A Beautiful Lie (Playing with Fire, #1)

by Tara Sivec

  Joe was initially taken Hospiten Bavaro, the local hospital only a few short miles away from their resort. Once he was stabilized, they transported him a few hours away to the much larger Hospiten Santo Domingo. Garrett and Parker followed the ambulance the entire way and had made themselves comfortable in the waiting room after Joe went immediately into surgery.

  Garrett avoided asking Parker any questions about her father during the drive to the second hospital, not wanting to open up that can of worms until she was ready. Instead, he concentrated on getting an additional SEAL team to the Dominican as soon as possible and briefing Captain Risner on the status of events. Risner assured Garrett that he knew nothing about Parker’s father or his surprise visit to them. Garrett ended the call with an assurance that Risner would send back-up to them within the next few hours, and Garrett promised Risner that as soon as he found out more information about Parker’s father, he would call him.

  Garrett slid his cell phone into the pocket of his pants and walked across the waiting room lobby to Parker. She had her back to him, leaning against a marble column and staring out of one of the dark windows.

  Parker heard Garrett’s footsteps behind her and let out a huge sigh of relief when she felt his arms wrap around her waist and felt his chin rest on top of her head. She closed her eyes and turned in his arms, sliding her hands up his chest and draping her arms around his neck. Garrett leaned down and placed a soft kiss to her lips, pulling back far enough to look at her.

  “How are you doing?” Garrett asked, watching as Parker slowly opened her eyes to him.

  “Honestly? I have no idea,” Parker replied. “My father just showed up in the Dominican Republic, over two thousand miles away from his home, to tell me he works for the CIA, and then he’s gunned down right in front of me. It sounds even more insane when I say it out loud. What did your Captain say?”

  Garrett shrugged. “Pretty much what I expected. He knows nothing about Joe or why he would be here in the middle of our mission claiming he was CIA.”

  Parker pulled out of Garrett’s arms and began pacing in front of him.

  “How crazy would I sound right now if I tell you that I’m actually considering that what he said is true?” Parker asked.

  Garrett stuck his hands in his pockets so his arms wouldn’t feel so empty after Parker moved out of them and stared at her as she walked back and forth in front of him biting one of her nails.

  “Did you call Agent Richmond and see if he could verify anything?” Garrett asked.

  “Yeah, he didn’t answer. I left him a message,” Parker replied as she stopped pacing. “I left him a message this morning too when you were in the bathroom and told him I wanted to speak to him about Lacie. There was so much going on I forgot until just now that he never returned that call.”

  Garrett didn’t like the sound of that. He was pretty sure the CIA didn’t just ignore phone calls from one of their agents.

  “Do you think that bullet was meant for one of us?” Parker asked.

  “I don’t think so. There have been plenty of opportunities for whoever it was to take us out. Neither one of us were out in the open when the shot was fired. I was covered by the door and you were covered by your dad. Whoever made that shot meant for it to hit Joe.”

  Parker had already thought everything Garrett said on the drive over to the hospital. She didn’t know if she felt justified or more confused to hear him voice the same theory out loud.

  “If my father isn’t really with the CIA, never had me recruited as some misguided form of protection, then why in the hell would anyone want to shoot him?” Parker asked.

  “Maybe all roads really do lead back to Fernandez,” Garrett said with a shrug. “He knew we were getting too close, and he did something to scare us into going away.”

  Parker was shaking her head before he finished talking.

  “Fernandez is too smart for something like that. He’d know that shooting my father would only force me to work harder at finding out what was going on.”

  Garrett thought for a moment.

  “Someone that works for Fernandez has maybe gone off on his or her own. Maybe Fernandez did something to piss off the wrong person. Maybe if we do finally piece everything together, Fernandez won’t be the only one implicated when things go bad. You know people like him never do their own dirty work anyway.”

  Garrett and Parker both knew exactly who Garrett was referring to when he said it, though, neither one of them would say his name out loud.

  “He’s dead,” Parker whispered

  “As far as we know,” Garrett replied gravely.

  “There was a body. The remains were tested for DNA,” she tried to argue weakly.

  “Mistakes are made every day,” Garrett countered. “How many times during this trip have we uncovered something about him that we never thought in a million years could be true?”

  They were interrupted by the sound of footsteps tapping against the floor and looked over to see one of the surgeons they briefly spoke to when they first got to the hospital. He walked up to them and removed the surgical hat from his head.

  “Your father sustained a bullet wound to the back as you already know. The bullet ricocheted, causing significant damage to one of his kidneys, his spleen, and his gallbladder. We have removed them and repaired the damage the path of the bullet left as best we could. Right now we just need to keep him under observation and make sure he doesn’t get an infection. Obviously, the next twenty-four hours are critical. Luckily, the bullet missed his lungs, his spine, and any major arteries, but we won’t know the full extent of how his recovery will progress until he is awake.”

  Parker thanked the doctor and Garrett shook his hand. The doctor advised them to go back to their resort and get some rest, that there was no sense in staying at the hospital when it would be hours before the anesthesia would wear off and they could run more tests.

