Live Wire (17 page)

“Jordan said it was your and John’s sources that reported the discovery,” Tehya said, turning to Bailey. “What happened?”

Bailey’s pretty face tightened into a grimace. “We have several contacts in Afghanistan who knew to listen for any inquiries into the death of Tehya Talimosi Fitzhugh. Several weeks ago two of them contacted us along a secured channel. Ira Arthur and Mark Tenneyson had been sifting through the wreckage of the warehouse we had blown up to retire your identity. Arthur and Tenneyson were overheard discussing the information that you hadn’t died as well as your new name and possible location. We still haven’t learned who contacted them, but we have people working on it.”

“Your contacts have no idea who employed the two men?” she asked as she felt a warning shiver chase up her back.

“None.” Bailey shook her head. “But when we arrived in D.C. last night, we learned that Stephen Taite and several of his associates had arrived in the States last week to oversee the purchase of a chemical production plant in Pittsburgh. Arthur and Tenneyson were reported to be watching him as well.”

Stephen Taite.

Tehya turned from the two women to drag mugs from the cabinet and hide her response to this information.

He was her great-uncle. Her grandfather’s younger brother. When Bernard Taite and his wife had died, Stephen had taken over the Taite estate and business holdings. From what she had learned, he had barely managed to save it after stockholders began pulling out following the deaths of his brother and sister-in-law.

It hadn’t been an easy time for the family, and Tehya had been dealing with her mother’s death then, as well as the death of the former marine whom her mother had persuaded to protect Tehya.

How long ago had it been?

So long. The same month her mother had been killed in Nicaragua. Francine had called her parents out of desperation at that time, begging them to help her to send someone for her and her daughter. Sorrel had been so close, Tehya had learned, to both their locations.

Less than twenty-four hours later Bernard Taite had been killed in a hit-and-run on a Paris street. The next day his wife had been found in their bedroom, dead from an apparent overdose.

And her mother had died at the hands of a madman determined to find Tehya for reasons she still didn’t completely understand.

Sorrel claimed she was the child he had promised to his son, her half-brother. That all she had to do was return to him and he’d ensure she didn’t suffer her mother’s fate.

For months, Tehya had contemplated simply giving up and taking her own life. So many people had died trying to protect her that she hadn’t dared contact Stephen Taite, her grandfather’s brother. She had been terrified Sorrel would kill him and the rest of her family as well.

“After all these years do they actually believe I would contact my family?” she asked softly, keeping her back to the others as she laid the mugs out and pulled sugar and powdered creamer from another cabinet.

“When you aided the authorities in France in bypassing Sorrel’s computer security and locating the underground rooms in which he kept the young girls and women he kidnapped, your identity as his and Francine Taite’s daughter was revealed to the authorities,” Lilly continued. “I know for a few years Stephen tried to contact you, to learn if you were indeed the Taite heir, but you never answered the messages he sent to you through the French authorities.”

Tehya shook her head as she turned back to them, hoping she now had her emotions in check.

“I replied and I told him that I wasn’t related to him,” she said. “That he needed to search elsewhere for his niece and her daughter. He never tried to contact me after that but I had to leave days later when an assassin attempted to get to me while I was still at the estate.”

She hoped he had accepted her denial of their kinship. Her grandparents had been murdered because of their determination to help her and her mother. She had no desire to have more of her family killed, or to put them at more risk than when her mother contacted her own father.

“Evidently someone is aware of the connection, though, and believes you will make contact,” Lilly said. “I suspect thats why Arthur and Tenneyson are watching him while I suspect others have been keeping tabs on you.”

“The report our contact received states that there seems to be a rumor that you’ve been working as an agent for the goverment since leaving France until you were dismissed just before you staged your death.” Amusement gleamed in Bailey’s eyes. “Quite the industrious little thing, aren’t you?”

“So it would appear,” she murmured with a grimace as Jordan, John, and Travis came to the counter for the coffee.

