Betrayals (Black Cipher Files series Book 2) (22 page)

I just wasn’t sure why.

The only thing I could come up with was my file on Department 5491. Someone didn’t want that information made public. Although I would never have exposed the file.

“Department 5491 is from the NSA but included CIA agents as well as NSA and DIA. I don’t know who to trust. Someone set me up.”

Jordan sighed and gazed steadily at me. His anger still burned below the surface but in his hazel eyes I saw his support. "You can trust me."

I knew him. Knew his core decency. Knew his protective instincts would encompass me and the baby. At this point, likely the
only
person I could trust was Jordan. He wouldn’t let anything happen to the baby even if he was still mad at me.

“When I was arrested in Afghanistan...they specifically came for me.”

“How do you know?”

“Because the other people in the UNOCHA group I was traveling with were allowed to leave. They only wanted me.”

“What was the charge?”

“Funny thing about foreign prisons. They don’t have the same laws regarding incarceration. They don't have to tell you why you're in prison.”

“Why did your group leave you behind?”

“I told them to go.” That may or may not have been a mistake on my part. “I assumed the CIA would quietly get me out. But that didn’t happen, and I spent two weeks in hell.” My voice broke, which pissed me off. I’m tougher than that.

Thankfully the military guy on the television, identified as Major Tony Vandenburg, interrupted my little breakdown. “We have reason to believe she is in New York City and traveling alone.”

This press conference could be a ploy by the CIA to get me back, to find out what had happened to me. Maybe they’d gotten tired of doing surveillance on my house and just wanted to know what information I had and why I had never reported in after escaping.

Jordan was still watching the flat screen. “How would they know you are in New York?"

I’d only spoken with Ravini, Zeke, Jordan and Thea. Four people. Obviously one too many.

Even if Thea wanted to turn me in, she wasn’t going to risk putting Jordan into a difficult situation. Was she?

I edged away from Jordan. “Did Zeke turn me in?”

“He wouldn’t have done that. His ass is in trouble already.”

“Maybe he thought it would gain him some points if he turned in a known terrorist recruiter.”

“He wouldn’t turn you in.” Jordan paced around the room, stopping to stare out at the view of Central Park at night.

The trust I thought I felt vanished as I stared at the senator flanking the press secretary in the press conference. “Maybe you did. It would certainly eliminate your problem.”

That pissed him off. “I don’t have a problem.”

“It would get you off the hook if I’m in federal prison.” Or worse.

“I don’t want to be off the hook, dammit.” He grabbed my upper arms, pulling me close. “Don’t make assumptions.”

“You met with the Senator,” I gestured to the television screen, “just a few days ago.” All the doubts that had been crowding my head suddenly coalesced.

What if I'd been wrong about being able to trust him? What if in my mind I'd built our entire relationship into something it wasn't just to get me through all the other shit?

"Don't do this. Don't throw up walls." Jordan's heart thudded against his chest as his desperate hazel gaze bored into me. His fingers curled around my biceps, not letting me back away. "If you know nothing else, you know that you can trust me."

The sharp sting of pain was nothing compared to the ping in my heart. I wanted to trust him. I did. Maybe too much.

My shoulders slumped as I finally gave in. "Okay."

"Good." Jordan squeezed me against his chest, his relief palpable.

My cell phone rang from inside my bag. The phone was a throwaway I’d bought to contact Ravini. Suddenly I put it together. Ravini was the only one who had the number. I could trust Jordan. “Shit.”

I grabbed my backpack and rummaged for the phone. After I dug it out, I glanced at the screen. I had one other missed call. Hurriedly I turned the phone off and shoved it away from me. “This needs to be thrown in the trash compactor or even better an incinerator if this building has one.”

The GPS locator in the phone was off. But for all I knew, we were experimenting with new technology that would work as long as the phone was equipped.

Jordan grabbed the phone. “I’ll take care of it.”

But before he could dispose of it, the sound of a key in the lock had us both diving for cover.

Thea stomped back into her apartment, muttering in Spanish.

