Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
It was much easier to have this conversation without looking at him. So much had happened today, it was hard to process it all. Now here she was, lying naked in Lachlan’s arms after he’d given her so much pleasure without expecting or asking for anything in return.
She felt safe with him. Safe enough to risk baring her soul here in the seclusion of his bedroom. He’d already proven that she could trust him with her body. She was ready to trust him with more.
“Okay,” he murmured, stroking his fingers through her hair.
“I felt stifled at home. My parents were…I think they were trying to be protective, but wound up being controlling. I wanted to stretch my wings and put some distance between us, and I found out about an IT government contracting job overseas.
“They sent me to Syria, and I met Blaine my first week in country. He pushed to get me a security clearance so I could work with him and his team on various projects. We also worked closely with intelligence contractors operating in the region. That’s how I met Elliot.”
Just saying his name out loud made her stomach clench, the betrayal still painful enough to cause a visceral response.
“We started seeing each other a few months after I arrived. I trusted him. Thought I was falling for him. And stupidly, I believed he was falling for me too. In reality, he’d marked me as the weakest link in the chain.
Everything he did was a ploy to get me to let my guard down. And it worked.”
Lachlan made a quiet sound and moved his hand up and down her back in a soothing rhythm.
“I’m not a great hacker, but I’m good with puzzles and codes. I did some cryptology work for Blaine, really enjoyed it, and made the mistake of mentioning it to Elliot.” She drew a deep breath, exhaled slowly. Beating herself up about her past actions changed nothing.
“What happened?”
“I was working on a cryptology project at a secret location near Damascus. Elliot went behind my back to make a deal with an enemy militia and leaked my location for a large financial reward.”
Lachlan’s hand stilled, his body tensing.
She kept going. “I was at my desk in a back room, working alone with my headphones on as usual. I didn’t know I was in danger until someone grabbed me from behind and yanked a hood over my head.”
“Oh, shit, Maddy.”
She swallowed. “They put me in a vehicle, drove for a few hours and then carried me into a building.
Tied my hands and feet to a chair. When they took the hood off, I was in a concrete cell, and Elliot was standing in front of me with this evil smirk on his face.
There were others around him from the enemy militia.
“One of them started interrogating me, and when I didn’t answer fast enough…” She broke off, struggling to find the words to describe it.
“Maddy…”
No. She needed to get this out.
“He kept asking me what I’d been working on. Things I knew about current and upcoming operations. Tried to overwhelm me and trip me up. I didn’t know most of what he wanted. He threatened me, but I was too scared to talk. So they put the hood back on me.
Her pulse beat faster. “A few seconds later I heard a hose running. Didn’t think anything of it until they tipped my chair backward and started waterboarding me.”
“Jesus Christ,” Lachlan breathed, hugging her tighter. As if he could stop or protect her from what had already happened.
“I thought I was going to drown. They stopped when I blacked out. Slapped me to bring me around and then questioned me again, but by that point I was too terrified to think straight, much less form a coherent sentence.
“They did it twice more. Then Elliot took the hood off me and said I was his now. That I was going to give him what he wanted. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.
They all walked out of the cell and left me there, freezing and trapped, scared out of my mind and convinced I was going to die.
“I don’t know how long I was there. A few hours, maybe more before I heard them coming back.
I knew what would happen. They put the hood back on.
Started the hose.” She swallowed back tears, a knot of emotion clogging her throat.
“Before they could resume the waterboarding, the door flew in and someone started shooting.”
“A rescue team.”
She nodded against his shoulder. “Blaine had used all his resources to find me and launch a rescue mission.”
“And Elliot?”
“Killed during the op, along with the militia members. Turned out he’d been playing both sides for a while to make money. We’re still not exactly sure what he wanted from me. There were no cameras, no recordings of what happened or what was said in the cell, and I don’t remember all the details.
“The intel they kept asking for up until the rescue wouldn’t have given them much. There had to have been something else. Something to do with money, probably, and maybe my crypto work.” But she’d never know for sure.
Lachlan expelled a hard breath. “Jesus Christ. I can’t even imagine how scared you must’ve been.”
She nodded against his chest. “So that’s why I have trust issues, and why I was suspicious of you at first.”
“Yeah, little wonder.” He groaned, wrapped his arms all the way around her and squeezed. “God, I fucking hate that you went through that.”
“I’m still not…over it. I’ve done all the things I’m supposed to after a traumatic event, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it. I didn’t tell them anything though. I’m proud of that at least.”
“You’re a hell of a lot braver than most people would’ve been in your situation. Especially as a civilian with no training for that kind of scenario.”
“I knew that even little details might add up if I told them anything. Wasn’t sure what they already had, and didn’t want any of our team members or allies to get hurt because I leaked something sensitive.
” It was a relief to get it all out in the open between them.
To know he would understand her better now.
“So the patch on your desk…”
Yeah, and now there was that. “Elliot’s unit. Whoever left it knows about Syria.”
“How? Who else would know?”
“No clue. But whoever it was knew it would trigger me.”
And that meant she could be in far greater danger than she realized.