by Misty Evans
“And yet, here we are, some of the brightest minds in the United States, along with the best hackers, and a highly-trained undercover operative who knew Agent Hayden quite well from my understanding, and yet, we have no idea where the man is.”
“Is there a question in there somewhere?”
The slightest movement of her lips suggested she was once more amused. “When did you meet Elliot Hayden?”
What did this have to do with finding him? “We went through the Farm together. We were paired up for a couple of trial run missions, discovered we worked well together, and our teachers agreed. The Agency decided to use us as a couple for our first mission after we graduated. The mission was a success and we were kept together to continue as partners.”
The man at the fireplace straightened from his spot. “The Agency doesn’t normally use partners in the field. You didn’t think it odd that they kept the two of you together as a team?”
True, most agents worked alone, but it wasn’t written in stone. “I’m sorry, who are you?”
“You can call me Zeb.”
Which explained nothing. Ruby spoke to Beatrice. “What exactly is Zeb’s role here?”
Beatrice didn’t miss a beat. “He contracts for me.”
Doing what?
What else? He wasn’t military, and Ruby doubted he was a hacker. So that left operative.
Former operative anyway. The wrinkles on his face told her he was well past his prime and the way he smiled at her suggested he knew how to kill her quietly in at least a dozen ways.
She smiled back, letting him know she could take him any day. “Elliot and I had good chemistry together and our skills complemented each other. The DO was once an operative himself and knows how to exploit his agents’ skill sets. That’s all.”
“Well,” Beatrice said, pushing herself to her feet. “I suspect your director—whose renegade reputation in the field is well-known in certain circles—selected you in particular to work with Agent Hayden.”
“Who, by the way,” Zeb interjected, “was on the Agency’s payroll three years before he went through the Farm with you. He worked for them for two years, was recruited by National Intelligence for something we don’t yet have intel on, and then magically appeared back at the Farm for new agent training at the same time you showed up.”
Ruby blinked. “What are you saying?”
“The Agency lied to you,” Beatrice said. “Elliot Hayden was placed into the Farm, into your world, on purpose.”
Seconds passed and Ruby heard her pulse loud in her ears. “Why?”
“We don’t know,” Zeb said, “but we suspect all of this with Hayden, Nelson, and James, is tied back to that reason, whatever it is.”
Ruby turned away, adrenaline pumping in her veins. None of this made sense. Elliot had lied to her, more than once, it appeared, but her boss had lied to her as well?
Either that, or Zeb and Beatrice were full of shit.
She whirled back to face them. “I want to see your intel on Elliot.”
Beatrice nodded, no surprise on her features. She withdrew a tablet from a black bag resting on the couch and held it out to Ruby. “You might want to sit down.”
Stomach churning, Ruby hesitated. Whatever was on that tablet might change her life forever. Change who and what she trusted.
She reached for it and punched on the power button.
Thirty seconds later, it was a good thing she was standing in front of the couch. Her legs gave out and she dropped into the cushions, speechless.
JAX WAS LOSING his mind waiting for Beatrice to get done interrogating Ruby.
Because that’s what it had to be, an interrogation. Why else had she insisted he stay outside? Did she not trust him to give her all the details or tell the truth about what was going on?
“What the hell are they doing in there?” he mumbled to Hunter.
The man was a statue, feet wide, hands folded in front of him. “Getting answers, I imagine.”
“Answers about what? I told Emit what happened, that we followed Hayden from a GPS unit Ruby had put on the guy. What’s the big, hairy deal?”
“Not about that. I believe Beatrice is trying to figure out Agent McKellen’s background and her relationship to Hayden.”
“Her relationship? They were partners. That’s no secret.”
“Um-hmm.”
Jax stopped pacing and faced Hunter. “What does that mean?”
Hunter met his gaze. “I was agreeing with you.”
“Your tone suggested you weren’t. Like there was something more between Ruby and Hayden.”
“Was there?”
“Fuck, no. She thinks of Hayden as a brother, that’s all.”
Hunter nodded. “I wasn’t suggesting it was a sexual relationship.”
