Killing Time

7

Eva breathed deep, regained her composure, and stared him down.

He dragged a hand through his too-long hair, brushing it off his face. Between the hair and his much more than a five o’clock shadow, he looked ragged and worn and still ridiculously gorgeous. His eyes were bright and clear now. The Ketamine had worn off.

“Fine,” he said when her silence made it obvious she planned to stick with her story. “Ramon was a friend. You hate me because he died. Got it. So, what? You plot for eight years to find me and tell me what a horrible person I am? Sorry. I’m not buying that.”

When she said nothing, he studied her face intently, and when he finally spoke he sounded thoughtful, even a little sad. “Did you come here to kill me, chica?”

“If I’d wanted you dead, I’d have put something with a little more kick in that syringe. I told you. I’m doing a story. A tribute to Ramon. A retrospective,” she said, restating her original lie, then adding a little extra, working him. “And I waited eight years because I’ve been on assignment in the Middle East. You might have heard? There are wars on terror, uprisings, military coups breaking out everywhere?”

“You know how it is. Us bottom-feeders tend to live under rocks. We miss things.” He gave her a considering look as he gingerly touched his fingers to the swelling under his eye. “Okay. Because you’re so entertaining, I’ll play along. You’ve been a busy little war correspondent. But now you’re back on Ramon’s story. Please, do enlighten me more.”

“In the process of doing research about Ramon and his deployments, I was given access to several military documents.” Another bold-faced lie. She’d never been given access to anything. If it hadn’t been for that top-secret file showing up out of the blue on that flash drive—no explanation, no return address, no postmark, because it had been delivered by a courier service that had conveniently lost all information about the sender—she would have never opened up this particular can of worms.

His eyes sharpened on hers. He clearly suspected that she was lying about how she’d gotten the files, yet for some reason, he played along. “And they handed over the OSD file. Just like that.”

Relieved that his skepticism seemed to have transitioned to interest, she pressed on with her lie. “No. Not just like that. My guess is they intended to supply me with a press-ready overview of the operations run since the war started. Your basic homogenized and carefully culled material. Declassified, redacted, and already made public in some form. They weren’t supposed to give me the Operation Slam Dunk file.”

His face paled again at the mention of the file. “Then how did you get it? That file isn’t supposed to exist anymore.”

“It exists. I read it.”

His expression grew grimmer. She’d already proven how much she knew about him with information that could only have come from the file.

“Okay.” He conceded the point. “Let’s back up. Who are they? Who gave you the information?”

“I don’t reveal my sources.” She couldn’t if she wanted to. She didn’t know who her benefactor was or what his or her motive was for dropping the bomb in her lap that had led her here to Lima and Brown.

“It’s so reassuring to know that you have some professional code of ethics—drugs and flex cuffs notwithstanding.” He lifted a shoulder. “But that could just be me, splitting hairs.”

“Those were carefully calculated tactics. You’re a big boy. I’m sure you’ve done the same.” She wrapped her fingers around the bars on the headboard and pulled herself up to get a little more comfortable. “Anyway, I’d scanned close to thirty generic, sterilized documents when I spotted the last one on the list. Somebody goofed and hadn’t erased the data.”

He let out a low groan. “No shit. All right. Let’s ride this horse and agree that you ‘stumbled’ onto the ‘official’ military report of what happened that night. The gospel according to the five-star gods of war. Still doesn’t tell me what you need me for.”

“In the pretrial transcripts you repeatedly denied any wrongdoing on your part, adamantly maintained that someone had sabotaged the mission then set you up to be the fall guy—”

He cut her off with a lift of his hand. “They did set me up.”

“Then why the plea bargain?” It was that abrupt about-face that had compelled her to dig deeper. And that digging had ticked someone off enough to have her followed. “Why would an innocent man cop a plea? Why would you sell out your remaining two teammates, Taggart and Cooper, and take them down with you?”

He considered her for a long time. “You ask that as though you think I might have had a reason other than being guilty. Having a change of heart, Pamela?”

She hadn’t realized she was so transparent. “Okay. Here’s the truth. When I came here, I wanted you to be guilty. I wanted you to admit it. I wanted it to end there.”

He arched a brow. “And yet—now something is making you wonder if maybe I’m not the scourge of the free world. Goodness gracious, my heart’s all aflutter.”

She squirmed and rolled her burning shoulders, as weary with this game as he was. “Just because I’m starting to believe you got a bum rap doesn’t change the fact that I think you’re a coward.”

“Give it a rest, chica. This is not the path to the truth. You ever hear the expression ‘You can catch more flies with honey than Ketamine’?”

“Damn it, Brown. Just give it to me straight. What really happened on the mission?”

He slumped back in the chair, slowly shook his head. “Oh, no. I still haven’t gotten my answers. You’ve been lying to me since you opened your mouth. Why is this really so important to you? And seriously, if this is about a story, why not put the screws to the powers that be and leave me the hell out of it?”

