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“Okay, so they knew we were coming in Aqaba. That’s why Rafiq and the artifacts were gone by the time the team got there.” He glared at Albrecht again. “When did you find out she was a honey trap?”
He dropped his gaze to the floor. “Saturday, when I went to Pennsylvania to supposedly meet her parents. There were some guys there.”
“Middle Eastern?”
He shook his head. “American. They said they were with the FBI and wanted information on Edwards. The news that Jordan had demanded extradition had just dropped, so I believed them. I told them I saw you kissing Diana on the sidewalk—we all saw you through the bar window—but I think they already knew about you two.”
Because Rafiq had seen them together at the Mayflower on Friday, and Chris had left his signed credit card slip on the bar when he left. Rafiq had his name before Chris even knew there was reason to conceal it. But Chris didn’t tell Albrecht that.
“You say you thought they were feds,” Rand said. “That doesn’t make your girl a honey trap.”
“I didn’t figure that out until Sunday. It was just her and me in this big old house she’d supposedly grown up in, but there were no photos on the walls. It was sterile and bland…and I started to think about how generic everything she’d told me was. I asked about her students and how it went the last week before winter break, and she just brushed aside the question. She just…didn’t sound like a second-year kindergarten teacher at all. And her parents were supposedly called away for a funeral of an old family friend, but she slipped and changed the friend’s name. I don’t think she even cared if she kept her story straight.”
“Because she’d gotten what she wanted from you and was done with the ruse.”
Albrecht reddened. His ego had to sting at that. His spy girlfriend didn’t enjoy fucking him enough to keep the game going. Poor baby.
“What happened when you called her on it?” Rand asked.
“I sneaked in on her when she was masturbating for another guy on FaceTime in her ‘parents’ bedroom. I could see from the background that the guy was on a ship. Before she could close the laptop, I told him she’s fucking half the fleet including me, and used that as my excuse to pack my bag.”
He closed his eyes. “She guessed I’d figured out the truth. Before I could leave, she gave me some trackers and said everything would be fine if I tagged you or your vehicle once I was in Little Creek.”
“And you agreed.”
“What else could I do? Shit. The stuff I’d told her…”
Chris kept a lid on his temper and refrained from listing all the other choices the prick could have made.
“I left, and while I was driving, I got a message saying you’d left Little Creek and they thought you were headed back to DC, but they didn’t know where you were staying. They told me to head back to the hotel where we’d stayed last week. Fallon was still there, and you and Fallon were tight.”
“Who was texting you all this?” Rand asked.
“I don’t know. It wasn’t Emily’s phone number. But I knew it wasn’t a fed, even though that’s who they still claimed to be. They even said tagging your car was fine because you were harboring a fugitive.”
“So you tagged my vehicle, then what?”
“I texted from the bathroom at the bar that I’d done the deed and I wanted to head home to Little Creek. I was told I couldn’t do that. They might need me again, so I went back to the hotel.” He ran a hand over his face, the manacle around his wrist limiting his movement so he had to dip his head down to perform the action.
He then straightened and said, “This morning, Jamal showed up at my hotel room. Told me he had a gift to deliver. I didn’t recognize him. I didn’t see his face in Aqaba.”
“But surely you suspected,” Chris said.
He shook his head. “I didn’t know what to think. He said he was Emily’s half brother, but I knew that was bullshit.”
“Emily being the honey trap?”
Albrecht nodded. “I can give you her name, but now I’m thinking it was fake.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
In his ear, Freya snickered. “This one’s a real brain trust. But Raptor got her photo and dating app profile from Albrecht’s phone. They’re scanning other apps for more profiles. Odds are Albrecht is one of dozens of marks.”
Rand picked up the line of questioning. “So you drove Jamal to the coordinates that had been transmitted via the tracker and left a pipe bomb as a gift for your teammate.”
Chris tilted back in his seat, remembering the pickup truck pulling out of the long driveway before he pulled in. Jesus. That had been Albrecht’s truck. He didn’t know what the guy drove, hadn’t recognized it. But damn, if he had, they’d be in a different situation right now.
“I didn’t know it was a bomb! I asked to see the so-called gift. He showed me an artifact. A tablet of some kind. Said it was from Jordan.”
