Chapter 17 #2
“No,” she whispered, drawing Wyatt’s attention from the computer screen, and he turned in the desk chair to face her.
Chris and A.J. had been talking in the kitchen area, and they joined the team when they spotted Harper.
“We need to talk.” Harper focused back on Wyatt. “The case that Director Spenser and Zack wanted kept under wraps was because it’s an embarrassment for the Agency.”
“The ringleader from that case, Brandon Atwater,” Wyatt began, which meant Natasha had gone ahead and filled him in on some details, “is dead.” Natasha most likely hadn’t told Wyatt that Harper had been engaged to Brandon.
“Natasha triple-checked, which means he’s not a threat or behind what’s going on. ”
Roman stepped alongside Harper, and her gaze skated down to see an angry fist tight at his side as if upset he’d been robbed of the chance to kill Brandon. Clearly, Roman didn’t need to bury any more bodies with so many skeletons already in his closet.
“Natasha thought you should share the details with us,” Wyatt went on, “but she didn’t want to rule out the possibility someone else from that case might be targeting you since it was the last op Ezra worked before parting ways with the Agency.
” He motioned for her to sit, but instead, she stood behind one of the wingback chairs and set her hands on top of it for support.
A.J. and Chris sat on the couch, eyes set on her as they waited for her to share more, and Finn remained standing.
“When Jessica reached out in 2018 and pulled me in to unofficially work with Bravo, I was undercover as a field agent at the time,” she said as Roman walked past her and over to the window. He set a palm to the glass, keeping his tense back to the room.
“Ah, now I remember Jessica saying you were an agent,” A.J. spoke up, “which I didn’t question at the time since we were focused on the op, but most agents are foreign nationals.”
Harper nodded, opting to look A.J.’s way instead of at the man who kept breaking her heart.
“In 2017, under the direct orders of the Office of Inspector General of the CIA, I was ordered to take a special assignment. They needed an American they could trust who had the linguistic skills and could pass as a French-American. Also, someone who’d never crossed paths with any operative stationed in France at the time. ”
“And they picked you,” Finn said in a soft voice.
“Yeah, it was easier to alter my background in the system and keep my own name instead of creating a new legend. Zack was already posted at the Paris station, and the Inspector General trusted him, so he was assigned as my case officer. He was the only one at the station in France who knew I was undercover for the OIG.”
“A CIA officer undercover as a CIA field agent.” She heard the surprise in Chris’s tone even though she didn’t look to check his face.
The guys weren’t fans of the Agency, which she understood given the CIA’s involvement with coups and assassinations of world leaders before Congress ordered them to stop interfering in playing politics in foreign countries a few decades ago.
“I guess they weren’t counting on a retired CIA officer to stumble upon you while you were there,” Finn remarked, referring to when Jessica had reached out for an assist in 2018.
“Thankfully, my assignment had ended the week before her call, and I’d been days away from heading back to Langley for new orders.” Harper hadn’t been able to tell Jessica why she’d swapped being an officer for a field agent role, and Jessica hadn’t probed.
“And then we got you shot,” A.J. said under his breath. “We should never have let Will Hobbs find out you were assisting us. We had you poking around Agency files, and it drew his attention.”
“Not your fault. You didn’t know he was a traitor.” She surveyed the room, putting eyes on everyone to ensure they dropped their guilt ASAP. “I wouldn’t have joined your team when Jessica asked a year later if I blamed you for anything that happened.”
And yet, Finn frowned, his shoulders falling in the process. Guilt, heavy and thick weighing him down. She knew a thing or two about that. “So, uh, were you sent to France to spy on the station there or to try and get recruited as a double agent or something?”
“There was concern someone out of France was profiting from the takedowns of terrorist groups. Whenever the Agency seized drugs, weapons, or even conflict diamonds used to fund terrorists, there were discrepancies between the amount seized and the final records. Small amounts that eventually started to add up and raise some flags at Headquarters.” This was the easy part of the conversation.
“So, I was tasked to try and confirm the rumors and find out whether this was a one-man show or a larger operation. We believed the ringleader of the operation recruited CIA agents and informants for an assist. They had to have an inside man.”
