Firestorm

by Rachel Grant

  “How is Aunt Kim?” she asked, referring to his wife. Kim Olsen had insisted on the honorific early in their relationship, and Savvy had been happy to indulge her. It wasn’t like her own aunts and uncle gave her any attention.

  She knew her relatives’ grief had been nearly as deep as her own, and their remote nature and distant location only exacerbated the situation, but still, it hurt. Aunt Kim had filled a void as much as Seth had. She’d probably call him Uncle Seth, except he was her boss now. There had already been talk of him playing favorites with her when he gave her the plum Djibouti assignment. But she’d worked her ass off to get here, and Seth knew she’d earned it.

  “She’s good and told me to give you a hug and tell you how proud she is of you.”

  Savvy smiled. “I picked up some colorful cloth for her the last time I was at a market in the city. I was going to mail it, but you can take it home to her.” Kim was a quilter whose designs were always based on the country and culture where the cloth came from.

  “She’ll be thrilled.” Seth cleared his throat. “You know this wasn’t an easy decision for me to make, Fr—Savannah.” That he’d nearly slipped was a sign of exactly how hard this was for him.

  She nodded. “I would hope not. Frankly, I’m feeling a little betrayed right now, Seth.” Her own words surprised her. She’d never spoken this way to him before. The words had slipped out. A sign she was at the edge of her control.

  The waiter arrived with her wine and his beer, forcing them to pause the conversation. She studied Seth’s face, looking for anger, and not seeing it. He looked regretful. Disappointed. But not mad.

  He took a sip of his beer, then leaned back in his chair, letting out a heavy sigh. “It was bound to happen at some point. You work in the same division.”

  “You said you wouldn’t assign us to go on ops together. You promised.”

  “What I promised was that I’d try not to assign you together. And I’ve done my best. But for this, he’s the best man for the job, and you are the best woman. Believe me, I ran through all the variables. Harrison Evers was the only option.”

  Except Harry made her sick. Literally. Her belly turned every time he was near. He tore at her ability to maintain calm control, destroyed her confidence in herself.

  She’d had her reaction to him under control when working at Langley, but she’d lost that mental protection during her months in Djibouti. She hadn’t been prepared to see him tonight, and she couldn’t look at the asshole without feeling degraded. Shamed.

  Her existence depended on her cool reliability, her unruffled, icy reserve as she did her part to give America an edge in the War on Terror, but she couldn’t draw upon her training when she was with Harry. He shattered her focus and her calm reserve. She felt revulsion for her own inaction and worried about other women who’d suffered at his hands. Her silence had left him free to assault others.

  At the crux of her self-loathing was the fact that she could have physically overpowered Harry but hadn’t out of fear for her CIA career. She hadn’t fought because she didn’t want to lose everything she’d worked so hard for from the moment she learned her family had died because of a suicide bomber.

  She also knew that she wouldn’t be in Djibouti now if she’d fought Harry or reported the assault to anyone other than Seth. But still, it gnawed at her, the fact that Harry had paid no price.

  “I’m sorry,” Seth said softly. “I considered pulling you from the op altogether—”

  “No,” she said sharply.

  “And that’s why I didn’t. So here we are.”

  She took a sip of her wine. “So here we are.” Seth was right. Cal couldn’t accompany her on this kind of op.

  Black op. Assassination. Deletion. Reset. There were a bunch of names and euphemisms given this type of assignment, but what mattered was that Jean Paul Lubanga was a clear and present danger to the fragile stability of Congo. This had been decided by minds far more knowledgeable and experienced than hers, and the order had been issued from the top.

  It was the perfect opportunity, with the man outside his country’s borders and spending several days with criminals who could shoulder the blame. And it certainly wasn’t like she flinched at the task. Lubanga’s quest for power had begun decades ago, when he used his eleven-year-old daughter to buy favor with a dictator.

  Seth reached across the table and took her hand and squeezed. “You can do this. By Saturday morning, you’ll be flying back here, and Harry will be on his way back to the US.”

