Page 2 of Covert Past

You are useless if you fall apart. Take out the emotions, Ayla. Find the truth. Gideon Broder, her Mossad director’s training, broke through the grief. He’d said that same thing to her through countless missions. If she was going to find Daniel’s killers, she had to get out of this box.

Ayla shoved as hard as she could against the lid. It didn’t budge.

Someone responded with what sounded like a fist being slammed against the box. “Be quiet in there.” The words were spoken in Arabic.

Where were they taking her? All sorts of worst-case scenarios chased throughher head.

Ayla struggled to control her panicked heart rate and listen to the sounds around her. A lapping of water against the side of a boat. No motor. They were probably using paddles to move through the water.

“This is good enough,” a different man spoke. “The tide is coming in.”

They were going to toss her into the water. She pulled in several breaths and forced herself to slow her thoughts.Think, Ayla! She could almost hear Daniel saying.

Her second weapon. The Ruger her director and friend Gideon had given her when she joined Mossad. It was tucked inside a hidden sleeve in her boot. No one knew about it. Not even Daniel. Chances are they’d searched her for a weapon. If they’d found it, everything was over.

Her legs were folded beneath her body. Hands zip-tied in front.

“Get her ready,” the same man said.

She struggled to free her legs in the cramped space. The box jostled as if someone had picked it up. Her head cracked against the side. She came close to blacking out. Ayla fought her way back. Tried to right herself and then . . . the box was tossed.

Don’t think about it.She kept working. Managed to straighten her legs. If she could reach the gun. All she had to do was reach the gun.

The box struck the water. Immediately it began to fill. She had seconds to live. With her hands tied together, she fumbled inside the boot. Found the Ruger. Held her breath as water poured in. There would be one shot. She had one shot to save her life.

Chapter One

Hope Island, Maine. Present Day.

The sign in the window said, “Help Wanted—Barista.” Ellie Jamison walked past the notice, barely giving it a glance.

Two weeks. She’d been on Hope Island for two weeks lying low. Trying to heal. Over the past seven years Ellie had lost count of the number of places she’d lived all over the world . . . and the different aliases she’d used to escape the two-fold attack coming her way.

From Syrian Intelligence who’d shot her on the shore of the Dead Sea and knew she’d escaped. For reasons she didn’t understand, they’d been persistent through the years. Determined to find her and shut her up.

But the hardest truth came in knowing she was considered an enemy of her own country. She’d been accused of murdering Daniel and betraying secrets to the Syrians. Her mind reeled every time she thought about those accusations her director threw at her.

She’d been running for so long Ellie had lost track of the places she’d gone. The names she’d used. The people she’d met while unable to make a connection. They passed through her life like ghosts.

Ellie massaged the spot on the back of her neck where they’d injected her with something meant to paralyze her body briefly and render her unconscious. It had left a nasty scar. Itand the gunshot wound she’d suffered after she’d escaped the box were constant reminders of what happened that night. But the emotional wounds ran much deeper.

Through the years, she’d endured countless near misses until she’d ended up in the Pacific Northwest.

Oregon had felt different. Days had turned into weeks, then months, and Ellie started to believe she’d finally outrun the threat until she’d walked into her tiny apartment and straight into an ambush. The last attack had almost taken her out. It happened less than a month earlier in a small coastal town.

She’d fought with everything she could muster but lost. If it weren’t for her neighbor reporting the incident to law enforcement, Ellie would be dead. Police sirens had scared off her attackers.

Ellie had known if she didn’t get away before the cops arrived, she’d be brought in for questioning. Besides Syrian Intelligence, Ellie had no doubt Mossad had agents stationed across the US who were actively searching for her still.

If caught, she’d either be sent back to Israel for prosecution or she’d be dead, depending on who captured her.

Barely escaping, she’d left everything she owned behind in Oregon except for the engagement ring Daniel had given her and the Ruger that never left her body anymore.

But she had survived. She was alive, and maybe this time—this place—would be different.

Ellie passed another window. The same help wanted sign appeared there. A barista. Could she allow herself to settle here? Grow comfortable? Form surface-level connections. She’d learned how hard bonds with others were to sever—even bonds that weren’t well rooted like most of hers had been through the years—when she had to leave in the middle of the night after danger found her again.

Over the past seven years, she’d worked for a tailor. On a ranch in Montana. For a winery in Napa Valley, to name a few. Anything to pay the bills while she searched for answers. She’d never been a barista before, but she did love all things coffee.

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