Page 20 of Nothing to Fear

Gideon’s brows drew together. “You’ve only been with one guy?”

“Yes.”

Gideon pulled away, dropping his hands from her, but she wasn’t ready to let him go. When she moved forward, he stepped back toward the door.

“What’s wrong?”

A loud banging erupted from the top of the stairs. “Willow! No boys in your room!”

The one time she managed to get a guy she wanted in her room, her father was spoiling it.

“Willow! What are you two doing down there?”

Sighing, she adjusted her clothes. “Gideon wanted to see my room. We’ll be right up!”

“I bet he wanted to see your room. Get up here. Now!” Harsh knocking resounded.

Her father must be slamming his baseball bat on the floor.

“I’m twenty-five,” she said to Gideon. “You’d think he’d stop treating me like a child.”

“Why did you write Babel, my mission to get Daedalus?” His cold eyes shot to her book.

The warmth in him had evaporated, replaced with a lethal edge of menace. He’d reverted to the hard, killing machine who stalked the halls of the Gray Box. What happened?

“Nothing went wrong on that op,” he said. “I completed the mission.”

She smoothed her hair with a trembling hand. “You eliminated the target, Daedalus, which was your primary objective, but you failed to retrieve data he had on a jump drive.”

Rocking back on his heels, he crossed his arms, gaze pinned to the floor.

“You never completed your debriefing because…” His wife had been killed. The shock had thrown everyone off, and the detail had been overlooked by Daniel, the analyst assigned.

“Willow!” Hammering resonated through the wood floor above.

She wished she’d given her father the glass of whiskey.

07

Wolf Trap, Virginia

Thursday, July 4, 8:55 p.m. EDT

The Daedalus mission had fallen through the cracks.

Young operatives didn’t lose spouses to death. Divorce took them. Most black ops agents screwed up their marriages with secrecy, disappearing on missions for unspecified periods of time. It was tough on partners and incomprehensible to regular civilians such as in-laws.

The car accident, Kelli’s death, had shaken everyone. What no one else at the Gray Box knew was that his wife hadn’t been in the vehicle alone. The cop on-site had told Gideon the cause of the accident was a combination of rainy road conditions and distraction while driving.

At first, he hadn’t understood, but the cop painted the picture for him. His wife in the passenger’s seat, no seatbelt on. Male driver, also deceased, with his privates exposed.

Gideon had later stumbled on the divorce papers inside her Jeep’s glove box and had paid her best friend a visit, demanding the truth. The affair had gone on for two years.

The guy had also been married with kids but had decided to leave his wife for Kelli.

Gideon had just gotten back from the Daedalus mission and hadn’t seen her in weeks. When he suggested that they both take time off to spend together, she’d shot him down with excuses. One of many was that her Jeep needed an oil change and tune-up, and she insisted he handle it and had taken his truck.

After learning Kelli had died while giving her lover a blow job, he hadn’t bothered reading the police report. Maybe it was time he did.