  She gave him a smile and nodded. She could do this. More important, she would do this.

  She sipped her wine, and he drank his beer, and they slipped into the easy conversation of old friends who hadn’t seen each other in months. He shared office gossip she’d missed, retirements, marriages, births, divorces. There were several divorces. The job was hard on relationships.

  Seth had been lucky in finding Kim, who could put up with the long hours and secrecy. Savvy had never bothered to try to find someone who could handle the stress of being a covert operator’s spouse.

  It was nearing midnight by the time she and Seth said good night and she headed to her CLU. It was too late to knock on Cal’s CLU and tell him the official verdict. He’d heard Seth’s words in Barely North. The details could wait until morning. Especially considering she couldn’t give him details.

  Better to let him and Pax sleep. They would need to get up early for their regular job of training Djiboutians. Besides, she was too tired, too emotionally drained for one more hurdle tonight.

  She did feel better after spending time with Seth. It had been comforting to chat with a person who truly knew her. And not only that, but he was the only person who knew why she’d be so upset over being partnered with Harry.

  She reached her CLU and unlocked the door. She needed sleep but figured that would be elusive. Tomorrow, she would depart for Kenya on a mission to assassinate a high-powered Congolese minister, stuck in the role of sexual plaything while her rapist played her master.

  Cal crossed CLUville, heading for Savvy’s single unit near the end of a ground-floor row. He rounded the corner and came to a stop. The guy—Harrison—was approaching Savvy’s unit from the other direction. Cal stepped behind a vehicle parked in front of the row of CLUs. If Savvy let the Agency officer into her CLU, Cal would return to his own unit and speak with her in the morning.

  He was irked she hadn’t seen fit to update him tonight, but that didn’t mean he would wait around while she got it on with her coworker. Why else would the guy go to her CLU alone after midnight?

  The base was quiet, and Cal easily heard the knock on Savvy’s door. She was slow to respond, making him think she hadn’t been waiting up for Harrison. So maybe this wasn’t planned.

  The door opened an inch, then closed in the guy’s face.

  Cal grinned. Okay, that was more like it. He quietly slipped between vehicles, moving closer without drawing attention.

  Harrison pounded on the door. “Freya, we need to talk.”

  Freya?

  Cal tried the name in his mind, testing the texture, rhythm, and weight of it. It wasn’t close to what he’d imagined her name could be—not that he’d ever made a mental list, but if he had, Freya wouldn’t have been in the top thousand choices.

  But at the same time, he could see how it fit. If he remembered correctly, Freya was a powerful Norse goddess. Wife of Odin? Maybe.

  Savvy’s looks were more Italian than Norse, with long, straight dark hair and those big brown eyes. But then, it wasn’t a surname.

  Freya.

  He liked it.

  Savvy opened the door and stepped outside, closing the door behind her. “Jesus, Harry, are you just out of training?” she whispered. “You can’t call me that here.”

  “It worked to get you to come outside.”

  “You’re fucking with my ident security to score a point?”

  The asshole shrugged. “It’s not like we’re in Kinshasa.
We’re on a military base. Everyone here is on the same team.”

  “That you even say that tells me you’ve gotten too soft for this op.”

  “Is that the way you’re going to play this, Savannah?”

  The way he said the name was somehow unsettling. Like it meant something entirely different to him. And the way she reacted—it was as if she’d received a painful electric charge. But she didn’t do or say anything, which was completely unlike the Savvy he knew.

  It was as if the guy had just declawed her. She was defenseless.

  “Let’s go inside and talk,” he said.

  “No. Say what you need to say right here.”

  “What I need to say is classified, and you just objected to me saying your name out here—which isn’t top secret like our mission.”

  Our mission. It was official. Cal was out. Why the hell was he disappointed?

  “Then you can tell me on the flight, because you are not entering my CLU.”

