Chapter 7
Seven
She might have made a mistake. Lila didn’t make many, but this one could be a doozy.
In the years since she’d discovered the money, she had told only one person, and her grandmother, well she couldn’t tell anyone.
Lila was the only living soul who knew about this.
Or at least, the only living soul trying to find the money.
The only one of the group she had reservations about would be Jenner. He was new to Dillon, and she hadn’t had time to dig into his past.
The other three…she definitely trusted them.
But all four men were looking at her as if she had lost her mind. She was used to that. Being someone who worked in code and hacking, she tended to say things that got her into trouble.
“Do you want to repeat that again?” Ian said carefully.
“That the money is missing or that it would be worth over five billion today?”
“Crypto is volatile, so how do you know?” El asked.
“Because I could trace the money. Well, trace the history of it. Mom put it in some kind of safe hold, then…poof, it disappeared.”
“How many people in the division would have known where it was?” El asked.
El…he would always be CIA. He and his sister had been raised by two people who used their cover of Middle Eastern business dealings as a way to work for the CIA.
They were brought up in that world, and she always thought it was sad that his parents didn’t let them have normal childhoods.
Of course, her parents had done that and look at what a disaster that turned into.
She pushed that aside and studied El. She could see that he was going through the divisions in the CIA in his head to figure out who would have known.
She sighed. “Not sure. I hacked into the case, but the documents have been erased.”
Everything in the room seemed to still. “You couldn’t find them?” Ian asked.
She shook her head.
“Fuck,” El said.
“Does someone want to clue me in on why that’s bad?” Jenner asked.
When no one else answered, Lila decided to.
“If I can’t find it, they have someone better than me, or had someone better than me, make it disappear. Usually, that isn’t a problem for me. The fact that the digital footprint has been erased is a big red flag. That is next to impossible.”
“Was there anything about China or Russia getting into those files?” Sam asked.
She shook her head. “At the time, the crypto was just getting started. And yes, both countries were doing quite a bit of hacking into the accounts, but I couldn’t find anything on that.
While the Chinese are good at hacking, they tend to leave a lot of breadcrumbs.
It was a newly formed group, but that was right before my family was killed. ”
Even now, the pain hit her. It had been over a decade, but the loss still gave her pause. It wasn’t as intense as when they died, but it lingered in her heart and stole her breath.
Pushing that aside, she focused on the present. That was the only way she would find the person who killed her parents and brother and who was after her.
“What about your father? Was there anything he was working on that would have brought people after him like this?” Ian asked.
She shared a glance with Sam.
“What?” Ian asked.
“My father was on sabbatical from the CIA. I didn’t know that he had been passed over for a promotion.”
That got a sharp look from El. “Your father was passed over? Who got the job?”
She sighed. “My mother.”
“Damn,” Jenner muttered.
“Jenner,” Ian said, warning in his voice.
“Calm down, Ian. I’ve been down that avenue. My father was the prime suspect until they confirmed his identity. Well, that and the money disappearing. They knew it had something to do with that.”
“The money disappeared when?” Ian asked.
“Within an hour of my house blowing up. The CIA was in full freak out mode. Two analysts being blown up was not an everyday occurrence. They knew right away that it wasn’t a gas explosion no matter what they told the media.”
“And why did you share a look with my father?”
She sighed. “I think my mother was thinking of divorcing my father. There was a lot of tension around the house. I mean, they didn’t fight. My father was like me. He kept his emotions under control, and, well, my mother was English and raised by one of the best spymasters ever.”
“And I think Eloise had talked to Judith about divorcing him,” Sam said. “But she kept that from Lila.”
She rolled her eyes. “There was no need. Why do parents think they can hide things from us? Kids can always pick up on the undercurrents. But since my father was ID’d through DNA and his dental records, there was no doubting he was in the blast. Then, the money disappearing ruined their murder/suicide ideas.
Plus, he wouldn’t have done that without making sure I was there. ”
“That’s morbid,” Jenner said.
She shrugged. “Family annihilators who commit suicide always want to take the entire family with them. I wasn’t there, and it had been the plan for a while. Believe me, I spent a lot of time researching my father and if he could be connected to this.”
