Hard to Trust (3 page)

"But why? Why wouldn't they go along with their plan, which I can only assume was to take you and me as well? Or maybe just kill us then and there."

And why hadn't he heard what she did? Or maybe he'd heard it too, but was afraid to mention it.

"They might have gotten spooked for some reason." He cleared his throat. "I need to get going."

"Do you think they got Alex to spill any secrets before they…?" The words came ever so slowly, as it almost seemed sacrilegious to think Alex would betray his country, even under duress. Who knew what anyone might do when subjected to torture? The Farm could only prepare an agent so much for the eventuality.

"Would you stop obsessing about this?"

She opted to change the subject, as she suspected she was wearing on his patience. "Have you been cleared to return to work yet?"

"Nope. They're still waiting on the final physical to give me the go-ahead."

"You going to be based out of New York still?"

"Yep. Makes things easier. I spend half my time flying all over anyway, so it makes the most sense. I'll check in with you when I make a trip to Langley later in the month when," he cleared his throat, "they do the dedication of Alex's star."

"Sure, Nick. It will be good to see you."

She disconnected. Nick couldn't have been clearer. He didn't want any part of probing into the specifics of the message. Fine. She'd been on her own before. She could do it again.

She dropped the phone on the floor next to the tub as she stared at the message once again. Even though she hadn't captured everything, with a few bits and pieces of the puzzle missing, there was enough to make her wonder what it meant.

Backgammon back in play
.
Loose ends taken care of…soon. Weaknesses…Reddog.

Did it mean anything at all, or was it guilt playing havoc with her thoughts? But if it didn't mean anything, why bother to shred it? That was the part that didn't make a lick of sense. Although people shredded a lot of things that had nothing to do with secrets.

Unwilling to let it die, she took a picture with her cell phone then saved it to her Dropbox. Not for any reason other than to capture it so she could study it more in her spare time. Sooner or later she'd be able to fill in the missing data, and whatever was written would make sense.

Hopefully.

Dreaming about Alex being alive every night wasn't going to help further her cause. It would only lead others to think she'd gone off the deep end. Maybe for once she should take the doctor's advice and take those sleeping pills he'd given her.

In some ways she was happy to be out of Afghanistan. But she hated desk work. Shifting through piles and piles of data searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack made her crazy. For the time being, until she was cleared for fieldwork once again, she'd be in a cubicle at Langley.

She rolled her shoulders to get rid of the kinks brought on by the lingering damage from the bullet in her shoulder. The doctor had told her that in order to get the bullet out, they'd have to break the bone. She wasn't ready for that kind of intervention.

She tamped down her frustration. Being at Langley could help further her personal investigation. A positive spin on the challenge facing her might be the only way to get up Monday morning and head to work. Fieldwork had always been her niche. The redundancy of being on site made her skin itch. She never could get anything accomplished stuck behind four walls of concrete and stone.

If she could remember more of what happened that day, or maybe if she'd been more mindful about doing something to stem her own blood loss before she passed out, she'd have a better idea of what actually transpired between her discovering Eli's body and Alex getting led away. Normally snippets such as that stuck in her mind forever, but this time they'd been blown away by a force she couldn't quite explain.

"Don't kill her."
Could it have been Alex's plea for leniency that she'd somehow misinterpreted as a command? The psychologist thought it was born of some kind of hero fantasy she had about Alex.

The shrink had told her it was about PTSD. She couldn't deny that as a possibility. Although that pat answer was almost as frustrating as the elusiveness of the truth.

All she could think about was where she went wrong. How had she missed the clues that seemed so obvious now in hindsight?

She laid her head back once again, closed her eyes, and let her mind drift. Seconds later, her body started to relax. An indeterminate amount of time later, her heart started to beat so fast she could feel the pulse of it in her ears.

Holy crap.

Somebody was in her house.

*  *  *

As far as intel, what Jake had pretty much sucked. An address, sketchy information about Ms. Graham, and diddly else. He didn't even know a whole lot about what went down in Afghanistan. He got off the plane in DC, rented a car, and drove to Virginia arriving in Tessa Graham's neighborhood just before midnight Friday.

He used GPS to get him close to her place then walked to survey the area. Google Maps could only tell him so much. As he expected, it was a typical suburban neighborhood, more than likely filled with people who worked in DC, with well-manicured lawns and overpriced fancy cars in the driveways.

Her place was the end unit of a townhome building. With a brick exterior, two-car garage in front, and open space behind backing up to a small wooded area, it appeared pricey and relatively new.

He did a quick check for surveillance cameras mounted to the roof, but still wasn't assured when he found none. She had access to the latest in technology. It was conceivable she had some kind of hybrid system to keep the bogeyman—currently him—away from her door if she didn't want him there.

Dark both inside and out. Not even timer lights. Which seemed a little odd. Most CIA types that he knew were of the paranoid variety, and had all sorts of bells and whistles in terms of staggering lights turning on and off, as well as state-of-the-art alarm systems.

Curious, he placed his fingers on the window ledge and leveraged himself to see inside. It was one of those designs where the entire floor was open. From the front window he could see clear through to the kitchen, where dishes were strewn about, all the cabinet doors were open, and broken glass littered the floor. The trash—mostly an overabundance of Starbucks cups—was scattered about the hardwood floor. Cushions were yanked off the couch and ripped open, the stuffing inside bubbling out.

What the hell had happened?

