Shadows Amongst Light (The Spy Who Loves Me)

Shadows Amongst Light

By Mary Eason

PUBLISHED BY:

Mary Eason

Copyright © 2013 by Mary Eason

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Praise for the author

Mary Eason skillfully crafts a tale that sends the characters on a wild goose chase. Everyone's a suspect. No one can really be trusted. This is the type of book you read during the day or you might jump at every little sound others. Gritty and emotional. A wild ride
.

LAS Romance Reviews

A fast-pace and deep romantic suspense story sure to grab your attention and make you wish it would go on and on! Extremely good and a recommended read.

Marilyn Rondeau for www.ck2skwipsandkritiques.co
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CHAPTER ONE

             
No one leaves The Organization.

             
It doesn’t happen.

             
Not once, in all of its illustrious history has anyone simply walked away of their own accord.

             
So what made me think I was going to be different? I didn’t have a choice. There was more than just my life involved now. There was the baby. I was pregnant.              

             
Don’t get me wrong. It isn’t as if we can’t be trusted not to divulge all of the government’s secrets that we are privy to. In fact, it’s not The Organization that’s the problem at all. It’s all the bad guys that are responsible for our existence in the first place. The reason The Organization was established. To protect our country against all enemies, both foreign and in our specific case domestic. You see, we are part of our government’s defense against domestic acts of terrorism. While we are technically assigned to the FBI, we certainly don’t follow their rules of procedure. We were the elite. The cream of the crop. The best of the Bureau has to offer.

             
As enemies of every known terrorist faction and militia element working within the United States borders today, we as members of The Organization are always in the precarious position of having our covers blown at any time. Our faces exposed to the enemy. Our lives and our purpose put at risk. All it would take would be one false move. Or one weak link.

             
As far as the rest of the Bureau was concerned, we don’t exist. Recruited for our various unique talents, we have all the resources of the Bureau at our disposal. We could deploy agents anywhere within in the US and abroad at a second’s notice if necessary but we never give those orders ourselves. They come from Adam Manning our director at the Bureau, because on paper we don’t exist. We were simply a new form of defense in the war on terrorism.

             
So you see, even if it were possible to leave The Organization, I knew I could never really escape my past. There would be no way to leave that behind. Because just like us, the people that we hunt have their own elite soldiers. Trained at seeking and destroying the enemy. Namely us.

             
I could run as far away as I wanted, but I would spend the rest of my life looking back over my shoulder wondering at every unnamed sound, every strange bump in the night if this was the moment. Paybacks can be hell on earth. Payback for the type of work we did could be fatal.

             
That was what Noah had been trying to make clear to me when he’d offered me the job in the first place. How many times had he told me, “Cameron, don’t rush into this. You have to be willing to commit your life to The Organization. There is no getting out.”

             
From the beginning, I guess Noah had somehow known that I couldn’t hack it long term. In the end in spite of what I wanted to believe about myself, I guess he was right.

             
I wanted out. Out of The Organization, which I was convinced also meant out of my marriage to Noah.

             
“What choice do I really have?” I’d asked myself that question so many times over the past few hours. Sure, I’d known the risks going in just as I knew them now. But I was sick to death of the work we did and I was pregnant with Noah’s child.

             
Just another mistake. One that Noah didn’t know about just yet. I was afraid this was going to prove to be my final mistake. Unfortunately, I hadn’t learned from any of my past ones and neither had Noah.

             
We’d been attracted to each other right from the beginning. Even though relationships between Bureau members are strictly forbidden. Noah and I both knew this going in and I think that was probably one reason Noah didn’t want me involved right from the start. But that hadn’t stopped me signing on or from loving him.

             
We were married a short time later. All very secret. No one knew about our wedding vows. Although most of the team suspected...something, we all honored the, ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ policy. As long as no one knew for certain about our relationship, we couldn’t be used against each other if it ever came to that.

             
This meant however that we were forced to live separate lives for the world around us to see. Finding only a few precious, private moments together where we could simply be just another normal married couple. And with Noah’s increased work assignments abroad, which took him away from me for weeks at a time those moments had become almost nonexistent anymore. I still kept my apartment and he had his house. We lived separately. And I hated the lies. But I’d learn to tolerate the secret life because I loved Noah. I didn’t want to live without him in my life. Still, lately I found myself thinking about things like family and growing old together. Living just a simple, normal married life.

             
Unfortunately, the chances of us ever living that fantasy were next to none for dozens of reasons. One of which was that we never knew if our next assignment might turn out to be our last. The likelihood of either of us living to a ripe old age was slim. So I accepted our life together for the moments that we could sneak alone and I was content, or so I thought. Until two things happened that changed that outlook completely.

