Despite my calm body language, my heart was racing uncontrollably. I'd never seen Matt so serious. Not even on the day of our three fallen teammates' funerals.
I'd watched him out of the corner of my eye as the caskets were lowered into the ground. Never once did Matt shed a tear, standing there the entire time still as a statue. I hadn't understood his demeanor back then, but I did now. He had to pretend like he wasn't affected – put on a good tough guy show for the rest of us. He'd been informed the day before the funerals that he would be promoted to team leader, and with that new title came the difficult task of acting stone cold a lot of times when everyone else was drenched in emotion.
Matt was, in a lot of ways, very similar to Dallas – at least in the way that they presented themselves. Both men tried to act like nothing in the world scared them. Both men were leaders, whether the word was in their official title or not. And both men were determined to overpower the enemy at all costs, no matter how long it took or what the level of difficulty was. I admired their tenacity and fearlessness, though I knew neither of them were truly fearless.
"What is it?" I finally forced myself to ask, studying his concern-laced eyes. "Did something happen to our team back home?"
Matt shook his head, to my relief. "No. They're all fine. But to be honest, I'm not sure if they could be in jeopardy, too."
"Just what the hell is that supposed to mean?" Dallas spoke in a fed up tone of voice.
Matt was clearly irritated with Dallas, and vice versa, but he tried not to let his temper flare. I could see his pulse rushing in his neck, though, and I was sure he was fighting coming unglued any minute.
"When I got started on this search and rescue case, I wanted to gather as much information as possible to determine your whereabouts, obviously," Matt started to explain. "I couldn't get anything out of Brit. She refused to discuss with me why you'd even left in the first place."
"To find a missing London agent," I interrupted.
He nodded. "I know."
"You know?"
He nodded again. "Before I left for London, after the director invited me, I broke into Brit's office that night and went through her computer files. I was looking for anything having to do with your trips to London and Germany. I felt like Brit was hiding something from me."
"And did you find anything?" Dallas cocked a brow.
"I found more than I was looking for."
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and started scrolling through it. It wasn't his regular phone. I had no doubt he'd used the same tactic as me, ditching his old phone so he couldn't be tracked.
"Here. Read this." Matt handed me his phone, open to a folder of photos.
Each photo was of a computer screen. I looked at him with confusion, but he gestured for me to keep looking.
I eyed the first photo. He had taken a picture of an email. I zoomed in to get a better look and saw that the email was from Brit to Mr. Lancaster.
Todd,
I'm sending our agent Natalia Dobreva to your division next week. You are to tell her only what I've instructed you to release information on. If you fail to execute this correctly, it will compromise the trust I've worked months to build with Miguel Santiago. Do not screw this up for me. This mission is too important.
I rolled my chair over to where Dallas sat at the foot of the bed and I held the phone out where he could read along with me.
"What the fuck!" he exclaimed at the first email.
We continued flipping through picture after picture of conversations. The emails went on to get more in depth and fill in a lot of the blanks that had left us confused as hell.
"This is all from Brit's computer?" I looked up at Matt with sudden shock.
He bobbed his head up and down with a look of disdain for the woman we were talking about. I could also see a twinge of sadness infiltrate his otherwise unaffected eyes. I knew Matt had always trusted Brit with everything. She'd been the person he went to for almost anything – and not because she was his boss, but because they were that good of friends. How cruel could she be to lie to him like this and conspire against me, one of his teammates?
I missed the times when he'd always come to me about everything. Those days were long gone, though. They were buried in the past, back before I'd developed a dependency on Jim Beam. Once my drinking had gotten out of hand, it had really severed the ties between Matt and I. I hated that I'd allowed that to happen. It was no one's fault but my own.
This new information was mindboggling, however. I'd never in my wildest dreams expected Brit to have anything to do with this case, much less an apparent friendship with Miguel Santiago. The very idea that she would turn her back on the Alpha Recon agents that have done nothing but love, support, and be genuine friends to her from day one... It was disgusting. How dare she?! What's more, it enraged me that I hadn't been able to see through her façade all this time. If she hated me that much, how had I never noticed?
There were also photos of conversations between Brit and someone called "M," which we figured meant Miguel. Dallas and I read along, wide-eyed and pissed off, as we discovered more and more awful details.
"So Lancaster was in on it like I suspected," I said in a sickened tone, handing Matt his phone back.
Matt moved his head side to side. "Eh. Kind of. There's a little more to it."
He slid his phone back into his pocket and shrugged his vest off with a tired huff. When he turned around to lay his vest on the bed, I noticed more tears in the back of his shirt. He must've really gone through hell on the way to find me, I thought to myself. I decided against commenting on it, though.
Matt sat back down on the bed and continued explaining. "Turns out, Tali, that every month when Brit sent our director her reports on each agent's performance, she'd been giving you all unfavorable remarks, while the rest of us got satisfactory reviews. She had it in for you, Tali. She wanted your employment terminated with so many black marks on your file that you'd never get another job in international security affairs again."
"But why conspire with Santiago?" Dallas questioned, a raging fury in his eyes as he listened intently to everything Matt told us. "What could she possibly have to gain from plotting with an international drug king?"
"Director Jordan didn't believe Brit when she told him Tali was incapable of handling her duties as an agent. He said he'd seen time after time how skilled Tali is, and he wasn't planning on cutting her loose any time soon. Alcohol problem or not," Matt answered. "Tali, Jordan has a hell of a lot of confidence in you, despite everything that's happened. He even threatened to demote Brit if she didn't start giving you a fair shake."
