by Unknown
A truth he hated so much it made him sick. “And there was no one else in the entire CIA who could do this job? It had to be you, made over?”
“Yes,” she said simply. Without, he noticed saying a word about what the assignment was. “And you have to believe me before I tell you why.”
A low-grade simmer of fury started in his blood. “Isadora is dead.” He ground out the words because as much as he hated saying them, he needed to believe it. He couldn’t fall for this. He couldn’t.
“Isadora’s death was faked on a rain-slicked road outside of Caibarién, Cuba, and had a body double placed there while I escaped by helicopter. There was no real investigation since Cuban officials, as you well know, are easily bribed.”
The simmer grew to a boil as anger flashed through him. If anyone else were to hear this story, they’d shake their heads and call it the stuff of spy movies. But Gabe had spent a lot of years in this world. He’d met plenty of guys—maybe not a woman, but who knew?—who’d changed the way they looked to use a special skill and infiltrate an operation. Some became sleeper agents and essentially disappeared in their target country. Some just left the agency and kept their new identity. Some killed themselves because this wasn’t fucking natural in any way, shape, or form.
But those kinds of life-changing assignments were taken by people who had nothing left to live for, not vibrant, gorgeous, brilliant linguists in happy relationships.
Not Isadora. His precious Isadora. Damn it.
“She is not dead,” she said quietly. “She is right here.”
“She might as well be dead,” he finally said, trying to ignore the flinch of pain his words caused her, because, too bad. Her pain couldn’t be as bad as his. “’Cause this”—he gestured up and down her body—“this model-slick bottle blonde with fake eyes and skinny hips isn’t the woman I loved.” He shook his head and got off the barstool, ready to erupt.
“I know I’m different, Gabe, but—”
“Different?” He spat the word back at her. “You’re…you’re…not Isadora.” He clung to that belief even as the tendrils of truth started wrapping their soul-sucking claws around his heart. “Isadora had heart and soul,” he said, hating that his voice cracked from the anguish those tentacles caused. “She had laughter in her smile and a spark in her eyes.” He stepped back with every word, feeling himself trying to get away from her, knowing he was hurting this woman—whoever she was—but right then he didn’t care because she wasn’t Isadora.
Even if she was or had been at one time, this bitch had taken his Isadora away, and he hated her for it.
“Gabe.”
“No!” He barked the word. “You’re not her! Isa had gentle green eyes and a ridiculously cute overbite and…and…no nail polish the color of a fire truck.”
She just looked at him like a prisoner taking the torture, refusing to break.
“She was soft and sweet and…” Goddammit, his eyes were misting over. “Mine,” he finished, turning away so he didn’t embarrass himself any further. “She was mine.”
He forgot his son and his mission and his common sense and did the only thing he could possibly do…he bolted. Marched through the room, out the door, and clomped down to the sand to get as far away from this phony, lying, conniving, threatening spy.
He hated her. Even if she was Isadora. He hated every fucking cell in her brand new body. He shot forward and started to run, his only need to escape this sickening impostor and mourn the woman he loved all over again.
Chapter Seven
Lila caught up with Gabe before he got twenty feet from the steps, slamming her hand on his back and pushing him so hard, he stumbled. Off balance, she threw them both to the sand and flipped on top of him before he had a chance to breathe.
He wasn’t even putting up a fight, or she’d be on her back in a second. Under her, Gabe stared up, shocking her with the redness in his eyes.
“Isadora couldn’t fight.” He barely breathed the whispered echo of his last words.
“At the risk of stating the obvious again, I’ve changed.” She used her full body weight to pin down his shoulders with her arms.
“It was her least favorite part of training.”
“It’s not so bad.” She pressed harder, straddling his hips. With her arms locked, her loose top sagged and gave him a bird’s-eye view of her breasts.
Lila rarely wore a bra and today hadn’t even bothered with a camisole.
And, of course, he looked, then straight up at her, yet another disappointment registering in his eyes.
“Breast reduction,” she said. “My boobs were too…memorable.”
He groaned a little and closed his eyes. “This is a fucking nightmare.”
Of course he’d think that. She sat up a little, releasing her hold on his shoulders but not a hundred percent ready to slide off this particularly wonderful saddle. How many times had she sat on Gabe like this, making love in one of their favorite positions?
Too many to count.
“I want to know the assignment,” he said.
“You actually were the first person to tell me about it.”
Disbelief flashed. “What?”
“Roger Drummand’s special snowflakes, as you called the detainees, set free in the United States of America.”
He sat up on his elbows, his eyes narrowing even more. “They canceled that program,” he said. “Someone got smart and realized it was one thing to send those nitwits back to their own countries to spy for us, but letting them live and work in the US was sheer madness.”
“They did cancel the project, but Roger never brought back the ones he’d already sent out to see if they could find domestically based terrorist cells. He was a little crazy.”
“And now he’s a little dead, thanks to Mal and my sister.”
“Which is how I got my release from the CIA.”
