gave the coordinates, and the team wasn’t supposed to raid that particular location. The location I called in was near Mazar-i-Sharif. It came off a tip from one of our assets. Only my tip turned out to be bogus, and all of the sudden the asset has disappeared into thin air. Jase, there’s no record of him anywhere. It’s as if I made him up or something to throw the team off, but he was in the system, documented as a trusted asset in the area before. I don’t mind telling you, I’m worried. I called the raid based on intel from him. Now he’s gone and someone erased his file.”