I tried to get up in a dignified manner but it wasn’t easy. My muscles and bones protested, creaking and whining, as I lifted my head over the back of the sofa.

“Are you still here?”

I wasn’t sure if the question was supposed to be rhetorical so I answered. “Yeah.”

As Jordan walked toward her, she went off on him, with a torrent of Spanish, a lot of finger jabbing, and hair tossing.

I couldn’t blame her for being upset. A known fugitive in your living room wouldn’t make anyone’s day.

“And you,” she rounded on me. I held my hands up as if in surrender. “What are you thinking to drag
miho
into your disgusting and depraved activities.”

I couldn’t tell her I worked for the CIA. But just maybe I could calm her down a little. “Thea.”

“What?”

“Do you always believe everything you see on television?”

“Of course not.”

“Things are not what they appear,
mi hermana
.” Jordan patted her shoulder gently.

I certainly couldn’t fault her for being upset with me.

“We need your help.”

“You need to leave my apartment.”

“We will. First thing in the morning, after you rent us a car.”

“I’m not renting you a car.” Thea stomped her Donald J. Pliner shoe. “I want you out. Rent your own damn car.”

“We can’t take the chance Jordan is being tracked too.” I pressed.

“You dragged him into your,” she waved her hands wildly, “illegal activities!”

“There’s no official link between the two of you, is there?” I clarified, ignoring her theatrics. “No way for you to be listed in Jordan’s file as someone to watch if they are looking for him?”

“They’re looking for Jordan too?” Her eyes widened in horror.

“It’s not as it seems,” Jordan said consolingly. “I, we, will be okay.”

“This is bad.” She paced back and forth in front of the window, one hand to her mouth, the other on her hip, her eyes wide and trouble. "I don't want anything to happen to you."

“It will be fine.” Of course, I was lying. What I really wanted to do was shake her and tell her to snap out of the hysterics. But for the time being we needed her cooperation.

I took her arm gently.

She snatched it away. “If you weren’t pregnant, I would punch you.”

“Fine. When I’m not pregnant anymore, you can punch me.”

“A baby,” she wailed. “What kind of mother will you be?”

That barb hit home.

What kind of mother? The kind who stole other babies away and sent them into dangerous situations for a government who was now throwing me under a bus.

My throat tightened. I couldn’t swallow, couldn’t even breathe. I didn’t know anything about being a mother.

“Thea. That’s enough,” Jordan said calmly.

I found my voice and pushed my defensiveness deep down inside me where it could hide forever. “We won’t ever find out if you don’t help me. Us.”

I could be the pushiest bitch on the planet when I needed something, and we needed her on board right now. Or we were going nowhere. “You with us or against us?”

Thea didn’t say anything. I started reviewing ways to incapacitate her for an extended period of time.

We could steal her car. At least that would get us out of the city, and then we’d need to dump it, in a river preferably, and get a new one.

Just the effort needed to plan the minor op had me dragging. I was so freaking tired.

Thea continued to hesitate.

I readied my body, thinking about strike points and carefully calculating so I would only render her unconscious but not kill her.

Jordan stepped in front of me, his gaze boring into mine. “No.”

Shit.

Now it was both of them against me. Worse case scenario, I bet she had some drugs around. I could put them both to sleep long enough to get out of Dodge. But dosing sleeping pills was always dicey.

Jordan hadn’t moved. “Thea. We need your help.”

Finally, she sighed. “What do I have to do?”

TWENTY-FIVE

October 18
th

9:45 pm

New York City

She was having a baby.

They were having a baby.

Jordan was smiling. A great big grin energized him. Every molecule of his body was filled with joy. A baby.

He’d envisioned this part of his life happening differently. He’d thought taking the step to becoming a father would involve long bouts of careful consideration before the actual deciding. But everything had changed with a few significant words. Staci was pregnant.

He shouldn't be quite so happy yet. He knew it but couldn't help the smile on his face. He wanted to be a great father.

Determination blossomed through him. He would be a great father. The best father a kid could ever have.

