Burned (Shenandoah Shadows Novella Book 1) Read online

  “And then we’ll go next door to the racing club and borrow a ride.”

  “Borrow?”

  “Borrow,” he promised.

  7

  Olivia twisted the bracelet around on her wrist, staring at the covcom’s display. Her finger hovered over the button that would activate it and allow her to reach out to Langley. It was what she’d been trained to do in this situation.

  And yet. She pulled her finger back. She trusted the near-stranger sitting next to her more than her bosses and colleagues—which made zero sense.

  She barely knew him. Yet, according to his boss, the FBI had activated a manhunt for them. What if Potomac was behind this whole thing and she was a pawn in some political game?

  She stole another glance at Trent. His clenched jaw and focus indicated he was taking their situation seriously.

  It could be an act.

  But Trent didn’t strike her as the sort of person who played games, and he had stormed an airplane for her. She wondered if Mateo would have lifted a finger to come to her aid. Of course, that was an unfair test because her husband didn’t know who she was, what she was.

  She hadn’t ever meant to mislead him. She’d genuinely fallen in love with him. And when, as she was required to do, she reported her feelings to her superiors, they encouraged the relationship but instructed her to keep her identity as a NOC a secret. Even then, she understood the Agency allowed their relationship for operational reasons. But in the heady early days of love, she didn’t care why she’d gotten the CIA’s blessing, only that she had.

  And when Mateo had proposed to her on a windswept beach with fireworks exploding in the sky overhead, she’d said yes from her heart, not from a strategic purpose. She told her bosses about their engagement, hoping that after they interviewed him they’d give their administrative blessing for her to marry a foreign national. Instead, they told her she could marry him but she could never, not even after the wedding, divulge what she did. It was an unusual, almost unheard-of, requirement for a married operative. But she was in love, so she went along with it.

  Over the past three years, she’d often wondered how much of the distance between them was the result of the secrets she kept and the lies she told. She knew it was the cause of at least some of their problems. But, then, his string of mistresses didn’t help matters.

  Focus. Forget about Mateo. Make a decision.

  She glanced at Trent. He was staring at the road, working his jaw. She should activate the covcom. Langley could get her out of this. And she’d make sure they helped Trent avoid prosecution. She worked out the distress code in her mind, walking through the series of long and short presses.

  She drew a deep breath and prepared to jab the button to activate the device. And then, before she could touch it, the communicator’s face lit up. She blinked down at it and watched as the numeric code flashed. She decoded the message instantly:

  Trivia night.

  That message could come from only one person. And it wasn’t her supervisor. It wasn’t anyone on the Western Hemisphere Desk. Or even in the Clandestine Service. Which meant it was someone she could truly trust. Marielle.

  She tapped out her answer on the face.

  Trent glanced over at her. “What are you doing?”

  She held up a finger. “Responding to an invitation. Hang on.”

  “I don’t think you should—”

  “Shh.”

  The next message came through fast. A cold ribbon of dread snaked through her belly as she processed it.

  “I need you to pull over.”

  “Olivia, we need—”

  “It’s important.”

  He huffed out a breath but swerved over to the shoulder and brought the vehicle to a stop.

  “Thank you.” She fumbled with the clasp on the bracelet with shaking fingers. “Can you help me with this?”

  He raised one eyebrow in surprise. “Sure.”

  She turned her wrist to expose the underside, and he unlatched the clasp. He trailed a finger across her bare skin and then dropped the band in her hand.

  She forced herself to ignore the delicious shiver that his touch had awakened deep inside her.

  “Thanks.” She closed her fist around the bracelet and tried the door handle. The child lock was still engaged. “Pop the locks, please.”

  He did as she asked, and she hopped out of the SUV. She jogged to the shoulder, placed the bracelet in the grass, and raised her right foot parallel with her knee. She drove the heel of her boot down on the tracker and crushed the delicate electronics inside. She stomped it again for good measure, kicked the pieces into the field, and then raced back to the car.

  She was still pulling the door shut when Trent zipped back onto the highway.

  “Happy?”

  “Yep. That should have taken care of it.”

  After a moment, he said, “What was that thing? Your covert communicator?”

  Why was she not surprised that he’d know about covcoms?

  “It was.”

  “And you decided to destroy it because …”

  “Because two messages just came through.”

  “Your boss?”

  “No. A friend. She’s not with the Clandestine Service. She’s a data geek. She said I needed to get rid of it. So I did.”

  “You trust her.”

  It wasn’t a question, but she answered it anyway. “I do.”

  He nodded. “Okay. It sounds like Langley’s out, then.”

  “Not exactly. After we switch this out for another car, we should head to a little town called Shenandoah Falls. There’s an Irish pub there. Marielle will meet us.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Look, we need to know what we’re dealing with. And Marielle can help.”

  He sighed but didn’t argue the point. “What was your assignment in Mexico City?”

  “I was gathering HUMINT on a Chinese cell phone manufacturer and its governmental contracts with Mexico.”

  “Qīng Líng?” There was an edge to his voice.