  “On this mission, you’ll be playing my sex toy—this cover was your idea, by the way—and we’re going to be alone together for the better part of a week. You can let me inside your damn room.”

  She said nothing, just stared at him. The light mounted to the side of the building was just far enough away to leave her face in shadow. Cal wished he could see her eyes, because he had a feeling she was doing nothing to cloak her feelings.

  “Leave me alone, Harry. I need to sleep.” She turned and grabbed the knob to open her door.

  Quick as a flash, Harry grabbed her arm, swung her around, and slammed her back against the metal unit.

  Savvy could fight. What shocked Cal was that she didn’t. Earlier this evening, he’d watched her take down a sailor in less than a second, and before that, they’d sparred, and the blows she landed hadn’t been because he let her.

  Yet she did nothing to fight this man, didn’t even raise her arms when his hand circled her throat.

  “Listen, Savannah. You heard Seth say I’m in charge of this mission. You answer to me. You will do what I say, starting now. Or you can kiss your cush job in SAD good-bye. I helped get you where you are today, and I can bring you down just as easily. When I’m done with you, you’ll be lucky to be offered a job with janitorial in the CIA.”

  Earlier today, Savvy had ordered Cal to hit her and had been concerned when he couldn’t do it. Was that why this guy was brought in? Was this some sort of fucked-up test? Was that why she didn’t fight back?

  Her head turned, just a bit, and Savvy looked straight in Cal’s direction, her face catching the oblique light. He could see the stark look of terror in her eyes.

  Cal launched from his position and was upon the man in an instant. He pulled him back from Savvy and threw a punch at Harry’s jaw. His head snapped back, but he kept his feet and threw his own punch, which Cal managed to block.

  From there, it was a boxing match. Harry was a trained operator and furious, while Cal’s protective instincts had been triggered.

  Harry got in several solid blows, but he was no match for Cal. He went down and stayed down.

  “That was pretty fucking stupid, soldier,” Harry said through bloody lips. “I don’t know who you are, but you messed with the wrong guy. I can get you court-martialed.”

  Too late, Cal remembered the skipper’s zero-tolerance policy. This guy, like Savvy, could be exempt. But Cal was not.

  “You were assaulting a woman. I was defending her.”

  “I wasn’t assaulting her. I was prepping her for our mission, in which I’m her master and she’s my slave. This was all prep work. Isn’t that right, Savannah?”

  Again, he put that odd stress on her name.

  Cal turned to Savvy, who looked stricken in the stark halogen light. The doors of the surrounding CLUs had opened. They had an audience. MPs would be arriving any second. If Savvy didn’t back him up, he’d just tanked his military career.

  “Why do you think she wasn’t fighting me? You think Savannah James can’t defend herself? She can. She chose not to.”

  “Savvy?” Cal asked, his heart pounding as he waited for her to throw him under the bus.

  Her gaze darted from Harry to Cal and back again. Finally, she said, “Harrison Evers was assaulting me. And it wasn’t the first time.”

  6

  Savvy paced outside Captain O’Leary’s office. What had she done? She’d accused Harry of assaulting her twice. In bringing up the first, unreported, assault, she’d undermined her own case. Already, she could hear the questions. “If this is true, why didn’t you report him five years ago?”

  Because he’d held control over her career.

  She’d reported it to Seth, who at the time had been out of Harry’s chain of command. Seth had discussed it with her at length, and in the end, left it up to her if she wanted it entered into Harry’s file. Entering it into the record meant pursuing charges.

  Likely the fallout would have all been on her. She said/he said. That he’d penetrated her would go uncontested. Harry would claim she’d consented. He’d told her that to pass the training, she had to prove she would have sex to maintain cover and further the mission. He’d told her she had to consent or she’d fail. He told her she had no right to say no. No right to decide who was allowed to put their dick in her body.

  Even so, she’d said no. But she hadn’t fought him either, fearing submitting to rape really was part of the training, really was a requirement.

  After all, she was training to be a covert operator for the Special Activities Division of the CIA. They did expect their agents to use any means necessary. Sometimes up to and including sex.