Shit. He didn’t know anything about being a dad. He’d been raised by his mother and his aunt. Thea’s father had been around, but he’d died young. Besides, Jordan wasn't going to be any kind of father unless he could get them out of this situation.

Staci lay on the sofa, sound asleep. Intending to gently nudge her awake, he leaned down, but she shifted in her sleep, making room for him to slide in behind her.

Just for a second.

Just a second to hold onto her and forget about their problems. Which were legion.

Deliberately he eased in behind her. His head fitted beside hers on the pillow, and his arm automatically went around her waist to pull her snug against his chest. He brushed a light kiss against her hair.

The familiar weight of her breasts was soft against his forearm. But the ridges of her ribs, so slight under his shirt, and the roughness of her once silky hair against his cheek were unfamiliar. Different.

She was different. They both were. Different wasn’t bad...it just was.

He should focus on other, more crucial things, but his mind kept going back to Staci, and the baby.

Jordan knew the moment she drifted awake. Her body tensed slightly, and then relaxed into the cradle of his embrace.

He squeezed her gently, somehow needing to say it out loud. “You’re having a baby,” he whispered.

“Oh my God,” she shuddered. “I didn’t do this by myself. You were there too."

He waited, refusing to get mad before he heard where she was going with it.

“You know when it happened.” Staci continued.

He knew exactly when she'd gotten pregnant. He even wondered if he’d subconsciously invoked this situation.

He’d known he wasn’t using birth control. Instinctively, he'd wanted to claim her.

He held her firm against him, just in case she planned to get up. This was important. “That night–you were right there with me.”

“I know.” She rubbed her palm over his forearm, her hard callouses catching on the hair. “I could have stopped, insisted you put on a condom, and I didn’t.”

She was quiet.

He’d gone back to that night over and over again, after she left, after she was imprisoned, and after she’d been listed as dead.

“We’re both very careful about protection,” he stated deliberately.

“I was on the pill.” She shrugged. “I guess it didn’t work.”

He’d wanted to bind her to him. In an act of pure insanity, pure possession he’d wanted to mark her, make her his in a way that couldn’t be undone.

Some might think he’d been caught in the heat of the moment. But he wouldn’t lie to her. Not about this. “I remember a calm, clear decision to...not use a condom.”

“Why?”

He knew why, but putting the emotions, the feelings into words would make him sound crazy. He’d embraced the primitive and totally anti-modern feeling. “You were mine.”

“You Tarzan, me Jane?” She snorted. “A little caveman of you, wasn’t it?”

But she was laughing not angry.

“Yeah.” He still wasn’t sorry.

Even after she’d gone, all he’d felt was satisfaction. He’d marked her in a way he’d marked no one else. He’d wanted to believe with total conviction they’d stay together, even if it hadn't felt like it at the time.

“I was committed to working things out.”

“Really? You could have given me some clue.”

“Just because I thought we’d work it out doesn’t mean I wasn’t upset about the whole CIA thing.” More about the lies than the CIA, although frankly he hadn’t told her everything about himself either. “Because I was.”

“Yeah. I got that,” she said drily.

So he had to be truthful, to himself at least, and give her a little leeway. Wasn’t that what you did when you loved someone? Compromise. Understanding.

So he said, “I just needed a little time to deal with the information. It was a shock.”

He’d worked enough covert ops to understand you were never sure of your friends and associates. The only life important to them was their own and occasionally a spouse or child.

You never knew what another person’s triggers were, sometimes even if you’d known them for years. So how could he, in good conscience, stay angry with her?

Especially since he was keeping a few secrets of his own. “I forgave you before you’d even cleared the Atlantic.”

“Might have been nice if you’d shared that with me.”

They hadn’t been able to discuss any of this while she’d been thousands of miles away.

“I was hyper-aware of every single word we exchanged over that damn Sat phone.”

“You just sounded....”

He'd sounded stilted and mad and dissatisfied because she was thousands of miles away and they’d had a bunch of issues to talk about.

That right there should have told him how he truly felt about her. In the past, if a woman had issues she wanted to talk about he was heading for the door...not anxious to have a conversation about it.