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I felt angry, and hurt, and betrayed. Like my biggest weakness had been used against me. Was I so desperate for a woman’s love that she saw right through me and used it against me? Used it to distract me and pull the wool over my eyes? She was good; she almost had me. If it weren’t for Jasmine, who knew what kind of lies Abby would have fed me in the morning?
“I don’t know, but it all seems to be too much of a coincidence. You swear she didn’t tell you?” Jasmine asked. I could tell she was concerned about me. Her tone wasn’t as accusatory as it normally would have been. That fire was replaced by sympathy or pity.Fuck this.
“I swear. As far as I knew, she was a fitness instructor. After the way she handled tonight, I knew there was more to her than she was sharing. I asked as much, and she said we’d talk about it in the morning. I don’t know if she planned on telling me the truth or not,” I answered. I felt like a complete and total fool. I thought of myself as someone with higher than average intelligence and a good gut instinct. This revelation only proved that I didn’t know myself as well as I thought, and that scared me. I’d always been terrified by the idea of being the weakest link. Call it a result of a shitty childhood and endless bullying. I bulked up so no one would dare pick on me, I was the tough guy who could think or fight his way out of any scenario, but what if that wasn’t really me? I had let someone with a good pair of tits and cool tats pull the wool over my eyes, and that was pathetic. The thought of her lying to me again only pissed me off more. I hated liars; it was one of my biggest pet peeves.
You can’t take this personally, Adam. This is probably all just part of her job.
“If she is here to help us, what do we do about that? Do we let her help us? Boss clearly trusts her if he sent her here, and this island is pretty large. Another body, another trained mind could be a big help,” Jones added.
I looked through the glass and saw Jones and Jasmine were having their own private conversation with just their eyes. It was a conversation that they could conveniently hide from me, considering I could only see Jones’ face clearly.
“You said she brought down a trafficking ring herself?” I asked. My head hurt from my own fury and high blood pressure. I massaged my temples, looking for some relief.
“Well, I’m sure there were people on the outside helping, but yeah. She was the lone undercover asset feeding them information and building the case. What she did is a pretty big deal. It exposed several politicians and a wealthy CEO. The FBI is making a big deal out of it,” Jasmine added.
Boss was sending his best asset in to help. She was particularly well trained for this type of situation. While we were too, our style was more of a “fly by the seat of your pants and hope you get lucky” type. We heavily relied on our military training and common sense. We weren’t as experienced with the whole creating a cover, infiltrating, and collecting evidence shit, not like she was. Abby could be an asset. Regardless of her experience, would I be able to trust her if we decided to let her work with us? Our group got along in Vegas just fine without her. Would bringing her in do anything to help us or just put us at risk and make us distrustful of one of our own?
All of our previous conversations had been based on lies. How was I supposed to get over that? She’d been lying to me from the very beginning, so the woman I thought I knew didn’t exist. She was a figment of her own imagination designed to keep me from getting close to her. A rational part of me knew that she was doing this for a reason; this was her job. Going undercover and keeping it while putting together a case was tough, I was sure, but being on the other end of the situation was worse. I could handle her being an agent; hell, that impressed me. It required lots of training, mental and physical. Our team could use someone like her. I knew myself well enough to know that I would be able to let go of the lies. I gave her the perfect opportunity to come clean, but she insisted on pushing that off. If she had, I would have told her about what we were doing immediately and likely asked for her help. I would have at least trusted her a little if she admitted it to me directly. Instead she chose the coward’s way out, and I had to question if she ever would have told me the truth. I didn’t like that one bit. She didn’t need to give us her cover. She didn’t need to wreck my trust with a lie, when I would have been okay with her presence from the very beginning, even if Boss did send her to babysit.
I knew she was too good to be true.
“So what now?” I asked.
I turned off the water. I had aggressively cleaned myself, and my skin was an angry pink.
“It’s your call. We’re pissed that she lied, but we know we could use the help. You are the one she lied to the most, and you are the one emotionally invested in her. Don’t bother trying to hide it. I know you too well for that. So you decide, do we interrogate her and then let her in, or do we kick her to the curb?” Jones asked.
