Page 64 of Dead Drift

David nodded. “Anything to stop our common enemy.”

“I’m sure you have already figured it out,” Luke said to the group, clearly unsure of who knew what, “but David is Mossad. We’ve worked together frequently in pursuit of Ebeid.”

David nodded. “We are both trying to combat the growth and spread of sleeper cells being staffed with young men out of Southeast Asia.”

Tanner and her family had spent a short part of her youth living in Southeast Asia. All the threads of her life seemed to be coming together in this very moment in time. As if God had been preparing her.

Her dad shifted his hands to his pockets, jingling the change in his right one, just like he had when she was a little girl—though she doubted he’d pull the magic trick of the disappearing coin at her age, or given their surroundings. They no longer had that kind of relationship. They’d had no semblance of a relationship period since she’d accepted Christ as her Savior.

Awkward silence filled the room, only the occasional jingle of his coins breaking it.

She still couldn’t believe Luke and her dad had worked together, though it made sense given Luke’s focus on Muslim extremists in Southeast Asia as well as her dad’s—at least during their time there. It’d been through that period of her youth that she’d felt the call to go back as an adult and serve. People there—woman and children, especially—needed help. It was why she’d requested to be assigned to Cambodia when she went to work for Global Justice Mission.

She wondered how long Luke and her dad had known each other, where all they’d worked together. There was a mentor-mentee, father-son vibe going on. Her dad clearly liked and respected Luke, and Luke clearly looked up to her dad. It was surreal.

“When was the last time you saw Bedan?” Luke asked.

“In Paris after he fled the Munich attack.” Her dad’s presence was as commanding as ever. He was still strong and refined, but he had wrinkles creeping in at the corners of his dark brown eyes, and whispers of gray edged his temples.

“Is that where you’ve been working?” she asked, unable to curb her curiosity. “In Paris?” He’d never been allowed to say where he was going when he traveled, other than when they were living on-location, of course. But she had occasionally guessed—or at least attempted to guess—where he’d been from the small gifts he brought her when he returned home. But now she was part of the task force, so maybe he’d actually share his full knowledge with her. She caught herself holding her breath as she awaited his answer.

“Tania, you know I cannot say.”

“But you just told Luke you were in Paris. . . .”

“I did so to comment on Bedan’s location. Not mine.”

Same old silence.

“Of course,” she quietly said, just as she’d always done.

But this time it felt even more wrong. She was part of the circle, not to be relegated out of the room as she’d been when she was young and visitors came to see her dad. Not that they came often. They didn’t have friends over for dinner. Didn’t do things her other friends did. Hers wasn’t a typical family growing up, but as she got older and gained a better understanding of her dad’s high position in the Mossad, she understood why.

No wonder her dad had always been so cautious of his speech around her.

She still remembered the terror in his eyes when he’d discovered her hiding in his office while he was on, what she could only assume looking back, a Mossad business call. She hadn’t meant to be in there. She’d been playing hide-and-seek with her gray lop-eared stuffed bunny, pretending they were secret agents like her papa. She froze when she heard him enter the room, too frightened to move. She’d be in severe trouble for being in his office, period. It was off-limits, but she and Mr. Rabbit weren’t civilians—not on that wonderful, carefree afternoon while her momma ran to the market and her nana was asleep in the living room recliner. She and Mr. Rabbit were secret agents, just like her papa.

At age seven, she’d been too young to understand anything that was discussed on that call other than a few words, which stuck in her mind—surveillance, payment, and dead.

It was then she’d discovered just how different her papa’s job in the Mossad was from that of her friends’ fathers and just how good he was at sensing another’s presence in the room.

She remembered the soft sound of his footsteps, his shadow looming over the slit in the cabinet she and Mr. Rabbit were hiding in. The door swung open and she gaped up at the barrel of a gun. It wouldn’t be the last time she’d had a gun pointed at her, not in her line of work, but it was a memorable first seared in her mind. Mr. Rabbit tumbled to her feet as she shook in fear.

Papa had been livid, chastising her for being where she didn’t belong, and after that day, right up until she’d joined the Global Justice Mission, she’d never felt like she belonged.

Parker returned with the aerosol can and handed the black canister to David.

He studied it with a creased brow.

Declan rubbed Tanner’s shoulders from behind. “You okay, love?” he whispered as everyone else’s attention shifted to David’s scrutiny of the device.

Tanner swallowed. “Just in shock.”

“Luke had no idea. . . .” Declan began.

“Oh, I know. It’s just . . . he’s the last person I expected to see when I walked through that door.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”