Chapter 17 #3
“I was good at my job, though, and based on Brandon’s shocked reaction when I had him arrested, at some point during our relationship, he must have decided he was being paranoid and that I wasn’t a spy sent to find Dumas.
I think that’s why he relaxed a bit in his operation, which eventually enabled us to ID him and take him down.
” She gulped, determined to get through this.
“And when you found out Brandon was Dumas?” Finn probed, and based on the fact Wyatt didn’t appear too shell-shocked during her reveal, she had to assume Natasha told him most of the details, all except for the fact Brandon had been her fiancé.
“Once I realized Brandon was Dumas, I was ordered to keep up with appearances. To stay with him.” Round two of her undercover work: fake being a happy couple with the enemy.
Thinking about it now still hurt almost as much as it had back then. Those were the worst three weeks of her life, and they ended when someone died taking a bullet from Brandon meant for her. Now that moment haunted her forever.
Roman stepped away from the window, drawing everyone’s eyes. “Who ordered you? Who made you . . .” His chest rose and collapsed from the weight of his heavy, angry breaths. He didn’t bother hiding his rage this time.
Brandon was dead, but Roman needed his pound of flesh, and she knew he intended that to be the person who made her continue “sleeping with the enemy.”
“Zack,” she whispered. “But he was only following the Inspector General’s orders.
And, unbeknownst to me at the time, one of your boss’s orders—the director of the CIA.
” Rutherford was the former CIA director before Spenser took over in 2021, but he’d been one of the handful of people who were aware of Bravo and Echo Team’s existence back then.
“We needed concrete proof before my cover was blown. And three weeks later, we got it. Dumas made a call to Ezra, and Zack was able to geolocate the call to my house while Brandon was there.”
She closed her eyes, remembering that day. The day Brandon set a kiss on her cheek, still wearing a towel after his shower. We’re going to take a long honeymoon. Make a baby, he’d whispered into her ear, his hand around her waist just before a team swarmed into her apartment for his arrest.
Had he really fallen in love with her? Had his ploy of dating her turned into something more in his eyes, and he truly wanted to be with her?
The team had always believed Harper was haunted by her near-death experience in France when Will Hobbs ordered her death, but now they knew her demons were because of Brandon.
And they were about to find out the guilt she carried for the life Brandon took the day he refused to surrender without a fight.
Everything that had happened a week before Jessica contacted her for an assist . . . that was what kept her up at night, why she woke up in a sweat from time to time.
The room remained silent.
When she dared open her eyes, she saw Roman’s back to her again. Balled hands set on the glass alongside his bowed head.
“I’m so sorry.” Finn was the first to break the quiet.
“I should’ve figured it out sooner that he was the man I was hunting, but his tradecraft was top notch.
The best of the best at the station, and he had loyalty from his men.
” Now she knew why she’d forgotten these memories after hitting her head.
Why in the world would she ever want to remember?
“A group of the CIA’s SOG branch arrived, and Brandon looked so betrayed before he snapped.
He tried to take me hostage, but I managed to evade him.
” And because I did that, someone else died.
“That’s when Brandon discharged his weapon.
” She swallowed the lump down her throat.
“He killed someone while trying to kill me. Diego, a former Green Beret, had a wife and a daughter back home. He took the bullet in the throat.” She could still remember the gurgling sounds coming from him as she dropped to her knees to apply pressure to try and save him.
The look in his eyes before they closed for the last time would haunt her for the rest of her life.
“Tell me the other guys killed the fucker?” A.J. growled out, on his feet at the news.
“No, the team had been ordered to keep him breathing. Brandon needed to be interrogated to identify the remaining disloyal CIA operatives.”
“Shit, I’m so sorry,” Finn said yet again. This time, he strode her way and set a hand to her shoulder.
“I’m okay,” she lied. “Brandon was sent to a TH to serve his life sentence, and they did get him to talk. He broke, shared everything, including the names of the other members, all of whom eventually joined him in that prison. The Agency used the Program to persuade him. President Rydell was more of an advocate of black sites and EIT than Knox’s dad is now. ”
The Program, which CIA officers called it, was the use of enhanced interrogation techniques at CIA black sites.
While in the middle of the War on Terror, the government couldn’t exactly house terrorists in normal prison cells or trust Syria or Iraq to properly detain them, so where else could they send them? The CIA needed their own prisons.
Harper didn’t always agree with their methods, but honestly, shooting Brandon point-blank back then would’ve been too kind.
“TH?” Chris cocked his head.
“Traitor’s Hell,” Wyatt answered.