The intensity in his blue eyes reminded her that while this was about her wanting answers, it was also about his life. His career. Both things he’d walked away from.

“Because the moment I said the words Operation Slam Dunk out loud to someone at the Department of Defense, I lost total access. They quit answering my e-mails, refused my phone calls. I get real suspicious—red-flag suspicious—when doors start slamming in my face.” Just like she got scared when she started noticing the same black sedan following within a few car lengths on the freeway each night. The same panel van parked a block away from her house.

He made a tired, cynical sound. “There are no stone walls like the U.S. military’s walls.”

She strained futilely against the cuffs again, then laid back against the pillows. “Listen, I have my own sources, my own methods. I can get to the bottom of this. But I need you to help me flesh things out, sift through the garbage and get to the real leads.”

He jerked his chin back. “Leads? Leads on what? An eight-year-old story that—at the risk of total redundancy—the military is going to stonewall like it’s Fort Knox?”

“Leads that might go beyond what happened in that valley that night.”

There. She’d said it.

“What are you talking about?”

“I wish I knew. But something… something’s way off.”

He looked completely baffled. “Is that not what I’ve been trying to tell you?”

“I had to find out for myself, okay? That’s why I’m here. That’s why I used extreme measures.”

He had nothing to say to that, but his expression said plenty. Somewhere, mixed in with the staged indifference and very real anger, was relief that she might actually believe him now. Which meant he wasn’t as apathetic about the hand he’d been dealt as he let on.

“Isn’t it time you found out?” She pressed her point. “Don’t you want to know who was responsible for what happened that night?”

Silence. A slow, methodical shake of his head. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Stone walls, remember? That’s not happening.”

“But what if it could? What if I could make it happen? What if we could make it happen?”

He pushed out a laugh. “What? So… now you want to help me clear my name?”

“I want to clear Ramon’s name,” she said honestly. “I couldn’t care less about clearing yours.”

He laughed again. “You are such a charmer.”

“Don’t you want to read the files?” she hurried on, ignoring his cynicism.

“Sure, fine. So show them to me. Or wait… if I frisk you, will I find them myself?”

His eyes were smug and baiting. And he was enjoying himself far too much at her expense.

“You really think I’d compromise my investigation by traveling with the flash drive? It’s not on me. It’s in a safe place. Back in the States.”

When he looked thoughtful, she pressed her advantage.

“Look. I haven’t added it all up yet—I can’t add it up without hearing your full story. Detail by detail. Call by call. You were there. You know what really happened. Who was there, who called the shots, who had something to gain. But the bits and pieces I have uncovered tell me that if you were set up—”

“We’re back to if again? You should really do something about this little bipolar thing you’ve got going on.”

She couldn’t blame him for doubting her. “If someone set up the team and framed you they could still be active duty. They could still be running bogus reports to cover up other operations that are far from being in the interests of national security.”

He held up a hand. “Whoa. You a big Vince Flynn fan? Into spies and double-agent stories? Talk about a major leap,” he sputtered with a whole lot of cynicism.

Too much cynicism. So much that she knew he was actually thinking the very same thing but didn’t want to admit it. He struggled to hide it but he was interested. Real interested.

She decided to take a huge leap of faith. “Doors didn’t just slam in my face when I started asking questions. I can’t prove it, but I’m fairly certain that I’ve been followed.”

“Bipolar and paranoid. Throw in schizophrenic and you’ve hit the trifecta. They have padded rooms for people like you. Some of them even come with a view.” He touched a finger to his cheek again, winced.

“You think that didn’t cross my mind? That I wondered if I saw things where nothing existed? They were there. I’ve seen one too many cars, one too many times, behind me on the freeway or in my neighborhood. Sensed something out of place in my kitchen or my bedroom once too often.”

Just like she’d gotten that prickly sensation along the nape of her neck and that sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that had her sleeping with her gun every single night.

He had that hard look in his eyes again. The one she’d started to recognize as stubborn but intrigued.

“So why not go to the CIA with your speculations? Or the FBI. DHS. Hell, pick the alphabet agency of your choice. Let them investigate.”

Of course she couldn’t do either, because she worked for one and the other would go straight to the very people who could be involved in the cover-up. If there was a cover-up.

“You know that’s not how it works. In the first place, it’s illegal for the CIA to conduct ops inside U.S. borders without special dispensation from the president. In the second, the Carter administration destroyed the CIA’s human-intelligence capabilities and the current administration has continued the war on the CIA. Third, the FBI has bigger fish to fry. Department of Homeland Security? Forget it. Besides, they’d never believe someone was after me.”

He lifted his hands as though she’d just made his point. “Well… yeah… that’s because you’re nuts.”