Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 146417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 732(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 732(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Tag sobered. “When she’s ready, we’ll tell her everything.”
“God, don’t.” Beck had a grin on his face as he held the door open for his brother. “Sasha could be on the wild side.”
Beck was smiling like nothing was wrong. Like everything was going right in his world. The man who hadn’t smiled for seven years.
Well, she hadn’t been the one who pushed him away. She hated that she was suddenly having these thoughts. They’d crept up on her. Or perhaps they were leaking. Perhaps last night had exposed some cracks in the walls she’d built, and years of pain were beginning to seep out.
She needed to patch those up and quick.
“Hey, you need anything?” Beck asked as he set a folder on the table, claiming the seat beside her. “Coffee?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m good. Thank you.”
He settled in as Ezra took his other side. “So, Tag, what’s the word? Did you hear back from your DPD contacts?”
“It was Beck’s bad driving, right?” Ezra asked.
It was odd to sit here with them. She hadn’t thought about it before, but it had been so very long since she’d been with the both of them. Even back when she and Beck had been married, Ezra had been deployed or on assignment, or Beck had been out of the country. They hadn’t spent much time together as a family. They hadn’t all sat around the breakfast table making jokes and enjoying the morning.
Had she ever truly had that? What would it be like to have it and lose it?
Was that what she was setting Roman up for? Even back in Malta her uncle had spent a lot of time traveling. It was usually her and Roman and Ezra in the mornings.
“I wish I could agree with you.” Tag sat back. “Adam did a deep dive on your officer yesterday. I don’t like the situation. Derek Brighton is our police department contact and he told me that Officer Gates has been bragging that he’s going to get a job with the feds. According to Adam, he’s been in DC recently.”
“Any overt ties to Levi?” Beck asked.
For her the fact that he was applying for a federal job was all the ties she needed. “He wanted to get a look at you. I would bet he had his body cam on the whole time. We have to assume Levi now knows Ezra is alive. The question is how did he even know to look? We know for a fact he didn’t see Ezra in Malta.”
“Do we?” Beck asked. “I know if I’d been Levi I would have had someone use their phone to tape the helicopter rescue.”
“It was rainy and Owen got pretty low.” The walls to the upper fort were high. “I don’t think that’s where he saw Ezra.”
What she didn’t say was how worrying it was.
“It’s possible that Levi was trying to figure out if you’re staying with Beck,” Charlotte mused.
“Why pull me over?” Beck slid a look her way like he was coming around to her way of thinking. Or trusting her instincts. “It would be far easier to put someone on surveillance. We’ve been coming and going. We’re not hiding. Ezra is, and we need to consider that Levi won’t be happy he’s alive.”
“But why would he even think to check if I’m alive?” Ezra asked. “Unless he saw me or someone told him. I’ve been in Europe for years and not once have I thought someone was looking for me.”
“I can assure you he thought you were dead,” Kim said. “If he hadn’t, he would have moved heaven and earth to kill you. You’re a loose end, and Levi doesn’t like those. You could potentially testify against him.”
“Ezra and I talked about this.” Beck sat back, looking thoughtful. “We decided he shouldn’t try to testify. He isn’t the best witness because of what he was doing back then.”
Ezra held up a hand. “Drugs. I was doing drugs. I’m betting there aren’t many people who would listen to me. There’s also the fact that I didn’t really interact with him. I remember his face, but he talked to my CO and my CO relayed his orders.”
“That sounds like Levi.” She needed to start thinking like an operative again. “I want to do some homework on the missions you went on back then.”
“That’ll be hard,” Ian pointed out. “I’m going to assume most of them were classified.”
“Yes, but I think if Ezra can tell us where he was and what he was doing, Kim and I might be able to piece some things together,” Beck offered.
“It was a lot of running guns, especially in North Africa, but I suspect those guns found their way to the Middle East.” Ezra fiddled with the mug of coffee in front of him. “There were a couple of rebel forces the Agency wanted to support.”