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He was trained to detect lies. Instead, he’d let his libido—and yes, dammit, his feelings for her—get in the way of seeing the truth. Plus, Jules Stone was without a doubt one of the best liars he’d ever met.
“Could you unlock the cuffs, please?”
Ignoring the plea in her voice wasn’t easy. She was suffering, but he knew as well as he knew anything that if he unlocked the cuffs, she’d be out of here in a second.
“Later. Right now, I want answers. Why didn’t you tell me your real identity?”
“It wasn’t pertinent to my mission.”
“And what exactly was that mission? What did you promise to do for Turner?”
“She hired me to find incriminating evidence to ruin you and destroy OZ. And if that didn’t work, I was supposed to murder you.”
Even though he’d already known that was the most likely reason, the stab of betrayal was there.
“Why did you take the job?”
“Ash, please. I won’t leave until you know everything, I promise, but I need to get out of these handcuffs.”
The words wouldn’t have worked, but the tears behind them did. Sighing, Ash stood and unlocked the cuffs. She lay still for several seconds.
Watching for a sign that she would try to run, he waited.
* * *
Jules sat up carefully in the bed. One wrong move, and Ash would handcuff her again. She would do almost anything to avoid the humiliation. Not that she hadn’t already humiliated herself enough for a lifetime. Having a meltdown in front of friends was one thing. Friends understood you, cared about you. Wanted good things for you. Experiencing a meltdown in front of people who hated you was altogether different. She was lucky they’d sedated her instead of shooting her.
“I’m very sorry about hurting Gideon and the other two men. I don’t even know who they are.”
“They’re from a team of mercenaries we use from time to time if the job is too large for our small group.”
“How…how did the mission go? Did you get Lang?”
“I don’t discuss OZ missions with outsiders.”
The barb went straight through her heart, just as he intended. If she had been standing, she was sure she would be on the floor now.
Swallowing past the huge lump in her throat was impossible. If she spoke now, her words would be a garbled mess. Jules nodded, waiting for her composure to return.
“All right, Jules. You’ve delayed the telling long enough. I know your real name is Lucy Carson. I know what happened to you, before and after you escaped Clark. And I have no problem understanding why you faked your death and started a new life.”
Hearing him gloss over the most painful events in her life might have bothered her if the words had come from someone else. But she knew Ash’s heart, his compassion. Besides, she didn’t need sympathy from him now. What she needed was for him to have an open mind.
“I’m assuming you had major plastic surgery. You look nothing like your photos.”
“The scars were significant. Plastic surgery was the only way to remove them. I could have just had them repaired, but I was too recognizable to be able to disappear completely with the same face I was born with. I wanted a new look and a new life. I got both.”
“Later, we’ll get to why you didn’t tell me the truth. Right now, what I cannot comprehend…cannot begin to fathom, is why you would work for Nora Turner.”
“I did it to protect you.”
“Protect me how?”
“Kate told me what Turner did to you. The incident in Colombia. How she betrayed you and the other men. Then she told me about how you were both sure that she arranged for John Leland Clark to escape.
“By the time she finished, I hated Turner almost as much as you do. I wanted to do something…to help. Kate said that you were close to finding the evidence against her, b
ut that Turner was looking for a way inside OZ to destroy you from within your organization.