Page 63 of The Only Reason (The Trident Trilogy 2)

She rolls over and looks at me. “Do you think this room is bugged?”

“Not a chance. We sweep it every time you leave the room. It’s clean. We looked in Alex’s gear, too. Did you know he’s carrying a Glock?”

“No, I didn’t. He told me we weren’t allowed to carry on this mission.”

“That figures. We’ll deal with that later. Will you please tell me what I don’t know?”

She takes a deep breath and slowly exhales. “So when Chase and I met with George the other day, he repeated that Dad had asked him to help him disappear. George said he called his boss right after Dad left his office. His boss told him that he would handle it from there and ordered George to back off. His boss at the time was Paul Ward who—as you know—is the director now. When George told us the director had taken over my dad’s request, I told him I wanted to meet with Ward to find out what he knew. I didn’t think there was any chance in hell they would grant the meeting, but they did. I was headed to meet with Ward within an hour of my request.”

“Did Chase go with you?”

“Yeah. He went all the way to the outer office, but Ward and I met alone. Ward told me they had staged Dad’s death. He escaped the explosion through a tunnel. Agents met him in the tunnel and took him to a meeting spot.”

“You believe this?” I ask cautiously.

She rolls over on her back and looks up at the ceiling. “I do. He was telling the truth. I don’t have a doubt in my mind that Dad was alive after the explosion.”

“You’re the best at reading people, so I’ll believe you. Where did they say they hid him after that?”

“They didn’t. The agency only agreed to do anything because Azayiz asked them to. Ward made it very clear Dad wasn’t at all important to him. They only did this because Azayiz had helped them with the bin Laden raid. She was apparently the key informant. That’s why she had to go into hiding.”

“So what happened when your dad hit the end of the tunnel? You said they took him to a meeting spot. Who’d he meet?”

“Ward said Azayiz had arranged for someone to meet him in Baghdad. He said they handed Dad off and didn’t ask questions. They washed their hands of it after that.”

“So they could have been handing him to the enemy?”

“Yep.” She closes her eyes for a second. I see a tear roll down her cheek. “I said I believed he didn’t blow up in the building that day, but I think he’s dead. He could have died later that day or a year after that, but he would never stay away from me this long. Never.”

I take a deep breath. “I love you with everything in me. And I have no problem believing it’s still only half as much as your dad loved you. If someone told me today my being around you was threatening your life, I would disappear forever so that you could live. It would be the hardest decision I’d ever make in my life, but I would do it in a second. I can only imagine your dad would have done that and more.”

She turns and looks at me again. “There’s one more thing. Apparently, Dad made a deal with the agency that if they helped him, he would never resurface. He had to stay away forever. They basically wiped his identity clean—took his passport, erased all mentions of him in naval records, probably destroyed every trace of him.”

“That would explain him staying away for so long.”

“Yeah, and apparently he at least made it to Baghdad after the explosion. Raine found the guy Dad’s team had used as a translator back in the day—an Iraqi national. She and Chase are there now. They talked to him yesterday. He confirmed he helped with the meeting with Azayiz’s people.”

“Raine’s with Chase?”

“Yeah. That was part of my deal with Ward. He said he’d support Chase and Raine going to Iraq and retracing Dad’s movement from that side.”

I take her hand gently. “I don’t mean to insult you, but there’s no way in the world the director of the CIA is doing all this for a 25-year-old agent—much less an agent who tried to resign from the agency. There’s something way bigger than you and your dad going on here.”

“Oh, I’m aware. This has nothing to do with appeasing me. It has everything to do with finding Azayiz. There’s something really suspicious going on with her disappearance. I’m just not sure what it is yet.”

“Is that everything?”

“Chase said the translator told him the people they met in Baghdad were from Pakistan, but they were speaking a Dardic language. He thinks it was Kalasha.”

“Why’s that important?”

“There aren’t many people who still speak that language. Raine did some research,” she says, pausing for second. “She found out Azayiz’s grandmother was from the Kalasha Valley. She still has family near Birir. If she helped Dad escape, he could be hiding there. It’s kind of the perfect place to hide—remote, cloistered.”

“Yeah, but from what I’ve read, they aren’t much into outsiders. I can’t imagine they would be okay with an American hiding out there, especially for nine years. I don’t think that’s very likely. Plus, it’s so close to the Afghanistan border and the FATA. It’s not like it’s completely safe. Even if he got there, surely someone would have given him up to the Taliban or worse.”

“I don’t think we’re that far yet,” she says. “Chase believes the Iraqi guy. He thinks Dad made it to Baghdad. He doesn’t know what happened after that. He and Raine are headed to Birir right now.”

I reach for her hand as we both look up at the ceiling. We lay there silently for a few minutes.

“So you think he’s still alive?” She says it so quietly, I can barely hear her.

I squeeze her hand. “I don’t know, Mills. I really don’t. But for the first time, I think it’s possible.”

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