Page 66 of Deceive Me
New scrapes and bruises decorated what she could see of his skin. From the size of the bandage on his temple and the careful way he placed his feet as he entered, his concussion was likely worse as well. But it was his expression that worried her: not remote, not blank; more like a lid had been placed over a boiling pot of water and was tipping constantly to release small bursts of steam. Only the steam looked far more like fury in Fionn’s case.
A second man followed him into the room, walking almost as carefully as his teammate. Trapper. She recognized him from the initial intel on their case. Trapper’s scarring was significantly more horrific in person, the stiffness of his movements and the wary way he held his body—part afraid someone might bump into him and cause pain, part afraid his skin might not hold all of him together for much longer—bringing home the fact that this man had been tortured and somehow survived. Elliot reached a hand out to shake, refusing to flinch or baby him. He didn’t need that; he needed a warrior’s acceptance, and she gave it willingly.
Everyone gathered around the conference table: Dain, King, Saint, Mark’s team, Fionn, Trapper, Deacon, and Elliot. Sydney went happily with Amelia to the far end of the room to play. Elliot found herself sitting in a chair directly opposite Deacon, and when she glanced up, their eyes locked naturally, irrevocably into place. She stared, cataloging his bumps and bruises more closely than she had Fionn’s, searching for any hint of pain. All that stared back at her was…
No. It wasn’t love. She wouldn’t recognize love if it hit her in the face, and besides, it couldn’t be; it was too soon, too ridiculous, too…everything.
But the longer she looked, the more she realized she wanted desperately for it to be love. And in that moment, all the emotion she’d kept locked away, everything she couldn’t bring herself to say welled up in her eyes. She tried to stop it, tried to hide, but Deacon’s gaze wouldn’t let her; it bored into her, digging up everything, stripping her naked in a roomful of hardened soldiers—
None of whom mattered when Deacon gave her a soft smile. She hadn’t seen a smile like that since their shower together. No bitterness, no anger, no mistrust. Just…
Fuck. She couldn’t breathe.
Later, he mouthed and turned his head to look down the table, starting the meeting. But the sense of connection lingered, so foreign and yet exactly right, like pieces of a puzzle falling into place.
“The bomb appears to have been set by Lyse Sheppard,” Deacon announced. The words were quiet enough that Sydney couldn’t hear them at the other side of the room, but firm nonetheless.
“Did she build it?” Dain asked.
“Sheppard?” Trapper shook his head. “That girl knows computers, not bombs. She’s scared of her own shadow.”
“Computers have the Internet, which has plans for bombs. Most anyone can make one,” Dain argued.
“I have to agree with Trap in this case,” Deacon said. “I can’t see her actually making the bomb.”
“Just placing it,” Fionn said bitterly. The words—and the tone—shook away Elliot’s distraction.
“Fionn says you think I was the target?” Trapper flattened his scarred fingers out against the conference table, fisted them, spread them again. Stretching the too-tight skin, more than likely. “I don’t get it. Why go to the trouble?”
“We believe Mansa is here to finish the kill on Deacon in person,” Dain explained.
“But the other team members are expendable.” Fionn rubbed the back of his head near his stitches. “We’re now oh for two against.”
Elliot fought the instinct to hunch her shoulders, make herself small and unnoticeable. Trapper had been tortured, but Fionn had not—and they all knew why.
A tap on her arm. Elliot turned to accept the sheaf of papers being passed around. King added a wink to the pile. Of course he’d know how she was feeling in this moment.
She buried her face in the paperwork.
The file on Sheppard was thick. Elliot flipped to the back, to the employment contract and intake information. Typical family unit—mother, father, one brother, all normal. Sheppard was the same age as Elliot, but with a different expertise. GFS had scooped the woman up straight out of intelligence training, which she’d finished at eighteen. Sheppard wasn’t simply an intelligence expert; she was a fucking genius.
No flags on the background check. Nothing suspicious other than the speed with which she’d flown through her training. And yet the fresh-faced nerd staring back at Elliot from the profile image had jumped aboard the terrorist bandwagon?
Elliot wasn’t buying it.
“Here’s what I don’t get,” Deacon was saying. “Why would Sheppard do this? What’s her motive?”
“Money?” Saint asked.
“The woman’s a hacker,” Elliot pointed out. “She could earn her weight in gold every year if she wanted to.” And if she had no scruples. Scruples had a hard time coinciding with the things terrorists would ask a hacker to do.
“Any signs of excess in her lifestyle, any debts, anything like that?” Dain asked.
Elliot flipped to the front of the file, but the last annual review was clear—and holy shit, the woman made a lot of money. That cleared up more than one thing, even while it left others murky. “No.”
“There has to be something,” Fionn argued. “Some reason.”
Elliot stared at the image of Sheppard. From all accounts shy and unassuming. Awkward. Why would a girl like that help a terrorist blow up the people she’d worked with for years?