“Then what are you suggesting?”
At that moment, the door opened and Zeb’s ugly mug popped out. “Jaxon, get your Cro-Magnon ass in here.”
“About time,” Jax groused.
He and Zeb exchanged back slaps and Jax let out a relieved sigh when he saw Ruby sitting on the couch.
And then he saw how pale she was and a spurt of anger hit his blood. What had Beatrice said to her?
Clenching his fists, he marched over to where Beatrice sat in the window seat. “What’s going on? Why are you harassing Ruby?”
Beatrice rose, and even though she was considerably shorter than him in her sensible, low-heeled shoes, she cut him down to size with her steely gaze. “First of all, lose the attitude, Jaxon. I’m on your side and I’m doing my best to protect you and Agent McKellen. Secondly, sit down and shut up or I’ll have Hunter throw you out on your ass and turn this investigation over to Shinedown.”
Hunter, now standing inside the doors, gave him a friendly wave and a grin.
Bastard loved a good fight.
So did Jax.
Unfortunately, Hunter had superior fucking everything. No one could beat the guy at hand to hand. Or anything else. Jax had already tried. Miles and Colt had too. In fact, the three of them had ganged up on Hunter and still been handed their asses.
“It’s okay, Jax,” Ruby said. Her voice sounded small and hollow. “Beatrice has done me a giant favor by uncovering the truth about Elliot—and my job.”
“The truth?”
“Have a seat, Jax,” Beatrice instructed again. “I’ll let Ruby fill you in.”
Ruby cleared her throat and looked back down at the tablet in her lap as Jax sat next to her on the couch. “It seems Elliot is—was—actually working for National Intelligence.”
Okay, so that was interesting, but not the end of the world, so why was Ruby acting so gutted? “Doing what?”
“Intelligence collection. Military intelligence specifically.”
Again, an interesting revelation, but not earth-shattering. Goddamn spies were always running undercover ops on top of undercover ops. “So Hayden went from NI to the CIA. What’s the big deal?”
“That’s what we’re trying to hash out,” Zeb said. He plopped into a recliner and put his feet up. “He didn’t go from NI to the CIA. The CIA originally recruited him, then NI plucked him from the CIA ranks and gave him a job working in their bowels, possibly with direct links to Homeland. Somewhere along the line, Homeland took him from NI and inserted him back into the Agency as a new agent in Agent McKellen’s class. We believe they purposely hooked him up with Agent McKellen, but we don’t know the why of that either.”
Beatrice shifted, as if uncomfortable, in the window seat. One hand rested on her stomach. “What we strongly suspect is that Hayden was running duel missions on the overseas operations he shared with Agent McKellen. On the surface, he was working legitimate, Agency-approved missions, but underneath that, he was secretly running a mission for NI under the direction of Homeland.”
“Moroccan 5,” Ruby mumbled.
Hunter moved away from the door, producing a bottle with a thick, pink substance in it. “Drink,” he said to Beatric
e. “You’re getting dehydrated.”
Had to be Beatrice’s favorite—a fruit smoothie. She took the bottle, sipped. “What about M5?”
“From the moment we graduated from the Farm, that was our target—taking that group down and bringing them into custody to be interrogated. The CIA knew the M5 were front soldiers for a much larger terrorist group and the plan was to infiltrate that group and bring it down.”
“Mohammed Izala’s group?” Beatrice asked.
Ruby nodded. “I’m not sharing anything here that you couldn’t find out on your own, and since my career with the Agency is pretty much over anyway, I’ll tell you what I know. Izala grew up under Saddam Hussein’s regime. He’s suspected of being a distant relative, as you probably know, and saw himself as the next great leader in the Middle East. When bin Laden became a superstar, Izala saw him as competition, but there were advantages to staying in the shadows. He studied bin Laden, learned what not to do as well as what to do to hurt America and their allies.”
“He stayed out of the limelight,” Zeb said, “building a multi-layered, guerrilla army.”
