Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Roman’s balance was off, and Harper knew he’d never fess up to it.
To anyone else, he may have been walking nearly normal as he skirted around her to join A.J.
on the couch, but she saw the invisible ball and chain shackled to his ankles as he moved.
He seemed weighed down by a lot more than his injuries.
He dropped down onto the couch with enough force that A.J.
’s laptop came precariously close to sliding off his lap.
He quickly reached out to keep it from hitting the floor and shot Roman a worried look, which he didn’t appear to notice.
Too busy staring at the ceiling and probably trying to remember Newton’s laws of physics or something, anything to take his mind off their recent kiss and her questions.
“Gravity, sorry.” Apparently, Roman had felt A.J.’s eyes on him even though he hadn’t peered his way.
“You sure you’re okay to work? It’s only been twenty-four hours since the accident.
” Wyatt studied Harper with concern from where he sat at the desk chair in the living room of their three-bedroom suite.
There was a connecting door to the second penthouse with three more rooms. Enough beds for everyone, which was convenient.
“You need my help,” Harper told him. “I can tell by that guilty look in your eyes.”
Wyatt frowned, then pivoted his gaze to Chris standing in a relaxed position by the expansive window that’d most likely offer a great view of the city if the shimmery-looking curtains weren’t drawn.
Chris nodded as if saying to their team leader, Yeah, we need her.
Harper sat in one of the two gold, tufted chairs on the other side of the wingback couch. The furniture was gaudy and belonged inside a fancy room in an even fancier estate. Not her taste. At least she remembered something.
“No treating me with kid gloves, either,” Harper firmly insisted, fighting the urge to look at Roman.
Instead, she swiveled her gaze from Chris to Finn, who was in the adjacent kitchen brewing coffee.
But when she returned her attention to the living room, intending to focus on A.J.
, she accidentally glanced Roman’s way and instantly regretted it.
His dark eyes were a wrecking ball to her composure.
What are you thinking about?
He scratched his jawline as though the scruff annoyed him, and once again, she had to force herself to look elsewhere, this time up to the painting hanging on the wall over the couch.
Pointillism. And points for remembering that particular art technique from one of her fun courses at NYU. Okay, I’m making puns again. That’s more like it.
The painting of a beach at sunset, a collection of tiny dots that were meaningless up close, continued to hold her attention.
Symbolism for my life right now. She had memories in her head that were disjointed, and she needed to put them together, step back, and see the bigger picture. Remember what her brain was apparently working so hard to keep hidden.
“With Zack now out of our hair, hopefully we can wrap up this assignment and be out of Barcelona a hell of a lot quicker,” A.J. drawled, his fingers busy over the keyboard.
“I assume Jessica has been trying to track down Ezra’s whereabouts prior to the explosion so we can work on identifying the driver?” I can do this. Focus. Not get lost in my own thoughts like I’m inside some carnival mirror maze with no foreseeable way out.
“Jessica hasn’t identified the driver of the Mercedes yet, but she did manage to trace your source. Ezra Bashara was at El Prat airport at four in the afternoon yesterday,” Wyatt began. “He flew in from the Ben Gurion airport.”
“What was he doing in Israel?” Roman spoke up, surprise in his tone. “And why in the hell would he have us meet him in Spain?”
“Good questions, ones we need the answers to, which is why Bravo Team is en route to Israel as we speak,” Chris answered while shoving off the window at the sight of Finn trying to juggle holding too many paper cups of coffee.
Why does this fancy hotel have paper cups?
At least they weren’t Styrofoam, shittier for the environment.
“They’re on a plane to Tel Aviv right now?” Harper blinked, trying to orient her thoughts to that idea. “Does Natasha have any contacts at Mossad? If not, I have an old friend there who might give Jessica a sort of off-the-guide tour of the area.”
Mossad, Israeli Intelligence, was just about as secretive as Echo Team. They also tended to spy on friendly nations, not that the CIA didn’t do the same.
Finn offered her a cup of coffee, but at a whiff of the ashy smell, she waved it off, her stomach rolling with a wave of nausea, which had her gripping the chair arms when a memory gathered at the front of her mind.
Two pregnancy tests.
Each with a lonely single line letting her know she wasn’t going to have Roman’s baby.
She hadn’t even missed her period, and it’d been months since they’d had sex.