  “Yeah, you know of them?”

  “I know that the national security crowd believes they’re using their handsets to spy on U.S. citizens.”

  She nodded. “They almost certainly are—well, to the extent they’re able to, they are. There’s no question the company is an agent of the Chinese government, but we’ve been able to minimize the risk stateside.”

  “The phones are banned, right?”

  “Yes. No U.S.-based retailers will sell them. But if you buy one abroad or online, you can activate it. So, you know. The risk remains.”

  “And in Mexico?”

  “Well, thanks to the ban, QL’s been unable to make any real inroads into the North American market, especially now that Canada’s also prohibited the sale of the phones. But Latin America’s a different story. There are countries with underdeveloped, aging cellular networks. And, in most of them, QL is coming in and building state-of-the-art towers at no charge.”

  “What’s the catch?”

  “In exchange, they get the contracts to provide the service to the government for at least the next decade. Within three years, QL is projected to be the largest carrier in South and Central America.”

  He let out a low whistle. “That’s got to be giving the suits heartburn.”

  “It is. But it could have been worse. The diplomats worked out a deal with the Mexican government to at least keep QL away from the U.S. border. Well, they thought they did.”

  “But?” he prompted.

  She exhaled. “I don’t know. I personally saw documents that confirm QL wasn’t invited to bid on any towers slated for construction in the northern Mexican states. I filed a report to that effect.”

  “That’s good. It confirms what the diplomats say. Right?”

  “Right. Only, this morning, I was told by a senatorial aide that my intel was bad.”

  He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “This an aide to Senator Angl
in?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So the senator who sits on the intelligence committee told you that you provided false information to Langley, and then she hooked you up with us.”

  “Wait. What? No, Anglin’s on the communications and technology subcommittee.”

  He eyed her. “Jake said intel.”

  Olivia’s throat threatened to close. “Shit.”

  “Is that important?”

  She coughed out a response. “Yeah. I assumed her interest was technological. But if my name came up in front of the intelligence committee … someone inside exposed me.”

  “Couldn’t it have been her?”

  “Senator Anglin? No. No way. She and my mom went to college together, she’s a family friend from way back.”

  “But she knows you’re a NOC?”

  “She does now. I mean, she knew I went through training, and I assume she assumed I worked for the Agency in some capacity.”

  “What’s your cover?”

  “I work in the telecommunications sector in Mexico City, editing a trade journal. Senator Anglin knows Mateo is an executive in the industry. And she’s reached out to me about QL in the past. But today’s the first time anyone on her staff has ever directly referenced one of my reports.”

  “She reached out to you because she doesn’t trust the CIA.”

  He was right, but accepting it as true made her queasy. “If the Western Hemisphere Desk is compromised, I’m a dead woman.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I’m not?”

  “I won’t let anything happen to you.” His voice rang with a fierce conviction that caught her off-guard and settled her jangled nerves.

  “That’s a good segue. Your turn—who are you, really?”

  “The short story? I’m a former Navy SEAL.”

  “Let me guess. Team Six?”

  “Technically, it’s called Task Force Blue, now. But, yeah.”

  She nodded. It fit. She could see him on the elite counter-terrorism unit. Responsible for everything from reconnaissance to hostage rescue to assassinations to missions she probably couldn’t even imagine, Team Six was a legend.

  “Which squadron?”

  He flicked her a look, as if he was surprised she knew enough to ask. Or maybe he didn’t want to say. Either way, he tightened his grip on the steering wheel and returned his attention to the road before answering. “Black.”

  She waited, but the one-word answer appeared to be a full sentence. She ran through what little she knew about the black squadron. It had historically been made up of snipers—frighteningly good ones. But in the wake of 9-11, the black squadron was remade into a counterintelligence unit. The members were still qualified as snipers, but they also did some spying of their own.

  “You were undercover?”

  “Yeah. My last posting was as part of a two-person undercover team in Nigeria.”

  “Well, if I have to go on the run with somebody, a former black squadron spy is probably the best partner to have.”

  She said it lightly, but a heavy shadow passed over his face.

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  He clenched his jaw for a moment, then relaxed his face and rolled his neck, first to the left, then to the right. He passed a hand through his hair, wrestling with his response.

  Finally, he nodded and set his jaw, his decision made. “You need to know if we’re going into battle together. It’s only fair.” His voice dropped. “You know that after Black Squadron was remade as a spy unit, we brought some women on?”

  She did. It had been big news within the intelligence community. “Yeah. Two-person teams. One man, one woman.”

  “Right.”

  “So your partner in Nigeria was a woman?”

  “She was. And she died because I failed her.”

  Olivia wanted to say … something. But no words came. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “Boko Haram captured and killed her.”

  His eyes were locked on the road. A vein pulsed at his temple. He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed.

  After a long, silent moment, she placed her hand on his right forearm. “I’m sorry, Trent.”

  He nodded tightly. “I didn’t handle it well.”

  “Well, of course you didn’t. She was your partner.”

  He laughed harshly. The sound echoed in the quiet passenger cab.

