Chapter 19
Daisy insisted on dragging her suitcase up the academy steps. She looked small and delicate and vulnerable, her usual sass buried under a sixteen-hour day filled with danger, stress, and uncertainty.
Jordan had tried to take the bag for her, but she’d refused his help.
Mac had ordered them all to get some sleep.
Feelers had been sent out to all the other agencies and the Five Eyes intelligence agencies, and if anything urgent broke, they’d get called back in.
Better to catch some sleep while they could.
The other task force members had still been packing up when they’d left, many living close enough to go home and sleep in their own beds for the night. Mac had been on the phone updating the director with today’s progress.
Jordan resented not being allowed to go home and getting this thing over with sooner rather than later.
He knew Bocharov would come for him, and he’d be ready.
HRT would be ready. They’d examined his place from chimney pots to pilings, reactivated the cameras and alarms. Some of the guys had volunteered to hole up at his neighbor’s place, in case Bocharov or one of his goons decided to pay a visit tonight.
“That’s good news though, right?” Daisy paused to catch her breath at the top of the steps. “That the database wasn’t altered.”
“It’s great news, but it means the asset who supposedly gave us Bocharov’s DNA from the bomb site is compromised, because aside from the new face, Konrad didn’t look like something that had been scraped into a plastic bag.
Bocharov must have given him a blood and tissue sample, possibly even from his facial reconstruction operations. ”
Daisy shuddered.
Jordan winced. Sometimes he forgot she wasn’t trained for this.
“What happens now? Will they be arrested?”
Jordan shook his head. “Not immediately. CIA and counterintelligence will be coordinating to see what he’s fed them over the years and flag it.
They’ll do a deep dive into everything he’s done.
Everywhere he goes. Everyone he speaks to.
Every email, internet site, text he sends.
Figure out who his friends are and watch them too.
It’s a potentially rich vein of information as long as he doesn’t know he’s been blown. ”
She shuddered again, and he realized she was cold, not frightened.
The temperatures were somewhere in the low forties, and she wasn’t dressed for a Virginia winter.
It reminded him of Tremblay lending her his jacket on the beach last night—more of a gentleman than Jordan apparently.
He held the door wide. Compensating? Competing with a dead guy?
They were already inside now and almost at their rooms.
He leaned closer so he could whisper in her ear. “Let me check your room for listening devices when we get there, okay?”
Her eyes went wide. “They wouldn’t.”
He gave a wry tilt of his head. “They might.” And he was heartily sick and tired of being spied on.
They walked past the cafeteria and headed for the dorms they’d been assigned. A woman at the desk handed him a single key.
Shit.
He knew what that meant. They were sharing a room, which made sense given they were supposed to be a couple. At least there should be twin beds.
Yeah, Jordan, another lucky escape.
He rolled his eyes at himself.
Even if her father hadn’t been his best friend, she deserved someone she could have a future with. Not some cursed, damaged excuse for a human being like himself.
He knew that. Believed it down to his marrow. But it didn’t mean that somewhere deep inside, a kernel of resentment and regret hadn’t started to unfurl.
They were both mature adults who knew this wasn’t going anywhere, so why shouldn’t they make their own decisions about what they did when they were alone?
The fact it was temporary would only make it worse in the eyes of Kurt and his teammates. If you were going to break the code, it better be for something meaningful, not just a one-night stand or a short-term fling.
Not that he didn’t care for Daisy. He did.
And not simply because she was Kurt’s daughter.
He cared because she challenged him and looked incredible while doing it.
That gossamer hair and pale complexion juxtaposed against those deep, navy eyes and red lips, and a tongue that could peel the skin off your back.
Yup.
He found everything about her hot. Worse, she was smart and didn’t take any bullshit. And the fact she’d tossed him over her shoulder earlier should not have been a turn-on, and yet, it absolutely was.
But Jordan wasn’t built for relationships. Never had been. Aside from his commitment to his team, he was a loner. Built for hookups and no-strings sex. His mouth went dry with sudden realization—that was exactly what Daisy had proposed.
“We’re in here.” His voice sounded a little strained as he pushed opened the dorm room door.