  Garrett went out to the parking lot to pull the car around to the front of the building while Parker gave their phone numbers to the front desk, instructing them to call her with any news.

  They decided to make the couple hour trek back to the resort instead of getting a room for what remained of the night close by. Parker knew she would be of more use back with the team then she would be at the hospital. There was nothing she could do for her father now except find out what the hell was going on and if he was telling the truth. She couldn’t do that at the hospital or in some run-down motel around the corner.

  Even though it was close to five in the morning, Parker tried calling Agent Richmond a few more times on the drive back, still with no answer. This disturbed her almost as much as her father showing up on her doorstep after ten years. Richmond always answered his phone, and if she had to leave a message, he'd call back within minutes. She often wondered if he took his phone into the shower with him. For him to be out of reach while she was in the middle of an assignment sanctioned by the CIA or not, was beyond unheard of.

  They made it back to the resort in record time and headed down the path that lead to their villa. As soon as they walked through the lobby and out the other side, they were stopped.

  “How’s your father, Parker?” Brady asked.

  “The same as when we left a few hours ago. I just called and got an update from the hospital,” Parker replied.

  “Were Cole and Austin able to find anything when they canvassed the area?” Garrett asked him.

  “Negative. But there’s something else we need to discuss first,” Brady told them.

  “I don’t care about anything else right now but finding the bastard who did this,” Garrett said angrily. “Just give me the status of the sweep.”

  Brady seemed a little irritated but he covered it up quickly. “Whoever it was covered their tracks extremely well. I did some surveillance of the palace while they cleared the area. There wasn’t any unusual activity there through the night. No questionable vehicles coming or going or anything like that. I made an anony
mous call to the local police to see if by some chance it was just a random shooting, maybe they had reports of shots being fired or other victims in the area, but there was nothing,” Brady explained. “But we need to discuss―”

  Garrett cut him off with a slice of his hand through the air. “Okay, keep checking with them just in case the reports come in late and have the guys do another sweep of the area as soon as the sun is up. They might find something in the daytime they missed in the dark,” Garrett told him as he grabbed Parker’s hand. They started to make their way towards their villa once again.

  After only a few few feet, Brady hurried to get in front of them, stopping them abruptly.

  “There’s something else you need to know before you get to your villa,” Brady said.

  “Whatever it is, can it wait a few hours?” Parker pleaded as she tugged on Garrett’s hand and they began walking again. “I’m dead on my feet and just want to close my eyes and not think about anything right now.”

  They walked away from Brady, but once again, he caught up with them, this time keeping pace beside them instead of trying to stop them.

  “It definitely can’t wait. There’s something that happened a few minutes before you got here.”

  Garrett and Parker continued walking while Brady attempted to stop them again by getting directly in their path.

  They easily stepped off of the path and onto the grass to go around him.

  Brady turned and spoke to their backs. “You need to be prepared for―”

  Brady was cut off by the sound of Parker shrieking and the smack of her hand across her mouth as they rounded the corner to their villa and stopped in their tracks.

  Garrett had been focused on getting Parker to the room and making sure she didn’t fall down from exhaustion. After Brady gave him the status report, he tuned out whatever else he had been trying to say. Brady’s insistence on stopping them bordered on annoying, and Garrett had been a few deep breaths away from turning around and hitting him.

  It made sense now - Brady trying to prepare them for what they were about to see, the fact that Fernandez never would have got his hands dirty and most likely had someone working for him, the conversation he had with Parker right before they left the hospital, and the doubts that had been floating around in his brain for days that he kept from her.

  Even with all of these facts piling up, he still had to blink several times and shake his head to make sure what he was seeing was real and not just a figment of his imagination or the product of too little sleep and too much excitement in the past forty-eight hours.

  He knew he didn’t imagine Parker’s scream. She had seen the same thing he did.

  A ghost, who sat in the chair by the door to their villa, was now rising to his feet slowly, with his hands up in the air, mirroring the same position Joe had just a few hours earlier when he’d shown up in the same spot.

  “It’s okay, Park. It’s okay, baby.”

  Parker had to swallow back the bile that rose in her throat and another scream that was threatening to let loose. She blinked back tears in an effort to make the vision in front of her clearer. She used to think about this possibility in the quiet of the night right before sleep overcame her. She would even dream about something like this happening and wake up thinking about how likely it could or couldn’t be.

  It was altogether different to have the product of those moments standing in front of you as real and as alive as the last time you saw him.

  Parker let her hand fall from away from her mouth and finally found her voice.

  “Milo?”

  Chapter Twenty

  The air was thick with humidity and rife with shock. Parker couldn’t tell if the sweat dripping down her back was from the temperature or her nerves. The man standing a few feet in front of her looked exactly like the man who had been her best friend during a time in her life when she desperately needed friends. He was the same man she had been prepared to love and cherish for the rest of her life. He was the same man who made her laugh, took care of her, and let her be her own person.

