He glared down at her and felt that rolling anger he’d harbored against her the last year begin to grow again in his belly. “My mother died of breast cancer. And a few months later, my grandmother. I inherited money. I wasn’t selling secrets.”
“I know that now,” Eve said. “But back then . . . they wanted you checked out.”
“So you lied to me?”
She looked down at the floor. “About my reasons for being there, yes.”
No, she hadn’t just lied about that. He could tell by the way she wouldn’t meet his gaze. “About everything.”
Eve’s cheeks turned the slightest shade of pink, and she quickly glanced toward Miller.
Fuck Miller. At this point, Zane didn’t care what Miller heard.
Miller held up both hands in mock surrender. “Don’t mind me. I’m just here to make sure no one gets killed.”
Eve frowned.
“Answer the question, Wolfe,” Zane said, his patience growing thin.
Eve looked back to Zane and pursed her lips. “I lied to you about the op. Nothing else.”
I loved you, you son of a bitch! Why would I try to get you killed?
He didn’t know what to believe anymore. She could lie with the best of them, but those words—spoken so frantically and with such emotion—wouldn’t leave him alone. His pulse beat faster.
Focus on the facts, dumbass. Not stupid emotions that don’t mean anything now.
Zane crossed his arms over his chest. “What about the arms dealer I saw you meeting with? The one we’d been observing for months?”
“He was an informant, helping us figure out which officers were compromised.”
That answer was way too easy as far as Zane was concerned.
At his silence, Eve looked up. “My job was not to bring him down. My job was to stop the leak within. Come on, Archer. You know as well as I do that sometimes in this business bad things happen no matter how we try to stop them.”
“Bad things?” Zane’s control snapped. He leaned forward and gripped the arms of her chair, every muscle in his body tense and rigid. “We were close to nabbing that son of a bitch, and you let him go. And he went on to bomb an entire school and kill dozens of young kids. That’s more than a fucking bad thing.”
Eve’s eyes flew open wide. “I didn’t know he was going to bomb that school. If I had—”
She was acting again. She had to be. “If you had, what?”
“If I had, I wouldn’t have let him walk away.”
Zane stared hard into her eyes, looking for confirmation of the lie. He couldn’t see it. But he couldn’t see the truth, either.
She clenched her jaw and lifted her chin, her own temper finally bubbling to the surface. “Do you honestly think I’m such a monster that I wanted innocent children to die? I live with that decision every day. I wake up to it at night in a cold sweat. Just like I’m going to wake up to the image of that child lying in the middle of the street next to me in Seattle. Don’t talk to me like I don’t know the cost of the choices I’ve made. I know them all. And I carry every single one of them inside me.”
“Why don’t we take a breather?” Miller pushed a hand against the center of Zane’s chest, forcing him back from Eve’s chair. To Zane, Miller whispered, “You need to dial it down a notch, cowboy.”
Zane’s chest rose and fell as he stared at Eve, his brain humming with questions and memories he was too keyed up to focus on. She blinked several times, looked away from him, and then drew a deep breath and let it out. He tried to tell himself she was lying, that she was making all of this up, but the wetness in her eyes and the emotion he’d heard in her barely contained voice wouldn’t let him believe it. Yeah, she was a good actress, but he’d never seen her fake emotion like this. Not even when she’d walked away from him.
If what she said was true—if she really was with CI—Ryder could get confirmation for him. But that still didn’t explain what had happened yesterday in Seattle or what she’d done to his team in Guatemala.
“I’m fine,” he said to Miller, pushing his hand away.
“Really? ’Cause you don’t look fine, brother.”
Zane glared at Miller. “I said I was fine, and I meant it. Let it go.”
Miller dropped his hand in a “whatever” move, then shrugged. He stepped aside but stayed close enough to get between them if things heated up again.
And Zane wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or upset by that realization. Because he wasn’t sure who needed protecting more right now—him or Eve.
Raking a hand through his hair, he worked to cool his temper. “Okay, assuming you really do work for CI, what were you doing in Seattle yesterday at the site of the bombing?”
Eve’s jaw clenched. “I was scheduled to meet a man by the name of Tyrone Smith. Recently, the CIA has seen an influx of opium and other drugs being imported from places like Afghanistan. The money exchange is going to fund terrorism. Case officers are constantly being bombarded with opportunities that didn’t exist ten or twelve years ago. Anyway, a contact with CSIS—the Canadian Security Intelligence Services—set up the meeting. Smith has connections all over the globe, and through those connections, he’d supposedly come into possession of a laundry list of compromised operatives collected by MI6. I was posing as the front person for a privately funded defense company interested in the information he’d obtained. He’d agreed to sell it to me.”
“Did you get the list?” Miller asked.
“No. Smith was being evasive. I got a bad feeling and decided it was time to turn tail and run. Just as I was about to leave, he pushed his phone across the table and showed me the image of my sister bound in the back of what I assumed was the van across the street. He led me to believe she was in there.”
“How can you be sure it was her?” Zane asked.
“Because Olivia has a unique purple butterfly tattoo on her ankle. I saw it clearly in the image. I didn’t doubt it was her. This kind of guy doesn’t play games. He also knew my real name.”
Eve finally met his gaze. And Zane’s chest stretched tight as a drum when he saw the fear in her eyes.
She looked back down and gripped the chair cushion. “I gave him the money, he called his goons off the van, then he left and I headed for the crosswalk to get to the van and get my sister out. But it blew before I could cross the street. And the next thing I remember is waking up”—she lifted her gaze once more—“with you.”
Zane’s heart beat hard against his ribs. First slow, then faster with every pounding blow. She lies. She lies for a living . . .
“What—” He cleared his throat because there was suddenly a huge lump blocking his words. “What about Guatemala? You knew my team was compromised.”
Eve sighed and looked back down at the floor. “I didn’t know your team had been set up until it was too late to warn you. Someone in the CIA has a personal vendetta against the CEO of Aegis Security. I don’t know why, and I don’t know who. I just know he wanted to see Aegis taken down.”
Miller looked Archer’s way. “Ryder told the State Department to go fuck itself when Aegis didn’t get that contract in Egypt.”
Yeah, Zane remembered. Ryder had been pissed when Aegis had been passed over for the Egypt job, even though his guys were the more qualified team. That had been a few months before the Guatemala raid. Aegis hadn’t originally been awarded the Humbolt contract in Guatemala. It had gone to a different defense contractor, but at the last minute they’d backed out and the government had come calling.