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Jordan searched the room, looking behind him and scanning the crowd before answering.
“She’s her sister.”
Dimitri felt like he’d been transported to another planet or was having a bad dream he couldn’t wake up from. Everything he’d known of her was in direct opposition to the facts he was being presented with.
“But she never had any relatives. She never had parents. She never had any family. She said they were all dead. They’d all been killed in an auto accident.”
“I don’t think Moira told you about her past or her family. She had a family. Still does. And that’s who she’s with now.”
Chapter Three
The reporter refusedto go further. He sent Dimitri the file and promised it was clean. They agreed the next meeting would have to be in one of the parks, some place out in the open, Jordan said.
Dimitri was beginning to feel like he was involved in one of those clusterfuck ops with the Suits, as he called his CIA friends. He had nowhere to turn for verification, which was the worst feeling of all. He wanted to trust this guy, but could he? His training told him not to, that his emotions would get the better of him, but man, did that work. If he’d been set up by this guy, it was working.
He walked in a daze, raising his head to make sure he didn’t run out into the street or in front of a bicycle. It was a clear blue early May day, one of the prettiest in D.C. One of those days people convinced themselves they loved the city that ruled the world. They could make money in LA and New York, but D.C. could take it all away. That’s where the real power was, unless you were making money outside of the “protections” of the government. Then you could be free.
But not legal.
He stared at the video over and over again as he walked. She looked happy. She was smiling, using her hands like she always did, expressive, making a point. And if that was indeed her sister, no one she’d ever mentioned to him, maybe that’s why shelooked familiar. They weren’t twins, but they were close in age, and they looked so much alike they could have been. Moira was slightly taller. Maybe slightly older.
His body ached for her. Just seeing the video summoned that dragon beast inside him that wanted to have her one more night, the vessel for his desperate desire to make a difference to someone, someone he loved more than life itself. His action-oriented wiring needed to be needed, needed to be the giant protector and Maker Of Things Right.
Except he couldn’t do it. No way in Hell could he make this come out right. It wasn’t logical and went against everything he’d held onto, thought he knew about her, and spent years now grieving over.
Why would she do this to him? How could she just walk down the beach like that? Why was she not as devastated as he was at this picture?
Unless… The unthinkable truth of it all came flooding in.
She really didn’t love him. She’d been pretending. She’d been playing the role he’d dished to those two former wives and other broken relationships. Was it for the sex too? Was she so much like that evil, ugly side of him all along? He wanted her to be pure, because if she was pure and she loved him, that redeemed his flaws and gave him a chance at a future, at least until he didn’t want that any longer.
And he’d thought about that too. His therapist had told him to go to sex addicts meetings, and he refused. He wanted to stay hopelessly addicted to her. It wasn’t a disease to him. It was a lifeline.
And now it was gone? Or maybe he could figure out an angle somehow to get her back?
Without knowing, he’d come to the front steps of the building he worked out of, the State Department of Special Services.
He was recognized but showed his badge anyway. Then he moved on to the eye scanner with the canned “have a nice day,” message. He rode the elevator to the sixth floor, greeted the ladies working the front desk, and inquired about his liaison.
“Mr. Davis is out for the afternoon. Would you like to request a meeting with Shirley?”
“Yeah. Can I just go in?”
“She’ll meet you in your office, Mr. Kyriakos.”
“Thanks.” He started down the hallway but was called back. “Mr. Kyriakos, you have a lot of mail. Can I get it for you? Your cubby is stuffed.”
“Fine.”
She looked at him as if she could see the pain and confusion resident there. For a large woman, she moved deftly over the marble floor to a series of file cabinets, searched for the one with his name on it, and brought out a sheaf of papers over three inches thick, presenting it to him without smiling.
He wrestled it rather clumsily from her hands with enough energy to raise her painted on eyebrows. Clutching the papers against his chest, he shuffled into his office and closed the door, catching it before it could slam. He sat down at his desk, placed the mail on the blotter, and turned around to see the white Capitol Building sending a bright white shadow against his face.
He studied the structure, the symbol of power the place where all the suits and the businessmen and women of the world came to play. The place where countries were divided up, plans to go to war had been devised, deals were penned, careers made and ruined, and secrets numbered higher than at a girls’ slumber party. Everybody took the dare. Everyone thought they could make a difference. Maybe they could, he thought. But it wasn’t really like what they thought it would be.
He was glad he was on the outside, looking in. He was just one of the lackeys, not responsible for doing more than he wastold. His job was to protect the innocent, just like on the Teams, but now the problem was who was that? How could you tell?
And why did Moira lie to him? Why couldn’t she trust him?
