“Just like the eight-legged abomination he is.” Dagan squinted at the TV screen even though he wasn’t paying attention to the fiber commercial that was playing. “But he won’t stay there. He’s too confident. He’s been on top for too long. He won’t like life at the bottom. He’ll poke his head out eventually, and we’ll be there to chop it off.”
Ozzie nodded, but his expression remained unconvinced. Then he shrugged. “Speaking of people poking their heads out, now that the news about Morrison and Chelsea has aired, the heat will die down across the pond. The rest of the gang is planning to return stateside. The same charter pilot that brought you and Chelsea home is scheduled to bring them over in two days. And get this… That friend of Emily’s who helped you all out over there is coming with them. Since we don’t know exactly which authorities are in Spider’s pocket, it’s been decided this Rusty Parker guy would be safer here with us. At least for a while.”
For the first time in days, Dagan felt a smile tug at his lips. “Ace will be happy about that.”
Ozzie cocked his head. It reminded Dagan so much of Chelsea’s “thinking pose” that he had to turn away.
“How’s that?” Ozzie prompted.
“Huh?” Dagan had lost his train of thought.
“You said Ace will be happy about Rusty Parker being here.”
“Oh, right. Well, I don’t want to tell tales out of school…”
“Sure you do.”
“But there were definite sparks flying between Ace and Rusty.”
“No shit?” Ozzie’s eyebrows disappeared into his hairline.
“No shit.”
“Huh. Well…good for Ace.”
“If you two are finished gossiping like a couple of frickin’ schoolgirls…” Becky arrived in the doorway. “Zoelner, there’s a phone call for you. Came in on the main line.”
She handed him a cordless phone, and he looked at it in confusion. Who would be calling him at headquarters? Everyone who knew him knew to reach him on his cell.
He didn’t try to disguise the curiosity in his voice when he said, “Hello? Who am I speaking with?”
“Agent Zoelner.” A booming baritone sounded over the line. Dagan paid less attention to the voice and more attention to the “agent” in front of his name. No one had called him that in years. “This is Elliot Russell. Director of the CIA.”
Dagan’s stomach hit the floor right along with his feet. “What happened? Is Chels… I mean, is Agent Duvall okay?”
“She’s fine,” Director Russell assured him. Dagan blew out a ragged breath and tried to calm his pounding heart. He gave Ozzie and Becky a thumbs-up to wipe away the concern on their faces.
“Well, her cover is officially and eternally blown,” the director added. “She’ll never be able to do undercover work again, which means her job as the official liaison to BKI has been terminated. But other than that, she’s fine. She’ll go back to riding a desk somewhere, which she assures me will please you to no end. According to Agent Duvall, you never were too enthusiastic about her fieldwork.”
“I was wrong about that, sir,” he said. “Agent Duvall makes an excellent field agent. She’s brave and decisive and—”
“That’s good to hear,” the director interrupted. “Too bad she’s burned. But it’s not Agent Duvall’s future I called to talk to you about.”
“No?”
“It’s yours.”
Dagan’s chin jerked back. Did a needle scratch over a record somewhere? “Mine? What do you mean?”
“I mean now that President Thompson is out of office, and now that the Black Knights are in the midst of finishing their last assignment for him, I think it’s time you started thinking about what comes next. A man with your skills would be wasted in retirement. Have you ever considered coming back to work for us here at Langley?”
“Come back to…” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. What?”
“Agent Duvall told me what happened with Ted Edens,” Russell said, and Dagan stopped breathing. “She assures me if anyone deserved to be fired over that tragedy all those years ago, it was Edens for not taking action on reliable Intel and her for not coming forward to out her boss for his failings despite all his threats and accusations. Although, I’ll tell you like I told her, she was pretty much stuck between a rock and a hard place. I’m not sure anyone walking in her shoes would have—”
“Sir?” Dagan’s blood pounded in his ears. Chelsea had… She’d told? She’d risked her job, risked her reputation, perhaps risked losing the house she’d worked so hard to save for her mother and…told? “Are you really offering me my old job back?”
