Page 45 of Don't Let Go

“That doesn’t make you foolish,” Remy chastised me lightly.

“It does when it’s based on blind loyalty.”

“Youtrustedthem,” he said, pressing on as if I hadn’t disagreed with him. “In the field… you have to trust your handlers. Your eyes in the sky. You have to give them everything and put your life in their hands.”

The intensity in those words arrested me and I twisted to look at him. All I found in his eyes was a kind of dedicated solemnity.

“Working in intelligence is the same way. They recruited you when you were young and impressionable.”

When I would have argued, he covered my hand on the coffee mug with his.

“You were young. You were in college. They courted your intellect. When you are being sought for the very skills that could bring them down, you don’t look for a trap. Why would a shadow organization bring in people who had no idea what they were doing for real?”

It wasn’t an unfair question. Letting go of the cup, I clasped his hand. “I just—I hate that it took me so long to see it. How much blood is on my hands because I did what they asked of me without question?”

“Did you do it with no question at all? Or did you wait until they’d given you enough evidence to trust that you could believe them?”

This time, the sigh that left me seemed to deflate everything. I cut my attention from him to the screen once more. It scrolled through the interior programs I had running. Sniffers to make sure nothing had been installed that I didn’t want, as well as details on the drives I’d connected.

Yes, I had set up the system. Didn’t matter, I always verified everything now. Triple verified if I could.

“I don’t want to fall into another trap,” I admitted without looking at him. “The holes in my memory could be one, easily. You guys could be another. Except…” I didn’t sigh so much this time as pause to regather my thoughts. “Except I do know you.”

Now I looked at him again.

“I know you and McQuade and Locke. I’ve known you for years. The three of you didn’t know each other. You never worked jobs together. Except on very rare occasions, you have not been in the same cities on assignment or otherwise.”

“So what does that tell you?” He’d begun to stroke the side of my hand with his thumb. The action soothed, but it also helped to keep me grounded. I probably shouldn’t be leaning on them so much, but the last thing I wanted to do was pull away.

I chewed the inside of my lip, trying to examine it from all angles. “You met because of me.”

“Correct,” he said with a single nod.

“You guys are only working together because of me.”

“Also correct.”

A faint smile curved my lips. “You don’t much like each other.”

To that, Remy shrugged. “What I know about them? I like. McQuade will die for you. He will also kill. That makes him a good ally. Locke?—”

The hesitation now seemed far more pronounced.

“Locke?” I prompted.

It was his turn to give a faint smile. The lighting cast his face half in shadow. It was as though I saw both sides of him, the dark assassin and the cheerful man who enjoyed dry teasing.

“Locke is not a killer. He has no interest in becoming one, but he goes right into the fight if given no other choice.”

Now that intrigued me. “If he is given a choice?”

With the faintest of snorts, Remy turned my hand over so he could trace his thumb over my palm. “During our hunt for you, we needed to gather information from an installation. McQuade and I were going to go in, take it by force. Locke went to relieve himself, but didn’t return immediately. Instead, he just let himself into the building, got the drives we needed and got out without a single shot fired or anyone noticing.”

The grudging admiration was harder for him to hide. The description also sounded so much like Locke. “He loves to pit himself against security systems, the more challenging, the better. His mind never stops working, and he could sell sand to a desert dweller with his charm.”

“You care about him,” Remy said softly. “Don’t you?”

“Yes.” That wasn’t so hard to admit. Even when I thought to soften it or at least bury it, I didn’t want to. “I care about all of you. That makes you dangerous to me.”

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