Hard to Trust

by Wendy Byrne

  "I've got her at my place."

  "This operation is so hush-hush they haven't even told me what happens when you retrieve her, other than expecting you to keep her safe." Jennings chuckled. "Maybe they didn't expect you to be successful so quickly."

  "Success is a relative term in this case. Somebody's after her. They seem like CIA types, but she keeps babbling about the Russians. It's all very weird, and I'm not sure what to make of it yet." He mulled through the options, thinking out loud more than looking for input. "You sure the people who hired The Alliance were CIA?"

  "They used their letterhead, and the check came from them, so that's my assumption."

  "All I know is somebody's after her, and they're playing for keeps."

  "Who knows? Maybe they're tied to whatever happened in Afghanistan. Has she told you anything about what went down there?"

  "Are you kidding? I can barely keep her from kicking my butt."

  Jennings chuckled. "I guess you're not using that Shaw charm you're so famous for."

  "Either that or she's immune."

  "That would be a first." Jennings cleared his throat. "Are you secure at your place?"

  "For the time being, but I have no doubt those guys will come looking for us. They might not know who I am right now, but chances are it won't take them long to figure it out."

  "What's your plan?"

  "I need more information. I need to know who's involved before I can figure out what role she has in the whole thing."

  "Where is she now?"

  "In my spare room, passed out cold after a couple of days of sleep deprivation, with the aid of a Tylenol PM chaser. Yep, that's how I roll with enemy combatants."

  "Okay, now you're exaggerating."

  "I'm telling you, she seriously kicked my butt, or at least tried to. I'm secure enough to admit the woman has skills."

  "All I know is they want her safe and hope you can dig up some information before they move on to the next step."

  "What the hell does that mean? This is the frickin' CIA. It's not like they have scruples or anything."

  "They're a client. I'm not privy to their reasons."

  Jake could sniff out doublespeak a mile away, and Jennings was doing it right now. "They want her for something specific. Something she knows, or something they think she knows. They don't want to protect her. Whoever they are, she's fair game as far as they're concerned. I'd stake my life on that."

  "Don't be foolish, Jake. From what I hear, she's good at sucking people in with her lies. She fooled even her best friend and ended up getting him killed."

  He'd known this woman for less than twenty-four hellacious hours, but he still didn't think she was some sort of Mata Hari. She was vulnerable and scared and beautiful, which definitely put her in the running as premier candidate for a woman he was most likely to get fooled by.

  "Jake, don't mess around with this. They told me in confidence they believe she might have killed two other agents on her last mission. From what I hear, neither one of them saw it coming."

  "I've gotta go, Jennings. I'll check in with you later."

  He peeked into the bedroom and found her sound asleep. For a minute or two he thought about chaining her to the bed to make sure she didn't run away while he slept. He was exhausted. But he didn't want to be naïve about the situation.

  Failure wasn't an option. Maybe others who had brothers close in age, like him, suffered from the same malady. Being constantly compared to Max when he'd been under Petrovich's tutelage hadn't benefited him. For a while he and Max were distant, going months without talking, even though they'd been free of Petrovich's control for a long while. The competition between them had always been fierce, with Max winning most times. Not measuring up had always been the chip on Jake's shoulder he could never dislodge.

  When he joined The Alliance, Jennings had asked with a hopeful look in his eye about Max. When Jake said that Max had decided on a different path, the disappointment was evident in Jenning's eyes. His older brother's skill set had been legendary, with Jake perpetually coming in a distant second in everything from marksmanship, to lock picking, to something as simple as a foot race.

  Jake brushed off the feelings of inadequacy. Thinking about past mistakes was the last thing he needed right now. Instead, he used his thumbprint to activate the alarm system, just in case she woke up and got any brilliant ideas about striking off on her own.

  A little bit of sleep would help keep him sharp. He had the distinct feeling he was going to need it.

  * * *

  Tessa yawned and moved around in the soft bed. For a minute or two she fantasized she was safe and sound at home, and everything had been a bad dream. When the traffic noise from below filtered through the window, she realized she wasn't in her home in Alexandria anymore.

  Outside it had started to turn dark. She stumbled out of the bed and into the adjoining bathroom. From the cultured marble floor, to the steam shower, to the vessel sink everything about the room spoke of wealth. Based on the location of the apartment alone, she knew his gig at The Alliance paid well.

  Glancing around the room, she spotted her backpack on the dark wood dresser and walked over to retrieve her laptop. She spotted the Post-it Note affixed to the zipper indicating his Wi-Fi password, and couldn't help but smile. The guy anticipated well. She'd give him that. Not that she could ever trust him, but at least he was attending to her creature comforts.

  But she needed to know more about him to help her make up her mind about what to do next. While she'd never trust him totally, she had to know if he was going to be an asset or a liability.

  If anybody could find more information, it would be she. Most databases had vulnerabilities, and she intended to dig until her curiosity was satisfied. She needed to find out more about Jake Shaw before she even thought about sticking around.

