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“Can we talk?” he asked. His face appeared hard and uncaring. In the short time I had known him, he had never looked at me like that before, and I didn’t like it. Did he somehow already know?
“Sure, come in,” I said. My grumbling stomach was just going to have to wait. To hold myself over, I used the coffee maker to brew another cup.
“Do you want any?” I asked and nodded my head toward the coffee station I was tinkering with.
“Sure.” Again his tone was cold, his face emotionless. Something was definitely wrong. I should have just bit the bullet last night; maybe he wouldn’t be acting like this if I had. Or maybe he would have reacted worse. Maybe he would have already cut me out of the mission if I had.
I swallowed hard.
We were quiet while I made two cups of coffee and passed him his. We moved over to the small table that sat in front of large windows that overlooked the ocean. It was already a beautiful day, and the beach was crowded. Part of me wished this was just a normal vacation so I could go park my ass on the sand like the rest of the tourists. I was going to have to ask Bob to let me take a real vacation after this was all over. If they didn’t close the field office here permanently, maybe I could get a transfer here. I’d have no problem living my hours off the clock in a bikini.
“So, about last night, give me the truth about who you are, why you reacted the way you did. Running head-first into danger is not normal for a civilian. Don’t feed me a bullshit line either,” he said. His eyes were hard, his jaw was set, and his shoulder muscles were tense.
He must know.
My pulse quickened, my heart beating erratically in my chest. I took a deep breath and then released it to try to gather a bit of control. This went against everything I knew as an agent. I had never blown a cover before, but there was always a first for everything, and he wasn’t the suspect. There were worse situations to be outed in.
“I am an FBI agent, and before that, I was briefly in the Navy.”
I watched him closely for any signs of surprise or anger. There was no shock, no recoil; he gave nothing away.
He already knew.“But you knew that already, didn’t you?”
“Found out you are an agent last night, after Jasmine and Jones cornered me in the lobby,” he answered. His face remained neutral, and I had no idea what he thought about the news. “Had no idea about you being in the Navy. Now the tattoos make sense.” He scanned my arms, looking at the ink again. He was still cold, but I thought that just maybe his voice was slightly less chilled. Maybe admitting the truth and sharing more than he had figured out himself helped the situation slightly.
His eyes left my arms and snapped back to my face, searching with a hard expression. “Why lie?”
Guilt wrecked me, and I swallowed it down. I would not cry for doing my job.
“My boss is Bob Dempsey. After my last assignment, in which I spent six months undercover, he had another assignment for me, and it was to be disguised as a vacation. He said that the new assignment wasn’t on the books, so I took on the job. I wasn’t lying when I said I was focused on my career. I am dedicated to my work with the Agency, and that includes following orders. Bob told me to create a cover and convince you guys to let me work with you but not to let you know who I was.”
“Why would he ask that of you? I thought he trusted us. Didn’t we prove ourselves in Vegas?” Adam asked. His Adam’s apple bobbed. His fists were clenched at his sides, and I heard his teeth clash as he locked his jaw to stop himself from saying more.
“He trusts you, and he really wants you guys to succeed, which is why he sent me in the first place. Neither of us would be here if he didn’t think your team could handle this. Trafficking is my specialty. I don’t know why he didn’t want you to know who I really was. Maybe he thought you wouldn’t trust me or believed you guys would be insulted at my presence? All I know is that I was given orders, and I followed them,” I said. He would know exactly what that was like, to put on a uniform and do what you were told, even when you disagreed with the orders. If anyone could understand that, it would be Adam and his friends.
He was silent for a moment. His lips would part as if he was going to speak, then they slammed shut again. It took him four tries before he said what was on his mind. “Was any of it actually real?”
That was a loaded question, and my heart broke at the inference. It felt real to me, despite my lies. I was attracted to Adam, and in another life, maybe he and I could have been something more than a drunken hookup in paradise. I sensed that under his large and tough exterior was a sensitive man looking for a connection with someone who he could relate to, someone who wouldn’t be intimidated by him. I wanted to give him that, but I couldn’t.
“Most of the backstory was false, but I do know martial arts. That’s part of my training.” I swallowed hard, because I was about to make myself very vulnerable. “The chemistry between us, that wasn’t an act. That was very much real.” I laid my heart out on my sleeve, a heart that I couldn’t give away in the first place. I liked this chemistry between us, it woke up a part of me that had been dead for a long time, but I couldn’t give him my heart. It was battered and bruised and very distrustful.
His eyes searched my face still, and I could feel my eyes pleading with his.I’m telling you the truth.“You said you were in the Navy. Why did you leave, and why did you lie about that?” he asked.
For what felt like the millionth time, I swallowed hard. I nervously played with the ends of my hair as I answered. “This is difficult for me to talk about, so give me a second okay?” Deep breath. “I’ll tell you because I realize I need to earn your trust, but this is heavy.” My mouth turned dry and my hands began to sweat. This happened anytime I was forced to talk about the abuse I endured. It had sent me into a deep and dark depression, and it took a long time to claw my way out to see the light. It didn’t matter that in my past undercover assignments I had been subjected to abuse; I was ready for it then. In the Navy, I wasn’t prepared. I was ready to take on the nation’s enemies, not it’s sexual predators and narcissists. The Navy made me into a cold and calculating person, but not in the way it was supposed to.
Adam’s hard expression turned slightly softer. He could likely see my turmoil. I was extremely uncomfortable with his expression of sympathy. After my lies, even ones made with good intentions, he deserved to know my truth—no matter how painful. I deserved whatever reaction he gave me.
“I was a Petty Officer Third Class, and one of my superiors, a Petty Officer First Class, took an interest in me. He was supposed to be mentoring me, but he did a lot more than that,” I said with a scoff. “He started with inappropriate comments disguised as flirtation, and when I rejected his advances, he became mean. I didn’t report him for fear of retaliation. We were trapped on a ship together, and there wasn’t much I could do to escape him.” In fact, there wasn’t much I could do to keep myself out of trouble. He was always finding a way to metaphorically keep his hand around my throat. Ironically, my throat felt like it was closing as I continued to choke out the story. “He threatened to destroy my career if I refused to fuck him. He said he’d ruin me or kill me in my sleep if I told anyone about what happened. A 1150 complaint wouldn’t look good on his record.” I scoffed again, because somehow hisneedsand career mattered more than my bodily autonomy and career.
“Is that a complaint for assault or harassment, like SHARP for the Army?” he asked. His eyebrows were knitted together with what looked like worry. I wanted to reach out and touch them, to soothe them back into place, but I held still.
“It’s a complaint made against a superior for any reason.”
I left the sentence hanging in the air; it would be easy enough to pick up where the rest of my story was going. I hoped that would be it, that it would answer all his questions and we could move on. He remained silent, and I could tell by his glassy stare that he wanted more from me. Despite the fact he knew where this story led, he wanted to hear it all. My story was the ugly side of the military that others refused to acknowledge. Yet he knew; I could see it. His hard demeanor was gone now, soothed by pain.
Something like hope fluttered in my stomach, forcing some of the guilt to leave. There was no judgmental hardness to his gaze; he wasn’t going to blame me for what happened, like others had.
“The blackmail, threats, and rape continued the whole deployment. He’d cover my mouth as I cried, when he did what he did.” I swallowed past the gagging reflex that threatened to take over as I imagined the terror and pain I felt in the moment. “It wasn’t consensual. I told him every single time that I didn’t want him to touch me, all he had to do was corner me near a closet, and it didn’t matter what I said. He did whatever he wanted to me. He’d be balls deep inside me and whisper in my ear all the ways he would destroy me if I exposed him.”