“M5 was quick, agile, and highly effective at staying under the radar. Instead of broadcasting executions and sermons on YouTube, and recruiting on Facebook, they did things the old fashioned way, making them much harder to track.” Ruby rubbed one edge of the tablet in her lap. “They stayed on the move, hit their targets fast, got out just as fast, and disappeared.”
“Like SEALs,” Jax added.
“Like SEALs,” she agreed. “Elliot and I spent several years tracking them, and for a long time, we believed the group kept changing, evolving, morphing. After each mission, one or two of the members would change. They’d go back to Izala’s headquarters or underground and others would take their place. It was like chasing a ghost. We’d get a lead on one of them and they’d disappear.”
Zeb sat forward. “Tell us about Al-Safari.”
“After we’d been chasing our tails for three years, the group seemed to stabilize. We were able to trace the same five members to several attacks over a three-month period. Al-Safari was one of the men in the group. We strongly suspected he was their leader.” Ruby told the story she’d shared with Jax earlier, then added. “I had no knowledge that Elliot had turned Al-Safari into an asset until the other night when El confessed that to me.”
“You believed Elliot was innocent of shooting the man, correct?” Beatrice asked.
“I did.” Ruby sighed. “Now, I’m not so sure.”
“Did you have another assignment that went beyond stopping M5?”
Ruby paused, seeming to choose her words carefully. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
Beatrice sipped her smoothie. “Sure you do.”
Jax’s head was getting tired from the volleying back and forth. “Well, I don’t.”
Ruby’s lips screwed up for a moment. “My end goal was always the apprehension of Mohammed Izala. Chasing M5 and shutting them down was imperative, but my ultimate assignment was Izala. My boss knew with my…looks…I could open doors Elliot never would. The other night, Keon James told me Izala was coming for him. For me, too.”
A boil started in Jax’s blood, just thinking about Ruby using her feminine charms to get close to a terrorist. It was the same feeling he’d had the other night at the club watching her flirt with the guard outside Nelson’s private party. “Why didn’t you tell me that earlier?”
“Izala is somewhere in Northern Africa, possibly in the Middle East.” She looked completely unconcerned. “He’s not my biggest issue at the moment.”
Jax bit his tongue. She was right, and yet, the omission sat like a day-old burrito in his stomach.
Apparently, Beatrice didn’t much care for the omission either, but they were dealing with a spy. Secrets came with the territory. “Did Agent Hayden know Izala was your target?”
Target? Whoa. Jax shot Ruby a look. “As in you were supposed to hunt down and kill him?”
“Not exactly.” She looked a bit skittish of a the idea of sharing what was classified information. “I had verified intel the night we were in Marrakech that Izala was just outside the city in Ben Guerir. My secondary mission after we picked up Al-Safari from the Moroccans was to confirm Izala’s location.”
“And do what with him?” Jax said.
“Your SEAL team wasn’t there to assist Agents McKellen and Hayden with Al-Safari’s transport,” Beatrice offered. “You were actually on standby in case Agent McKellen confirmed Izala’s location. Is that correct?” she said to Ruby.
A reluctant nod. “If I found him, I was to call my boss, who would go up the chain and get the SEALs activated.”
Make that a two-day-old burrito. “You spent the entire night with me, until Al-Safari blew his brains out. My team was never called in to apprehend Izala.”
Ruby actually blushed, glancing at Beatrice like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “No shit, Jax.”
She took a deep breath and blew it out through her lips. “I screwed up. I got carried away with you and then I couldn’t…”
Her eyes filled in the rest as she looked at him. Leave you.
And ah, shit, he suddenly understood much more than he had before.
“I chose you over my mission,” she finished softly.
He wanted to grab her, hug her, hold her hand, something. But she would hate that. “You’re on probation for blowing off an order, not for what happened with Elliot and Al-Safari.”
She acknowledged his statement with a slight incline of her head. “I’ve regretted that decision multiple times.”
Low blow, right to his gut. The emotional burrito was twisting his guts big time. About to blow, he stopped when Beatrice cleared her throat to get his attention. The look on her face told him to keep a lid on his emotions.
Count. One, two, three, four…four, three, two, one.