“So, do we have a plan C,D, and E yet?” Bailey turned to the men, her tone patient and filled with amusement as she stared at them.

Jordan had always trained his men to have more than one plan. Tehya was aware she had shot his plans A and B to hell and back. Evidently the others were aware of it now as well.

“We’re getting there,” John said. The look he gave his wife was one filled with love, devotion.

Tehya had once dreamed of seeing Jordan gaze at her in such a way. It was a dream that had died the morning she left Texas.

It was the same look Travis Caine gave his wife, Lilly. She completed him, and it was more than apparent that he completed her as well. The two couples were the perfect examples of the relationship she had dreamed of having with Jordan.

“What about grabbing Arthur and Tenneyson and allowing Micah to interrogate them?” Tehya suggested, “Surely they would know who hired them?” She wondered if they could get that lucky? God, she just wanted this over this before Sorrel’s men had a chance to hurt her friends as Sorrel had once destroyed anyone who attempted to protect her and her mother.

Including the young nun who had taken her in at the convent just after Tehya had turned six, while her mother had tried to lead Sorrel and his men away from her.

Within months Francine had sent word that Sorrel possibly knew their location. Tehya remembered Sister Mary wakening her, the room so dark she had stumbled as the sister helped her dress, urging her to hurry.

They had left the convent by way of a small tunnel hidden behind the stone wall of the wine cellar in the basement. As they had exited the tunnel into the heavy forest, Tehya had heard gunfire in the distance and a woman’s screams. The remaining nuns had died horribly that night.

Within three years the nun had put Tehya under the protection of a former CIA agent she had known while in college. He had managed to keep Tehya safe for only a few years.

He had been killed mere days after putting her on a bus and sending her across the country to a friend who lived in the Washington mountains.

The same scenario had played out so many times. A short period of peace. Then as soon as she began learning how to sleep without fear, it had begun all over again.

Tehya had been fifteen when she had received word of her mother’s death. After that she had to run on her own. She couldn’t bear to be the cause of anyone else’s death. To see more bloodshed for a child who was no more than a curse to anyone who cared for her.

And now it seemed, the past was returning with a vengeance.

The thought of seeing these men and women risking their lives, the love they had found in each other, for her, was too much to face.

“We would try interrogation, but we have enough suspicion they’re unaware of his identity that at the moment it’s riskier than we’d like. We don’t want to tip them off that we’re aware of them at this point,” Lilly explained.

Tehya clenched her fingers into fists and tried to beat back the fear and the panic. “I can’t deal with this!” The exclamation shocked herself as much as it did the rest of them. “You should all leave. You shouldn’t be here, risking yourselves this way. For God’s sake, go home.”

She didn’t wait for a response from any of them. Walking past the two women, she strode quickly to her bedroom to escape. She couldn’t bear to see the love between the two couples and know what they were risking if they involved themselves in this fight. She’d tried. She’d fought this fear, but it was her only weakness besides Jordan. No one who had ever tried to help her had survived it.

Even more, she couldn’t allow Jordan to take this risk. Knowing she had been the cause of his death or any of his family’s would destroy her soul in a way she knew she would never survive.

The Elite Ops had given her six years of peace, what more could she ask for? It wasn’t their fault that the team had disbanded, that their contracts had run out. It wasn’t their fault that she was haunted by a past her father had created.

“Tehya.” Lilly’s determined tone had her pausing at the bedroom door, her hand on the knob. “We’re friends. Wouldn’t you help Travis and me if we were in trouble?”

She turned back just enough to see them, her gaze flicking to Jordan. “But I don’t have anyone who would give a damn, Lilly, in the way you and Travis care for one another. So that really doesn’t apply, does it? Perhaps that’s something all of you should think about. You have families. The others have children. You have something to live for. Do you really want to risk that for someone who isn’t worth it?”

Yanking the door open, she walked into the bedroom, slamming and locking the door behind her before rushing to her dresser.

