Prologue
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“It’s empty. Did youknow that?”
From behind his dark glasses, Trevor Matthews stared down at the shiny new casket. Its silver hue shimmered in the summer sun.
Jake McQueen—his Delta Force team leader and best friend—stood silently beside him. They were the only two who had yet to leave the gravesite.
Beads of sweat formed on Trevor’s forehead, his wool beret doing nothing to fight off the warm sultry air. He was so hot he thought he’d suffocate if he didn’t get out of his dress uniform soon.
Would be a hell of a lot better than the way Lisa died.
“Why the casket?” he wondered aloud.
Not the most appropriate question, given that they were standing less than two feet from her grave. For some reason, Trevor couldn’t let it go.
“There wasn’t even enough left for her parents to bury.”
“Don’t do that, man,” Jake tried to deter that line of thinking.
“I’m serious. Why spend the money? Why go through all this?” He waved his arm toward the numerous floral arrangements and now-empty seats. “It’s not like she’s here to...” He shifted gears mid-thought. “I shouldn’t have let her go in there. I should’ve listened to my gut, but I”—his voice broke, and he cleared his throat—“I shouldn’t have let any of them go.”
Jake turned to face him. “I’m there; I make the same call, all day long.” Trevor shook his head in denial, but Jake kept going. “Listen to me, Trev. You can’t do this to yourself, you hear me?”
Trevor turned to his friend, grateful the sunglasses hid his red-rimmed eyes. “I knew it was off, Jake. In my gut, I knewsomethingwasn’t right with that guy, but I still gave the go-ahead.”
“And if it hadn’t been for the fucking flu knocking me on my ass,Iwould have been the one giving those guys and Lisa the green light to enter that building,” Jake growled.
“You don’t know that.” Trevor shook his wary head. “You may have seen something. Noticed something I missed, or—”
“Bullshit. I’ve read the reports. We got bad intel. Period. You didn’t miss a fucking thing.” When Trevor remained silent, Jake said, “And let’s not forget, Lisa’s the one who brought Hadim in to begin with.”
“Don’t do that.” Trevor’s gloved hands fisted at his sides as he spoke through clenched teeth. “You donotget to blame her.”
“Why? Because you want to shoulder all the blame yourself? Lisa was CIA, Trev. She knew the risks. You shared your suspicions about Hadim, but she chose to ignore them and moved forward as planned. That’s onher. Not you.”
“It wasn’t her fault,” Trevor growled, defending the woman he’d grown to care for.
One he’d been sleeping with for two months, despite regulations against it. A woman he’d just said his final goodbyes to.
“Hadim was a long-time asset,” he reminded Jake. “She trusted him.”
“And that trust got her killed.”
Except Lisa hadn’t just been killed. She’d been held captive for nearly a week. Tortured that entire time. With each day that passed, a new wave of pain and terror had been brought down on her until finally...mercifully...she took her final breath.
Using his shoulder, Trevor wiped away the single tear that had escaped beneath his glasses. Turning, he glanced at the casket one last time and made a silent vow.
Never again, would he allow himself to feel this way. Dealing with the loss of those he’d served with was bad enough. Knowing someone he’d been intimate with had died becausehe’dfailed to protect her...that was a brand of pain all its own.
One he never wanted to experience again.