It had seemed a bit ridiculous at the time when she took the tests just after New Year’s last month, but she’d been feeling nauseous, her boobs seemed just a bit bigger, and the smell of coffee had done a number on her for a week.
Those were the symptoms for her two sisters when they were first pregnant, so she’d somehow got it in her head that she was carrying.
She even went to the doctor for bloodwork to be certain she hadn’t peed on the sticks incorrectly, and her shoulders collapsed when he’d said it was a stomach bug and most likely too much pie at Christmas.
Did that mean she’d wanted to be pregnant? We’d never had unprotected sex, though. Roman was adamant. Was the idea of a baby that horrifying to him? Of having a baby with her?
“You okay?” Finn asked, still hanging close by her chair after she’d rejected the coffee.
“Sorry, my head.” No, don’t let them know you’re not okay. “I was thinking about something. I’m fine.”
“You sure?” Finn asked, blocking her view of Roman, which was probably for the best.
Roman was a giant distraction and . . . another memory pushed its way into existence.
Am I really partially to blame for why we didn’t work?
Was she worried their feelings for each other might interfere with the job even though Natasha and Wyatt and Jessica and Asher made it work?
Maybe. But it felt like a flimsy excuse.
They were both strong enough to do their job when needed.
“Yes,” Harper finally let the word roll from her lips.
Finn left her side, revealing a distressed-looking Roman peering straight at her. Goose bumps scattered over her skin, and she did her best to hide the shiver in her arms.
Had Wyatt answered her about Mossad? And if she asked again, would that draw more attention and worry from the dark-haired Titan of a man ten feet in front of her?
“Natasha has a contact, and the Mossad agent will be picking up Bravo Team when they arrive in the morning,” Wyatt said, and she had no clue if it was for the first or second time. “Director Spenser instructed Natasha to join them as well.”
“I assume you need me to find our mystery driver, then?” Harper asked as Finn stood alongside Chris, continuing to eye her with concern. She didn’t need a room full of people worried about her. Roman was the one who’d been hit by a car, damn it.
“Yeah, we pulled the surveillance footage from the hotel to get a plate number, and the Mercedes was reported stolen four hours before the explosion. No CCTV footage in that neighborhood the driver stole it from, either,” Wyatt said.
“You think you can use your magic to track down where the car was between six and ten p.m.? Maybe we can find a better angle of the driver to identify him.”
“Zack was disgruntled for getting kicked back to Langley, calling us a bunch of washed-up SEALs. I’d bet a hundred he already has someone at HQ searching for our mystery man as we speak,” A.J. threw in his two cents before Harper could answer.
“And maybe that’s not a bad thing?” But then Harper’s shoulders fell in understanding. “Just because Director Spenser ordered him to stand down doesn’t mean Zack won’t have someone else local try and get to our driver first.”
“Hell, it’s what I’d do if I were him,” Chris said with a crooked smile. “I wouldn’t want a bunch of cowboy commandos that are now PMCs running my show,” he added, imitating A.J.’s Southern drawl perfectly.
Even now, they couldn’t keep from joking around. It was oddly comforting.
“Wiseass,” A.J. replied.
The admonishment “Boys” hung on the tip of Harper’s tongue. Wasn’t she the one to usually corral their attention and get them to focus?
“I’d like to find the driver before Zack does,” Wyatt interrupted Chris and A.J.’s back-and-forth.
Harper sent Wyatt a reassuring nod that she’d find him and started to stand, but the way Wyatt was peering at her with a similar Atlas-holding-the-world look as Roman from earlier had her staying put. “What is it?”
“The CIA and a few other agencies heard chatter on the Dark Web indicating the Israeli embassy in D.C. as a potential target for the terrorist attack. Or possibly another Jewish site on U.S. soil,” Wyatt delivered the bad news.
“So that’s why Natasha’s Mossad contact was eager to help.” Roman stood, then immediately collapsed back onto the couch as if his legs had given out.
“Gravity again?” A.J. joked, which earned him a gruff look from Roman.
“I assume it’s all hands on deck Stateside searching for this potential target?” Harper asked.
What could Ezra have possibly learned that would bring him out of hiding after nearly four years? He wouldn’t involve himself with criminals now that he no longer worked for the Agency.
“Yeah, but while flying, Natasha and Jessica are doing their best to digitally track Ezra’s whereabouts before his death while we find the driver and wait for forensics to confirm it was, in fact, Ezra in the car,” Wyatt explained.