Chapter Forty-Five
Graham
I probably should have skipped my a.m. run and grabbed some shut-eye, but if truth be told, sleep would have been impossible with all the junk rattling around my head. And while seven klicks with Jena was the farthest thing from my want to do list, after consuming that file I wouldn’t have skipped it for the world.
Leland might have wanted to withhold from me the details of his last mission, but like fuck I’d let Jena do that as well. Once we were alone, far from the ears and eyes of camp, I was having it out with her.
Jena showed up promptly at 0430, dressed in designer hot pink civvies, while I was still doing my stretches. “You ready to hit it, Hound?”
I pulled one arm into my back. “You going to run in the woods like that? Once we’re beyond the compound there’s no satellite scrambling mesh.”
“This? What the fuck do you expect me to wear? Combat fatigues and boots like you?”
“Yeah, if don’t want any of the satellites to pick you up among the trees.”
“They won’t,” she said confidently and I didn’t ask what she meant by that because I was positive by how she spoke that US intelligence had started scrambling the eyes in the sky, and that meant it was mission go tonight.
Fuck.
Jena began to run and I fell in beside her. “You got your head in the right place, Carson, or do I sideline you when your team heads out?”
Yep, I’d called it. Those fuckers in DC had given the order for the op.
“Like I said, I do as ordered. And like you said, I haven’t failed a mission yet so keeping me out of the game would be a mistake.”
“Good to hear. Good to know.” She glanced over at me and her brows furrowed. “You chewing on something today?”
Ah, you could say that. I shrugged. “Read an interesting story last night.”
One of her brows hitched up. “Oh yeah? Anything good? I haven’t got shit to read that I haven’t already read.”
My gaze locked on hers intensely. “This one you’ve already read. In fact, you wrote it. Only, the last chapter was removed. Fascinating reading. How does it end?”
“Oh.” She looked straight ahead, focusing on the path, but I could feel she knew I wasn’t going to leave it there. She made an aggravated shake of her head. “You mean you’ve only just read the file last night? Is that why you haven’t returned it to me or asked any questions? And here I thought…”
“What?”
“That you read it and figured out on your own—”
I stopped running. “What?”
She halted and turned back to face me. “Why we were here. What was going down. That’s what I thought you were struggling with, not unresolved shit over Leland.”
My nerves turned taut as iron. Fuck, was it impossible for a spook to say anything that wasn’t a riddle? “Why is his last mission record missing?”
Her expression turned angry. “Because it’s not done, and it’s better there’s no record of it until it is.”
What the fuck did that mean? Anxiously, I ran a hand through my hair. Doublespeak. I hated doublespeak, and got enough of that at home with Leland.
“What the fuck aren’t you telling me, Jena?”
“It’s need to know, Graham.”
Need to know? “For me, it’s need to know now.”
She planted her hands on her hips. “What happened to that Special Forces operator who takes orders and does as he’s told? I need to know if that’s not going to happen, Carson, so I can replace you with Dillon as team leader.”
My internal alarms sent the hair across my arms to stand at full alert. The pieces flew together in my head. “Why is Leland’s last mission not in the file, and how is it connected to this? What the fuck are you two involving me in?”
Jena stared at the ground, moving dirt with her shoe. “The expert I sent in before who fucked up the op was Leland.”
Leland? My brows shot up. Leland never failed at anything. “How? How did he fuck it up?”
Her chin lifted and when her eyes met mine they were fierce with anger. “By not doing as he was ordered. I hope to fuck you’re not just like him. We don’t get out of this if you are.”
This? What this? And who did she mean by we?
“Why have the details of his last op been withheld from me?” I ground out in frustration.
“Deniability,” she spat back. “What you don’t know you’re not guilty of, Graham. If we fail and the shit hits the fan. Think. Why would Leland not want it in the file?”
Fuck. It felt like I was near to exploding. What was she trying to tell me without saying? “I don’t know.”
She shook her head. “Then you don’t know Lee at all. Not a single thing about what makes that man tick. He’s lied to you about Layla. He’s lied to you about everything that’s happened in his world for the last six months. Clearly, he didn’t want you knowing what we were doing. The only material point you need to know now is that Leland would rip out his own heart to protect the people he loves. That’s also the answer to what he told you about Layla and why we’re all here.”
And with that she picked up her run again, going down the path at a fast clip, her posture such that it told me not to follow, leaving me with new questions in my head.
Confronting Jena hadn’t solved a fucking thing.
* * *
You don’t know Lee.
I lay on my bunk, staring at the ceiling, turning that over and over again in my head. How Jena had said that and how I took it were different things.
No, I didn’t know my husband. That was confirmed by the intel in the file. I couldn’t piece together how Layla fit into anything except the ruin she’d created in my life with Lee.
And deniability of what? This whole fucking mission existed in the hemisphere of forever to be denied by all involved. How was it possible there was more to this op that would also forever be kept top secret?
What the fuck didn’t I know?
And why the fuck wouldn’t Jena just tell me?
Lee had lied to me about Layla.
That was obvious, but why did she say it?
What part?
Was she referring to when he omitted he’d been married to her or something else? Something more recent. Like how a pregnant Mossad agent ended up coming with Leland to live in our home?
The baby is mine…that part had been crystal clear.
I rubbed my jaw with my fingers. Was Layla the reason Leland went rogue, fucked up his last mission, and we were all here to finish what he hadn’t? And why would he do that, fail his country, for her?
Questions without answers; God, I despised them.
Leland would rip out his heart for the people he loved.
Who was he ripping his heart out for? Me or her?
This puzzle wasn’t going to be solved. Not by me. Not today. And again, I felt ragged and on the edge because of Lee.
After the op, I could continue my search for the truth and decide what to do about Leland and me. One thing was for sure: I wouldn’t know what Leland didn’t want me to until he planned for me to know it. Same shit, new day. Reading that file hadn’t helped. It’d made the agony worse, the unresolved conflict of us more present in me.
I wrestled him from my brain and emotions.
From what I’d learned earlier from Jena, I was going out soon on what was little more than a suicide op into a country we weren’t at war with.
Pull yourself together, Graham. Your men need you. Once the bullets start flying that’s the only reality there can be if you want to make it through this and go home to Ella.
Punching my pillow, I turned on my side. Shut-eye. I needed rest before nightfall and the experts came to announce mission go.