  Seth had assured her sex with her trainer wasn’t a requirement to pass training. But he’d also acknowledged her “no” would be seen as ambiguous—she’d said the word but hadn’t fought him—and would play against her.

  She’d asked if making the allegation would end her career in the CIA. Seth said he didn’t want to believe that…but he couldn’t offer any reassurance either.

  And now here she was, five years later, making the allegation that could take her out of the game when she was on the cusp of an important mission. Lubanga was not only in her sights: she had orders to pull the trigger.

  She wasn’t a fan of assassinations. She thought it was more advantageous to use ball twisting to make these bastards the USA’s tool, but at the same time knew that practice had an expiration date. Despots didn’t like being beholden to the US for very long. In this instance, she had no doubt Lubanga had it coming, and would perform her duty without breaking a sweat.

  She’d do it for Zola, the girl who’d been raped by Mobutu on her father’s orders. Zola, who’d lost her beloved sister the same day.

  She stopped pacing and stared at the wall, seeing nothing but Zola’s face as she shared her nightmare with Savvy. What would happen to Lubanga if Savvy was pulled from this mission?

  She’d made the accusation to protect Cal. Plus it was true. But if Cal hadn’t been at risk, she never would have said a word. If Cal hadn’t stepped in, Harry might’ve raped her again—claiming it was preparation for the op—she’d have fought him this time, but she might not have said a word out of fear of risking the mission.

  What did that make her?

  She was victim-blaming herself and couldn’t seem to stop.

  Right now, Seth was in the base commander’s office, confirming her account of the rape five years ago. Thank goodness he was here now to back her story. He was the only person who could.

  Cal and Harry were both in the base’s small, temporary brig. What have I done to Cal?

  She’d been so stunned to see him in the darkness; she’d been unable to hide her terror. And when he’d attacked Harry, doing what she’d been too frozen to do, she’d been utterly grateful.

  Since she was seventeen, there hadn’t been anyone to defend her. She’d learned to defend herself and was fine with that until a man she couldn’t fight—not without losing everything she’d been
working toward since the day a suicide bomber killed everyone who mattered—assaulted her, and she’d discovered physical strength wasn’t enough. Not when men like Harry had power over her.

  So she’d worked her ass off to move up the ranks. Here, she’d found autonomy. If any man assaulted her here, she could fight back without fear of a crushed career. That wasn’t exactly true for the female soldiers, sailors, and marines based at Camp Citron. She was aware of her privilege and the benefits of being outside military hierarchy.

  She’d never expected Harry to show up at Camp Citron. She certainly hadn’t expected him to take over her op and then, mere hours later, assault her outside her CLU. But then, he’d never had any reason to think or believe she’d fight back. She hadn’t even called for help.

  He’d counted on that.

  He hadn’t counted on Cal.

  Her emotions were in a jumble she couldn’t mask. This wasn’t her. She was calm and cunning. She was the manipulator who twisted others, just like Cal said. She was never the one caught in the emotional whirl—at least, not outwardly.

  Now all her defenses were gone. She was worried about Cal. Worried about her job. Worried she wouldn’t be able to embark on this mission. In less than six hours, she’d gone from the top of her game to the lowest she’d been since the moment she’d decided not to pursue assault charges against Harry.

  The office door opened and out walked Seth and Captain O’Leary. The base commander stared at her for a long moment before saying, “Sergeant Callahan witnessed what appeared to be an assault?”

  She straightened her spine. “It didn’t just appear to be an assault, it was one. Harrison Evers pinned me to the wall with his hand on my throat.”

  “I heard you got in a fight with one of my sailors this evening. Are you claiming he assaulted you too?”

  “No, sir. I hit him. He said something vile about Brie Stewart, and if I didn’t take him down a peg, Chief Ford would have. I didn’t want to see him land in the same place where Sergeant Callahan is now because a foolish sailor was baiting him.”