Game of Secrets and Shadows (Book One in the Covert Operations series)

Twenty-Seven

One Month Later

"You sure you're going to be fine here?"

Wes nodded, blue eyes bright as he stared at me. His hair was no longer dark. He'd died it back to the sandy brown I was used to seeing a few weeks earlier. "Yeah, I'll be fine."

"You know I don't want to leave, right?"

"I know. But, it's safer if we're not together. I get that. People are still trying to kill you."

I grimaced at the brutally honest tone of his voice. "Now more than ever."

"Where are you going to go first?" He glanced over my shoulder to where a black car was waiting. It would be taking me to an airport where I would be boarding a private plane and going to start my new life.

"I have no idea. I'll contact you as soon as its safe and I'll try and pass word to people I trust whenever I can. Once I'm set up somewhere, I'll figure out a way to get regular communication set up between us."

Wes smiled but it was forced. "I wish you didn't have to leave. It'll be okay, though. We'll see each other again. At least this time, I know that you're alive and would much rather be back here."

"You have no idea how true that is."

I looked past Wes to the bungalow behind him. It was situated directly on the beach. The waves were blowing in a gentle, salty breeze. I could taste it on my tongue as the sun beat down on us.

As safe houses went, it was a good one. He'd been relocated out of Oregon, courtesy of the CIA, to Virginia Beach. It was an area I knew he would enjoy as he'd always enjoyed the heat and the sun. And it wasn't as if he were here alone.

In the doorway of the little bungalow, I could see Grace and Malcolm Ortiz. They were watching us say goodbye. I'd already bade my goodbyes to them and thanked them for uprooting their lives and moving across the country to take in my brother. It was because of them that the safe house for Wes had been set up with such care. They would look after him as if he were their own. And he would help them, too.

After all, it wasn't any easy thing to get over the loss of a child.

Daniel was missing and presumed dead. One of the Scorpion bombers had detonated an explosive just outside of his room. The blast killed two nurses and injured a third. Daniel was simply gone. The technicians from the Global Centre for Covert Operatives had ruled the most likely explanation that Daniel had simply been too close to the bomb and had been blasted into a thousand little pieces, never to be found or recovered.

Daniel was the only one of our party who'd died from the bombers. His parents had been getting coffees when it went off. Jack had already been gone. A bomb had gone off near Tasha's room where Lia was waiting but they'd both walked away unscathed. He wasn't the only casualty but he was the only one who I'd ever talked to and cared about.

His death hadn't been an easy thing to come to grips with. For days, weeks, I'd woken up screaming his name. Or Patrick's. Or Gregory Lauer's or my parents or any of the other people I'd watched die. But it was the last conversation with Daniel at the cabin before we'd rescued Jack that kept replaying in my mind. The one where I'd promised that we would talk once I'd gotten back. Eventually, I stopped screaming his name but his face never disappeared from my nightmares.

The hardest thing about it all was the never ending tirade of 'what ifs?'" Daniel had told me that he loved me. I hadn't had an answer for him then. If he were alive, I doubted that I would have had one for him now. But it was difficult knowing that I would never have the chance to give him a reply. Never have the chance to learn if, perhaps, I could have loved Daniel.