A chill ran up my spine at the memory of Leon Jordan interrogating me the morning after the raid in D.C. I'd thought, for sure, he'd hated me ever since that day. For the last four years, I'd done my very best to avoid Director Jordan, whether it was at meetings or passing in the hallways or anything else. I'd always assumed my reputation with him was ruined after Dallas's "death." Now that I was getting a completely different story, I didn't know how to react to it. But one thing was for sure. It felt so good to hear that Jordan was on my side. I'd always respected him as a director and had the utmost confidence in his decisions for A.R.T., no matter how awkward it was to be within fifty feet of him.
"I always thought he hated me," I murmured, glancing to the ground.
Matt reached out and placed a reassuring hand on my forearm, mumbling that everything would work out in the end. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw jealousy flood Dallas's face, his cheeks reddening as he glared at the spot where Matt's and my skin were touching.
I knew Dallas was thinking about that night when Matt and I had had sex. He was letting it eat away at his patience, wild scenarios likely dancing through his mind at the sight of Matt trying to comfort me. It wasn't what Dallas thought it could be. I thought I'd made it clear to him that I didn't have those kinds of feelings for my team leader. But I could understand why it sparked a little jealousy to see us express a mutual support for each other. I probably wouldn't like it either if I saw the same display between Dallas and a female coworker. Regardless, I tried to brush it off and ignore his piercing stare.
I stood up and walked across the room to where I'd laid down my bag, retrieving a water bottle and gulping it down like I hadn't had a sip of water in weeks. I was suddenly feeling parched beyond words.
"Anyway," Matt picked up where he'd left off. "Since Jordan wouldn't fire you, Brit decided to take drastic measures."
"She wanted Tali dead," Dallas thought out loud.
Matt nodded. "Yeah. So she contacted Miguel Santiago with a proposition. The deal was that if Santiago would get rid of Tali and make it look like she simply died on a mission in an unsuspicious manner, then Brit would help Santiago with anything he wanted. His choice. Well, his choice was to have his buddy, Bellucci, freed from prison so they could go wreak havoc together again. So-"
"But Santiago wouldn't be stupid enough to trust the Alpha Reconnaissance Taskforce." I cut him off, walking back to my chair. "So he worked a deal where Agent Lindsey would go on an unauthorized mission to Germany to kill the German feds' informant, Bellisario, who had aided in Bellucci's capture, and break Bellucci out of prison. That way Santiago could determine if A.R.T. was trustable. Only then would he honor his half of the deal with Brit."
Matt agreed. "Exactly. But he didn't want Bellisario dead just because he'd helped put away Bellucci. Santiago had been planning to bump off Bellisario for months because he had information on Santiago and his cohorts that could cause their entire empire to come crumbling down."
"The box," Dallas and I said at the same time, remembering the box of papers I'd pulled out of the air vent.
"Box?" Matt looked at us, confused. "What box?"
"Tali found a box in Bellisario's apartment that has a bunch of records on Santiago and his buddies," Dallas explained.
"Ah." Matt didn't look surprised, probably having already assumed that Bellisario would have something like that, since he was such a valued informant.
The three of us sat in an awkward silence for a few seconds until something occurred to me.
"There's something weird with this picture, though," I said. "If Lindsey killed Bellisario and freed Bellucci back in February, why the hell did Brit wait three months to send me to London?"
"Santiago took that long to decide if he wanted to give Brit what she wanted. He probably thought it was going to end up being a trap even though A.R.T. had honored their half of the deal," Matt told me, adjusting his position at the foot of the bed.
I couldn't really blame Santiago for being suspicious and extra cautious. I'd probably have done the same thing, had I been in his position. He had a whole hell of a lot to lose if he made just the tiniest little slip up.
"As it turns out, the timing ended up being perfect, because Lindsey's disappearance gave Brit the perfect excuse to send you on a missing persons case without anything seeming unusual – other than why Lindsey vanished, of course."
"That explains why Lancaster acted weird when I wanted to know why they'd waited so long to search for her."
"With Lancaster, though," Matt continued. "He wasn't totally in favor of Brit's plan."
He went on to explain that Brit had gotten Santiago to threaten Lancaster's family in a way that made Lancaster think no amount of A.R.T.'s protection would keep them from being killed. He'd been more or less forced into working with Brit, likely so she could drag someone else down with her if she got caught.
In addition to that, Matt told me that Lancaster had actually been the one to request my help on the Lindsey case, per Brit's orders, and that the reason he hadn't given me the real case information was initially because Brit had instructed him not to, or Santiago would "take care" of his family. But part of his reasoning was also because Lancaster was apparently on my side. Well, as on my side as he could be, given that he was working against me at the time.
Supposedly, based on what Matt had discovered, the other reason that Lancaster hadn't given me reliable information was because he'd thought that A.R.T. was planning on letting me go, and he wanted my talents as an agent to prove to A.R.T. that I was worthy of staying with the Taskforce. He thought I was a good enough investigator that I could put all the missing pieces together myself.
I was both angered and slightly flattered. Mostly angered. If it was true that Lancaster believed in my abilities as an agent, that was nice, I supposed. But I would surely never trust him or cut him any slack after the role he'd played in Brit's scheme. I understood why he'd done the things he had, if it was true about Santiago's threats, but I refused to believe that there wasn't something he could've done to combat that. I refused to believe that Lancaster had no choice but to turn his back on a fellow agent. He had a choice. Everyone always had a choice.
One thing still stood out to me, though. I had yet to hear any reason why on earth Brit suddenly hated me so much that she would want me killed.
As if he could hear my thoughts, Matt piped up again. "Tali... I guess you didn't know this, but your father used to work with A.R.T. in Europe. Daniel Gallows was his partner when he was killed. I think Brit's blaming you for her husband's death."