Page 8 of Forgiving His Past (Eagle’s Nest Securities #5)

Eight hours later…

“Mornin’, Sunshine.”

Van blinked the sleep from his eyes and turned to the man sitting on his left. “We close?” His voice sounded as rough as he felt.

“Thirty minutes.” Logan nodded as he raked a hand through his short, brown hair. “Pilot announced it a few minutes ago.”

Damn.

He sat up straighter, rubbing the taut muscles at the back of his neck. He hadn’t meant to fall sleep after he’d completed his guard-duty shift. But apparently his body and mind had decided he needed the rest because not long after Logan took over, Van had fallen right to sleep.

Earlier, after having drilled Kam with a barrage of questions, Van had escorted her to the bathroom attached to the jet’s private sleeping quarters in the back. Once there, he’d stood guard outside the narrow door, not taking the chance that she’d try to do something stupid .

When they returned to the group, Logan had informed him that he and the others all agreed to let her—and them—get some much needed sleep. Despite Van’s objections, majority ruled, and the decision was made to finish the interrogation later.

Van had offered to stay up and keep watch, mainly because he’d been too pissed off to sleep.

It wasn’t that he was a heartless bastard who wanted to make Kam suffer by putting her through more of their in-your-face questioning. If he were being honest, it wasn’t even that he doubted all that she’d said.

There were just too many questions still needing to be answered, and right now, she was their best shot at finally figuring out the truth.

“So.” Logan spoke up from the seat to Van’s left. “You believe what she said about not being the one responsible for Hunt’s death?”

He looked up to where she was sitting, her head resting on the plane’s inner wall near one of the small, oval-shaped windows. From here, he couldn’t tell whether she was awake or asleep. All he could see was a portion of her hair.

Dark. Long. Beautiful.

“I don’t know.” He answered Logan’s question as honestly as he could.

So far, everything she’d told them seemed about as far-fetched as it could get.

It would be easy as hell to call bullshit and be done. And that’s what he’d gone into this thing fully intending to do. After all, hadn’t Webb warned the team that she was a terrorist mastermind?

If that’s true, then why does a part of you believe what she said?

He didn’t want to. Hell no. In fact, the second she’d threatened to slice his throat, Van had wanted nothing more than to end her life and walk away.

But despite the fact that he would have been more than justified in doing so, he’d followed through with the team’s original plan to bring her back to the States alive.

Sure, Kam supposedly had information their team and Webb wanted. And if she was the one behind Hunter’s death, then spilling her blood would have finally brought forth the justice their fallen teammate deserved.

There was just one problem with that scenario. Only one thing standing in his way.

If that was really the case—if Kaamisha Dawari truly was the cold-blooded terrorist as their intel suggested—then why did his gut fill with a heavy feeling of dread every time he pictured her lying dead and bloody in that alley?

“We’ve got thirty minutes until we land.” He shot Logan a look. “I’d say that’s enough time to get some more answers.”

Starting with her connection to their dead CIA asset.

He pushed himself up and out of his seat. Bending down, he avoided smacking his head on the inner curve of the jet’s low ceiling as he made his way out into the aisle.

“I’ll wake the others.” Logan started to stand.

But Van put out a hand and gave his teammate a quick shake of his head. “It’s okay. Might be better if I talk to her alone. Less intimidating than having the five of us hovering over her all at once.”

“Worth a shot.” The other man settled back into his seat with a lackadaisical shrug. “You need backup, just holler.”

“I got this.”

A man on a mission, he covered the distance between his seat and Kam’s in a matter of seconds. He passed by a slumped and snoring Lucky on his way.

As he sat in the empty seat to her right, he found her awake and staring out over the endless sea of white, fluffy clouds.

“Why did you kill Farzad Akimi?” he asked, not bothering to beat around the bush.

Moving slowly, Kam turned her weary gaze toward him. She looked even more beautiful in the light of day, but her eyes revealed a tiredness that existed on a deeper-than-the-surface level. One in which he could easily relate.

“I met Mr. Akimi one time.” Her accented voice came out soft and slightly rough, as if she’d recently been sleeping. “It was the day he died, but I swear to you, I was not the one who killed him.”

“But you admit that you were there.”

