Chapter 23
Twenty-Three
I’ve been trying to sleep, but I can’t, and I know he can’t either, although I wish I knew what was on his mind. Mine is crowded with a million things that I can’t sort through anymore, and if I don’t figure some of it out, I may never sleep again.
“Tell me.”
He shifts. “Tell you what?”
I exhale and roll over to face him.
One of us needs to make a move, and with the Agency coming for me, I don’t know what or who I’m protecting anymore.
Myself? From what? York? It could all be a ploy, but I can’t see the ends to that deception anymore.
Honestly, if it is though, and I walk right into whatever it is he’s devised .
. . it might just be a relief at this point.
“Tell me what you think you know, and I’ll tell you if you’re right,” I say calmly.
“Why would you—”
“Going once . . .”
He props himself up on his elbow in the shadows. “Raven is really an intelligence-gathering task force.”
“Yes.”
“They’ve stolen secrets from everyone, including allies.”
“Yes.”
“They’ve intercepted sensitive data regarding Great Britain and her interests.”
“Probably,” I whisper, and he gets out of the bed and starts pacing.
“You’ve stolen her secrets.”
“No.” I cock my head back, surprised.
“Don’t!” His voice snaps in the silence, and I jump. “You are selling those very same secrets.”
“No,” I repeat breathlessly looking at his shadowy form. “I’m not selling secrets.”
“You’ve been partnered with two British agents in the past six months. Don’t fucking lie to me. You may not specifically be selling us out, but we’re in the fucking mix.”
“I’ve done my job!”
“Fuck.” He walks away in the dark, headed toward the bathroom.
“York,” I say sternly.
“I need a minute!”
Sitting on my heels with the blanket rumpled around me, I watch him pace at the far end of the room.
This whole time he’s thought I’ve been undermining his country .
. . The British agents I worked with, I wasn’t even in the room for the exchanges with their points of contact.
I couldn’t possibly have garnered the intelligence he’s talking about.
Why does he think this? Shit. Is that what Jeffries meant when he asked where it was?
Like hardcopy data? What I have in hardcopy is so much more dangerous than random intel .
. . and I'm certainly not fucking selling it.
Getting off the bed, I move across the room and grab onto him. “I’ve never gleaned a single piece of intel from British operatives. I never had the chance, I swear it.”
He pushes me away and stalks into the bathroom, slamming the door.
“Quid pro quo, asshole!” I yell through the door and slap it. “Why do you think it’s me?”
The door flies open with such force my hair gets swept forward in the backdraft, and the light flips on, making me shield my eyes.
“Because in every scrap of information I was able to dig up on Raven, I never found so much as your code name mentioned.”
“So what?”
“So? You are redacted from mission files and transmissions.” His finger thrusts accusingly into my face.
“The only way I even knew you existed was by word of mouth until I got your dossier. That’s pretty fucking suspicious, don’t you think?
” He clenches his fists. “I was dropped here with clearance to clean house. Your government paid me to do it!”
I shake my head for a moment. “And that didn’t seem suspicious to the British government?”
“Everything you pricks do is suspicious.” He gets right into my face until we’re sharing the same quick, angry breaths.
“But you—you are the definition of the word. You’ve been protected from the top down, and now they’re trying to erase you entirely.
Why is that, Tripoli?” His chest heaves, brushing against mine.
“How do you go from being so valued to expendable virtually overnight?”
I can’t tell him. “What are you talking about? The entire unit has been deemed expendable. That’s why you’re here, right?”
“Oh, I took the fucking job to eliminate a scourge, but I needed to find the one Raven that only had a single page in the dossier on her. The one that made my research hit a brick wall. The one who only had a physical description instead of a photo!” He paces away from me.
“No one seems to know why they took a contract out on their own people, the only reasonable explanation is that someone’s been turned, and they don’t know who. ”
“But what makes you so certain it’s me?” I ask again, flustered. “I get why the Agency does but we both know they’re wrong because I haven’t offered you intel in exchange for my life. So why do YOU think it’s me?”
“The Agency tried to hide you,” he repeats.
“Maybe from the world, but not from you!” I throw my hand out at him. “They put me right in your lap!”
“Yeah, and they were hoping I’d pull the fucking trigger without asking any questions,” he growls. “But you are the odd one out for some reason. You are special to them. You’re the one they want to hide in the pile of bodies I stack. You’re the one they’re afraid of someone finding. Why?”
“I can’t!” I grab my hair. “I said I’d tell you if you were right. I didn’t say I’d spill my guts!”
“That’s fucking bullshit!” he shouts, frustrated, and paces away again.
It makes sense that I’m being left off the paperwork, but only Russel knows my secret.
I’m a living, breathing account of every bit of intel I’ve come across.
It’s not comprehensive—I don’t have access to the information my counterparts gather—but what I do know is damning.