At this, both Becky and Ozzie leaned forward, frowns on their faces, unabashedly listening in to his phone conversation. Privacy wasn’t a concept anyone at the shop held dear.
“Of course. You were always an excellent agent. Had I known what really happened all those years ago, you would never have been fired in the first place. Only an agent like Chelsea Duvall, with her tenacity and nose for connecting dots, could have been able to find the familial connection between your source and Mullah Zahed. I don’t blame you for missing the link. But Edens made it seem like you had blatantly… Never mind. That’s not important. The important thing is that your job is here if and when you want it. Oh, and one more thing…”
Then Director Russell dropped a bomb that left Dagan reeling. After he said his good-byes, Dagan sat in silence, his mouth hanging open.
“What?” Ozzie demanded. “Are you going back to work for the CIA?”
Dagan shook his head. “No, I…I don’t know. I…” He couldn’t go on. How could Chelsea have done that? How could she have… “I have to go.” He pushed up from the sofa, looking around, his mind racing.
Becky’s eyebrows slammed together. “Go? Where?”
“To DC. To Langley. I need to talk to Chelsea.”
“But Chelsea isn’t in DC or Langley.”
He scowled at her. “Then where is she?”
Becky shot him a considering look. “First tell me what happened between you two in England.”
Dagan crossed his arms over his chest and clamped his mouth shut, hoping his fiery stare was enough to convince her the subject was strictly off-limits. He should have known better. Becky was not easily intimidated. She just stared right back until he was forced to ask, “Why do you assume something happened between us?”
“Because you’ve been walking around here wearing a murderous expression for the last three days. And anytime one of us brings up Chelsea’s name, you flinch.” She pointed at him. “See? You just did it again. So? What happened?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“It is if you want me to tell you where she is. Because I happen to like Chelsea. And I’m not sending you after her until I’m convinced you’re going to be nice.”
“I’m always nice.”
“Bullshit.” Well, she had him there. “When I talked to Chelsea—”
He stood up straighter. “You talked to Chelsea? When?”
“The day after she left.”
“What did she say?”
Becky narrowed her eyes, regarding him for what felt like an eternity. He was so tempted to shake her and demand she answer that he had to stuff his hands in his front pockets. Someone started a buzz saw between his ears. Eventually she answered. “It wasn’t so much what she said. It was more her tone.”
“And what was her tone?”
“Sad.”
The word was a bull’s-eye arrow to his soul, piercing deep.
“So what did you do to her?” Becky asked.
“Why do you assume I did something to her?”
“Because you’re a man. Which means you’re inherently egotistical and pigheaded and—”
“Uh…” Ozzie raised his hand. “In the name of all good men ever
ywhere, I object to that generalization.”
Becky pulled a Dum Dum lollipop from the front pocket of her bib overalls—she’d been working down in the shop, which meant she was speckled in grease, paint, and a few metal shavings. Shoving the sucker in her mouth, she frowned around the stick at Ozzie. “Fine. Point taken.” Then she turned to Dagan. “Are you saying she was the one to do something to you?”
“You’re damn right!” Was he shouting? Why? Oh, right. Because every cell in his body urged him out the door and on his way to find Chelsea. And Becky—nosy, irritating, infuriating woman that she was—was holding Chelsea’s whereabouts hostage.
“So what did she do?” Becky raised a brow.
He struggled with himself for about five seconds before the whole sorry story poured out of him. He generally wasn’t the kind of man to over-share, liked to consider himself more of the strong, silent type. But he’d been wrestling with what had happened for days, fighting all his contradictory feelings, and, God, it felt good to tell someone. To get it all out.
By the time he was finished, he should have felt drained and beaten. Instead, he was energized and more determined than ever to—
“Do you love her?” Ozzie asked, casually sipping his beer. The keen intelligence in Ozzie’s eyes was anything but nonchalant, however. If Dagan lied, Ozzie would know.
