I woke in the back of an ambulance. I sat up, knocking the paramedic who’d been attempting to stick me with an IV needle back against the wall.

“You’re okay, Patrick,” Jack said, pressing a hand to my chest and forcing me back again. “You’re in an ambulance.”

The paramedic grabbed at my arm again, but I brushed him off. “I don’t need that.”

“You were unconscious for ten minutes, sir,” he told me. “You need to be checked out.”

“I’m fine.”

Jack waved the man away. He nodded and stepped out of the ambulance, leaving Jack and me alone.

“Why did you come back?”

I reached up to rub my forehead, which was pounding like a drum, dismayed to see that the sleeves of my jacket were burned.

“The computer,” I said, checking out the damage to the rest of my suit. “I think Briggs Thomas managed to get some sort of virus in our system, and he’s been reading our files.”

“What makes you think that?”

I tilted my head, aware that now was the time to be completely honest. “The witness I told you about? She’s been staying with me in my hotel room. I encrypted that file on Friday. There’s been a car outside our hotel off and on ever since. I think he saw the file, and he’s been watching to make sure I don’t try to take her to Los Angeles to testify in person.”

“How would a virus get on our system?”

“She accessed some emails he’d sent her. I think, maybe, there was a virus attached to one of those.”

“Did you access the emails anywhere else?”

I nodded. “At Alli’s.”

Jack climbed out of the ambulance, tugging his cell phone from his pocket. I sat up, my head spinning. A concussion. It wasn’t the first I’d ever had, and likely wouldn’t be the first.

I followed him, removing my burned and destroyed jacket, watching as he spoke quickly to his tech team back in Memphis. One glance at the warehouse showed that the entire place was a loss. There wasn’t going to be any coming back from this one.

Fuck!

If I’d been paying attention, I might have been able to stop this.

Jack hung up and looked at me. He was covered in soot and some sort of powdery debris, his face and hands cut from the flying glass in the office.

“Where’s this girl now?” he demanded.

“Back at the hotel.”

“We need to talk to her.”

Getting there was a little bit of a trick. Our cars had been parked in front of the warehouse. The explosion had taken out everything within a hundred yard radius. But a call to Crispin got us a ride. Thank goodness everyone else had left the building after our meeting this morning! The collateral damage would have been much worse if the bomb had gone off during our meeting. As it was, three of the construction workers had to be transported to the hospital for burns and smoke inhalation.

We pulled up to the hotel, and one of those dark cars was sitting across the street. As I watched, the man sitting in the driver’s seat made a phone call. Then he drove away.

“That what you’ve been seeing?” Jack asked.

I nodded.

We proceeded upstairs, single file, Jack and I. Crispin cut off to talk to the front desk, to make sure no one had been to my room in my absence. The distrust was palpable. And understandable.

Rachel was sitting on the bed, the television remote in her hand as she flipped through the cable channels.

“Patrick?” she asked, her eyes widening when she saw I wasn’t alone. “What happened?”

I tossed my dirty, burned jacket on the back of a chair and stood in front of her, my arms crossed.

“Did Briggs tell you to show me his emails?”

She seemed thrown by the question. “Why would he?”

“Did he ever suggest that you open your email account on my computer at work?”

“Patrick? What’s this about?”

“Just answer the question.”

Crispin came to the door. “She’s been making local calls from the room.”

“I called Briggs in front of you!” she insisted, looking directly at me and no one else.

“How many times?” Jack asked.

“Once,” I informed him.

“There’s multiple calls on here.”

I turned and snatched the phone bill from Jack’s hand, a pain I couldn’t quite describe rushing through my chest. As I made note of more than a dozen calls made from this room, as many on her first day alone here as on the following days, the pain grew.

And then my sat phone rang.

What the hell was happening here? I’d already spoken with Ariella this morning. There was no reason for that phone to ring, unless—

“What did you tell him?” I demanded. “What does he know?”

Tears started to roll down her cheeks. “Patrick—”

I grabbed her by the throat and shoved her back against the headboard. “What the fuck did you do?”

Jack grabbed my arm, jerking me away from her. “Take him outside!” he said to Crispin.

Crispin grabbed my arm, but I twisted to look back at her. “You lied to me! You fucking bitch!”

“No, Patrick! You don’t understand!”

She was crying, her hands on her throat. There was such betrayal in her eyes, but I couldn’t imagine it was anything compared to the betrayal I was feeling in that moment. Crispin dragged me out into the hall and let me go. I turned away from him, pressing my palms to the sides of my head. I could hear the sat phone ringing again. I knew what that meant. I’d been compromised. My contacts in Mossad were calling to warn me off.

She’d told him. And what had he done with that information?

I paced the length of the hall, aware of Crispin’s eyes on me. My life had just begun to make sense again. I was almost happy! I had gotten a damn promotion, a new salary, a new life. And now this.

What was I going to do now? Where was there left to run?

“You put those bruises on her?” Crispin asked.

I glanced at him, saw as much confusion as outrage on his face.

“No, man. That is Briggs Thomas’s handiwork.”

“Yeah? Why would he do that?”

“To manipulate me. To convince me she’s a damn victim! And I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.”

Crispin leaned against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. “You sleeping with her?”

I snorted. “Yeah. Aren’t I an idiot?”

“We all fall for the pretty ones, Patrick. You’re no different from the rest of us.”

Jack came to the door a moment later. “Get in here,” he said, looking at me. I couldn’t gauge his mood, couldn’t tell if he was pissed, if the trust we’d shared was gone. And I couldn’t tell if he was feeling pity for me, which I was sure would be so much worse than losing his trust.

“Tell them what you told me,” Jack demanded of Rachel.

She looked at me, her hand moving to her throat briefly. “He said he’d kill me if I didn’t do exactly what he said.”

I shook my head, but I kept my mouth shut.

“He told me to trick Patrick into thinking I was a sexual assault victim. He said that I should get him to trust me any way I had to, and to encourage him to give me access to his office. He wanted me to look for information on all the operatives, particularly information on Jack and Patrick.”

“Why?” Crispin asked.

“He said he needed information to fight them. To end this fight that started months ago when the Guardians had a different leader.”

Again, I shook my head, pacing back and forth in front of the bed where she still sat.

“He said if I didn’t do it, he’d find me, and he’d kill me. He said I’d never be able to get away from him, and I believed him. You know why I believed him, Patrick,” she said, talking right to me. “I had no choice! I had to do this. I had to make those calls. I had to lie to you. What other choice did I have?”

I couldn’t respond. I was so angry that my throat was closing up, and I couldn’t have spoken even if I wanted to.

“I told you about the guy in California! The one he killed! I told you I would cooperate, and I will! I want you to take him down.”

“But you’re still working with him,” Jack said.

She didn’t speak, but she nodded.

“I couldn’t allow him to think I’d switched sides. If I did, he would come after me.” Again, she turned to me, speaking only to me. “You leave me alone during the day! Who’s going to protect me when you go to work? Who’s here to make sure he doesn’t show up and do to me what he did to that poor guy in California? You don’t know him the way I do!”

Suddenly my voice came back.

“Is that why you told him about my past? Why you betrayed my trust in you?”

I said it as calmly as I could. And when I was done, the sat phone rang again as a punctuation mark to my words.

I was dead if I didn’t get out of town. That was on her.

I marched over to the drawer where the phone was hidden, snatched it up, and plugged in the code, answering in front of everyone. I no longer gave a shit what anyone knew or didn’t know.

“Hello, Mr. Shaughnessy,” a cold, whiny sort of voice said in my ear. “Welcome to the game.”