Page 12 of Enemy Within

Neither did Faisal.

Time for a different approach. “I didn’t know you were such a badass. Thought you were just a computer nerd.”

Faisal chuckled softly. His eyes sparkled. “There’s quite a lot you don’t know about me. I am an al-Saud. My family subdued the Arabian Peninsula. We wrested control from the tribes of old and stitched together a nation made from blood and conquest. We may look like fat, wealthy Arabs, but we carry the hearts of conquerors.”

“Now I see why Adam took an interest in you.”

Faisal’s eyes darkened, and his expression went brittle, like holding his tiny smile in place was all that kept him from breaking apart. He shrugged. “I suppose that’s one reason.” He looked away, staring at the bulkhead and the jump seat for the flight attendant as if it were a priceless artifact.

“You guys okay?” Doc crossed his arms and frowned.

Silence.

Shifting made one of the drawer handles dig into the center of Doc’s spine. He leaned back, pressing into it. “I don’t really know the L-T all that well…”

What the hell was he trying to say? He barely knew Adam at all. Adam had been their team leader for a little over a year, and he’d gone from being a stick-in-the-ass perfectionist when they’d met him to a rough-edged brawler with the shadow of some huge weight dragging him down. Months ago, Adam had been thrown in the stockade by General Bell, and the team had gone out to drown their frustrations in liquor, anticipating their collective stand-down and reassignment to a new team lead.

Color them all shocked—and hungover—when instead they were on a black-ops White House mission to South America at midnight.

“I know he’s a private guy...” Doc shrugged. What he knew about Adam could fit in a paragraph. The most important fact about Adam was what he and Faisal were to each other. Not just, as Adam had claimed in the highland sands of Ethiopia when they first ran to Faisal and his safety net, someone he’d worked with in the Middle East.

Adam had seemed to unbend with Faisal, just slightly, around him and Reichenbach. Had at least acknowledged that Faisal was someone to him, someone special.

That had all changed when the team arrived. Adam had locked up tighter than a missile defense shield. Even Doc had felt the reverberations of Adam’s distance echoing painfully off Faisal’s confused heart.

“Having the whole team here is probably hard for him,” Doc finished lamely, shrugging.

“I appreciate what you are trying to do,” he said, meeting Doc’s gaze. “There are… larger problems, though.”

Doc shifted again, the levers grinding against his back. “Like what?”

Faisal stayed quiet, his gaze seemingly turned inward, and Doc watched him pick and discard words as he licked his lips. “This is the third time he has walked away from us. Each has been difficult. The first…” Faisal’s voice faded away, and his eyes slipped closed. “I’ve never felt anything like that. And I never want to again. After the second, I tried to put us back together. I thought if I reached out, if we could just connect again—” He shook his head.

Doc tried to add up what he knew. He frowned. “When was this?”

“After Ethiopia.”

Doc thunked his head against the cold metal. So, when they’d first run to Faisal when they were presumed dead, killed by their own government, Adam had found comfort in Faisal’s arms. And then left again. After Ethiopia, and after the White House, Adam had started his slow slide, his descent into gruff silence and barroom brawls, and a prickly hardness that had the whole team on edge. “And now?”

“This is the third time he has turned away from us. I thought, after the hospital, that things would be different. Heseemeddifferent. But it is all just the same. He is not ready to love.”

“He was fucking crazy at the hospital. I mean, just fucking desperate to get to you. I thought he was going to get himself killed. He wasn’t faking that.”

Faisal glared at him when he cursed, a flat stare that broadcast his displeasure. He sighed. “Three times is significant in Islam. We do things that carry great meaning in threes.Al-wudu, the ablutions before prayers, done three times. InSalat, prayers are repeated three times. And—” He inhaled, holding his breath. “Talaq, to divorce someone, must be done three times before it is final.”

Shit. Doc’s eyes flicked up the aisle of the plane, as if he could spot Adam in the rows and rows of passengers. “You think he’s trying todivorceyou? You’re notmarried, right? I mean, I thought that couldn’t—”

“I think,” Faisal said, interrupting him gently, “that three times is three times too many. This hurt I feel is not right. This is not the way it’s supposed to be. Pursuing this again would be wrong.”

“Then why did you insist on coming?”

Faisal’s expression softened, though his eyes shone with a cutting pain. “How could I not? I still love him, even if he does not feel the same. I will do everything I can to help him. Always.”

Halfway up the plane, a man stood, stretched like he was a bad actor in a soap opera, and turned around, leaning against the front of his seat as if he wanted to stand for a while. He stared toward the rear of the plane, his eyes laser-like in their intensity. He spotted Doc, and Doc stared right back.

He watched Adam look down at his seat cushion and pick at his fingernails.

“He doesn’t deserve that from you.”