“I thought I did.” Anguish grabbed his heart and squeezed it in a fist. He ran a hand over his beard and shook his head. “No. I know I did. I still do, but—”
“No buts,” Becky cut him off. “When it comes to love, there’s no weakness in forgiveness.”
Dagan blew out a blustery breath and stared at the ceiling where ducts and exposed piping created a lofty, industrial feel. The image of Chelsea’s face, her gorgeous eyes pleading with him, flared to life in his mind’s eye. “She’s not the woman I thought I knew.” It came out as a whisper.
“Of course she is.”
“No.” He shook his head.
Looking at Ozzie and Becky, his teammates, his friends, he begged them with his eyes to understand. Judging by Ozzie’s mouth, which was in full-blown lemon-sucking disapproval mode, and Becky’s stare, which was hot enough to blister paint, they didn’t.
Becky spoke up. “She was put in an impossible position. If she had told the truth, Edens would have ruined her. You would still have been out of a job, because Edens would have had you fired to save his own ass. And honestly, if she hadn’t been smart enough to look at the Intel in the first place and see the incongruities in the information your asset had passed you, you would’ve still been in the same boat. So I don’t understand why—”
“I get it!” Dagan yelled, once again shoving his hands in his pockets, but this time it was to keep from pulling out his own hair. “And I could get past all of that. She followed a bad order that ended in a bad outcome, and her boss was holding a job she desperately needed over her head, so she kept her mouth shut. Believe me, I understand all of that. I know what it is to be responsible for a family member’s happiness. I know what it’s like to have to make a decision that goes against your better judgment because you’re desperate for money. Avan and that whole mess with Senator Aldus ring a bell? Anyone? Anyone?” Ozzie and Becky just blinked at him.
“What I can’t get past is her not telling me until after we…until after I…” His voice trailed off. “She should have told me once it was safe to. She should have. She was just too damned scared. And that’s not the Chelsea Duvall I fell in love with.”
For several seconds, the only sound in the room was the murmur of the television. Another commercial was on, this one hawking a pain medication. Then, quietly Ozzie observed, “Shame and guilt make people do the damnedest things.”
Becky was a little less subtle and hit Dagan over the head with “You don’t really love her.”
His heart skipped a beat. “What exactly do you mean by that?”
“If you really loved her, you’d kiss her tears and bumps and bruises the same way you kiss her lips. You’d stand by her side when she’s at her absolute worst and doesn’t think she deserves it. Real love is hard and messy and painful. Real love is sticking around when the ugly parts make you want to run away.”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Then opened it again. Before he could get in a word edgewise, Becky continued. “You thought Chelsea was perfect. You had her up on this pedestal. And boo-hoo, now she’s fallen off, proved she’s a human being. Poor you. But, you know what? If you really, truly loved her, you’d frickin’ sac up and—”
“Becky.” There was a warning growl in Dagan’s voice. “Tell me where she is.”
Becky’s expression remained mutinous, but eventually she said, “She’s home. In South Carolina. She told me she needed to spend some time with her mother. Said they had a lot to talk about.”
“What’s the address?”
“I don’t know off the top of my head. But I have it on file somewhere.”
“Good.” He started for the door. “Get it for me while I’m packing my saddlebags.” And then, to prove he wasn’t egotistical and pigheaded, he added, “Please.”
“Your saddlebags?” Ozzie called to his back. “Are you planning to ride to South Carolina? That’s a hell of a long way, and it’s only fifty degrees outside.”
“Well I have a hell of a lot to think about and sort through, don’t I? And maybe the cold will help clear my damned head!”
Chapter 51
Beauford, South Carolina
“Momma, will you please come sit down?” Chelsea patted the spot beside her on the porch swing. “You’re making me nervous running around like a chicken with its head cut off. And you’re making the installation men crazy, asking all those questions.”