Her small emergency backpack was there on the side. A weapon, cash, credit cards, and an extra set of keys to the car were inside.

She doubted there was a chance in hell of getting to the car, but she had to leave the house. She had to get away from the acceptance and love she could feel between the two couples. She was so desperate to have it herself, and the knowledge that they were risking what they had to help her made her die a little inside.

Thinking straight, thinking logically, wasn’t going to happen here with Jordan demanding to protect her, and the other four backing him without a thought for their own safety.

She wasn’t at base any longer. There was little security, there was no safety, and Jordan wouldn’t always be there to protect her.

This was one battle she was going to have to decide whether or not to fight, on her own.

*   *   *

“She’s slipping into the garage,” John stated quietly as he watched the handheld monitor he carried. The wireless reception from the small cameras he’d installed before dawn came in clearly.

Jordan stood facing the French doors that led to the back patio, his arms crossed over his chest, as he forced himself to stay in place.

“Are Micah and Nik in place?” he asked quietly.

“They’re ready to roll,” John told him. “They have the same view I have until she leaves the camera’s field of vision. After that, all he has is the tracker we placed on her car.” He gave a small, amused grunt. “Son of a bitch, it’s a good thing you warned me about the electronics detector she slipped out of base, because she’s running it over the vehicle now. I was able to modify the tracker so she can’t spot it, but damn, it wasn’t easy.”

Jordan almost had to grin. She’d slipped out several little goodies that the team had used in the course of their missions. The enterprising little thing had squirreled away well over a million dollars’ worth of high-tech equipment.

And he’d let her. Despite the fact that he had been certain she was covered, that her new identity was secure, he’d allowed her to take it.

Because he knew it would make
her
feel secure.

“It’s nice to know she came out of there with something for the six years she gave you,” Bailey murmured, apparently following his train of thought.

Jordan almost winced at the not-so-subtle dig. He knew that for years the women at the base had watched him and Tehya, expecting any day that their relationship would develop into something more. When it hadn’t, their disappointment in him had been apparent.

“Door’s up and she’s pulling out, Jordan,” John reported. “Micah and Nik are on her ass.”

Maverick and Renegade would make sure she was protected.

Jordan had known she would run. Once John, Bailey, Travis, and Lilly had shown up, she’d panicked, just as Kira had predicted when he had called and apprised her of the situation before arriving in Hagerstown.

He was praying that in allowing her to run they would at least catch a glimpse of who was tailing her here. If they could identify who it was then perhaps they could get lucky and trace them back to their employer.

Kira had known Tehya far longer than the rest of them had, and during that first year on base, she had kept Tehya centered on her job when her fears had almost had her running more than once. It had taken nearly a year for her to settle into the idea of being safe.

Staying in one place wasn’t something Tehya had ever done. Most of her life had been spent running, barely managing to stay one step ahead of her father, or the men he continually sent after her.

Settling down and accepting safety hadn’t been something Tehya could adapt to overnight. And as Kira had known, once she had accepted it, the agents with the Elite Ops had become her family.

The thought of endangering them, like those who had tried to protect her as a child had been endangered, had sent her back into the panicked running mode.

Those protectors had all died within weeks of hiding her with someone else. Her father had caught up with them, tortured and murdered them. For months after Tehya had moved into base quarters, her screams had echoed into the steel-lined hall outside her bedroom from the nightmares that haunted her. More than once Jordan had been unable to resist going to her, pulling her from her suite and putting her to work to exhaust her.

“What if she doesn’t come back?” Lilly posed the question worriedly.

“She’ll come back.” Jordan turned back to them. “She has roots here now, Lilly.” He gazed around the house and thought of the small business she owned. “She’s never had roots before. They’ll tie her to this damned house when nothing else could have.”

Lilly shook her head, her gaze somber. “There are no roots strong enough to hold her if her friends are endangered or if you are.”