A haunted look fell over the former CIA agent as he slowly paced the room.
“I got lucky.” Julian moved back and forth, holding his pistol steady in his hand. “When I walked into that room and saw that bomb, I thought that was it.” He huffed out a breath. “I suppose it was, in a way. After all, as far as the world is concerned, that was the day Julian Miller ceased to exist.” His stone-cold gaze turned her way. “I lost myself because you and Keith chose to turn your backs on me and leave me there to rot.”
Leave him there to?—
“You’re wrong!” Natalia shook her head with vigor, ignoring the throbbing headache that had returned. “We tried getting you out. Keith and I…w-we worked forhourstrying to dig our way through the stone and other debris to find you. But we couldn’t?—”
“Bullshit, you tried!” Spittle flew from his mouth as he yelled. “I was there, remember?Iwas the one trapped with hardly any air to breathe! I didn’t know how badly I’d been hurt. I thought I was going to die in that hellhole. So don’t tell me you tried!”
“Wedidtry, Julian! You have to believe me. We did all everything we could! But those stones…” Flashes of haunting memories began filling her mind’s eye. “They were all too big.” Another few tears fell with a blink. “They were too heavy, and there weren’t any spaces between them that were big enough for me or anyone else to crawl through.”
“And when exfil came, I suppose you told them to leave you there so you could keep working?”
She nodded. “As a matter of fact, I did. I fought to stay as hard as I could, Julian. I swear, I did. But then?—”
“What, Natalia?” The angry man seethed. “Go ahead. Give me one good reason that will excuse you leaving Afghanistan without me.”
“They told me you were dead!” She shouted back. “The team they sent in…at first, they went through all the reasons you couldn’t have made it through an explosion like that alive. And theykeptsaying it until I?—”
“Until you what?”
“Until I finally believed them.” She lifted her watery gaze to his, praying for the words to make him understand. “Two days after we got back to the States, we were told they’d found your remains.”
He grunted. “A nice cover story to keep the wrong people from asking the CIA too many questions.”
“We knew what we were signing up for that very first day at Langley,” she was quick to remind him. “As an agent within the Central Intelligence Agency, you and both understood and accepted that, should we die in the field, our families and friends would most likely never know the truth about how.”
There were many details about a CIA agent’s death that were never revealed to anyone on the outside. In this case, Natalia, Keith, and everyone else who was there that day had also apparently been kept in the dark.
She watched her former best friend closely as he processed what she’d shared. For a moment, it was as if the old Julian had returned.
“I could hear the chopper as it flew in,” he muttered low as a softness she remembered returned to his troubled gaze. “I yelled until my voice was gone, but none of you could hear me.”
“I’m so very sorry, Julian. If I had known…”
“Two days later, a group of al-Asiri’s men found me when they were searching through the rubble,” he continued as if she hadn’t said a word. “I was taken prisoner and held captive forweeks at their camp. They tortured me, Natalia. Did things to me you couldn’t possibly imagine. And when I didn’t break after they gave me their worst, al-Asiri himself paid me a visit.”
Dear God in Heaven, what kind of evil had this poor man been forced to endure?
“What did he do to you, Julian?” She could no longer tell where her new tears began and the others ended.
“He offered me a job.”
Natalia blinked. That wasn’t at all what she’d expected to hear.
“Wait, what?” She frowned. “You were offered a job with the al-Qaeda leader we’d been hunting?”
Julian nodded. “He said if I could withstand his most feared man, I was worth more alive to him than dead.”
Her heart broke, knowing Julian’s only choice was to accept al-Asiri’s offer. Of course, he had. It was either that or be killed.
“That’s how you became involved in the illegal underworld,” she surmised.
Another nod. “And I gotta tell ya. The pay and the perks are a helluva lot nicer than the CIA. Yes, siree, doin’ it this way is a much better deal. I’ve got access to more money, drugs, weapons, and women than I ever dreamed a schmuck like me would have. Not to mention the sweet collection of sports cars I’ve got scattered across the globe. You wouldn’t believe it, Tally Cat. Not even if you saw it with your own eyes.”
It was almost as if he were trying to convince himself his words were true, rather than convincing her.
“Julian,” she breathed his name softly and moved her head side-to-side. “This isn’t you. You fight for what’s good and right. You risk your life to save those who are innocent, not soyoucan be the one who hurts them.”
