“I’m not sure,” he finally admitted. “I guess it’s one of those instinctive kind of things. I kept getting the feeling you weren’t the person I thought you were. And after seeing you risk your life to go after Wade, that’s when I knew it was time to trust you.”
Alina gazed at him for a long time, and he felt his heart pound faster. Did she realize he was holding back a good portion of the story, that it wasn’t just the way she’d thrown herself into a fight that had tipped the trust scale in her favor but the fact that he’d started feeling something for her? Or that it was the most powerful thing he’d ever felt and growing stronger by the minute?
“Well, thanks, whatever the reason.” Alina reached across the table to cover his hand with hers. “Knowing that you trust me is more important to me than you can imagine.”
Trevor looked down at her hand. She had beautiful fingers. Long and graceful, like the rest of her. She casually ran them back and forth over his knuckles, then slowly laced them through his. His heart thudded so hard in his chest, he could hear it.
He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Trust is pretty important to me, too.”
Suddenly, his gums and fingers started to tingle like they did whenever he was on the verge of an uncontrolled shift. Shit, that hadn’t happened to him since those early days in high school.
He probably should have pulled his hand away. That would have been the smart thing to do. But at that moment, he wasn’t worried about doing what was smart. He was only interested in doing what his instincts told him was right.
What the hell was it about Alina that had him acting like this? And more importantly, did she know the effect she was having on him?
He lifted his head to see her smiling at him.
“Trust is definitely a two-way street,” she agreed. “I think it’s time I tell you everything.”
Chapter 13
Alina was shocked at how fast everything had changed between her and Trevor. Then again, almost getting blown up could force two people to set aside their differences surprisingly fast. Trevor had taken a huge risk telling her everything. If she’d actually still been a spy for Dick—or Thorn—her partner had given her more than enough to hang him and his friends. Trust like that deserved trust in return.
She hadn’t realized she’d taken his hand in hers, not until the strength and warmth in his strong, sexy fingers seeped through her palm and all the way down to her toes. She marveled that something as simple as two hands touching could have such a profound effect on her, but the contact made her feel warm all over.
“I used to run a CIA direct action team,” she said quietly. “There were five of us—Fred and Rodney, two guys I’d worked with my whole career, and Jodi, a new agent fresh out of Quantico and probably the closest friend I’d ever had in the Agency. Then there was Wade, a piece of crap the big shots at Langley put on my team, not because he was a good agent, but because he’d always talked a good game and knew the right people.”
She hesitated, but Trevor didn’t interrupt. Instead, he sat there and let her collect her thoughts, not seeming to mind that she was still holding his hand.
Once she started, the story flowed, and she told him everything. How her team had been sent to southern Turkey to stop a group of terrorists from getting the chemicals necessary to make sarin gas. How Wade had taken the lead setting up the raid. And how Fred and Rodney had died in the ambush.
Talking about Jodi was harder, simply because it hurt to think about how young the woman had been when she’d been so viciously murdered. But for some reason, Alina found it easier to talk to Trevor about it than she had other people, even Kathy. Maybe because he never pushed her to keep going but instead allowed her to get the story out however she had to.
“You know what sucks nearly as much as losing my three best friends in the world?” she asked. “It’s that less than five months after my team was wiped out, the Syrian town of Ghouta was hit with a sarin rocket attack. Over fourteen hundred men, women, and children died.”
Trevor frowned. “I read about that but never heard who did it. Are you sure it was the same people you’d gone into Turkey to stop?”
She shrugged. “The UN investigated, but nothing formal ever found its way into the reports. Everyone in the CIA knew what happened, though. There were a handful of rockets loaded with military-grade sarin used in the attack, but the majority of the civilian deaths were contributed to lower-grade gas spread with several improvised explosive devices. That was the stuff my team was supposed to keep off the battlefield, and we failed. My team, and all those people, died because I didn’t realize what Wade was up to until it was too late.”
Alina appreciated that Trevor didn’t pull out the standard it’s-not-your-fault-you-shouldn’t-blame-yourself crap. She’d heard that more than enough over the years. She didn’t need it from him, too. But he seemed to sense she needed to talk about it without him trying to introduce logic into it. She was well aware all those deaths lay squarely at Wade’s feet. That didn’t make it hurt any less, though.
“I spent years looking for Wade,” she admitted. “You could say I became obsessed with it. That obsession made it easy for Dick to recruit me into the DCO. All he had to do was promise to help me find Wade again, and I was hooked. It’s kind of sad how easy I made it for him.”
“Don’t beat yourself up over that part,” Trevor said. “Dick might look like a moron, but he’s actually a master when it comes to manipulating people.”
Maybe so, but she was still mad at herself for buying into his crap. On the flip side, it was amazing how good it felt to talk to someone who genuinely seemed to get it. It was like a weight had been taken off her shoulders.
“You want something to drink?” she asked.
After almost getting blown up and talking for two hours straight, he had to be as parched as she was.
“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks.”
Realizing she was still holding on to his hand, she reluctantly released it and got up from the table. Instead of waiting for her there, Trevor followed her over to the fridge and leaned back against the counter beside it.
“Thanks for listening to me vent,” she said as she handed him a bottle of water. “I never realized I had so much baggage until I started unloading all of it on you.”
