“I CAME TO tell you that I’m on your side.” Luke was back at the target’s house on surveillance duty trying to see if there was anything that would give him a clue as to Azizi’s whereabouts. He turned to find Boots beside him.
Luke put a hand on the soldier’s shoulder to make sure he wasn’t just imagining him. The sun had begun to set, illuminating the dust in the air. Boots looked around before speaking. There was enough ambient noise between honking horns, sputtering car engines and random merchants that there was little chance of anyone overhearing them in the street.
“Listen, I know you don’t trust me, but I’m asking you to give me a day to show you what I’ve been working on. Don’t make any decisions until then.”
“That won’t work for me, Boots. If you’re on my side, you need to read me in or you’re off the unit.” Luke had never taken such a hard line with one of his men, but he was dead serious this time. Boots raised a brow, probably just as surprised as Luke was.
The soldier blew out a breath. “The last time we were here, Ethan shared with me that he suspects someone from the unit is leaking information. Even before the safe house was blown up, we had tried to get to the target twice and each time he eluded us, as if he knew we were coming. You see how regimented this guy is—how come he disrupts his routine at the exact time we try to snatch him?”
That fact had been bothering Luke, too, which was why he’d asked Alessa to look into the team’s phone calls, texts and emails. There was no way anyone outside the unit would have known their operational details. Decisions were made on a daily basis and other than Luke, no one was allowed to communicate with the Pentagon. He knew he hadn’t talked with anyone in Washington; it was time to find out who had.
Boots kicked at some pebbles on the sidewalk. “Ethan asked me to keep an eye on the other guys.”
Luke tried not to smile. Maybe he and Ethan weren’t as different as he thought. That had been his first priority, to find a spy within.
“So what have you figured out?”
“I ditched Rodgers in Afghanistan and made it here before everyone else. I’ve been watching the target. I managed to plant a bug on his driver. They don’t sweep the driver like they do Azizi.”
Luke raised a brow. It was a great idea, one he had considered but then dismissed because it was unlikely to yield useful information.
“The driver was in range when the target was talking on the phone. He said, ‘Don’t worry, your boy Ethan is safe, I keep him close to me.’”
Luke’s blood ran cold. While it was great to hear that Ethan was alive, that he was being held like that meant that they planned to use him as collateral for something. He needed to get to his brother.
“I followed Azizi and I’m near certain I saw Ethan in the house where we almost got ambushed. That’s why I sent you the text.” A tide of relief washed over Luke. He wasn’t crazy; Ethan really was alive. But unease also tugged at him.
Boots kicked at another pebble. “There’s one more thing.” He swallowed. “I saw Alessa and Rodgers together a couple of days ago. They looked close. Be careful what you tell her—I think she’s on his side.”
Luke’s chest burned. He wasn’t a jealous man by nature, but he hadn’t stopped wondering why Alessa had waited so long to tell him about Julia being missing and Rodgers’s involvement. Luke thought they finally had trust and rapport between them, yet she’d kept something important to her from him. It wasn’t the first time a woman had chosen another man over him, so why was his heart in such a twist? Had he finally let himself dream of a having a family? He knew there was nothing romantic between Alessa and Rodgers—she herself described him as a brother—but Rodgers had something Luke didn’t: Alessa’s faith and trust.
“You need to come back into the team.”
Boots frowned. “But…”
“You can just say that it took you a while to get across the border. The rest of this stays between us. I need you to keep an eye on everyone from the inside. Including Parrino. I’ll start compartmentalizing information.”
An hour later his phone buzzed. It was Alessa calling. He didn’t pick up but responded with a text.
Boots is back with the team.
Good. Keep an eye on him.
Right now, Luke didn’t know who he could trust.
* * *
THE SATELLITE IMAGES floated in front of her eyes. Luke’s face when she told him about what happened with Julia kept blocking them out. He’d been hurt that she had turned to Rodgers instead of him, but what choice did she have?
Once again, she wondered whether she should have allowed herself to get close to Luke. After what had gone down with Aidan, any leaks of what had happened between her and Luke would be devastating. He wasn’t worth the risk. Was he?
She thought about their kiss and the moment he’d admitted that he wanted to be with her. He made her feel something she’d never felt in her entire life. Safe. Loved. That moment was the first time she’d understood what love was. Her mother claimed to love her father, but Alessa knew that was just fear. While Aidan had never proclaimed love, he had intimated that he cared for her deeply. At the time, the words had meant something to her, but when she’d found how he’d been using her, her affection had turned to anger. With Luke it was a whole new level. It wasn’t just the way he said the words, or the look in his eyes when he said them. When he touched her hand, she felt connected to him at a cellular level.
But something had changed between them. She’d seen it in his eyes when she told him about Julia. She shook her head to bring things into focus. She was looking at images taken earlier this morning at various houses Azizi had been known to frequent to see if she could detect activity in any of them. Her pulse kicked up a notch as she zoomed in on a particular picture. She stared at it for several minutes to make sure she wasn’t seeing things. Yep, that’s Azizi. The time stamp was from six hours ago, which meant there was a good chance he was still there.
She called Luke, who was surveilling the house they’d almost broken into yesterday.
“Stay at the apartment, I’ll mobilize the guys and we’ll gear up.”
“I’m ready to go and your bag is ready, too.” She had been packing as she talked to him. They couldn’t exactly roam the streets with guns and bombs in their arms so everyone would have to come back to the safe house to gear up for an assault. “I’ll go ahead and do recon on the location. It hasn’t been on our list. I’ll have info for you when you get there.”
“Alessa, I don’t want you going alone.”
“I can handle it,” she said dismissively and hung up. She wasn’t going to waste precious time arguing with him and risk losing Azizi. The sooner they wrapped up this mission, the faster she and Luke could uncomplicate their relationship.
She took a rickshaw to the house in the satellite picture. On the way, she thought about what it would mean if they found Azizi and Ethan in that house. The mission would be over, Ethan would regain command of the unit and Luke would leave the army. The two of them could finally be together.
She asked the rickshaw driver to drop her off a block from the house. It was on a busy road but had a long driveway that led to a secluded area covered by brush and trees. The house was surrounded by a five-foot-tall concrete wall and there were houses on either side. The only way in was through the front door. There was no guard at the gate and when she walked up to it, she opened it easily.
She had a cover story in case someone questioned her. Her backpack held some gear, but she was dressed in a salwar kameez. Sometimes the best option was the most direct one. She got all the way to the front door before encountering a guard. He yelled at her and she stopped, then in halting Urdu said, “I’m coming to ask if they have a job. For a maid.”
The guy shook his head but she kept insisting and begging, repeating the same phrases. “Please, I am very good. I need money to feed my children. Let me talk to the woman of the house.”
Alessa wanted to make a fuss to draw out the other guards, but only the one guy remained. He eventually got frustrated with her and came close, grabbing her by the elbow to escort her off the property. She whirled and delivered a blow to his head, knocking him unconscious. Then she made her way to the front door, keeping an eye out for any other guards. Seeing none, she knocked, but there was no answer. The door was locked. It was a heavy wood door; she wasn’t going to be able to kick it open, so she opted for a walk around the periphery.
The house seemed deserted. Then she heard it, a footfall behind her. She turned to find a man pointing a gun at her.