He looked hard at her. “Because of what happened in Cuba? Chessie and Mal did that when they brought him down for embezzling half a million bucks and letting Mal take the blame.”
She nodded. “Until then, he secretly kept those detainees-turned-US-spies alive and kicking, against all rules. My job was to infiltrate his organization, use what I knew against him, and hunt each of the former detainees down and ferret them out. It had to be someone who knew Drummand and the detainees, someone willing to change their looks.” At his look of raw incredulity, she added, “No one else had the language skills, the knowledge of the individuals, the insight into Drummand, the ability to transform myself, and an uncanny knack for flying under the radar. Nobody else could do it.”
He puffed out a disgusted breath. “Nobody else wanted that shit job.”
She couldn’t argue that. “I’ll give you that. It was a delicate, dangerous, dark operation that required tremendous sacrifice and took years to accomplish. But I saved lives, Gabe. Lives that would have been snuffed out like my mom and dad’s lives were. And that’s what mattered to me.”
He speared her with a look, pushing himself all the way up now, his wheels turning as he took that information, added it to what he already knew, and looked at her, maybe for the first time since she’d arrived, with a flicker of belief.
Finally.
“How exactly did you do that?”
She shook her head. “You know I can’t. Everything was top secret. Highest clearance imaginable.”
He leaned closer, inches from her face. “Baby, you better dish up a heaping, stinking pile of classified crap. Right this fucking minute.”
She looked down and plucked a tiny white shell from the sand, running a finger over its edges. “Drummand had managed to place six former detainees in the US. He did it rogue, because he couldn’t get CIA support, and monitored the program himself, with hopes of becoming the big hero of antiterrorism.”
“Now that is a chilling thought.”
“Precisely. After a complete physical transformation so he could never recognize me, I was brought into his department i
n DC as part of an international joint task force, a new agent from the MI6 who could speak a number of Middle Eastern languages, ostensibly to work on some unimportant, bogus project he supervised. Of course, it didn’t take long for him to grow dependent on me, which was the goal, and ask if I could translate some messages. Then I really made progress.”
“What kind of progress?”
“Three of the spies, it turned out, hadn’t completely flipped to side with the United States and were actively planning terrorist attacks. I was able to track them down and work with the FBI and our agents to stop the attacks.”
He considered that, and her, no doubt sizing up her ability to handle a job of that magnitude. “And what about the baby? You did all this as a single mother?”
“While I trained, I stayed in Cuba, where the agency has some secret facilities. It worked well. I stayed at a farm and worked there as a cover and made sure I trusted the people who took care of Rafe. After I…after Isadora died, Rafe went to live with Alana Cevallos, who adopted him and gave him a safe home. You remember that she worked at Guantanamo and had, at one time, reported to Drummand.”
“She was in on all this?”
She nodded. “That was my stipulation, and she was sworn to secrecy. That way, I had someone I could be in regular contact with and a way to see Rafe without having him be in the States until we were ready. When he was two, I was able to bring him home to live with me in DC.”
He sat very still, processing this. A non-CIA person would blow his stack or at least pepper her with a million questions. But Gabe knew the agency all too well.
“He’s reported dead,” he finally said. “That grave said his name was Gabriel.” His voice grew thick. “Chessie took a picture for me.”
She swallowed. “It was the only way to get him safely out of Cuba. His name is Rafe Wickham now.”
He closed his eyes like she’d shot a nine-millimeter bullet right through his heart. “How’d you explain that undercover?”
“Easily. The deeper I wormed my way into Drummand’s good graces and helped him, the more dependent he became on me. So, when I said I wanted to return to London because I’d left my child to be raised by a nanny, he immediately had me transferred full time into his operation and I moved Rafe to DC with me.”
His jaw clenched and unclenched as he listened. “Why didn’t someone—you or Crain or someone—tell me I had a child?” The break in his voice was like a hot poker through her brain.
“They cut me off from everyone and watched me very closely,” she said.
“Because they’re pricks like that,” he said.
“Every single piece of communication I had, made, or did was supervised by the CIA and many by Drummand himself. I tried a few times to send test comm, without saying anything specific, and every one was intercepted. I had to stop trying because what good would it have done? It would totally have blown my cover if my old pal from Gitmo showed up to claim his kid. Don’t even pretend you wouldn’t have stormed DC demanding him.”
“As I should.”
“So the last time I was in Cuba, when I got Rafe back, I had Alana plant that letter in the interrogation cell. It was my only hope.”
He gave the sand a frustrated flick, silent.
“Gabe, listen to me. I made my decisions and have to live with the consequences. But those decisions resulted in three foiled attacks: one at the Mall of America the day after Thanksgiving, one in the middle of the red carpet before the Oscars, and one on a fully loaded plane leaving Orlando. None of them publicized and not a single word leaked. You know this kind of counterterrorism work is not unusual. Hell, there’s more going on every day with ISIS.”
“Then why’d you quit?”
“We finished the job, Drummand is dead, and the CIA wants the whole thing to go away. Can you imagine the outcry if the media got hold of the fact that someone planted ‘flipped terrorist detainees’ on US soil? It’s one thing if they sneak in under our noses, but if we planted them there?”
