Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“I need the room.” Knox faced Calloway and the other Secret Service agent in his father’s hotel suite. “I need to speak to my parents privately.” His entire body tensed. Muscles atop muscles locking tighter.
Echo Four was alone on a compound with a shit-ton of armed government haters, and it was very possible his mom was the reason for it.
“What’s wrong?” Frowning, his mom removed her glasses and set aside the newspaper she’d been reading. Her questioning gaze held his, searching for answers. And then the frown dissolved and the delicate skin around her blue eyes relaxed a touch when realization hit her.
She knew why Knox was looking at her with barely restrained emotions. He saw it on her face, and in her rigid posture, which meant everything he thought about her had been a lie.
His knees buckled as a thought struck him. He was his mom. He lived the same lie. How the hell had this happened?
“Sir?” Rodriguez sought permission from Knox’s dad whether or not to clear Secret Service from the room.
“Yes.” His dad motioned for Knox to have a seat on the chair in front of him.
Knox waited for the room to empty, but he didn’t sit. How could he when . . .?
“Does he know?” he asked, his voice straining.
The color drained from her face.
“Know what?” His dad semi-smiled as if he was missing out on a joke. “Know what?” he repeated, angrier this time.
“No.” Her gaze moved to the window overlooking the buildings in the city.
Thirty-nine years of marriage. Thirty-nine years of lies.
“Somebody better fill me in before I lose my damn mind.” His dad stood and looked back and forth between his wife and son.
But she still wasn’t looking at them, damn it.
“How’d you find out?” she asked, her voice eerily calm. Maybe she was in shock? Her eyes dragged from the window to his father at an irritatingly slow pace.
“While trying to figure out the damn mess you seemed to have gotten us all into,” he seethed through barely parted lips.
His dad stabbed a finger in the air. “Boy, don’t you talk to your mother like that.”
“Are you gonna tell him?” Knox’s fingertips tucked inside his palms. “I don’t want to do it for you. I won’t do it for you.”
“Dear.” His dad lowered his voice this time. “What’s going on?”
“I was planning on telling you,” she said softly.
“It never felt like the right time, but I was worried it may come out sooner or later if you ran for president.” She clasped her hands together in her lap.
“I should’ve told you sooner. I’m sorry.
” Her gaze moved to Knox, and her next words were spoken in the manner of a seasoned politician’s wife, a role she played so well—calm, methodical, all about the facts.
“Who broke the story? How can we get on top of this? I can make a speech, I guess. I’ve thought about this since they mentioned it might come out and . . .”
“The press don’t know—only my people.” The press. The fucking press. Really? That’s your focus?
“I still don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about,” his dad snapped, and for the first time in Knox’s life, he felt sorry for him. “Now, damn it, if someone doesn’t tell me what the hell is going on—”
“I was in the CIA, Isaiah,” she interrupted. “This isn’t about that, though. Your son is referring to the off-the-books team I was part of.”
What? His stomach dropped at the news. No. No. No.
President Rydell’s words from the Situation Room on Tuesday flew back to mind. “Lyle also mentioned rumors of black ops groups existing under previous administrations during the Cold War days. Groups that’d gone sideways.”
She was more like him than he realized, wasn’t she? He’d been doing his best not to be like his father, but he never stopped to consider the possibility he was like his mom. How could he have ever known, though?
“I don’t understand.” His dad fell back onto the couch as if he’d been pushed.
“I’d been recruited to the CIA during college.
My cover story was that I worked for the State Department,” she explained, her voice soft.
“But in the mid-seventies, the government decided to put together a unique team of agents for specific black ops missions. We were a team of five—a small group, less chance of leaks. Not many in the government knew about us.”
He knew a thing or two about that, but it was still too hard to believe the words black ops came from her mouth.
“What happened in Iran?” Knox asked, his question almost an accusation. “In seventy-nine. Three weeks before the hostage crisis.”
Her lashes fluttered, and she looked up at him with sorrow in her eyes.
“At first, my assignment was to identify American agents who were double-crossing us by handing intel to the Russians and Iranians. But we quickly realized it’d be more beneficial to keep those men and women in their positions without them knowing we were onto them, and then purposely feed them the wrong information. ”
Knox crossed his arms but shifted his attention to his father.
His dad’s elbows were on his thighs, his head in his palms.