“Your brother and mother were ID’d?”
She nodded. “Through DNA.”
All of a sudden, a wave of dizziness hit her.
It had been a long few weeks on the run.
It had been over two years since she had been burned, but the last few months had been particularly treacherous.
Someone had been on her trail, coming at her when she least expected it.
And now with this injury, her body just didn’t feel as if she could go on. She blinked a few times.
“Okay, I think that’s enough for now,” Ian said, stepping forward.
“I can answer more questions.” But she sounded exhausted even to her own ears.
“They can wait for a bit,” he said, herding her back to the bedroom.
“Fine.”
He made sure she got into bed, then pulled the covers up to her chin. Her eyelids felt as if they had two-ton weights on them.
“Thank you. Have I said thank you?”
“Yes, you have.”
“Well, I knew I could count on you.”
She sensed his pause, but her eyes had already closed.
“You did?”
“Yeah. Like I said, I read your file. Plus, Sam raised you right. There was no doubt you would do everything to find me.”
There was a long moment of silence, but he didn’t leave her.
“What?” Lila asked without opening her eyes.
“Why didn’t you contact my father? When you went on the run?”
It took some effort, but she opened her eyes. The sun had started to set, and it cast the room in an orange glow. She liked the sunsets in Hawai’i. It always meant she’d survived another day.
“Your father was up for a transplant. I didn’t want to put him at risk. And just remember, I wouldn’t have contacted you now if I hadn’t been hurt. It seemed worse than the other times.”
With a sigh, she felt her eyes drift closed and she fell into a deep sleep.
Ian studied her for a long moment and tried to figure out if she was really asleep.
Lila was worming her way into his heart, and he didn’t know what to do about it.
He wanted to shake her awake and ask her about those “other times.” How had this woman survived the last few years on the run with no one to help her?
He knew the twins had helped to an extent, but…
she was a solitary figure. He had never met another person who seemed to thrive when left alone. Well, other than him.
He hadn’t always been like that, but when you become a sniper, it sort of went with the job.
This was different. She’d had little to no connections.
No family. No backup. He ground his teeth together trying to work through the anger that pounded through him.
Even so, he reached up with gentle hands to push the hair away from her face.
Seeing that she was sleeping, and he had all the important things she would need to survive, he rose to go talk to his father.
After he closed the door to the bedroom, he joined his father and his two friends on the back lanai.
“How is she?” his father asked.
“Fine. Sleeping.”
“Should we keep an eye on her?” Jenner asked. “She got the slip on you once already.”
Irritation bled through him. “She didn’t get a slip on me.”
“If you say so,” he said.
“I mean, she sort of did, Ian,” El said.
“Sod off. Also, I hid all the things she would need to survive out in the world. But she is sleeping deeply.”
Both men looked at him as if they didn’t believe him. He decided to ignore them, at least for now.
“So,” he said looking at his father. “We need some more explanation about Sa…Lila.”
His father shoved a hand through his hair. “Not much more to tell but ask me anything. Now that she’s been found, I don’t think she would mind.”
“Did you know she was alive?”
Samuel sighed, sitting down on one of the cushioned chairs. “No. Actually, I worried that she had been disappeared by someone from her or her grandmother’s past.”
“She could run WITSEC with one hand tied behind her back and her eyes closed,” El said, admiration in his voice. “She offered to help me disappear after everything I went through, but I didn’t want that. Still, I know that she could have done the job.”
El had been tortured and nearly killed a few years ago. Both his sister and he had pretty much been shown the door after Eden broke protocol and went after him. Apparently, Lila helped.
“She’s the one who found you.”
He didn’t ask, but instead just used a statement. Her need to help people, to keep them safe probably had something to do with the loss of her own family.
“Didn’t hesitate when Eden called her for help. But that’s Lila.”
Irritation filled him. “And your sister never thought that she could expose Lila to dangerous people? That the very thing she did subsequently had her running for her life?”
He was going to have a talk with his partner. He had thought more of her before now, but putting Lila at risk was unacceptable.
“Yes. She did. But she couldn’t find me.”