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She stopped and caught her breath. “What did you say?”
“That I’m not—”
“No.” She shook her head. “Your exact words. Say that again. ‘I promise. You have to trust me.’”
Her face had changed. She was deep in thought, working through an intricate mental puzzle. As she turned over my unfortunate words in her head, I could almost see the pieces clicking into place. I shook my head.
“Say it!” she hissed, clenching her fists. She closed her eyes, waiting.
There was no point in denying it. I added the other words I’d spoken to her the day of her rescue when she’d been dehydrated and overwhelmed and slipping in and out of consciousness. As the medics had lifted her into the ambulance, I’d stood behind her, out of her sight, worried sick that we would lose another civilian. That the world would lose the talented Ashlee Armand. “You’re safe now, I promise. You have to trust me.”
She opened her eyes slowly. “I thought it was the voice of an angel. Hearing your voice again... That’s why I trusted you Saturday night, why I’ve continued trusting you.” She moved to the sofa and dropped down to sit on the arm. “I want all the information about my kidnapping. Not just what you deem acceptable to share.”
“Ashlee, my heart breaks for you, for what you went through, it really does, but a lot of that is classified.”
“No! You don’t get to say that to me.” Tears ran down her cheeks. “My friend died in that kidnapping. Right in front of my eyes. I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t even grieve for him because I spent every minute of the next twenty-four hours waiting for them to come and kill me, too. So, I need you to pull every string you have to declassify every document necessary, polygraph me and swear me to secrecy and teach me the secret fucking handshake if that’s what it takes, but I need to know what happened to me.” She was sobbing and shaking.
I stepped toward her.
She held up her hands to stop me. “Will you do that for me?” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Is there some way you can do that for me?”
There was exactly one way, and it wouldn’t be free. It would cost her everything. Her close-knit family of her mom, dad, and younger sister, her college friends she still saw regularly, her friends at the paper, her career.
But I could do it. I could bring her into my world. Draw her in and keep her close, at least for a while. A small, naysaying voice in my head warned me that my motives weren’t pure, that the idea of having more time with her was making me reckless.
I reminded myself that wasn’t what was happening. She was asking for something she desperately needed, for the only thing that could bring her peace of mind and allow her to reclaim her life and her sense of place in the world.
I gripped her shoulders. “If that’s what you want, what you really need in order to heal, I can do it for you. But in return, you’ll have to give up your life.”
8
Ashlee
I thought I knew what I was getting into. In my eight-year professional career, I’d faced down crooked CEOs, corrupt politicians, perverted Hollywood moguls, and all-around shitty masters of the universe, all of whom wouldn’t have bothered to piss on me if I’d been on fire. In fact, they would probably have been the ones lighting the match. I’d been hated, threatened, detained, and once—six months ago—kidnapped and held for three agonizing days.
But as I sat in TJ’s nondescript, dark blue sedan in a parking garage on the west side of DC, staring at the unmarked black panel van in front of us, it occurred to me that I had either gone off the deep end and was living out a dystopian fantasy, or shit had just gotten real beyond my wildest imagination. And given that I had a dual degree in journalism and creative writing, my imagination could go pretty hog wild.
“How many of them will there be?” I asked.
TJ glanced at me. “Right now? Two.”
I nodded. Two spies. Well, three, since TJ was one of them, as well. I could probably handle that without too much anxiety. I waited for the men in black to emerge from the back of the van with their earpieces and dark glasses and suits. Then I remembered that the earpiece TJ had shown me, the one he’d used just under an hour ago to call in his team, was tiny and clear and undetectable.
The back doors of the van opened, and I clenched every muscle in my body. I was sweating through my coral blouse and tan pantsuit, one of my favorite summer professional outfits that I was probably now ruining. I shouldn’t be so overwhelmed. I’d met FBI and CIA and NSA agents before. I had confidential contacts in all those agencies, most of them chattier than they should be. But this was a covert op, an off-the-books agency, a black line in the budget. This group, whose name TJ had yet to reveal to me, had the resources and camouflage to be the stuff of nightmares.
The first person out of the van was a tall, redheaded woman wearing a designer peach sundress and matching stilettos. I’d seen photos of her while researching TJ and his associates. The second agent was a young guy, probably in his twenties, with short-cropped dark hair and a well-trimmed beard. He wore tan cargo shorts, a black T-shirt, and slide-on beach sandals.
“That’s Dr. Bond and... a surfer dude?” I asked TJ.
“Glad you still have your sense of humor. That’s Jensen, the best white-hat hacker and worst bartender in the business.”
I furrowed my brow. “Worst bartender in the spy business?”
TJ shook his head. “Worst bartender in any business.” He climbed out of the car and came around to the passenger side to open my door for me.
I didn’t bother telling him I could get out of the car by myself because, at that moment, I wasn’t sure I could. When I’d agreed to TJ’s terms, I’d been consumed with anger at him for hiding the truth from me and besieged by the need to avenge Aiden’s death. The man who had kidnapped us, and the people he worked for, were pure evil, and I believed that surviving that ordeal had left me with a sacred duty to see justice done. But in pursuit of that, I’d promised to walk away from my family, my career, and my entire life and enter the Witness Protection Program.
“I can’t breathe.” I clawed at my throat, which was closing. I knew it was a panic attack and told myself that over and over, but my throat didn’t relax, and I couldn’t catch my breath.