What I do know is enough to indict some incredibly powerful people, and the fact that I exist at all in the capacity that I do is enough to have Russel strung up by the balls.
If anyone found out about the shit we’ve collected . . . Russel would be charged with treason. We all would. To say nothing of all the things he doesn’t know about . . . the things I kept for myself.
I’d be the first one he’d want to protect and the first one he’d want dead if protecting me was no longer viable.
As soon as York let me live . . . it made me look like the mole.
York’s made it look like I cut a deal with him, which means Russel Wainwright thinks I’m the one selling all his closely guarded secrets. That makes me enemy number one now.
I should be angrier…but instead, I’m anxious enough to vomit. The only other option York had was to kill me. It’s a witch trial. Damned either way. All of us.
“I’m their biggest liability,” I admit.
“Why?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I shake my head. “But if Raven has been compromised somehow . . . maybe that thing in Venice with Babylon . . .”
“But why have everyone killed?” He shakes his head. “Why not just Babylon?”
It’s the same thing I wondered at first but .
. . “The things we know . . .” I trail off.
“If the Agency couldn’t convince whoever discovered Babylon that her actions were unsanctioned .
. . then that would blow back on all of Raven.
If they couldn’t sell the ‘bad egg’ story, then the entire program’s cover would be blown.
If the wrong people find out about us, we’ll be hot commodities on the intel black market.
Trust me.” I shake my head. “Killing us is the only way for Russel to . . . ”
“What?” York’s brow furrows as he puts his hands on his hips.
Things start to clear in my head, and I wrap my hands around the back of my neck.
“There is no mole.” I reason, staring at the floor.
“I’m right about Venice…this is a massive coverup.
Babylon blew her cover and therefore exposed us all.
Few people beyond Wainwright know what the Raven program really does.
Russel floated the mole narrative to explain our deaths away to anyone else in government.
” I laugh, but it’s clipped. “It’s so believable that even you think it’s true. ”
“Two things can be true at the same time,” he grimaces. “But don’t worry about Wainwright. No one fucks over my king and country and tries to put us over a barrel.”
“You're really going to try to execute the Director of the Agency at this gala?” I stare at him blankly. "The British government sanctioned this?"
“Yes,” he mutters.
“Please.” I approach him slowly. “I have secrets, and I’ve lied by omission. I admit that I am still lying by omission, but it’s nothing to do with you . . . it has nothing to do with your interests. I’m just . . . trying to stay alive.” I put my hands on his chest. “Please don’t be mad at me.”
“Theresa.” He grabs my face. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”
“Okay.” I swallow a knot in my throat as he releases me, and I drift back to the bedroom reluctantly, a little dazed.
At least most of it is out in the open. This situation has international consequences, and he’s right; we may have information that is politically damaging for the British.
The Agency could blackmail them with it.
That’s the whole point, though, Russel always wanted leverage.
By now, the Agency could blackmail most of the first world and part of that is my fault.
It's hard to believe I'm about to become an instrument of Russel's downfall.
My brain keeps turning things around as I walk to the bed.
If Raven has been completely compromised and someone out there knows what we’re doing—well, the British know what we’re doing .
. . and for the British to have found out, for York to be here looking for me—it means Babylon blew her cover with a British agent.
Could it have been York? Or is he just the one who ended up tasked with all this?
I stop at the foot of the bed and turn back. “Were you—”
He’s right there, stone faced, and I startle back, hitting the bed and dropping to my butt. Bouncing slightly, I stare at him in the dark, but he doesn’t talk; he just looms, and my hair stands on end as I scoot back on the bed away from him.
This is what I was afraid of—his intel has been confirmed, and that makes me extraneous.
“York, I promise—”
“Shh.” He crawls onto the bed and grabs me.
“No!” I shriek and kick him back, but he grabs my leg and hauls me down the bed. “Please!”
“Please what?” he asks softly, leaning over me as he pins my arms down.
The next thing I know, he’s kissing me, and I freeze for a moment before I exhale and inhale again sharply, confused. Surprised. Hands slide up my shirt, and before I can question what’s happening, my arms are around his neck and I’m pulling him down on top of me.
He’s not gentle, and neither am I.
Frustration and anger, disappointment . . . it all comes out as our clothes come off, and we find ourselves twisted in the sheets, panting and trembling as we use each other again.
Above him, I chase my own ends until my head falls back, and I’m racked with a release that I ride out until my legs give way. After that, he goes at me hard.
Everything is rough, from the way his mouth and teeth pull and suck my skin, to how hard he pins me down and how deeply he tries to bury himself .
. . In the end I feel raw, like an exposed nerve as I lay in the bed, and even his passive touch is enough to send bolts of sensation through me that tighten my nipples and make my heart race.
I’ve gone too far now.
I’m too involved . . . I’m too invested. In him.
His fingers comb through my hair and then fist it at the back of my head as he curls me toward him, and I fold into the demand of his touch again.
There is no saving me, not after tonight.