A heaviness visually fell over her as she gave a slow dip of her delicately sculpted chin. “I was. Only because he called the day before, compelling me to meet him.”

“How did you two know each other?”

“We didn’t.” Strands of her long, dark hair framed her face in a haphazard way.

“I had never spoken to the man before he called. Even then, all he would say was that he’d been working undercover for the United States government.

A CIA asset, I believe is what he called himself.

He said I was being set up for the strike on your team and that someone out there wanted all of us dead. ”

“Who went with you to meet Akimi?”

“No one.” Another shake of her pretty head. “I went alone.”

Van huffed out a breath. “You in the habit of meeting with strange men by yourself?”

Her fiery gaze met his once more. “He said he knew the name of the person who was truly responsible for my mother’s death. Mr. Akimi told me that man was the one who set up the attack on your team.”

“And you believed him?”

“What other choice did I have but to believe?” She searched his eyes as if they held the answer to her question.

“I knew it was quite possible he was lying, but he sounded very sincere in his words. And he knew things. About me…my mother. You.” Kam shifted in her seat to fully face him.

“He sw ore to me that he had proof of his claims, but he said that I must come alone or he wouldn’t be able to help me. ”

“Why didn’t he just tell you the name of the guy calling the shots when he had you on the phone?”

“Believe me, I tried. But Mr. Akimi said it was too risky. Normally, I would have considered him to be paranoid if it wasn’t for the fact that I?—”

The jet dropped slightly, the unexpected jostling causing Kam to wrap her fingers around the arm of her chair in a white-knuckled grip. A few seconds later, the plane shook again, and it became clear to him that the mysterious woman found the sensation highly unsettling.

“Just a pocket of turbulence.” The pilot’s deep voice sounded from the speakers above their heads. “We should be cleared out of it within the next couple of minutes.”

Ignoring the announcement, Van kept his focus on Kam and what she’d been about to say.

“Except what?” he prompted her to continue the forgotten thought. “You would have thought Akimi was being paranoid except for the fact that you…”

“Understood his fear.” She held his stare.

“For several weeks now—even before Mr. Akimi’s death—everywhere I’ve gone, it’s as though I was surrounded by watchful eyes.

I’d look around, but no one would be there.

Or there would be an entire crowd of people, making it impossible to identify the person responsible. ”

“If you never caught anyone in the act, then how can you be so sure you were being watched?”

“I felt it.” Kam jutted her chin as if daring him to argue.

“Deep within my gut. The hairs on the back of my neck would stand on end, and my chest would grow tight with worry. I know it probably sounds crazy, but I swear on my mother’s grave, I am telling the truth.

” She looked away briefly before making eye contact once more .

“What else?” he asked gruffly. Because he was going to need a hell of a lot more than that.

With a quick swipe of her tongue along her bottom lip, Kam followed his one-word command.

“When I got to the place where I was supposed to meet Mr. Akimi, I found him…” She trailed off, her beautiful face falling into a wince as if the memory of that moment was still very much fresh in her mind.

“He’d been beaten very badly. Several bones had been broken, and there were so many cuts on his body, I couldn’t even begin to count them all.

The poor man was barely alive, and I tried…

” Her throat worked a hard swallow. “I put pressure on the worst of his wounds as best I could, but it was too late. There was nothing more that could be done.”

“He talk to you before he died?”

“Only a little. He told me his name, and that the person who had framed me for the attempted murder of your team was an American. He said that this man was in a position of great power within your government.”

“The guy said all that, but didn’t give you a name?” Van frowned.

Yet another convenience he wasn’t sure he should buy.

“He started to, but just before he could, his body began to tremble with these hard, horrifying convulsions. The chair he was bound to shook so hard, I thought…” Her voice cracked with what sounded to be genuine emotion.

“I thought it would splinter apart beneath him. But a few seconds later, the shaking stopped. He was dead, and I was left with more clues to a mystery I still don’t understand. ”

The official report showed DNA proof that Kam was present either at the time of Akimi’s death or within the immediate moments following. Even Webb had assumed it was left there when either she or someone who worked for her killed him.

But now …

If she’s telling the truth, and she really did try to offer aid, it would explain how her hair got onto his body.