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Autumn came around the corner from the direction of her office. “Except for me, because I’m here. I’m assuming that our night out is off?” she asked with a twitch of her lips.
“Yeah,” Tamilya said with sigh. “I think we need other jobs.”
“Oh, do you know of some other job that will allow us to carry guns and shoot people?”
Tamilya snorted, her shoulder muscles relaxing just a bit. Autumn was an odd duck, but she always seemed to understand what Tamilya needed to help her chill out.
“The boss wants you to give a rundown of the Virginia Star Mall incident. I’m going to gather up the figures and make the slides, but I know he wants you to let us know what the official word was and what you think happened,” Charity said.
“What do you mean?” Tamilya asked.
“We all know that you’re a kick ass agent; so I, for one, want to know what the FBI got wrong,” she said, glancing at her husband.
TJ held his hands up. “Hey, I wasn’t part of that, and I agree with you.” He looked at Tamilya. “You’re too sharp not to have picked up on a few issues out of the norm.”
She felt the backs of her eyes start to burn, and she blinked away the tears that threatened to fall. These people who had known her for such a short amount of time compared to her FBI colleagues didn’t question her thought process. Then, there was Marcus.
They were never going to be a couple again, but the fact that she knew he had her back, meant the world to her. It was giving her all those warm, fuzzy feelings she’d mistook for love previously. She pushed them aside. She could take his admiration and work with him. That was all she wanted or needed from Marcus.
“I’ll help you with those slides,” she said as Charity turned to leave. She hurried to catch up before Charity made it to the elevator doors. As soon as the doors slid closed, she drew in a deep breath.
“Girl, that man has a hankering for you.”
Tamilya hated the way the words made her heart jump. She didn’t need him, or the heartache he would definitely give her. If it had been bad before, it would be ten times worse this time around. And if she reminded herself every five minutes, she just might remember that.
* * *
Marcus hatedthat he had to watch Tamilya give a briefing. No, strike that. He liked it, he just hated sharing her with everyone else. He wanted her all to himself and everyone else could go get bent.
Charity was just about finished going through the timeline of the Virginia Star bombing, and he knew Tamilya would take over. Tammy. God, he loved using that name for her. It was intimate. He could just imagine saying it against her flesh as he kissed his way over her stomach.
“Lowe, you’re up,” Del said, breaking into Marcus’ fantasy.
Damn, he hadn’t been paying any attention, but he knew all the facts about the Virginia Star bombing. He’d been in DC at the time. Still, thinking about tasting Tamilya left him half erect like he was a teenager without the ability to control himself. He shifted in his chair trying to ease the pressure in his pants. The chair squeaked loudly in the silence and everyone turned to look at him. Damn.
Tamilya ignored him and stepped up.
“So, what we had was three dead terrorists, and numerous dead civilians. We were still going over the data, getting the bodies examined, when they claimed all the bombers had died in the incident. There were a few issues with this,” she said, her voice true and strong.
She clicked on her iPad and the pictures of several different people appeared. “We had four dead people who had been wounded before the explosion, and one that had been killed.”
“Wait, what?” Elle asked. “I read the report. That wasn’t in there.”
Tamilya nodded. “That’s why I threw a fit when they announced that all the bombers were dead. Not one of those guys had ever shown up on any watchlist. They’d never even shown a propensity for violence or hatred toward the US. Don’t get me wrong, they could have had those feelings, but because the FBI was worried about PR at the time, they wanted simple answers.”
“You didn’t think they did it?” Del asked.
“I think they did. I didn’t know their reasons though. When someone is a terrorist, why they choose that path is as important as what they did. We need to know why they wanted to participate. If they acted of their own free will, then where did they go wrong? What had pushed them over the edge?”
“Why is that important?” Autumn asked.
“If we know where they got recruited, we can start looking for more. It’s like IEDs in Afghanistan and Iraq. As soon as the military comes up with a way to detect one, they have ten more ways to build and activate them. So, if we could figure it out, it would help us at least stop the recruitment there.”
“You said ‘if they acted of their own free will.’ What do you mean?” Del asked.
“They could have been blackmailed or forced to participate in some other way. There were rumors about Pavlov being gay, which was a dangerous thing to be if you’re Russian. The other two had some massive debt, but all of them had family members in Russia. We know that many people would get stuck in Soviet Russia due to not wanting to leave their families. That practice has not changed today.”
“So, these five people, who were they and where do they fit in the big scheme of things?” Del asked.
