She had learned as a teenager that the enemy could pose as anyone, even a friend. Yet evidently, that lesson hadn’t impressed itself upon her effectively enough.
It could be Casey, it could be Kyle, or even Journey. Tehya had known the other girl was a risk from the beginning, but not the type of risk Micah was watching for.
“Someone with a complex and a seriously nice ass,” Journey laughed.
“More than a seriously nice ass matters, Journey,” Tehya said. “And on that note, it’s time for me to leave.”
She had to get out of the bar, away from whoever was there specifically to watch her, to betray her. To complete Sorrel’s mission and destroy her.
It wasn’t as safe here as she had believed it was. For all her careful surveillance and background checks, somehow she had still managed to fuck up. Still, she had allowed herself to be fooled.
That, or she had been located within those first two months of moving to Hagerstown and was being watched even as she was watching those around her.
That would have allowed whoever was following her to put someone in place and prepare a proper background. Especially if she had been led there, or if her enemy had known her well enough to guess where she would head.
The thought that she was under surveillance for months and had never guessed until the past few weeks, had a chill of terror racing through her.
Looking around, she didn’t catch sight of Micah or anyone else. She felt the eyes on her, though. God, she should have paid attention to her instincts and run that first night she had felt the back of her neck itch.
Two weeks ago.
But if her suspicions were right, if Micah’s were right, it had been too late long before that. But why hadn’t she felt the danger then? Why had she only begun feeling those eyes on her in the last two weeks?
Slipping the small electronic key fob from her jeans, she started the ignition to the car before crossing the street. Once she got to the vehicle, she walked around it, watching the screen on the fob intently for any sign of electronic devices or explosives.
The screen showed clear.
Once insi
de the vehicle she sat still and quiet and stared out the windshield, as she tried to get a grip on the fear building inside her, and the final realization, the acceptance that her father truly was reaching out from the grave to drag her into hell with him.
She wouldn’t get rid of Jordan or the others. If he had pulled the team in before he had showed up on her doorstep—and it appeared he had done exactly that—then he’d intended to learn who was searching for her on his own once he had placed her at base or in a safe house.
She knew Jordan; He didn’t do anything without a carefully thought out plan. He would have shipped her off to the Elite Ops base and then gone after anyone that seemed to be interested in her. He would have attempted to take care of the matter on his own.
What he couldn’t have realized was the moment she disappeared, her shadows would have disappeared as well. And eventually they would have found her again. They always did. And someone always died.
How many times had someone ended up dead because they thought they could fight her battles for her? Because they thought they could save her or her mother, no matter the odds.
However, unlike the others, Jordan had come prepared, and Tehya knew he had. She knew how he worked, how he planned, how he waged war.
Pulling out of the parking lot, Tehya headed home. Watching the rearview and side mirrors carefully, she drove around for a while, hoping to catch sight of anyone that could be tailing her. At least, perhaps she would give Micah a chance to catch sight of them, though she doubted whoever it was would be so careless at this late date.
She knew Micah was most likely behind her somewhere, but she couldn’t catch sight of him, either. Had she lost her edge? There had been a time when her instincts, her ability to draw out a tail had been so much better than this.
By the time Tehya pulled into her garage she was frustrated, irritated, and riding a temperamental edge that she rarely allowed herself to visit. Fear did this to her. It made her crazy with the need to run, to hide, to draw the danger away from friends or acquaintances.
When she was too weak to control the fear, her mother used to tell her that her redheaded temper would get her in more trouble than what they had following them.
She’d had a horrible temper as a child when under stress. She had believed she had conquered it as a teenager, though. Hell, she hadn’t had a choice. It was control her temper or risk her mother, or a protector’s life. But now, she could feel it rising inside her like a storm that couldn’t be stopped. She felt as though she were being infected by the fear. As though it were crawling inside her, burning her guts.
Parking the car in the garage, Tehya got out and walked into the house only to come face-to-face with more people than she had left there.
Jordan and the two couples were waiting, but with him was his nephew, another former Elite Ops agent, Noah Blake. Micah and Nik were slipping through the patio entrance even as she locked the door between the kitchen and the garage.
“Did I give you enough time to catch my tail?” she asked Micah as she leaned against the door.
A grin quirked the hard line of his lips. “Not this time. They followed you in, but they didn’t follow you out. We crisscrossed behind as well as ahead of you and didn’t glimpse anything or anyone suspicious.”