The whistle of the wind in the trees nearly blocked out what sounded like the tap of footsteps across the roof. If they were a little faster and lighter, he might believe they were a squirrel, but knew instinctively they were of the human variety.

He followed the sounds from above, moving along the front of the building. Stopping, he plastered himself against a large evergreen and listened. The dainty steps were too soft to be a man. Could it be the elusive Ms. Graham making a run for it? Had she somehow spotted him outside? Or did it have something to do with whoever trashed her place?

He'd reached the end of the unit, cowering next to a bush laden with tiny thorns that adhered to his pants and poked through the fabric of his jeans. Just as he was about to believe he'd gone crazy, someone slid down the drainpipe not ten feet away from him.

Based on the slight build, he'd bet female. While he couldn't see much in the dark, he'd put money on the fact she was his target. His hunch was confirmed when she rubbed at her shoulder before peering around the corner. Whatever she saw made her hesitate for a second before she sprinted through the back toward the woods.

Since he'd scoped out the neighborhood, he already knew cutting through there led to the center of town. On a Friday night, he couldn't help but wonder where she might be headed, or why she might have run. Had she escaped from whoever trashed her place, or had she done the damage herself to get people off her trail?

But then he peeked around the corner and spotted a guy in a knitted hat guarding her back door. Unless he missed his guess, the guy had a gun clutched along his side.

What was the guy doing there? Could the CIA have hired somebody else besides him to bring her in? Was this some kind of off-the-radar operation? Or did this have something to do with whatever went down in Afghanistan? The only thing he knew with certainty was it had a whole lot to do with the mess he'd spotted inside.

Any way he looked at it, the entire situation made him curious enough to see where she went. But it also raised the question as to why in the hell they had hired him.

Any minute now Tessa expected her heart to pop out of her body, as oxygen seemed unable to reach her starving lungs. She'd been in tough spots before, but nothing like Afghanistan and nothing like today. A home invasion by some bad guys had always been a lingering thought. Being discovered and tracked down seemed even more likely in her current frame of mind.

Why hadn't she seen this coming?

There was only one answer
the terrorists that let her go had tracked her down. Somehow. Someway. Maybe Alex's death hadn't satisfied their bloodlust. Someone had tracked her from Afghanistan to kill her. That remained the only explanation in her current paranoid state.

Perhaps Alex had promised them something in exchange for her life that hadn't panned out. Now they had come to exact revenge.

It didn't happen often, but was within the realm of possibilities if the men who'd invaded the camp knew her real name. No doubt they'd hypothesized she lived in Virginia, near CIA headquarters at Langley. Alex's plea for leniency might have been the impetus.

Brushing off the fear, she drew in a breath and forced herself to think rationally. It could have been some random burglar who had happened upon her place. Considering there was a patch of woods behind her house, it would make a perfect spot to hide if someone wanted to rob her and be reasonably free from detection. But there were two problems with that scenario. One, she had a sophisticated alarm system that would require some expertise to get past, and, two, would a run-of-the-mill burglar have a guy stationed at her back door with a Glock in his hand? Probably not.

Part of her believed she should have stood her ground and confronted whoever had invaded her place. She had enough firepower to do that but instead chose to run.

Six months ago, running wouldn't have been on her radar, but today it seemed like it was the only logical choice. Taking risks no longer was a viable way to live her life.

But as an adrenaline junkie, how long could that last? Maybe she only needed more time to heal and think through where she might want to go.

She sat in the back of the coffee shop with the hood of her sweatshirt covering her head as she waited out the bad guys. They had to have tripped her second alarm by now. They might have gotten past the first alarm, but no way they could have gotten past the second. If that were true, why hadn't she heard the blare of sirens? She wasn't far away.

There was a reasonable explanation for everything, as Alex had schooled her time and time again.

Why did everything circle back to Alex?

She loved him, but wasn't in love with him. That was how it had always been. He'd always told her that if he ever got married, she would be his best man. And she felt the same way.

All this mindless brain activity allowed the throbbing in her shoulder to seep into her awareness. She pulled one of the pain patches she kept in her purse and applied it across the incision. More than likely it was the placebo effect, but the ache seemed to ease as the metal discs inside did their magic. Even though her body tensed tight inside, she kept the exterior looking casual and fluid as she surfed the Internet with no particular destination in mind and watched every person that walked inside.

At this time of night, most people fell into two categories. Either they were under twenty-one and used this place as their hangout or were middle-aged couples having a decaf latte before heading home.

A guy who didn't look like he belonged to either of those categories strolled inside. His languid walk couldn't disguise the intensity of his perusal. She guessed him to be thirtyish, well over six feet, and probably close to two hundred pounds. With dark hair, stubbled cheeks, and olive-toned skin, he could very well be one of the men who'd broken into her home. He fit the general description circling around her head.

If they'd discovered the bathtub full of water, they would know she'd heard them. But that would also mean they'd made it past the second alarm. Why weren't the Alexandria PD's sirens blaring? Maybe somehow she'd missed the sound, or maybe they were that good.

The next logical conclusion would be to come look for her in town. That set of assumptions nicely followed her paranoid expectation that she was the object of their focus.

A public place gave her a sense of safety. And the guy who entered wouldn't show his hand with people around. She watched as he flirted with the young girl behind the counter while he waited for his coffee, seemingly oblivious to Tessa's presence. But she sensed he knew exactly what she was doing, as if he had eyes in the back of his head.