Hidden Truth

by Danica Winters

  “Sounds like that’s something you have a little bit of experience in,” she said, looking into his eyes.

  “I don’t want to talk about it, but people don’t lead lives like ours if they have a healthy childhood.” Trevor threw the plate he’d been holding and it hit the exposed ground opposite them with a clatter.

  “Why did you do that? You know that had to echo throughout the entire forest.” She motioned toward the plate.

  “They wanted us to come here. They’ll be glad to know we took the bait.”

  She looked around. From what she could see it looked like a regular old campsite. There were no booby traps or any other evidence that they’d been set up, so she wasn’t sure where he was coming up with this idea.

  Almost as if he could read her mind, he continued, “Did you notice everything around here is brand-new? If you look at our guy’s tracks, his boot marks are still in perfect diamonds and squares. And that plate, and all the dishes, barely have any marks on them. And if you look at this makeshift camp, everything has been moved here within the last day or two.” He pointed toward the ground. If they’d been here long, the ground would be trampled well beyond this.

  “So what? Maybe they just got here. These people are travelers.”

  “If these are the Cusslers, or their enemies, they aren’t the type to be running to Walmart to get cookware and boots very often. Either they aren’t who we’ve been thinking they are, or we’re chasing the wrong ghosts.”

  She couldn’t think of anyone else who could have been behind this.

  “While I have my fair share of enemies, they aren’t people who would shoot at me and miss. The people who want to kill my family are the type who can kill from two miles away, like our friends in Turkey. Which means it’s likely that whoever is behind this is after you. Who have you ticked off lately?”

  No. He was grasping at straws. There was no way she was the target here. He couldn’t turn this back on her. This was his mess. His family’s drama. Not hers.

  Unless everything wasn’t on the up and up with Mike.

  The brass they’d found, the new plates, the manic deadline and the threatening emails...the evidence wasn’t in the Bureau’s favor, but everything he was pointing out was circumstantial. Sure, she had enemies—who didn’t? It didn’t mean that anyone was after her.

  And yet she had a sinking feeling Trevor was right.

  Chapter Eleven

  Trevor wasn’t sure if he had assumed correctly or not but he could tell he had planted just enough doubt about her team to create a distraction. As soon as they got back, he would alert the family that they were under investigation. In just a couple of hours, they could bug out—and disappear once again. He’d always heard Crete was beautiful. He could use a little bit more of a tan, and he certainly wouldn’t miss snow.

  As they walked back to the horses, he tried not to feel guilty as he took in the view of her walking ahead of him. He would be lying if he didn’t admit how much he enjoyed that picture. He loved the way her hips swung back and forth as she picked her way through the underbrush that led to the serpentine trail. He’d miss that almost as much as he’d miss feeling her breath on his skin when she fell asleep with her head on his chest. It had been a long time since he’d made love, but the things she had done with her hips were unlike anything he’d ever experienced before. He couldn’t risk losing her.

  If the situation had been different, she was definitely the kind of woman he could imagine settling down with. Then again, he was never planning to settle down again. Maybe she was more the kind of woman he could imagine traveling the world with. A scene from the movie Tombstone came to mind—with Wyatt and Josie slipping away into the sunset aboard a cruise liner and setting out on a life of adventure together.

  But she was his adversary. She was trying to take down his family. Or at least she had been. It had to count for something that she had outed herself to him. Working with the CIA, he knew exactly how much was at risk in doing so—and exposing the truth to him may have put her job on the line. She certainly couldn’t continue their investigation—but just because she left didn’t mean that his family wouldn’t still draw scrutiny from the Bureau. Just for once he wished he could call his friends in the CIA and have them whisper the truth into someone’s ear in order to get this all to stop.

  He’d end up dead long before the truth reached the right people. The Gray Wolves had their men everywhere, and where they didn’t have their own people, they had paid informants. There was a lot of money to be made if a person was the type who was willing to sell state secrets.

  “Sabrina, can you think of someone who wants you gone at the FBI?”

  She stopped walking and turned around to face him. “There’s always someone who is breathing down your neck behind closed doors.”

  The pinched expression on her face told him he had struck a nerve. She definitely had enemies.

  “Is there anyone you can trust inside the Bureau?”

  She looked off into the distance, as if she were contemplating her answer. “I know you think you’re onto something, but I just don’t see anyone working this hard to get me fired. If my enemies wanted to see me go, all they had to do is fudge a little paperwork.”

  “It isn’t that easy. I know it isn’t.”

  She quirked her eyebrow. “And how would you know? Did your family do an in-depth study of the Bureau?”

  He chuckled. “You and your BuCrew aren’t nearly as secret as you all would like to think you are. Sure, you have great people in tech, but when it comes to the truth I’m learning that you guys are at least ten steps behind.”

  “And yet we knew all about you and your family’s dealings.” She gave him a smart-ass tilt of the head.