Broken.
Lied to by the woman he loved.
“Our plan had been working, but then—”
“Someone died, right?” That’s what always happens.
“One of the men at the embassy who we believed to be selling intel . . . well, as it turns out, he wasn’t.
His wife had been stealing information from him, turning it over to the Russians.
The Russians probably thought she was working with us since she’d provided them the wrong information so many times.
We assumed they staged her death. Faked an overdose. ”
So Nina’s dad wasn’t CIA. “But not before murdering her husband as retaliation first, right?”
She nodded. “We were instructed to clean up the mess, hide what happened, and never talk about it again. And then the hostage crisis took place, and we were ordered back to the U.S.”
“How could you lie to me all these years? Do I even know who you are?” his father finally spoke up, bringing his eyes to her.
“You’re the reason I quit, Isaiah. Please,” she said as her eyes became glossy. “I met you, and I realized I’d never be able to be with you and lie about my job, and since I was sworn to secrecy, I quit.” Genuine tears cut down her cheeks. “I chose you over the job.”
Knox couldn’t move. He could barely think straight as he witnessed the parallels between her life and his own.
“You still lied,” his dad said bitterly.
“I did it to protect you, too. If anyone ever tried to get information out of you about me—”
“Don’t. You were protecting yourself.” He stood.
“I promise I was planning on telling you. I was afraid you’d look at me differently, and if the press found out, I didn’t want it to hurt your chances in the election.”
God, he had to tell Adriana the truth. He couldn’t hide from reality anymore. Damn the consequences.
“Jefferson Lyle’s people will have a field day with this if they find out you were part of some sort of black ops group gone wrong,” his dad seethed in a bone-chilling voice.
His father’s words were like a stab in the heart. No way would his dad accept Knox’s true line of work after such a shocking discovery.
And he wasn’t sure if he could blame his father, but that didn’t reduce the pain in his chest.
“I need some air.” He hurried past Knox, and his mom’s shoulders flinched when the door slammed shut.
She stood, ready to go after him, but Knox blocked her. “Don’t.”
“I need him to understand. I didn’t have a choice.” More tears hit her cheeks. He hadn’t remembered her crying like this since his grandfather died ten years ago.
“You need to give him time, but right now, I need names of everyone who would’ve known what happened in Iran in seventy-nine. One of them might be behind the attempted assassination.”
“What? No.” Her brows flew together, and she stumbled back a step. She cleared the tears from her face with the backs of her hands.
His heart hammered in his chest. Angry vibrations. “I—” His words died at the realization of something his mom had said, but he’d nearly missed it. “You said ‘they’ mentioned it’d come out—the truth, right? Who told you this? When?”
She blinked a few times. “My old team. We got together three months ago. Glenn said someone knew about us, and we needed to handle the situation.”
“Glenn?” His stomach dropped, and he gathered a breath.
Her shoulders sagged. “Glenn Sterling.”
“Your close friend, and now the man in charge of the investigation, was on your team in seventy-nine?” He kept his voice even despite the disbelief at what he was saying.
She nodded. “Paul. Charlie. Greg. All close family friends. The five of us. They’d never hurt your father, though.”
He stepped back, his mind spinning. “What exactly did Glenn say to you? You need to tell me everything.”
“Only that someone came to him with evidence that could expose us.”
“And what’d you say?”
“I didn’t believe someone would turn up with information after forty years, so I told him not to worry, but then—”
He reached for her arm, frantic. “What?”
“I said we should go ahead and tell Isaiah the truth. Maybe even the media. We could be in charge of how the story unfolded, and hopefully, Isaiah would walk away unscathed.”
“And?”
She closed her eyes. “Everyone was adamant that I keep my mouth shut. They said we could lose the trust of the people. Paul’s a governor. Glenn’s with DHS.” Her lids lifted, and her blue eyes shimmered. “Glenn said he’d handle it.”
“And what’d you say?”
“That if the truth came out, then it was meant to be. I’d stand by my actions. I was protecting my country.”
“And you didn’t think it’d be relevant to tell me any of this when Glenn showed up in Charlotte the day of the shooting?” He let her go and turned his back.
“I never thought he’d try and kill your father. It’d been months since we talked, and I believed everything had been swept back under the rug.”
“Mom,” he hissed and faced her again. “Don’t you get it?”
“What?”