That was the question. Could I swallow my pride and work closely with someone who lied to my face and possibly used me to figure out what we were up to? I had to be okay with it. If we didn’t bring Abby in on this, we took the chance of others being kidnapped. If she could speed up our investigation, then I couldn’t let my refusal be on my conscience. I couldn’t live with that knowledge that someone was kidnapped because of my pride.
“I guess we’ll tear her a new asshole and then let her in. That’s clearly what she wants,” I said. At least the last part.
“Are you sure?” Jasmine asked. I could see her concern, and I was grateful for her concern, but also her fierce passion. It’s what helped us get the answers I needed about Abby.
“I’m sure.”
My stomach rolled with the anticipation of calling her out on her lies. If she were a man, I would have considered hitting her, but I wasn’t a monster. I wouldn’t lay hands on a woman in anger, no matter how well she was able to defend herself or how much she deserved it. No, I’d make sure she knew just how disgusted I was by the lies, her cover be damned. I was a gentle giant unless provoked, and she definitely poked the bear.
CHAPTERELEVEN
abby
Iwas operating on no sleep, and I could really feel it. I laid in bed and tossed and turned all night, contemplating what I was going to do. When the sun rose, I moved to the bathtub, hoping the warm water and lavender bath salts would help me relax. I was one of the best undercover agents in our field office, and yet I struggled to keep this cover. I should have lied and said I was a police officer. It would have been way more believable than a fitness instructor. Then I could have pinned my response last night on that training. I couldn’t have known that I was going to save someone’s life like that, but I should have anticipated there was going to be trouble, and I shouldn’t have underestimated Adam or his team. Maybe I let my ego get in the way, thinking I was here to babysit a bunch of inexperienced civilians. After speaking with them, and getting to know Adam, I knew there was more than met the eye with the guys, and hell, even their women.
It’d never been this hard to stay in character before, but then again, I’d never been in a situation like this before—working with good people who couldn’t know who I was. I’d certainly never connected to someone like I had Adam while I was undercover. This whole situation felt unprecedented.
Deep down I knew Adam wasn’t going to let this go. He was suspicious of me, and I wasted time playing games, trying to keep a cover that my heart was only half in. I wasn’t sure why Bob wanted me to go undercover and hide my identity from these guys in the first place. I was an asset to a team, but only if they knew what I could bring to the table. If they wanted someone they could take seriously and rely on for their expertise, my cover was useless.
I was so freaking stupid. I should have listened to my gut and just been honest in the first place. Bob might be my mentor, and one of the best agents I knew, but he’d been wrong on occasion, and this was one of those times. I screwed this up so badly, and I was beyond embarrassed. I was half tempted to tell Bob that I wasn’t the woman for this assignment and to send someone else. Every time I touched my phone, I dropped it at the thought of letting Boss down and at the thought of jeopardizing my career because of a mistake that I didn’t want to make in the first place.
I was going to have to tell Adam and his friends the truth. And that also meant sharing that I didn’t want to lie, that I created a cover under Bob’s orders. I’d tell him how sorry I was and how much I wished to be on their team, not just because that was what I was supposed to accomplish, but because I wanted them to succeed in their goal. My life’s work was to make myself a weapon against those who took what they wanted and didn’t care about the consequences, to seek justice for those who couldn’t do it themselves. I wanted every trafficker and abuser behind bars, and that was what we had in common. I hoped that’s what his team would focus on when the truth came out. My training had hardened me into a sharp blade, but even the hardest of blades had vulnerable spots, and for some reason I found one in Adam. I hoped he could understand that and that he’d eventually forgive me. I’d hate to think that I lost someone who could be important to me because I was doing my job.
I pulled myself out of the bathtub to grab another cup of coffee. I needed the assistance to keep me awake. I watched the sun rise through the morning sky from this very spot, and the water had long since gone cold. I pulled the plug and let it drain and then got dressed for the day.
My stomach rumbled with the nervous anticipation surrounding the idea of coming clean to the others. I’d go grab some food, and if Adam and his crew were down there, I’d explain everything then.
I opened the door and was surprised to see Adam standing there with his fist raised, as if he had been about to knock.
“Uh…hi,” I said with what felt like an awkward smile.
