Page 8 of False Flag

Jake had trouble believing his eyes as he took in the gorgeous woman who’d stepped outside with Kira Hanson. She was way overdressed for a barbecue. But then, she’d been overdressed when they first met too.

Maybe that’s how she rolled?

“Anastacia?” Her name slipped out without thought as he tried to make sense of seeing her here.

“You know Staci?” Rand said.

“Staci?” he said, then did a double take. “You’re Staci?”

“To my friends, yes, I’m Staci.”

Her cold tone indicated her opinion of Jake hadn’t improved since their first meeting, but there was no reason it would have. Their paths had never crossed again until now.

He’d heard her name a few times in the last ten months. Most notably in a debriefing after she’d been part of FMV’s team that assisted in an op last summer, but also, Diana had spoken of the friend and colleague who would be assisting her in teaching several cultural resources awareness trainings on base in the coming months.

Never in a million years would he have guessed the Staci who worked for FMV was Anastacia, the siren who’d attended the Lost Civilizations fundraiser last December.

Campbell attracted a different demographic—his followers tended to be white male millennials. The spelling and likely pronunciation of her first name was Spanish. Her coloring—light golden-brown skin with dark eyes and hair—could indicate Latina heritage. As far as age, she might be millennial, but she could be older Gen Z.

Of course, age was a deceptive metric to estimate. After all, Kira could pass for midtwenties, but she was thirty-seven. Again.

But that was a different story.

Still, it made no sense that Anastacia had attended the fundraiser. Campbell wasn’t kind to professional archaeologists in his talks, and Jake presumed anyone who worked for FMV was some kind of historian or archaeologist.

All at once, he remembered their conversation at the bar, when he’d hit on her and crashed and burned.

He’d said Campbell’s ideas were interesting, and when she asked him to elaborate, he’d specifically mentioned the theory that archaeologists were, as a group, hiding the truth of what they knew to be true about ancient civilizations.

Campbell had offered a reason for such lies and omissions: the truth was inconvenient for current cultural heritage laws and treaties around the globe.

“The truth, if it were to be fully known, would reshape the modern world.”

This was, to the best of Jake’s knowledge, Campbell’s favorite conspiracy theory against the history gatekeepers, as he called them.

He hadn’t really thought about what he’d said to Anastacia that night. He was just trying to impress a beautiful woman by parroting a man he’d believed she admired.

Well, fuck.

Admitting that wasn’t exactly an excuse that absolved him. It made him an even bigger ass. The kind who spewed things he didn’t believe, hoping to get laid.

How could he have guessed she was an archaeologist?

Still not okay to say what he said, no matter what her profession. Not if he didn’t believe it himself. And now that he thought about it, it was a pretty shitty theory.

He didn’t know why Anastacia had been at the fundraiser, but it was highly unlikely she was a fan of the podcaster.

“I uh—I—” He had no clue what to say. Bragging that his brother was on the Lost Civilizations expedition team was out.

He doubted she’d be impressed.

She met his gaze, her eyes holding a spark of something. It was too much to hope it could be attraction. Probably amusement as she waited for him to praise Gerard Campbell in front of his teammates.

Chris and Rand were both engaged to women with PhDs in archaeology and history. If they knew who Campbell was, they’d be outraged that Jake had even attended the fundraiser. It didn’t matter that he’d done it in an attempt to mend fences with his brother.

He was suddenly glad he’d never mentioned it. He’d never considered what it might signal to others. It was his brother’s thing, and he wanted more than anything to connect with Lloyd.

He held out his hand to the beautiful woman, deciding a do-over was his only shot. “I, um, I’m Jake. Lieutenant Jake Burns.”