“Ah, yes.” He blinked open his eyes. Chelsea had her bottom lip caught between her teeth, and her hair was all wild and crazy, making her look so damned cute. Unfortunately, that look was back in her eyes. The one from Rusty’s place. “Your big confession. Okay. Let me have it. Once again, Big Z is all ears.”
She swallowed. “It’s about Afghanistan.”
That word shriveled his burgeoning hard-on. In contrast, the rest of his muscles stiffened. “Chelsea, I—”
“No, please.” She placed a finger over his lips. “Will you let me finish?”
It was the last thing he wanted, but… “Yes. Okay.”
She blew out a deep breath that ruffled the hair over his forehead. “When I heard you were handing over Abdul Waleed to Agent McShane before returning to the States, I went back and vetted him again.”
He frowned. “Why? A whole host of analysts had already vetted him. Ted Edens, your boss and the head of Advanced Analytics, had already vetted him.I’dalready vetted him. And Waleed gave us some really good Intel during the two years he was my asset. Why would you investigate him further?”
Chelsea’s lips twisted. “Hesortof gave you good Intel.”
A sick feeling swirled low in Dagan’s stomach. “What do you mean?”
“Waleed only revealed soft targets. Things that would convince you he was legit, but nothing that was ever truly actionable.”
“That can’t be right.” Dagan shook his head.
“Think back. Did you ever actually catch a target? Find a hideout? Bust up a conspiracy?”
He searched his memory. “That bomb-making shop outside of Kabul. Waleed was the one to give us the location.”
“And by the time you got there, the bomb makers were long gone.”
“But we confiscated all their equipment, all their unfinished ordinance.”
“Which they could have easily replaced. Which I’m sure theydideasily replace.”
That sick feeling swirling in his stomach turned into a tornado. He had known Waleed was a double agent. Of course he had. That had become apparent the day Waleed set off that suicide bomb. But to hear that he might have knownbeforehand? That the red flags had been there and he’d missed them? No wonder he had been fired the minute he set foot inside the director’s office.
“So, yeah. That made me curious,” Chelsea continued. “And me being me, I dug a little deeper.”
Dagan screwed his eyes closed. He wasn’t going to like what he heard next. That didn’t stop him from asking, “What did you find?”
“I found out he was a second cousin twice removed from Mullah Zahed.”
Dagan blew out a ragged breath. Mullah Zahed had been one of the most powerful and feared Taliban leaders before his capture, and he had been Waleed’scousin? “How did I miss that?”
“Not just you,” Chelsea assured him. “Everyone missed it. Edens himself missed it. And now I know that was part of the problem. Edens didn’t want it known he’d made a mistake. He didn’t think it’d look good on his résumé. But, heck, I might have missed it too, had I not run across the guest list for Mullah Zahed’s daughter’s wedding. Waleed’s father attended, and that got me curious enough to go looking for the connection between the two men. It was really convoluted, but I eventually untangled all the threads and found the blood ties.”
“Fuckin’ A.” Dagan ran a hand through his hair. He wouldn’t have thought it was possible for the submersible to get any smaller, but the thing seemed to shrink around him. Then a thought occurred. “But, wait. You found this outbeforethe handoff, right? So why—”
“And here’s where my confession comes in,” she said, her voice heavy with undisguised misery.
That sick, swirling feeling in Dagan’s stomach ratcheted up from an F5 tornado to a full-force hurricane.
Chapter 46
“Twenty-six hours before you were supposed to hand off Waleed, I went to Ted Edens and told him what I found,” Chelsea said, her heart racing to beat the band.
“What did Edens say?”
She couldn’t ignore that Dagan had gone as still as a statue carved from polar ice. It was a terrible change from moments before, when he’d been all warm hugs and roving hands. Was this a hint of things to come?
Love conquers all…