  If only she knew the truth, she wouldn’t be so glib. And yet he could never reveal his truth to her. It wasn’t just his to reveal.

  “At least you can find some comfort in the fact that your enemies don’t want you dead, or else they are just crappy shots,” he teased her. “If this is someone from the FBI taking potshots at us, with all your long gun training through Quantico, I’m sure your instructors would’ve been so proud.” He laughed. It felt good to be able to joke with her once again.

  “Hey now, we don’t know for sure whether or not those were my people shooting at us. In fact, if those were my people then I guess they weren’t really mine after all, were they?” she pondered aloud.

  “You are ridiculously cute when you’re being asinine. You know just as well as I do that it was your enemies up there—FBI or not.”

  “I just think it’s too far-fetched. It seems more likely that it’s someone who wanted to make it look like FBI or a government agency. Plenty of these off-the-grid types are anti-government. It’s easy enough to get your hands on those types of weapons. You know all about it.” She gave him a judgmental look.

  He walked up beside her and slipped his hand into hers. “How about we put a bet on this? If we get to the bottom of this and it’s someone close to you, you have to spend another night with me—we’ll order room service.”

  She gave him a playful grin. “Since you seem so certain, if it ends up being someone involved with your family—which by the way, seems far more likely—then you owe me two things. One, you have to keep my secret, under threat of penalty of death, should you expose me.”

  He loved that she could threaten him with death and it turned him on. “And your second ask?”

  “A favor yet to be named. Do we have a deal?”

  “I don’t make bets when I don’t know what’s at stake.”

  “It’s a deal, or there’s no deal at all.” Her playful grin grew even more impish. “It all comes down to how much you believe in your theory.”

  She was calling him out—testing to see exactly what cards he had up his sleeve. “Okay, deal...but the second ask can’t be for somet
hing I don’t want to give.”

  “Again,” she said, a look of pure innocence on her face as she cajoled him, “all or nothing.”

  “Then all it is.” He didn’t like the deal, but something deep in his gut told him that he was right and there was more to this than what they had first assumed.

  The ride out of the woods took far less time than it had taken them to ride in. As they passed by their makeshift lean-to, he found himself once again wishing they could go back in time.

  He wasn’t angry at her admission of working for the FBI, not as he watched her ride in front of him. She had a job to do, just like he did. And the fact that she had finally admitted the truth to him went a long way. She certainly didn’t have to do that. And it proved to him, more than anything else she could have done, that he could trust her. In a way, it also made him wonder if she was just as emotionally invested in what happened in that lean-to as he was—which meant, she must have realized how impossible their relationship would be.

  If nothing else, at least they could walk away from each other knowing that somewhere in the world there was a person who really cared for them.

  The ranch was dead quiet as they rode up with the truck and trailer. Unsaddling the horses, they barely spoke. It was as if she knew just as well as he did that things between them were about to come to an end.

  There was no way they could go back and pretend they weren’t the people they truly were, the people they had revealed to each other up on the mountain. If only he could have told her his truth as well, that he was working for the CIA, and yet...he couldn’t. If he did, it would serve nothing. She would still have to leave, but when she did she would be in even more danger than when she arrived. The people he worked for weren’t the kind who liked leaving loose ends. They made Trevor and his family look like teddy bears in comparison.

  Instead of taking the horses straight back to Dunrovin Ranch, they’d decided to head home. It could have been all the riding or all the emotions he experienced over the last few days, but when they hit the front door, he was exhausted.

  When he walked in, Chad was sitting on the couch, watching ESPN. He looked up and his expression darkened as though he could see from their faces that something was up.

  “How’d it go? Did you find them?” Chad asked, flicking off the television.

  Sabrina glanced over at Trevor. “Hey, I’m going to run out and unload the horses and put them in the barn. You guys go ahead and talk.” She gave him a pleading look, as though she didn’t want him to tell his brother what she had told him, but also understood he couldn’t let a secret that big just stay between them.

  He hated being in this position.

  “Okay, I’ll be right out and I can help you grab the rest of the stuff out of the truck.” Stepping closer, he was going to give her a quick peck to the forehead, and then stopped himself. Chad didn’t need more fodder for the fight they were likely about to have.

  As the door closed behind Sabrina, Trevor walked over and sat down on the couch beside his brother. His knees ached from all the riding, making him feel old and tired.

  Chad leaned forward looking him in the eye. “Are you going to tell me what that was all about?”

  And so it began.

  He couldn’t look his brother in the eye, and he wished Chad hadn’t turned off ESPN—it would’ve made things easier.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, trying to buy himself more time.

  He had been trying to think of ways around this conversation for hours now, and yet at zero hour, he still couldn’t decide exactly how he wanted to handle things with his family. They deserved to know the truth about Sabrina, and they absolutely had to learn that they were under investigation. In fact, if he were under investigation, it was likely that other UCs were trying to break into their lives—other UCs who probably weren’t as softhearted and kind as Sabrina.

