I shook my head in a grip of panic. Perhaps it was the shock from the night, but all my training had left me. “Please, I wasn’t—We weren’t going to—”
He calmed me with a raised hand. “I imagine you weren’t, Erin. I think you were just going along with what your father told you to do, and things didn’t go according to plan. That’s not your fault.” He leaned in and lowered his voice. His gaze grew deadly serious. “But I can tell you, with a record like yours, no one’s going to believe that.”
I felt like I was drowning right there in the interrogation room. All the air had turned to murky, cold water filling my lungs like cement. I was terrified and alone.
He sat back and released a breath. “But,” he said, and my head jerked up, “maybe we can work something out.”
A sick feeling swirled in the pit of my stomach at the thought that he was suggesting an exchange of services I did not want to provide. I became intensely aware we were alone, locked in a room together. I broke out in a cold sweat.
When he opened my file again, I relaxed a fraction. “You have a very impressive skill set, Erin. One that takes most people many years to master. Someone so young being so talentedat assuming identities could prove to be a valuable asset.” He paused and looked up at me.
The layers of shock and nerves still clouding my consciousness made me slow to understand. “What do you mean?”
A slow smile spread his lips, lifting his mustache. “I mean we could help each other.”
“We could?”
He quietly laughed, seeming to find my innocence amusing. “Yes. Do you know what a confidential informant is, Erin?”
I’d heard the words before but only in movies and on TV.
“Like a spy?”
He laughed again. “Sure. Like a spy.”
I didn’t find any of it funny. “What does that mean? You want me to like, go undercover?”
He stopped smiling and looked at me straight on. “I want you to think carefully about what you want, Erin. Do you want to go to prison for most of the rest of your life? Or do you want to stay out of prison by working for us?”
It might have been the shock of the whole night, but it wasn’t until he saidusin an unusual tone that I realized I wasn’t even sure who he was referring to. I thought I had been talking to an FBI agent the whole time, seeing as that was who’d busted into the hotel room, but on closer inspection, I didn’t see a badge or any of the storied letters I’d grown to fear shouting in block letters from his clothing: FBI, CIA. He was entirely nondescript. I wondered fleetingly if I’d somehow been kidnapped on the way to being interrogated.
“Who are you?” I asked, unable to keep a note of fear from cutting into my voice.
His mustache twitched when he gave me a soft smile. “I can only tell you if you agree to take the deal.”
I knew then I was right. I had been intercepted. I steadily held his gaze, finding whatever nerve I had left. “Why would I take the deal if I don’t know what I’m agreeing to?”
He leaned forward on his elbows and looked impressed.“Fair point. Let’s just say I work for an organization within the government that is very interested in acquiring your skill set.”
The government.So, he wasn’t a criminal who’d kidnapped me on my way to getting arrested. He was a legal authority figure, though apparently some secret, covert off-radar kind.
“Can you at least tell me your name?” I asked. “Seems only fair since you know all of mine,” I said with a sweep of my hand over the table.
He seemed to consider with another amused twitch of his mustache. “My name is Joseph. Joseph Wallace.”
I nodded, happy to have even that bit of information.
“Take the deal, Erin,” he said after I sat in silence for several moments. “I promise you, whatever horror you are imagining trusting me might lead to, prison would be a thousand times worse.”
A shiver shook me, but the choice seemed obvious. I was alone and drowning, and when the man sitting across from me threw me a lifeline, I saw no choice but to grab it.
CHAPTER11
Present Day
Iwoke with a start. I sat up, rigid in the warmth of my new bed, the soft linens bunched around me. My heart raced. Something had summoned me, a sound like a crack against the window. Despite my experience with weapons over the years, any such unexpected noise reminded me of the gunshot that had changed my life a decade before. I shook away the images that so willingly swam to my mind’s forefront at any opportunity.
The blood. The faces. The fear.