“Reminds me of college.” From her expression she was clearly not happy with the reminder.
“It’s basic,” he admitted, “but should be okay for a couple of nights.”
She sent him a funny look. “It’s fine, really.”
There were two twin beds in the room, and he let go of a breath. To cover his ridiculous disappointment, he tossed his bag on the nearest bed. Rubbed the back of his neck. “You want to take the first shower?”
Their quarters had a small ensuite, and he needed to search the place before he could even think about relaxing.
Daisy turned to face him. Even though the drapes were wide open to anyone who might be snooping, she stripped her T-shirt over her head and then shucked her jeans. She grabbed a towel wearing nothing but emerald-green lingerie and walked to the drapes, which she very deliberately closed.
She walked toward him, and he froze, but she didn’t touch him, and he wished she would.
“See you in there?” She raised a brow again and gave him a come-hither look over her shoulder.
“Sure, babe.” He forced the words past strangled vocal cords. “Two minutes.”
She disappeared inside the bathroom, and he shook himself out of his stupor to begin an inch-by-inch search of the room.
There was no real reason for the director to doubt their story now that his theory about Bocharov had been proven correct, but he wasn’t willing to entrust Daisy’s freedom to his na?ve belief in the justice system.
He knew it could be bent and twisted to fit someone’s agenda, and he knew very little about the new director’s loyalties.
He huffed out a laugh at himself and his increasing paranoia.
The fact he was a small cog in the wheel should be reassuring, but he was jaded enough to know he and his teammates—and Daisy—were all expendable under the right circumstances. He had no intention of walking blindly into a trap or dragging others with him.
He quickly went through their luggage and, sure enough, there was a small electronic listening device in Daisy’s case lining and another deep inside his pack.
He sat back on his heels.
What the actual fuck?
He exhaled and stared at the devices. He needed to ask Regan to look at them in case they were planted by hostile players, rather than at the director’s bidding, but it wasn’t likely given the timelines.
They’d probably been placed before Daisy had been interviewed and certainly before the DNA results had come back.
Crabtree?
Most likely. He’d had access and was Rhodes’s lackey.
He hadn’t had the opportunity to retrieve them because he’d left early and probably assumed no one would find them. Jordan carried both devices into the bathroom and held them up as Daisy drew back the shower curtain. Her eyes widened in surprise, and he tried not to look below her chin.
The woman didn’t have a bashful bone in her body.
Or maybe this was her revenge for him dragging her naked out of the bathtub a couple of weeks ago.
Tempting him until he forgot his promises.
As if the image of her naked wasn’t already imprinted on his brain on replay and living in his dreams in a better, happier alternative reality.
He dragged his eyes back to her mouth, her lips forming a perfect circle of outrage.
Didn’t help.
He was definitely a sex addict because his thoughts were way too dirty for a nice girl like Daisy, even if the nice girl in question was completely happy in her own skin.
He pressed his pointer finger to his lips, so she didn’t say anything to let the listeners know they’d been found out and then turned around and headed out of their room. He bumped into Mac in the corridor and held the two devices aloft.
Mac’s brows clashed together in annoyance.
Jordan headed down to the kitchenette each floor had and found some tinfoil and a plastic bag, wrapped them up, and then popped them at the back of the freezer. He and Mac headed back through the fire door to the corridor outside their rooms.
Mac’s expression was thunderous. “I’m going to demand answers first thing tomorrow.”
“Maybe we’d be smarter not to say anything.” Jordan held the man’s furious gaze. “Perhaps see if Regan or Parker could trace it back to its source? It is illegal to record a federal agent without his knowledge, and I can’t believe they got a warrant given I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Mac narrowed his gaze. “The director seems to have some kind of beef with HRT. Any idea why?”
“Nope. But it sure makes it hard to know whom to trust when your own bosses believe the worst.” Jordan frowned. “You don’t think they might actually believe I’m working for the Russians, do you?”
Mac shrugged. “From my interactions with her, I suspect it’s more she’s worried about making a mistake and looking foolish to her boss.”
“If she can’t trust us then we can’t trust her to have our backs. And she should be more worried about why a supposedly dead Russian arms dealer killed a nuclear scientist.”