             
The first was discovering that my brother, whom I’d, believed to be dead...wasn’t. I was almost convinced that the man that looked like Judah was my brother even though a part of me hoped I was wrong.

             
The second had come earlier today when I discovered that I was pregnant.

             
Until these things, I’d pushed all my doubts aside and concentrated on being with Noah for as long as I had left with him. I didn’t believe we were going to be permanent even though I desperately needed permanency. But Noah had loved me enough to marry me, in spite of the fact that it went against everything he believed was the right thing to do.

             
It wasn’t until I’d started getting calls from someone who claimed to be my brother, followed shortly by seeing the man that so closely resembled Judah that it had thrown my carefully created illusion of happiness out the window forever and caused me to question my choices in life.

             
I loved Noah. I just wanted us to have the typical Norman Rockwell life together. Not the cloak and dagger dangerous existence that had become our world.

             
On the few occasions that I’d actually brought this up to Noah I’d gotten the answer I was expecting. This was what we did. This was our life. It was who we were. I should be happy with it and stop wishing for the impossible. That hadn’t stopped me from being restless, doubting all my decisions in life. Wondering how I could continue to be a part of the work we did when what we did now involved my brother.

             
No one, not even Noah knew that I was now believed my brother might be alive. As far as Noah and everyone within The Organization and the Bureau knew, Judah had died years ago.

             
Of course, I didn’t actually have any real proof that the man I’d come across by chance was Judah. But something deep inside of me wouldn’t let go of the thought.

             
It was very possible that I’d found Judah again. He’d come back to D.C. to find me and tell me something. I owed it to Judah and to my parents to not only find out why he’d returned after all these years, but also to understand what had happened to Judah all those years ago. And where exactly had he been. Twenty-one years is a long time to be missing without explanation. I’d waited a long time to find out the truth. I wasn’t about to let him walk away from me again without those answers.

             
Unfortunately knowing the things that I did about the man that I now believed to be Judah, made me all the more certain that the only way I could ever have any relationship with him was to get out of The Organization. Which I was almost certain meant letting go of Noah as well. I wasn’t sure I was ready to take that step just yet until I was positive this was my brother.

             
If this was Judah, then somehow he’d become my enemy. A member of one of the most violent terrorist cells operating in the US today. The Red Jihad was an elite, well-organized group. The Bureau and The Organization had been searching for some way to infiltrate the Red Jihad for years now.

             
It was rumored that this group was made up of former members of our own military. Such highly trained specialists as Navy Seals, Green Berets, and Army Rangers, although none of this could be confirmed because the Red Jihad was virtually impossible to infiltrate.

             
I knew that if I told anyone, including Noah that I suspected the man known to the Bureau as Elijah Jacobs was really my brother, then my own loyalty would be called into question. At the very least, how my connection to this man could be used to benefit The Organization. I couldn’t let either of those things happen.

             
The Bureau believed that Elijah Jacobs was responsible for some of the most horrific attacks on American soil in recent years, even though none of this had ever been proven because the guy was good at getting rid of witnesses. Elijah Jacobs was in fact believed to be the actual man in charge of the Red Jihad.

             
From the few photos, we’d managed to obtain over the years of the guy it wasn’t possible to make out much about his appearance. But in my heart, I knew the truth. Elijah Jacobs was my brother. Because I believed this, I knew there was no way I could just walk away from the only family I had left in the world. I couldn’t--not even for Noah. I certainly wouldn’t sell him out for The Organization’s benefit.

             
Even though I’d see all the evidence that had been collected against the guy known as, Elijah Jacobs but I could not let myself believe all those reports. I didn’t believe my brother could have become this monster and I was determined to prove all those reports wrong. There was no way the boy I remembered could be the cold-blooded killer that he was depicted as being.

             
It was then that the thought of leaving The Organization, and living a normal life with my brother, first begin to take shape. Sure, I owed it to myself, to Judah to my baby, and to our parent’s memories to try, but there were other, far more disturbing reasons why I knew I had to get out. I’d started to doubt myself and everyone around me. I suspected everyone. I knew I was on shaky ground here. All those doubts and frustrations were starting to affect my survival instincts. It was time to get out of the business before it was too late. Before it cost me my life and the life of my child.              

             
After I’d gotten over the initial shock of discovering that I was pregnant, I found I couldn’t bear the thought of exposing my child to the evil that we faced almost daily.