Killian and his team had been at the base several times before she and Jordan had lef
t. It had been their job to clean their sat phones of the agency protocols, e-mails, or mission notes before returning them. Only Killian’s team and Killian himself had had the opportunity to tamper with the phone.
Jordan sighed. “It was developed specifically for the Ops by our techs. No other agencies have anything like it.”
“Well, then, that tells me something, doesn’t it?” It told her she was no safer at base than she would be here. Hell, Killian Reece would feed her to her enemies a piece at a time if he could, which meant she was safer taking care of herself.
“I’ll know who did it,” he told her, his voice icy cold. “I promise you Tehya, I’ll get to the bottom of it.”
As far as she was concerned, she knew exactly who had done it. There was no getting to the bottom of it. Only one person would have been capable of distrusting her to that extent.
“I think we’re both well aware who it was. Why the hell do you think he agreed to have me at base? So he could destroy me and made it stick. Not out of friendship for you, a sense of decency, or anything else.”
“I’ll find out.” His voice couldn’t have gotten any harder.
Tehya gave a small, almost silent snort. “And you think I’d be safe there, do you? Killian and I understand each other, and you keep refusing to believe it. He hates me. I stay out of his way and understand that he’ll always place Sorrel’s sins on me.”
She actually liked Killian Reece. He was hard-core, stone-cold, paranoid, and damned dangerous. He was the perfect commander for the new Elite Ops team. And she knew, in his position, she would have felt the same. She respected the hell out of him, but she was well aware of the fact that he saw her as the enemy. She would have seen him as no less if positions were reversed.
Sorrel had murdered Killian’s wife and unborn child; there was no way in hell Killian would ever trust the bastard’s daughter.
“Tehya, you can’t stay here,” Jordan stated simply. “You know yourself what could happen if it’s Sorrel’s enemies that are after you. If it’s his associates or allies, then it could be far worse.”
“Naw, I’m too old to be trainable as a sex slave,” she assured him. “If it’s his associates, then they simply want vengeance. I killed Sorrel and his son Raven, and helped to all but destroy the organization. Why would they care now, more than eight years later? It doesn’t make sense.”
“And you think they’ll simply kill you?” His blue eyes seemed brighter, harder. “Tehya, these are men that Sorrel funded, that gave him their loyalty. The same men who were determined to capture you and your mother for all those years. These men aren’t out to thank you, baby. They’re out to torture the hell out of you and make you beg to die because you destroyed the man and the organization they were so fanatically devoted to.”
They hated her because she had killed Sorrel and Raven, men she knew as her father and her brother. She hoped they were burning in hell.
“I’ve been running since I was five, Jordan.” She sighed wearily, exhaustion crashing in on her at the thought of even attempting to live again as she once had.
The last two weeks had been harder than she had realized. She hadn’t slept well; the fear that she was being stalked, that she had been found by her father’s friends, or his enemies, had weighed on her, she realized.
“Tehya, there are other places besides the operational base. Just let me hide you until we can reset your identity. We’ll do a full facial reconstruct and fingerprint alteration. When we’re finished, no one will find you, I swear it,” he said. And perhaps, if there had been a hint of emotion in his voice, the thinnest vein of desperation, she might have considered it. But that was all she would have done, considered it.
“The fingerprint alterations rarely work, and there’s still DNA. I’m tired of running,” she whispered, staring back at him as the heaviness weighing at her soul threatened to weaken her knees and take her to the floor. “I’m tired of losing everything I’ve worked for because some entity out there has decided I have no right to live, no right to freedom.” No right to love or to have the rest of her life to regret what couldn’t be.
“So you’re just going to sit here and wait for the bastard to strike?” He crossed his arms over his chest, which was never a good sign.
Jordan was possibly the most arrogant, most domineering man she had ever met in her life, and she had met a lot of men. When he took that stance, he was impossible to sway. Even his men knew better than to confront him at such times.
Fortunately, Tehya wasn’t one of his men, and confronting Jordan was something she had perfected over the years.
“I killed my father and my brother.” She shrugged, knowing that waiting for the strike would be easier than trying to run from it, easier than never having friends, never having a place to belong. “And I haven’t had a single nightmare over it. But if I have to start running again, Jordan, then my life will become a living hell again. I simply can’t survive that way anymore. And they’ll find out, I won’t be as easy to capture as my mother was.”
Her mother. Delicate, fragile Francine Taite. She had been tortured to death in Nicaragua when Sorrel’s men had finally chased her down, ten years after she had escaped with Tehya. Francine had refused to reveal where Tehya was hidden, had given him no information about where he could find the daughter he had chosen to breed.
Her father’s family was obsessed with bloodlines. It ruled everything, and nothing was allowed to taint its purity. Huge sums of money, land, and power were made in exchange and sometimes, there was even force. Her father’s family occupied a very dark corner of their superbly rich, exclusive world and for the right price, a blue-blooded daughter could be forced into marriage. Her mother was one of those women. Her father had repeatedly raped her until she had become pregnant with Tehya. It was a fate Francine did not want for her daughter.
Sorrel had still managed to find her, though. Through those hellish years he had murdered everyone who had tried to help her, cut her off from all possibility of peace, and in his demented mind he believed she would actually willingly return to him.
“Goddamn, Tehya.” Frustration filled Jordan’s voice now.
“You trained me well, Jordan,” she reminded him. “At the least, I’ll have a chance. They won’t be expecting someone able to fight back.”
She had learned a lot during her years with the Ops. Enough to believe she had a chance.
“I didn’t teach you to be fucking stupid,” he snarled, those blue eyes darkening to deep sapphire as he glared back at her. “Tehya, you can’t face these men alone. Hell, you’ve seen the merciless cruelties they inflict on their victims. Do you think I’m going to let you become one?”