  After about an hour, she hadn't found a thing besides the simplest of information. His name and address, as well as those of his siblings. Nothing about where he gained a skill set that qualified him to work for The Alliance, only that he and his siblings—Maxim (Max) and Sabrina—had immigrated to the US about eight years ago.

  Holy crap. She'd been so distracted thinking about Jake she forgot about the logical assumption that whoever was after her could be after Nick as well. It might be a tenuous connection, but if it had something to do with Afghanistan it would stand to reason he'd be in danger, too.

  Her hands shook as she texted Nick. She tapped on the phone and anxiously waited for a reply. In Manhattan. How about if I come by? T.

  Nothing.

  She drew in a breath and tamped down the fear threatening to overtake her common sense. Knowing Nick, he might not be answering, choosing to ignore her. Last time they'd talked, he'd been pretty annoyed with her, so that was a possibility.

  He didn't live far away. He'd be less likely to turn her down if he knew she was right in town. Assuming he wasn't dead.

  She brushed down the thought as it surfaced. This was her problem, not his. But that didn't mean he wasn't touched by the same thing. Maybe she'd seen something she couldn't remember, but nobody knew she couldn't remember. Still, she knew something had happened. While the pieces didn't fit together yet, it lingered in the recesses of her mind. Her brain wouldn't kick-start the memory.

  Nick was a product of the same CIA indoctrination. Maybe he could figure out this whole storm of trouble she was in.

  Maybe she'd show him the message in person and deal with his dislike for her methods. But the memo mentioned Backgammon was back in the game. What did that mean? Were they setting up a sting using Alex's former contacts? She mulled that possibility around her head. But would that information be worth killing her over? Even though Nick had acted like a total dweeb when she'd talked to him the other night, she had more trust in him than she did Jake, a perfect stranger. But Nick wasn't responding to her message.

  She chewed on the nail of her index finger and tried to keep the surge of paranoia at ba
y. Patience had never been one of her strong points. The Farm had been intense and kept the three of them on their toes, never knowing whom to and whom not to trust. She didn't understand it at the time, but later figured out they'd prepared her well for a life filled with uncertainty and watching her own back. Of course, that fed into her paranoia perfectly.

  After waiting for five minutes without a reply, she knew she couldn't wait any longer. Getting out seemed to be the best option for the time being. A known enemy was always preferable to an unknown one.

  Peeking into his bedroom door, she spotted Jake sleeping, fully dressed, on top of the bed. He commandeered the bed like he seemed to commandeer everything else. His arms and legs were flung wide, covering nearly the width of the bed, while snoring filled the air.

  For a minute or two she felt kind of bad. He'd been good to her so far. Saved her butt back in Alexandria. But early on she'd learned she could only help herself.

  No doubt he wouldn't be sleeping so peacefully if he worried she might be able to escape. She spotted the blinking light and easily found the alarm system hidden inside the front closet. It was trickier than the normal run-of-the-mill alarms. It had a fingerprint-driven mechanism to both disarm and arm, which had her stumped for a second or two. This wasn't the CIA's sophisticated eye reader, so she should be able to lift a reasonable print from the coffee cup he'd been using, transfer it onto tape, and then use that to deactivate the machine. The worst that could happen was half the building would be awakened by an obnoxious noise.

  Less than five minutes later, she had it disarmed. Piece of cake.

  * * *

  Jake got out of the shower and pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. "Tessa."

  Nothing. Not a sound.

  His shoulders tightened as he walked toward her room. Why did he think he could trust her?

  He'd become complacent. In a strange city, with the bad guys breathing down their necks, he figured she'd cling to him. But he'd overestimated her need for independence. He should have figured that with her background, she'd feel the need to strike out on her own.

  Undecided whom he might be angrier at, her or himself, he slipped into his boots and yanked on his coat. He naively thought she'd fallen for his charm. Instead she'd been pretending.

  At least he'd planned for this contingency and inserted a needle-sized tracker in the interior of her backpack. That would be assuming she didn't find it first and destroy it.

  He grabbed his go bag and threw in an AR-15 pistol, a couple rounds of ammo, a flashlight, some flexi-cuffs, and a first aid kit. As he walked out the door, he turned on his phone and accessed the program to track her progress. While berating himself would serve no good purpose, he couldn't help but think he should have put a little more Tylenol PM in her drink.

  From what he could tell, it looked like she was on the Lower East Side where her friend Nick Stamos lived, and was still moving. The guy had been in Afghanistan with her when everything went down. It would make sense that she might want to give him a heads-up if she truly believed the people after her were somehow connected to that attack. But why not call him, or send him a text? Why go there in person? He grimaced. There were only a few reasons, and none of them were good.

  On top of being a potential murderer, the woman was a pain in the ass. She didn't want to be helped, didn't want to be rescued, and did everything in her power to piss him off. As soon as he tracked her sorry ass down, he was going to call Jennings and tell him he wanted no part of this assignment.

  He'd been played. So played it wasn't even on the too-stupid-to-live radar.

  You still haven't figured it all out, have you, Jacov? Petrovich's words echoed in his head, mocking any progress he might make.