  And yet it would be immediately clear who the UC was in their lives as soon as he started talking. He wouldn’t be able to hide her identity. At least Chad wouldn’t want to kill her since she was an agent for the FBI...hopefully. Even though she didn’t have a clue, they were all playing for the same team.

  He would just have to figure a way out of this that worked for everyone and kept his family and Sabrina safe.

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about, Trevor.” Chad motioned toward the barn. “What happened up there on the mountain? Did you kill the family—is that why she’s acting all weird around you? Or did you guys bump uglies?”

  “Dude, seriously?” Trevor said, trying to look as innocent as possible. “Would I be this quiet if I’d taken the family out?”

  “Good point,” Chad said with a nod. “So then, you banged her?”

  Trevor shook his head but was careful not to look at his brother. His eyes would give it away. “Sabrina? She’s a nice woman, but I have a feeling that she’s not going to stick around here too much longer. Especially after what we found,” he said, a bit proud of the way he’d maneuvered around lying to his brother. Some things were better left unsaid.

  “Which was?”

  “Somebody up there decided to spark a few rounds off at us. They were just warning shots, but somebody wanted us to get the message we weren’t welcome.”

  He told him about the shooter and the campsite but left out his theory about who had been pulling the trigger and why. There was no use getting his brother up in arms about something he wasn’t sure of just yet. All Chad needed to worry about was making sure that the affairs of the ranch were in order and that the Gray Wolves didn’t find out where they were.

  If nothing else, at least he could be fairly certain that it wasn’t his family’s enemies who were behind this and the Cussler guy’s death.

  “What, are you surprised that our squatters would have a problem with you chasing them down? Nobody likes being kicked out of their house,” Chad said.

  Now would’ve been the perfect time for Trevor to tell him the truth and explain all the problems they were facing, but he held back. “Chad, do you think we made a mistake coming back here?”

  “What makes you ask that?” Chad asked with a worried expression on his face.

  “Nothing,” Trevor said with a shrug. “I’ve been thinking maybe the US isn’t the best place for us. I know we thought we had amnesty here, but what if we don’t? What if we peed in the wrong person’s cornflakes, you know what I mean?”

  “Clearly you’re not telling me something,” Chad said. “When you left here yesterday, you are all gung ho and ready to start making a new life here—even though it was boring. And now it’s like you had a complete change of heart. You have to tell me why.”

  Trevor got up from the couch and strode over to the bay window that looked out toward the barn. The lights were on and the sliding door was open. Sabrina was unloading Zane. He watched as she backed him out of the trailer. “Call it a gut feeling or whatever you want, but I just think that maybe it’s best if we bug out for a while—go somewhere in the Cayman Islands or something. Think about it, we could be lying on the white sand beach and drinking a cold one.”

  Chad stared at him like he was trying hard to figure him out. “Dude, Trevor, if you did something to upset Sabrina, we can figure it out—we don’t need to get out of here. There a lot of housekeepers we could hire.”

  “Have you talked to Zoey at all while we were gone?” Trevor asked, trying to change the subject.

  “Zoey said she’s been watching all the channels, but so far she hasn’t seen anything that would indicate the Gray Wolves have any idea where to find us.” Chad got up and walked over and stood beside him at the window. “I know you’re nervous, maybe that’s what’s going on with you, but I’m telling you this ranch is about the safest place we can possibly be. At least out here we have less of a chance of the Gray Wolves buying out some government agency in order to find us. I me
an who is out here who would give two craps about us?”

  Trevor’s stomach dropped. What if Bayural had bought out someone at the FBI? Maybe they had sent Sabrina here to make sure they stayed while they got everything in place to take them out. But then, if that were the case, wouldn’t they have just taken out a contract with a merc?

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Trevor said, turning his back to the window.

  “What? And what about Sabrina?” Chad asked, not stopping to ask him what he was thinking. His brother knew him well enough that if he said it was time to go, it was time to go. He could explain it to him later.

  “We’ll take her with us—if she wants to go.”

  “I knew you banged her,” Chad said with a satisfied laugh as they rushed down the hall to their bedrooms to grab their bug-out bags.

  Trevor was pulling out the .50cal from behind his mattress when the front door of the house slammed open.

  “Trevor!” Sabrina yelled, her voice frantic.

  The Gray Wolves were coming for them; he could feel it even though everything hadn’t yet quite clicked into place. “What?” He dropped his bag and his gun case and sprinted out of the room, pulling his SIG Sauer from his holster and readying himself for whatever—or whoever—he was about to meet at that door.

  Sabrina was standing at the front door, her hands over her mouth.

  He lowered his weapon when he saw no one was behind her. “Are you okay? What’s going on?” he asked, the words rushing out like it was a single syllable.

  “There...” She motioned behind her. “There’s a man out there, inside the last barn stall. He...he’s been shot.”