“Well, Chelsea Lynn, I just want to make sure they don’t do any more damage than is necessary. Your daddy and I put up every one of these boards with our bare hands, and I—”
Chelsea looked at the trio of men in their matching blue coveralls and subtly put-upon expressions and stopped her mother right then and there. “They’re professionals, Momma. They’re going to do a wonderful job.”
Her mother narrowed her eyes. Then, with a harrumph, she joined Chelsea on the porch swing. “Thank you,” she said, accepting the glass of sweet iced tea Chelsea handed her.
They both pushed off, setting the swing gently rocking as the security system crew traipsed around the side of the house to pick out the locations of the cameras they would be installing. The evening air was crisp, ripe with the smell of the freshly turned earth in the flower beds and the tangy brightness of newly budding trees. Chelsea closed her eyes and breathed deeply, hoping the familiar smells of home would bring her a measure of peace. But instead, they just made her sad.
On second thought, that wasn’t right. The smells of home didn’t make her sad. She just was sad and—
“I know I’m a bit neurotic when it comes to this stuff,” her mother said, cutting into Chelsea’s thoughts. When her mom took a small sip of tea, the ice clinking against the glass competed with the tinkle of the wind chimes hanging in the corner of the porch.
“A bit?” Chelsea raised a brow.
“I just…” Her mother stopped and looked out over the front lawn.
Chelsea had always thought of this part of South Carolina as the land of swaying Spanish moss and white-columned homes. She adored it. Adored the crushed-shell driveways, the weeping willows, and the bright, cheerful azalea bushes that bloomed in the spring. But she didn’t love it the same way her mother did—with everything she had, as if the place, the land, the house was a part of her, the marrow in her bones, the air in her lungs, the blood in her veins.
Watching the bright spark of contentment in her mother’s eyes as they rested on the mailbox at the end of the drive, then alighted on the hummingbird feeders dangling from the live oak, then flitted to the pecan trees lin
ing the fence, Chelsea wondered if, given the chance to go back in time and change the decision she’d made about Ted Edens and Afghanistan, she would have. Even now, she couldn’t bear the thought of doing anything to jeopardize her mother’s home and happiness. Still, she should have told Dagan the truth the minute Edens was dead.
Coulda, woulda, shoulda. She was plagued by that unholy trifecta.
“I know, Momma.” She patted her mother’s hand. “And I wish we didn’t have to do this, but…” She shrugged.
Her mother smoothed a hand over Chelsea’s head, her dark eyes kind. “Didn’t your boss tell you that this man you’ve been huntin’, this Spider character, would be foolish to come after you, and by extension me, given all the press?”
“It’s not Spider I’m worried about. At this point, you and I are small potatoes. Not worth his time, effort, or exposure. But being in the news brings out the crazies. I don’t like the idea of someone fixating on me or you. Because shit like that happens.”
“Chelsea Lynn.” Her mother tsked. “There’s no call for that kinda language.”
Chelsea hid a smile at the familiar scold. “I need this security system installed for my own peace of mind, Momma. So I can sleep at night. I don’t like thinking of you by yourself in this house. I never have. And truth to tell, I regret not having this done a long time ago.”
Her mother patted her hand. “My sweet girl, regrets are like pennies that have fallen down the cracks of the sofa. Most times, they aren’t worth collectin’.”
Chelsea set her iced tea aside and regarded the woman who had loved her since conception.
“What?” her mother asked.
“Are we still talking about the security system? Or have we moved on to another subject entirely?”
Chelsea had come clean about everything, including Dagan. There had been shock on her mother’s part, of course. Then guilt, because her mother hated that Chelsea had compromised her integrity to try to save the house. That had been followed by great sadness that Chelsea had lost the man she loved because of the whole mess. And finally, Grace Duvall had gotten mad. Mad at Dagan for not immediately seeing that Chelsea had been in a bad situation and therefore forgiving her on the spot. And mad was where her mother had stayed.
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