“Ah, okay, I remember. There are two of those black sites, right?” Chris asked, and Harper nodded. “TH Crimson and some other color for blood.”
“Yeah, they’d originally opted not to mix American prisoners with terrorist detainees, especially since most traitors had high-level security clearance before ending up there,” Wyatt added. “That changed after the prison restructure last year.”
“What happened to Brandon?” Roman asked in a gruff voice without facing the room. “How’d he die?”
Harper looked to Wyatt for an assist this time, assuming he knew the details. She didn’t have the energy to go on.
Wyatt tipped his head in understanding. “When Knox’s dad took over, he was less of an advocate of enhanced interrogation and the black site prisons.”
“Right. President Bennett ordered a few of the existing sites shut down,” A.J. started, “and for those prisoners to be transferred to more humane off-the-books sites. They shut down the THs, I assume.”
“We couldn’t unload traitors and terrorists into the U.S. prison system, so they had to go somewhere, just nicer, I guess,” Finn added, removing his hand from her shoulder. “Same with the asshole of the century, Will Hobbs.”
“Just hoping those fuckers don’t have an Xbox in their new digs.” Chris looked over at Wyatt.
“How’d Brandon die?” Roman asked again, cutting through Chris’s attempt to remove a layer of darkness from the mood in the room. “During a transfer to one of the new sites?” He slowly turned back to the room, his hands remaining clenched.
“Director Spenser told Natasha that the helo transferring Brandon in July out of Nicaragua had a mechanical issue, and it went down. The chopper crashed fairly safely because of the pilot’s training, but the pilots and two guards were unconscious for about an hour, and when they woke up, Brandon and two of the other five prisoners were missing. ”
A.J. set his eyes on Harper before shooting his focus to Wyatt as if wondering when he’d get to the Brandon-being-dead part of the story.
“Brandon was hurt pretty badly. The local authorities found him dead twelve hours later on the streets of Managua,” Wyatt answered A.J.’s unspoken question. “The other prisoners were detained.”
“Zack was called in to officially ID the body since he’d been part of the case back in France,” Harper rejoined the debrief. “I saw him the morning after your wedding,” she added, her gaze leaving Wyatt to find Roman staring at her.
Roman had been waiting for her in the hotel room when she returned from sneaking out to talk to Zack, and he’d about lost his mind with worry as to where she’d been.
“I’m sorry, I was under orders to keep all of this silent.
Zack insisted the meeting with Ezra wasn’t linked to the Dumas case.
Everyone from that case was either in jail or dead, well, aside from Ezra, but he’d been undercover on our side.
” And then I hit my head and forgot everything.
Buried it deeper in the back of her mind than the body Roman buried.
“What if there was another member you didn’t know about, and he found out Ezra was still alive somehow and went looking for some payback?” A.J. proposed.
“Brandon rolled over on everyone. I doubt he would have let someone else remain free while he was locked up.”
“And Zack? Are we sure he’s on the up-and-up?” A.J. and his conspiracy theories.
“Zack isn’t dirty. No way,” she quickly dismissed.
“We need to look into all possibilities,” Wyatt said upon exhale.
Her gaze lifted to the painting on the wall.
Hundreds of tiny dots that made up a much larger picture.
“I think we’re staring at the pieces right now, and we just need to put them together,” she spoke her thoughts aloud.
“I can get back to work on trying to find out who was following me. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find something. ”
“I’ll go call Bravo and update them.” Wyatt sent Harper a close-mouthed smile as if unsure what to say or how to comfort her. “And Liam’s beating me to the call,” he said as his phone vibrated on the desk. “Maybe he has news.”
Harper switched her focus to Roman, and he was tipping his head to the bedroom in a silent request to talk, but she wasn’t so sure she was up for another one of their “talks.”
“We’re leaving Ezra’s hotel now,” Liam said over speakerphone.
“Mossad pulled surveillance for us, and we put eyes on a man Ezra met with the same day he flew to Barcelona, but the camera angle is shit, and we’re struggling to get an ID.
And—” Liam let go of his words when a scream erupted in the background.
“Liam?” Wyatt stood, and everyone crowded around the phone.
She held her breath, and her stomach muscles banded tight as they waited for Liam to talk, but they only heard indistinct sounds in the background. “I think he dropped the phone.”
“What’s going on? Liam, you there?” Wyatt asked, his voice deep with worry.
Roman stood next to Harper and surprised her by reaching for her hand as if he sensed bad news was about to follow. She may have been angry with him, but she couldn’t let go.
“Bravo Five has been shot,” Liam said breathlessly and added, “Knox is down.”