Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 145091 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145091 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
“Don’t.”
That shouted command hadn’t come from Drake. It had come from Kyle Hawthorne. Drake had gone from a red flush to his face a pasty white, and he’d taken a step back.
Kyle, on the other hand, was the perfect vision of rage. “Don’t talk to him like that. I don’t know what he did to you, and right now I couldn’t care less. He’s not the one who fucked Julia. That was me. I was the one who couldn’t see the snake in my bed. Don’t talk to him like that because he lost more than anyone. She was his sister. She was his only sibling in the world, and she betrayed him utterly. So back the fuck off because he’s not going anywhere.”
Sister?
“She was…” Drake took a moment. “Sorry. I’ve thought she was dead for long enough that I have to remind myself to use the present. Julia is my half sister. We share a mother but not a father. I didn’t talk about her much then because she’d recently died. Well, she’d been injured and managed to go underground until a few weeks ago. We won’t be dismissed from this op because no one knows her better than Kyle and me. Though apparently I don’t know everything since I had no idea she’d killed your father. Was he working with her?”
“Fuck you, Drake.” She turned again. He’d slammed her with that information, but he was still the same man. He still thought her father was a traitor, and he’d used her to try to prove it. The fact that his sister had been involved made it all the more suspect that he would want to prove her dad was a bad guy.
“You’re one to talk. Your father was a literal double agent,” he shot back. “Don’t look at me like I’m tainted, Taylor. I would think you would have some sympathy for me. At least I didn’t help Julia. I might have been a moron when it came to my sister, but you facilitated your father’s crimes. You helped him cover up the fact that he was meeting his Kremlin handlers in Havana.”
It was more than she could take, and she rounded on him. “He was meeting doctors in Havana.”
That seemed to stop him cold. The self-righteous look on his face faltered. “Doctors? Why would he need Cuban doctors? He could have had American doctors.”
Ah, Americans couldn’t admit anyone knew more than they did. She was an American and even she saw this flaw in her homeland. No one could possibly know more than an American. “American doctors don’t have access to CIMAvax. It’s too tainted, you know. Might get socialism from it. Or you might cure lung cancer. My father didn’t turn. He got sick and he refused to die because the government won’t let doctors use the one drug that might have cured him.”
Her father hadn’t been the only America citizen in those clinics. Wealthy Americans worked around the rules all the time.
He’d wanted to live because he’d been all she had, because he’d had more work to do, because he should have been able to.
Her heart ached, and then she was weary all over again.
Kim put a hand on her shoulder. “Come on. Let’s give the guys some time to cool off. We can talk about how to proceed.”
At least someone was the voice of reason. It seemed like the Agency’s twisty-turny rules of who knew what and when had fucked them both over, but it didn’t change what Drake had done. It only made it worse, leaving her feeling vulnerable in a way she hadn’t for months. Not since she’d woken up in a CIA black ops site and realized the world had shifted and she’d been left alone.
“Taylor,” he called out as she started up the stairs.
She didn’t turn around. There wasn’t anything left to say.
* * * *
Drake stared at her, feeling more helpless than he had in forever.
He wasn’t the guy who felt helpless. He was the guy who controlled everything, the one who shifted the players around on the board because he was the mastermind. It was what his father had trained him to be since he was a little kid. He would be the puppet master, a benevolent god who took care of the world and all those innocent people in it.
Except it had all been a lie because he didn’t control shit.
Sometimes he wondered if it had been his father who’d sold him on a lie or if he’d simply not been up to the task set for him.
“Hey, man, are you okay?”
He knew something had to be seriously wrong for Kyle to sound like he gave a shit. “I am confused and angry, and I know who I’m mad at and it isn’t her.”
Nope. If Taylor had been lied to, then he was sure he looked like the bad guy. Of course, he knew who the real bad guy was.