He hadn’t told her exactly why Travis and Lilly were arriving. He had hoped Lilly would talk Tehya into leaving, but he knew that the moment the other woman comprehended the depth of pain Tehya would feel at leaving, she would pull back. Just as Jordan was now pulling back as well.
That was the problem with having women on the team, he reflected with a sigh. They thought of more than simple safety. Security had a far different meaning to them than it did to the men whose only thought was protecting them.
At least Tehya had been trained to understand, and to help in the areas required to protect her. And having her involved had the benefit of her knowledge of Sorrel’s organization.
He’d envisioned a far different outcome to this meeting with her. He’d assumed that after nine months she would have had a lover at the very least. That possibly she had begun a new life that included dating in her agenda.
He hadn’t expected her to have bought a home and a business. To have begun putting down roots, since she had never taken that risk when she was younger or while she had been in Texas.
It made the operation more complicated, but perhaps it was for the best. Hiding her didn’t ensure revealing whoever was determined to find her, and it didn’t ensure her safety in the future.
At least this way, when he walked out of her life, one of two things would be a certainty. She would be safe, or they’d both be dead. He was opting for safe.
* * *
It was actually closer to an hour before John, Bailey, Travis, and Lilly arrived at the house. Slipping in through the patio doors, the four made their entrances at different stages.
Dressed now in jeans, T-shirt, sneakers, and a bra that did little to hide her still-hard nipples, Tehya prepared another pot of coffee.
She remembered the amounts of hot, rich caffeine the men went through while preparing for an operation while they were all at base. Those planning sessions could take days. Determined to hammer out the first stages and acquire all possible information, they rarely slept until it began affecting their ability to reason. And then they only napped for a few hours before awakening and heading first to the coffee, then back to the meeting room.
When she went to the grocery store, she would have to buy enough to keep them going. She’d better stock up on food as well, she thought in resignation. And there was no way in hell she was cooking from scratch for this crew. She would be cooking night and day. Sandwiches and canned soup would have to work for them. She was making that list of supplies as Bailey and Lilly slipped into the house ahead of Travis and John.
“No wonder we couldn’t get a hold of you. I’m sorry, Tehya, I never thought Killian could be such a bastard,” Bailey said as she moved around the counter and gave Tehya a quick hug. Lilly followed behind her, both women frowning at her. “He needs his ass kicked.”
“At the very least,” Tehya murmured, though in all fairness, she didn’t think she could blame him. What wouldn’t she herself have done to protect her friends, the people she thought of as her family? Killian had done no more than she would have done herself.
“Well, no fears, dearest,” Lilly stated with an arch of her brows and a quick smile. “I’m certain it will be taken care of at the earliest convenience.” She glanced at Jordan as he, John, and Travis spoke in low tones on the other side of the room.
The two women were as different as night and day in both mannerisms and temperament, but they were dead ice when it came to a mission, and when it came to protecting friends. She had seen that over the years. Along with Kira Richards, they had kept the base running smoothly, and the men centered, in ways Tehya knew they wouldn’t have been without that feminine presence. They had claimed the women being there kept them human.
“Jordan said it was your and John’s sources that reported the discovery,” Tehya said, turning to Bailey. “What happened?”
Bailey’s pretty face tightened into a grimace. “We have several contacts in Afghanistan who knew to listen for any inquiries into the death of Tehya Talimosi Fitzhugh. Several weeks ago two of them contacted us along a secured channel. Ira Arthur and Mark Tenneyson had been sifting through the wreckage of the warehouse we had blown up to retire your identity. Arthur and Tenneyson were overheard discussing the information that yo
u hadn’t died as well as your new name and possible location. We still haven’t learned who contacted them, but we have people working on it.”
“Your contacts have no idea who employed the two men?” she asked as she felt a warning shiver chase up her back.
“None.” Bailey shook her head. “But when we arrived in D.C. last night, we learned that Stephen Taite and several of his associates had arrived in the States last week to oversee the purchase of a chemical production plant in Pittsburgh. Arthur and Tenneyson were reported to be watching him as well.”
Stephen Taite.
Tehya turned from the two women to drag mugs from the cabinet and hide her response to this information.
He was her great-uncle. Her grandfather’s younger brother. When Bernard Taite and his wife had died, Stephen had taken over the Taite estate and business holdings. From what she had learned, he had barely managed to save it after stockholders began pulling out following the deaths of his brother and sister-in-law.
It hadn’t been an easy time for the family, and Tehya had been dealing with her mother’s death then, as well as the death of the former marine whom her mother had persuaded to protect Tehya.
How long ago had it been?
So long. The same month her mother had been killed in Nicaragua. Francine had called her parents out of desperation at that time, begging them to help her to send someone for her and her daughter. Sorrel had been so close, Tehya had learned, to both their locations.
Less than twenty-four hours later Bernard Taite had been killed in a hit-and-run on a Paris street. The next day his wife had been found in their bedroom, dead from an apparent overdose.
And her mother had died at the hands of a madman determined to find Tehya for reasons she still didn’t completely understand.
Sorrel claimed she was the child he had promised to his son, her half-brother. That all she had to do was return to him and he’d ensure she didn’t suffer her mother’s fate.