Page 41 of Whisper

“Well… I’m not sure you can be, really.” Kris shivered, more than just the Afghanistan cold seeping under his skin. “You didn’t know?” How was that even possible? Everyone knew just by looking at him. Everyone knew, with a single look, that he wasn’t worth their time.

“From the moment I shook your hand, all I’ve seen is a CIA officer who knows his shit. Who is an undisputed expert in this country, in Islam, and who consistently performs exceptionally. That’s all that matters.”

Kris couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t look at David, either. His stomach knotted, and knotted again, coiling tighter than a spring about to snap. “You’re the only one.”

“General Khan sees that too.”

“Caldera!” George’s voice boomed from the compound’s entrance.

Kris twisted. George waved to him, ordering him inside.

“The principal is calling. Wish me luck,” Kris murmured, rising. David said nothing, just watched him stride into the compound, following George.

Jim and Phillip were gone. Maybe on the roof. Derek was nowhere to be seen. Even Palmer was gone, though he normally shadowed Jim and Phillip on the radios. It was just Ryan and George, standing in front of the giant map he’d helped hang.

“Kris… We need to talk.” George stood beside Ryan, arms crossed, scowling. “We think it’s time you head back to the States.”

He’d known it was coming. He’d known from the first moment Ryan had protested, back in Langley, September 14, that this would come. His ignoble removal from the team, sent packing, don’t let the door hit his ass on the way out.

He hadn’t thought he’d be so enraged. Fury billowed through him, an inferno that sucked the air from his lungs, from the room. “Why?”

Ryan and George shared a long look. George opened his mouth.

Ryan spoke first, cutting George off. “You’re a liability. Whatever is going on between you and General Khan is interfering with this mission. We’re worrying that an Afghan general is going to sexually assault you instead of focusing on the mission.”

“What?”

“We needed the GPS data and we knew you could get it quickly. Khan connected with you, we believe, inappropriately. But we knew we could use that connection to get the intel we needed, fast,” George said, his voice heavy with something.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Ruby rage colored Kris’s vision. He could feel his hands slicking, his muscles tightening throughout his body. “You think Khan wants to fuck me?”

“Are you inviting it from him? Your behavior around the general is concerning,” George said carefully.

“I am behaving exactly as the culture prescribes! Which you would fucking know, if you bothered to learn anything at all about it!”

“Holding his hand, being touchy-feely with him, being all up in his business? That’s culture?” Ryan snorted.

“This isn’t a machismo culture!” Kris roared. He’d never shouted this loudly, never bellowed like this. Not at his drunkest, not even when he was thrown out of beds in college or dumped by the older men he’d slept with on weekends and ditched on Monday mornings. Never, ever had he been filled with this much rage, this much sizzling-hot blood. “In Muslim cultures where there is a strict division of the sexes, men form close emotional bonds with other men. They aren’t concerned with posturing or proving who has the bigger dick in a perpetual ‘who is the bigger asshole’ contest!Yes, men here hold hands!Yes, men here hug! Being physical is a sign of trust!”

“That’s just Khan. We haven’t even started on you and Sergeant Haddad.” George sighed.

“What the fuck do you mean about me and David?”

“Oh, it’sDavidnow, is it?” Ryan shook his head. “Of course it is.”

“Ryan.” George cut his gaze to Ryan. His expression had gone dark, a frown worrying his forehead. His fingers dug into the sleeves of his jacket, his knuckles white. “Look, Kris…” Sighing, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Iasked Sergeant Haddad to look out for you. To keep an eye on you. And I think you may have gotten the wrong message from that. We’re concerned you’ve taken his protection as something it’s not. And we’re worried about what the Afghans will think about how you are around him.”

“How I am around him…”

From the inferno of his wrath to the frozen pit of his soul. He’dknown. He’d known that all of this, everything, was only a test he was bound to fail. That no one was on his side.

George kept going, hammering the nails through his wrists. “We’ve all seen how you are with him. If we’ve seen it, the Afghans have seen it. We can’t waste our time and our energy worrying about how the Afghans are going to react to you. To your—” George waved his hand over Kris, as if he could encompass everything Kris was with one limp-wristed waggle.

“It’s time for you to go.” Ryan’s glare could cut diamonds, could cut Kris’s soul to shreds. “We’re contacting Langley. Tonight.”

There was nothing to say. Nothing he could do. If he gave them the satisfaction of his rage, they’d win. If he tried to argue, they would say he was belligerent, combative, and it would prove their point even more: that he wasn’t fit to be there. His life, again, was being decided by other people, others who had ideas about who and what he was. His only choice, his only power, was in his reaction.

He said nothing, just turned and walked away.