“That’s why they sent you as an agent, hoping you’d get recruited,” A.J. said, the guilt from their talk about Will finally stripped from his gaze.
“Yes. Months went by without an approach, but then one of my informants I trusted came to me to let me know someone had attempted to bring him on board. He planned to report it to the Agency, but then Zack and I decided to ask Ezra to go undercover to learn who was involved in the operation,” she explained.
Was Ezra dead because of her? Did someone really kill him to get to me? Yet another person who’d been sacrificed to keep her alive.
The guilt was hot, heavy, and almost too much to bear at times, stifling as if she were wearing a thick wool sweater in the middle of July.
“Ezra found out the code names of the main group members but not their real identities. They never met in person. He was provided instructions over the phone, and his role was to give the members a heads-up of any criminal activity he discovered before reporting the activity to his case officer at the station per usual.”
“What were the code names?” Chris asked.
“Dumas was the leader. Ezra was recruited as d’Artagnan. The other three were Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.”
“From The Three Musketeers?” Surprise filled A.J.’s voice. “I think the bad guys neglected to do their homework,” he added, his Southern drawl thicker when he spoke. “In the book, the Musketeers fought for justice.”
Finn removed his hands from his pockets to fold his arms. “How’d Dumas swing this?”
She stole her focus from Finn to Roman, noticing him still rigidly standing by the window, and her heart sank. “Um.” She took a steady breath. “Dumas assigned his dirty agents to smuggle some of whatever the CIA seized before everything was transferred to a federal facility.”
“So, the agents like Ezra were his eyes and ears on the streets and the ones to physically get their hands dirty,” Wyatt confirmed, and she nodded.
“The guns taken were traded for diamonds, and those for other weapons, before cashing in. Then they cleaned the money through a variety of businesses, from brothels to restaurants,” she added.
Brothels, great. Thanks to her fantasy earlier, she now had to resist remembering her thoughts of sweaty sex with Roman. But she was too tired even to be upset with herself or him right now.
“A messed-up form of money laundering since they were never supposed to keep their dirty paws on the seizures.” Chris tsked. “The CIA found themselves with a corrupt group of spooks and a mess they’d rather the world not know about.”
“Did Ezra eventually help you discover the identity of Dumas and the others?” Wyatt unfolded his arms to sit taller in the chair.
“Only Dumas, and Dumas flipped on the others. But we never expected the ringleader to be a high-ranking officer at the Paris station. We’d believed it was someone from the outside, and he only used agents for an assist.”
“Brandon Atwater,” Wyatt said, followed by a hiss of disgust.
Roman pushed off the window and faced the room. The hard lines of his body were sharper than ever. The intensity rolled off him in waves, and she felt the tension like an impending tsunami. Anger toward “the asshole.”
“While I was undercover, I began dating an officer at the station in Paris.” Look away from him, or you won’t be able to get through this.
But she couldn’t seem to rip her focus from Roman.
What she’d felt, or thought she’d felt, for Brandon was insignificant when compared to what she felt for Roman.
She knew he was the only man she’d ever loved—or been in love with.
“He proposed, and I said yes. I felt guilty about the fact we were engaged, and he didn’t know my real life story.
About how my parents died. Or that I wasn’t even half-French.
” She lifted her hand from the chair and set it to her heart.
“I felt guilt.” In hindsight, it was absurd.
“I had no idea he suspected I’d been sent by Langley to spy on the station, to find him.
To find Dumas.” She clenched her abdominal muscles as if preparing for a punch.
She finally pulled her gaze away from Roman’s, worried she wouldn’t be able to get through the rest of the conversation without seeking comfort from him.
But she reminded herself he still held lies between them, and she wasn’t so sure she could trust him anymore.
And after what Brandon did to her, trust was everything.
Hell, she’d blamed her own insecurities and trust issues as one of the reasons they hadn’t worked out together.
She cringed at the memory of Roman digging a shallow grave. That had to be connected to Roman’s main reason why they weren’t together.