  He looked the same, aside from the facial hair, but he was vastly different from the man she used to know. You couldn’t tell by looking at him, but Parker had first-hand knowledge of all the things that were different. She had proof he was a liar and so far removed from the man she thought she knew, she could almost pretend like they were two different people.

  But they weren’t.

  Her best friend and the disgusting man she discovered as they delved deeper and deeper into the mission were one in the same.

  Frozen, just like she had been when she stood in the casket room of the funeral home and spent three hours trying to decide between solid mahogany wood with jewel-tone accessories and sienna bronze with European-style hardware until she finally curled up in the corner of the room and told Garrett she couldn’t do it because she wasn’t ready to say goodbye. She remembered the sickly sweet smell of the flowers surrounding the closed casket. Garrett had chosen the twenty-four by thirty-six black and white photograph of Milo propped up on an easel in the corner. The military report she was given showed, with ninety-nine point nine percent accuracy, the man sent home in a box was her fiancé.

  But then she remembered the photographs of Catalina Olivera lying in a dirty, dark alley after being beaten and raped. She remembered the testimony of a woman who saw Milo with Catalina, and many other girls over the years, coming out of hotel rooms while he was supposed to be home building a life with her.

  At some point Milo listened to Garrett’s warnings to not come any closer and had stopped where he was, his hands still in the air and a flash of fear in his eyes.

  The past and the present swirled through Parker’s mind, conversations and memories, lies and facts, all merged together until she finally understood that she wasn’t dreaming; Milo was alive and well and standing close enough for her to touch.

  And the fear she caught a glimpse of in his eyes moments ago was because of her, since presently she held her weapon with shaking hands and aimed it directly at his chest.

  “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t pull the trigger, you miserable piece of shit,” Parker growled.

  “Parker, put the gun down,” Garrett told her softly as he shuffled himself slowly in her direction.

  Garrett watched Parker struggle with what to do and wished he could just turn back the clock. He didn’t even know where he wished the hands of time could take them; he just knew anywhere was better than where they were right then.

  Garrett made it quietly to Parker’s side and reached out with his hand, wrapping it around hers.

  “It’s okay,” Garrett whispered in her ear as he gently pushed her hands down until the gun pointed at the ground instead of the man in front of them. Neither one noticed the same man clench his hands as he watched the tender exchange unfold in front of him.

  Garrett didn’t have any clue if they could trust Milo or what he was trying to prove by showing up, but he was certain that if Brady was aware of his presence and didn’t take him out immediately, there must be a good explanation for it. His team would never let a dangerous man anywhere near them if they could help it. Brady knew Milo had been there waiting for them, and instead of shooting him point blank or taking him into custody, Brady let him wait by their villa and tried to warn them that he was there.

  “I’m going to brief the new team that just landed, do you think everything will be okay now?” Brady asked Garrett.

  Garrett gave him a questioning glance, wondering the same thing himself. Brady gave Garrett a slight nod of his head in answer to his non-verbal question. Garrett dismissed him and pried the gun from Parker’s hands after he walked away.

  “Thanks,” Milo said to him.

  “I didn’t do that for you, asshole. Parker’s not thinking too clearly right now, and she might be a little irritated with herself if she killed you and wasn’t alert enough to watch while you suffered,” Garrett said with enough bite in his wor
ds, making Milo look away from him sheepishly.

  “Look, I know you guys have a lot of questions, and you have every right to be pissed off. Please, just give me a chance to explain everything,” Milo begged.

  “We planned your funeral. We mourned you. There is nothing you can say right now that could make up for that,” Parker said with scorn as she took a step towards him. “We know about the girls, about all of your sick trips here to the Dominican. Catalina Olivera was a child. Just barely sixteen years old. She had her whole life ahead of her.”

  Parker took another step in Milo’s direction until she stood toe-to-toe with him. Garrett stuck close to her side, still not one hundred percent certain of Milo’s intentions.

  “Everything about you is a lie and it makes me sick to stand here and look at you, alive and well, when you’ve left a trail of young girls in your wake. They'd still be here today if it weren’t for you,” Parker fumed, narrowing her eyes and clenching her jaw.

  Milo let out a sigh and looked at Parker sadly.

  “There is an explanation for all of that, I swear. I’m not the bad guy you think I am. And if we’re going to discuss lies, I think you had quite a big one yourself, Agent Parker,” Milo said softly.

  Parker’s hand flew out before he barely finished the sentence. Instead of the smack across the face she had given Garrett not that long ago, her fingers curled into a fist and her knuckles connected with his nose. The sound of cartilage shattering with the force of her blow made Garrett wince.

  “Son of a bitch!” Milo yelled as his hands flew to his nose and blood poured down the front of his face, dripping off of his chin.

  Parker stepped back and shook out her hand.

  “Jesus, Parker!” Milo said in a nasally voice as he tipped his head back and put pressure on his nose with one hand and tried to wipe the blood off of his lips with the other. “Garrett, can you please calm her down?”