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“You always do.”
“Dig down. Use whatever resources you have access to, and I don’t care if they’re legal to do it,” the man snapped before disconnecting the secure call.
My thoughts flashed briefly to my family and…her.
Fallon.
For the first time ever, she wasn’t at my family’s annual Christmas Eve party. I didn’t get to see her shaking her amazing body to whatever song Austyn was singing. I didn’t get an opportunity to try to maneuver her beneath the mistletoe. Instead, I propped myself up against a wall, nursing a single whiskey while keeping a sharp eye on the door, willing her to come through it.
She never did, and neither did her mother, which caused its own spurt of surprise. Helen Brookes has been my sister’s neighbor for as long as I can recall. A quick peek out the front window showed they were home as a tree was prominent in the front window, though there appeared to be new sheers across the windows.
Still, neither woman showed.
Damn, I’m thinking about her more and more despite the fact she likely found some college guy at UT closer to her age and is living it up—like she should be, I remind myself. Just because I’d sell my left nut to have her in my bed doesn’t mean she’d want me to be there.
Shrugging the disturbing thought of some guy touching her perfect skin when the truth is I’d give anything if I could find someone to wipe the fantasies of her from my mind, I figured this might be a good break. Satisfied at my silence, I was told, “Then keep your ass there and do what you do best.”
“What’s that?” I asked, curious.
“Clean up other people’s shitstorms.” His words remind me of how we met. Back when I was just an ensign—a hacker to be sure, but nothing in comparison to the men and women from the contracting team who stormed aboard the bridge of the USS Lassen—an Arleigh Burke missile destroyer I was serving on. The Alliance crew immediately drew notice from every man and woman serving on deck, in particular from the SEAL team, as they took over our consoles. Back then, the man was the hardened SEAL team leader—a lieutenant who had survived more combat action than I could fathom at the time. And when it was over, the two of us and a shit load of others working to keep hostages alive—not to mention the world at large—came off that particular cruise changed after we witnessed the desecration of human life for the madness of greed. My life mission drastically changed and I never questioned it.
Not once.
Not until I saw Fallon standing in my father’s backyard.
Now I wonder what the fuck is wrong because this is the longest we’ve gone without contact since we met. I don’t miss the opportunity to give the man on the other end of the line a raft of shit because I know I’m one of the few who can. “I gave you puke to test. You sent me as part of a clandestine, off-books, HUMANIT fact-finding fuckup.” The truth is, the human intelligence gathering mission yielded little, but it did give us a few leads, all of which I already passed along. What I’m pointing out is what he asked for wasn’t balanced in the slightest.
His, “You’re good at it,” made me bark out a laugh. The problem was, what should have been a seven-day job took weeks longer than expected. The agent I was supposed to be locating was never once found on camera. She was smoke. All I found once I hacked every security camera I could from street cameras to personal doorbells, was blond hair caught in a glimpse out a car window as she drove away from the fatal shooting sight. It demonstrated the agent in question is a fucking bad ass who managed to survive by the skin of her teeth. Not to mention, we share a mutual mentor if her driving skills are anything to go by.
Which also means she’s lethal.
Pulling my phone from my back pocket, I ring my sister to let her know I’m back in town from the computer system consultation she believes I’ve been working at, only to find out she’s in the process of packing up and heading back to New York soon to be with my niece and her man. I groan before rolling over to my back. Despite my exhaustion, I offer, “Need any help?”
“You sound exhausted, Ethan,” she scolds.
“Yeah. This contract was a bitch,” I admit, without elaborating. My family has no clue about the work I did for the Agency. They think I own a lucrative consulting business with a storefront open for local computer repairs in our hometown of Kensington, Texas. I snort. As if that would be enough to occupy my time.
They have no idea what happens in the back room.
They have no clue about the jobs behind the secure doors.
No one does but the man who sends me orders from safely behind his desk in northern Virginia.
If they did, I wonder if they’d hate me as much as I do myself, I think despairingly. When I think of all the pain I could have saved my sister if I verified the source of the information that guided all of our lives…
I broach the topic of my father’s deceit with my sister carefully. “Have you talked to him?”
I hear her murmur to someone she’ll be right back before she replies, “If you’re referring to our father, then no. Not since before you left. I’m arranging for his home health care for when I’m gone.”
“I still can’t believe you’re leaving.”
She’s silent for a long while. “It feels right to be with him, Ethan. How many years have Beckett and I lost?”
“Because of lies and deceit perpetrated by our father?” I was on a tour of duty when my father lied to my sister about not being able to find the father of her child. In the years in between, we all accepted his word only to find out he lied about so much.
Too much to forgive.
Paige breaks into my thoughts. “Yes.”