  He hailed a cab. Tracking her progress while they wove through the busy streets at nearly midnight was easy with the state-of-the-art device he'd installed. Unless, of course, she'd found it and attached it to a dog or something.

  What about this Nick guy? Was he a former lover? A friend? A partner in her crimes?

  Once again, he'd fallen into a trap. Tessa Graham, the woman who had fooled him into doing something utterly and completely stupid.

  Trusting her.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Tessa's indecision and fear cost her a few precious moments. Not knowing her way around Manhattan cost her a few more. But her drive to be safe and with someone she trusted seemed to overshadow any misgivings she might have. Okay, she didn't totally trust Nick, and he was being a pain, wasn't answering his phone or responding to the text she'd sent him, but at least she knew him and recognized all his foibles. Even if she felt the tiniest bit guilty about leaving Jake in the lurch with a compromised security system.

  Despite the traffic, the trip didn't take long. She readjusted the contents of her backpack along the way, searching for something she might be able to use in a pinch. Just in case. On hyper-alert, she felt a need to watch her back. Something she was always aware of, but she felt like when she wasn't on assignment that she wasn't as vigilant. Except now everything in her life had suddenly morphed into a twenty-four seven combat situation.

  Over the last couple of days she'd learned to assume the worst and be proactive. She could only hope it wasn't a result of the PTSD the CIA shrink had warned her about. Nope. She shook her head. It was not her imagination that several men broke into her townhome with the express purpose of causing her harm. She also wasn't imagining things when Jake Shaw rode up on his white horse saying he'd rescue her.

  Pfft. As if.

  Gun. Check. Extra round of bullets. Check. C-4. Check. Her laptop with everything she'd saved from every assignment she'd been on, embedded and protected so that anyone putting in the wrong retrieval key would automatically destroy the material. Of course, she had it saved out in the cyberspace world as well, but retrieving that would be a shot in the dark by anyone other than her.

  The part that didn't make sense was why the CIA would cover up and pretend Alex was dead. And why did the memory of Alex's words that prevented them from killing her in Afghanistan keep knocking around her brain? And what in the hell did it have to do with Russians? When she'd blurted that out to Jake, it was like someone else had taken over her speech function momentarily. It came out of some reptilian part of her brain she didn't recognize.

  Before she had the time to ponder the matter any further, the cabbie stopped in front of Nick's building. After paying, she got out and approached the door. The lock on the downstairs entrance prevented admittance except by key or being buzzed in. She punched in his number and listened as the phone continued to ring until voicemail picked up. Undeterred, she held down the buzzer and tried to annoy him enough so that he'd have no choice but to respond. But that didn't work either. When ten minutes had elapsed without any response, sweat beaded on her upper lip, and her heartbeat raced.

  She drew in a shaky breath and forced herself to move on to Plan B. And think positive.

  Maybe he'd gone out? Unlikely, given his propensity toward being a recluse, but anything was possible.

  Everything in her itched to get inside, but she needed to be cautious. Given the steady stream of pedestrians, using her file to pick the lock might raise attention. Patience. Sooner or later someone would open the door.

  She tried to appear casual, even while everything in her wanted to scream as she waited not-so-patiently for an opportunity to present itself. Finally a group of women barreled out the door looking like they had primped for a night of clubbing. She held the door for them and muttered, "Thanks, keys at the bottom of my purse." Without giving them much of an opportunity to see her face, she charged up the steps, making it to Alex's apartment on the third floor in less than a minute.

  She hit the landing slightly winded, but it had more to do with nerves than exertion. A tingly sensation tracked down her spine. She glanced at her watch—a little before midnight. Two apartments lined either side of the hallway, one facing the street, the other facing the building behind. She'd been there b
efore and knew Nick's place faced the street.

  But it was the complete and utter silence that made her fingers tremble and her knees go weak. That and the nauseating roll in her stomach forewarning of trouble.

  The hairs on the back of her neck stood at attention while dust swirled around the perimeter of the tent. Having a hint of a breeze might stave off the stream of water coursing down various parts of her body.

  Not only was she sweating her ass off because Alex thought she could get Amir to relax and tell her some juicy tidbits, the guy hadn't made so much as a sound. She had to wonder if the guy could even talk.

  Was he deaf? Mute? Based on his lack of response, she had to wonder.

  A sound from outside filtered inside. Amir got even twitchier. Maybe he wasn't deaf after all. It sounded like a camel nuzzling to her.

  The desert winds stilled. The groaning and bleating of the camels came to an abrupt halt as the whiff of something intangible but sinister trailed in the air.

  She moved her hand from the table to the gun she kept strapped to her leg. A tingle settled in the curve of her spine, setting off a series of pinpricks up her skull as she removed her gun from its hiding spot as discreetly as possible.

  The winds started up again, making the sides of the tent vibrate, like the prop department had suddenly turned back on the industrial-sized fan. Sand blew into the tent, swirling about the confines. Maybe there was an uptick in Amir's skittishness, because despite the mundane-ness of the moment, something set off her radar. She launched herself over the table, bringing Amir to the ground with her. Seconds later a bullet tore through the side of the tent while she and Amir wrestled for control along the sand-covered floor.