He tried to imagine the waterfall, the white room, any fucking thing that would keep him from exploding.
One, two, three…
Oh, hell.
Fisting his hands, he imagined beating up Elliot, then Al-Safari, and finally Mohammed Izala.
That calmed him down.
But his heart, stupid muscle that it was, beat too fast. It actually hurt as if Ruby had stuck her hand inside his chest and was squeezing it.
“Al-Safari was a chemical weapons expert,” Beatrice said, moving on and nursing her smoothie. “For the moment, let’s assume Al-Safari was a legitimate asset for the United States. National Intelligence was running Elliot on military intelligence ops from what we’ve concluded. What were the two of them working together to do?”
The question of the hour.
Before anyone could throw out a hypothesis, the double doors opened and Paula peeked a head in. “Sorry to interrupt, but there’s someone here who needs to speak to you.”
Hunter started for the doors when the second door flew open. Chief Rolands brushed by Paula and swept his eagle eyes around the room, landing on Zeb. “Your boy’s been spotted along the road heading east. Thought you might want to go with me to look for him.”
Zeb came to his feet and clapped his big hands together. “Hotdog. Let’s go hunt down a felon, brother.”
Chapter Sixteen
_____________________
______________________________________________________
RUBY WAS UP out of her chair. “You found Elliot?”
“Wait,” Jax said, rising as well and glancing between Zeb and Chief Rolands. “You two are brothers?”
“Half brothers,” the two men said at the same time.
Zeb clapped a hand on Chief Rolands’ shoulder. “Everyone, meet Caleb. He’s the chief in town.”
“We met,” Rolands growled, giving Jax the once over.
They were about the same height, and Ruby could see their eyes matched, but that was the extent of the similarities. “Can the family reunion wait?” she said. “We need to catch Elliot.”
/> “No need for the attitude, little lady,” Rolands chastised. “Your friend’s on foot, and appears to be injured. Mike Lostrom owns a farm out that way and called it in. Said the guy had blood all over his clothes. I’d have sent a deputy to bring him on in, but everyone’s on storm cleanup duty.”
Was it Elliot’s own blood covering his clothes or was it Augustus Nelson’s? “He may not be as injured as you think, and he’s quite skilled at evasion.” She shot a look at Jax, then Beatrice. “We need to move. Now.”
Beatrice nodded at Trace Hunter, who helped her up from her seat. “Zeb, ride with your brother. The rest of us will follow you, Chief.”
Rolands tipped the brim of his cap at her. “Hope you don’t mind me saying, but maybe you should stay here and take a load off.”
Beatrice straightened her maternity blouse. “Pregnancy is not a disability, but I know you mean well, so I’ll let it go.” She motioned to the door. “Shall we? As Agent McKellen stated, the man we’re after is quite adept at disappearing.”
Rolands looked at Zeb and rolled his eyes. As the two went through the foyer, Ruby and Jax on their heels, she overheard him say, “Who is this guy? Jason Bourne?”
“Nah,” Zeb replied, opening the front door. “That guy back there with the pregnant gal is Jason Bourne.”
Rolands turned to look back at Hunter, then he sized up Jax. “Quite a group you fell in with again, Zebulon.”
The old guy chuckled. “I like things interesting.”
Outside, Jax hustled Ruby over to a black SUV that looked a lot like Emit Petit’s. Did the company have an entire fleet in Chicago?
Paula came running out of the house. “Take this.” She shoved a cloth bag at Jax. “You didn’t get to eat earlier. A shame for all this to go to waste.”
The bag was covered with cats. “Thank you,” he said, as he accepted it from her.
She glanced over all of them. “And who’s settling the bill for the rooms?”
Hunter helped Beatrice into the front seat, but when he started to pull the seatbelt out for her, she slapped his hand away. Wrestling with it herself, she cast a look at the owner of the B&B. “You’ll find an envelope on the window seat that should more than cover the cost of rooms. Your discretion about our presence here today is expected. If anyone asks, we weren’t here. I believe you’ll find I can be quite generous in exchange for your silence.”