This wasn’t good. He needed to get rid of her—quick.
“It was you.” She jammed her finger into his chest with the accusation. “You sent the e-mail. You pretended to be Brandon.” He winced, knowing what was coming next. “How could you be so cruel? How could you let me think he was alive?”
The betrayal in her voice made him want to crawl under the proverbial rock. He felt low enough to do it, too. Clearly he’d killed what little faith she’d had left in him. He was surprised that she’d had any.
He’d known this was coming, but that didn’t make it any easier to take. He’d expected to feel like the world’s biggest asshole when she found out what he’d done, and that pretty much summed up the gnawing ball of guilt twisting in his chest right now.
It hurt to even look at her, seeing all that “how could you?” betrayal and rage in her eyes. She hated him, all right. And he couldn’t blame her. It had been a shit thing to do.
Shit, but necessary.
“You didn’t leave me a choice,” he said.
He thought she’d been angry before. He was wrong. Her eyes lit with blue fire that went full scorched earth on him—him being the earth.
“Don’t you dare turn this on me, John Donovan. I wasn’t the one pretending to be my dead best friend. Did they teach you how to do that in your SEAL school?”
They were alone, but he looked around anyway. “Shh,” he said. “You can’t talk about that here.” She knew that. Just as she knew it wasn’t a SEAL school but BUD/S. “And my name here is Joe.”
She shrugged out of his hold of her arm—he hadn’t even realized he’d grabbed her. “More lies and secrets? Is that your cover? Are we being watched?”
Something in her tone pricked through his guilt. Sarcasm maybe? Disregard? He knew the story surrounding her parents’ death—thefullstory—and understood the source of her distrust of secrets and government, but it didn’t change anything. It only put them at odds. More odds.
“No. We aren’t being watched, but it never hurts to be careful. And yes. Joe Phillips from Canada.”
She stared at him with those sharp, piercing eyes, which seemed to cut right through him for a long moment, and shook her head. “Still saving the world for Uncle Sam,Joe? But that doesn’t explain what you are doing here and why you are in hiding—which I assume you are since you are alone, Brandon’s dead, and your secret team seems to have vanished off the face of the earth.”
He didn’t need to ask how she’d learned about Team Nine. Brand had told him she’d seen the paperwork. But John wasn’t happy about it. That kind of knowledge made his job harder and put her in danger. Only a handful of people beyond their direct command knew about it.
She also must know he couldn’t—wouldn’t—answer her. “How did you find me?” he asked.
She crossed her arms, glaring at him. “Your oh-so-thoughtful e-mail.”
He ignored the sarcasm. “That’s impossible.”
She gave him a tight smile tinged with smugness. “Obviously it isn’t. I’m here, aren’t I? But you can tellwhoever did your dirty work for you at the CIA that it wasn’t their software.”
He didn’t show any reaction that she’d guessed his source. But how the hell had she guessed his source?
His eyes narrowed. “Developed a new pastime, Brit? Hacking for fun?”
“Afraid not. But I know people, too. And in this case, it looks like my people are better than yours. That picture I attached? It had a location program built into it.”
He swore.
Her smile only got more smug.
He had to force his hands to his sides so he didn’t try to wipe it off. What the hell was it about her that made him want to grab her by the shoulders, bring her in nice and tight against his chest, and force her to listen to him? He wasn’t ever aggressive with women. They came to him, for fuck’s sake.
But she was standing too close already. He took a step back. “You can’t stay here.”
Her smile fell. “Don’t worry. I won’t cramp your style for long. I know how you don’t like to sleep alone. I’ll be on my way just as soon as you tell me what happened to Brandon and why no one has told me that he was killed.”
He resisted the urge to reply to the digs. She couldn’t be more wrong—on both counts.
He gave her a long look. “You know I can’t do that. It was an op gone wrong—that’s all I can say. More than I can say. I meant what I wrote in that e-mail, Brit. This is dangerous. Your being here puts both our lives at risk.” And other lives as well. “No one can know I’m alive. No one.”
“Why? Is someone after you? Is that why you are hiding?”