  “Didn’t handle it well is a bit of an understatement. I trashed the safe house where I was staying, punched some holes in walls, got into an argument with my commanding officer. By rights, I should have ended up in the brig. But Jake reached out to my unit commander and made an offer. In exchange for coming to work for Potomac, I mustered out with an honorable discharge.”

  “He saved your career.”

  “He saved my life, most likely, because I was headed in a bad direction after Carla died.”

  She wasn’t surprised that a SEAL would respond emotionally to the loss of a team member, particularly his partner. But something about the rawness of the pain etched on Trent’s face made her ask. “She was more than just your partner, wasn’t she?”

  He closed his eyes briefly before answering. “Jake knows, but nobody on the team did. Carla and I were involved. That was an operational mistake. And I’ll never be sure that my feelings for her didn’t cloud my judgment when I let her go off to meet a Boko Haram informant without me.”

  “Trent—”

  “Don’t try to make me feel better, Olivia. Just don’t.” He bit off the words and shook her hand off his forearm.

  She twisted her hands together in her lap. “I didn’t know Carla obviously. But I do know a woman doesn’t get a place on the Black Squadron by deferring to the judgment of others. I sincerely doubt you could have kept her from going to that meeting if you’d tried.”

  He made a sound that was a cross between a broken laugh and a strangled cry. “You’re right about that.”

  They lapsed into a silence that seemed to stretch on like the road unspooling ahead of them. They crested a hill and wound past a picturesque horse farm and a vineyard.

  When he spoke again, his voice was steady. “These documents you saw about the cell phone tower bid—how’d you get a look at them?”

  His tone made clear that he already knew the answer, but she told him anyway. “They were in my husband’s home office.”

  “And he’s a C-suite executive with a Chinese cell phone company, right?”

  “Rght. Qīng Líng.”

  “You were spying on your husband.”

  The disgust in his voice stabbed at her gut. There was nothing to say but the truth.

  “Yes.”

  She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. She was a vile, disloyal creature. She knew it; she’d known it for a while now. But now Trent knew it, too.

  8

  The SUV’s communication system sounded. Trent leaned forward and punched the speaker.

  “We’re just a few minutes away, boss. Ten minutes, tops.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m watching on the map. Do me a favor and take me off the speaker.” Jake’s voice crackled with concern.

  Olivia’s clear eyes met his. Her forehead creased. A breath caught in her lungs. A protective pang stabbed at Trent’s heart. Damn, this woman was getting to him. He smiled to reassure her.

  “Is something wrong?” He kept his voice casual and light.

  “Pick up with your earpiece.”

  He frowned and fumbled the device out of the center console. He wiggled it into his ear and heard the electronic beep as it connected. “It’s in.”

  “Listen, a burn notice just came over the transom. Olivia Santos has been identified as a double agent for the Chinese. She’s gonna be taken into custody by the FBI when you get here and they’re gonna turn her over to the CIA. The agents will be here when you get here.”

  Trent was silent.

  “Trent, did you hear me?”

  He glanced at Olivia, who was staring
at him wide-eyed, waiting to learn what was going on, before answering. “Yeah, I heard you.”

  “Be smart, okay? I know you’ve got a thing for this girl, but think with your big head, not the little one.”

  “Who you calling little?” Trent made the joke on autopilot.

  “This isn’t funny. Keep your head on a swivel when you get here. There’s no telling how she’ll react once she realizes she’s been burned.”

  “I’m not sure that’s correct, pal. I think—”

  “Whatever else she is, she’s a highly trained CIA operative, Trent. The woman’s dangerous, and once she realizes she’s cornered, she could turn lethal.”

  Trent’s gut clenched at the concern in his friend’s voice. But Jake was wrong. Olivia wasn’t dangerous. She was vulnerable. And he was going to honor his promise to protect her—the way he should’ve protected Carla.

  “Hey, I gotta go. We’re coming up on that speed trap where the local cops like to set up.”

  “Roger that. See you soon.”

  The call disconnected. He growled and tore the communicator from his ear. He powered it off, then threw it into the center console with a clatter.

  Olivia twisted in her seat. “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s been a change of plans.”

  “What kind of change?” Worry clouded her eyes. He was pretty sure he could get lost in those deep blue pools.

  Give it a rest, Mann. You’ve got to focus.

  He forced his attention back to the road. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Right around the bend, there’s a large gravel pull off. We’re gonna pull over to the side of the road, and you’re gonna take over the wheel.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m gonna hop out and cut through the racing clubs’ grounds on foot. There are woods that lead to the garages. I’ll borrow a car and bring it to meet you. Meanwhile, you’re going to be driving about twenty miles an hour, and no faster, for the next five miles or so.”

  “Why?”

  He ignored the question. “You’ll see a rundown barn up ahead. Drive into it and—this is crucial—leave the car running. Then go wait for me at the vegetable stand by the roadside.”

  It wasn’t a great plan, but it was a decent plan. Especially for one devised on the fly. It could work. Maybe. If Jake was distracted by the swarm of federal agents descending on Potomac.