He shook his head. “A shit explosion of the highest order.”
“Exactly. It’s Dex’s worse fear.”
“And God forbid Dexter Crain lose the presidential bid.”
She ignored the sarcasm, unsurprised by it.
“Did you get them all?” he asked.
She took a slow breath, knowing he meant the terrorists. “We think so.”
“You think so?”
She rubbed her head. “But since I’m not absolutely sure, I hoped you could help me start over somewhere else with a whole new identity.”
He backed up a little, blinking. “That’s really why you’re here? What about Rafe? You expect me to give him a new identity so you can haul him away from me?”
She swallowed and looked down at the shells and sand. “No. I brought him here to…give to you.” This time her voice cracked.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
He moved closer to her, close enough to put his hand under her chin and lift her face. “Now I know you’re not Isadora.”
She stared at him, knowing where he was going with this.
“Because that woman would never give up her child.”
“She would to keep him safe.”
“He’s not safe?” he demanded.
“He is. Right now, he’s in a secure home with a trustworthy Secret Service agent acting as his bodyguard. But…” She turned away, shame and guilt making it impossible to look at him.
“But what?”
“I just want you to have your time with him, okay? Do you believe that?”
He smiled. “You just want that? What was it you called that, a linguistic tic?”
“And a little more proof that I’m not lying.”
“Oh, you’re lying,” he said. “I don’t know why or how much or even what parts of your far-fetched story, but you are lying.”
She sure was.
Chapter Eight
Dexter Crain closed his eyes, blocking out the rolling, snow-covered hills of western Pennsylvania and the sounds of laughter and Christmas carols emanating from the family room. He didn’t want to be in there when the call came in and have to excuse himself to take it.
He had a feeling it would be bad news.
All he wanted was for the whole operation to be over. For years, he’d lived with the tension that this potential land mine could blow up, and the closer he got to the nomination, the more deadly that explosion could be.
But all of the flipped terrorists were detained or dead now. Drummand had graciously put a bullet through his own head. Even Lila, who’d worked the hardest and sacrificed the most, had been released from the CIA and had assured him she would be disappearing with her son, taking their secrets with her.
He hoped. She was the only real thread still dangling that could turn into a rope to actually strangle him.
But when he received a text ordering him to stay near a safe phone and available all day, his heart had grown heavy. Had the media gotten wind of the project? Was someone writing a tell-all that would bring him down?
This thing had to end.
So he listened to the happy noises from the holiday scene unfolding in his ten-thousand-square-foot McMansion and prayed he didn’t lose it all in a scandal that could end his career. His kids, his grandchild, and his dear wife.
Anne would be heartbroken to give up that dream of the White House.
“We’re ready for the annual picture.” Anne’s voice pulled him from his reverie, making him turn from the picture window to see the petite woman with a sleek black bob, not a hair or jewel out of place, warmth and hope in her golden-brown eyes. “It’s hardly a family Christmas picture without you.”
There was just enough of a note of sadness in her voice that he let guilt squeeze his chest. He’d been so preoccupied and distant. He knew he’d stretched her patience thin, and she was beginning to think that it wasn’t a dark operation that fell under his purview that had him spending so much time
whispering on the phone or in secret meetings in undisclosed locations.
And he couldn’t blame her for assuming the worst, even though she’d be so wrong.
“I’m waiting for a call,” he said, holding up the cell phone—the untraceable one, of course. “It’s a CIA issue. Classified and urgent.”
“I see.”
“Anne. Lives are at stake. You know the world we live in and the role I play.” Actually, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee shouldn’t be playing this role at all, but she knew very little about his work, and he liked it that way.
“When you’re done, then?”
Before he answered her, the device in his hand hummed. “Here’s the call,” he said, holding up his phone. “Get everyone a drink, and I’ll be there in just a few minutes.”
“Dex, I—”
“Hello?” A woman’s voice came through the speaker he must have accidentally touched.
Anne’s eyes widened like she’d been slapped.
Dexter turned around, thumbing the phone to get it off speaker. “This is Senator Crain,” he said.
“Can you hold for Director Hollings, Senator?” Of course it was an executive assistant placing the call, but Anne didn’t know that. Now her worst suspicions seemed confirmed.
And so were his if the director of the CIA himself was on the line. On Christmas Day. This was not good.
“Yes, of course.” He walked down the hall to his study, his mind spinning over the possibilities. A number of CIA higher-ups had been putting pressure on him for some time now to get Lila Wickham out of the picture and out of the country. She knew too much about programs that could blow up in the face of the intelligence committee and cost too many people their jobs…or the jobs they wanted to get.
Was that why the director was calling? He could assure him she was doing just that. As long as a reporter hadn’t gotten too much information about this damn operation.
In his office, he closed and locked the door behind him just as the booming voice of Jeffrey Hollings came through.
“I’d like to say Merry Christmas, Senator, but I’m afraid it’s not.”