Breach Of Trust

Tate obliged, and the lock clicked solidly into place. Protecting himself and Meghan was going to make this ride a whole lot bumpier before this was over, and it would take more than a seat belt to save them.

* * *

After the glare of sunlight overhead, the interior of the old horse barn was dark. Meghan slid out of the truck and slammed the creaking door shut, breathing through her mouth to avoid the musty, earthy smell of old hay and long-moved horses.

She examined the floor around her feet, making sure a snake wasn’t about to slither over her foot. As soon as her sight adjusted, she searched the walls and the exposed ceiling rafters. No slithery visitors appeared. Good. In no way did she want to turn into a screaming weakling in front of Tate Walker. It was bad enough she was demanding the truth from him when she’d hidden her past for years, first out of self-preservation, and now...? Now because she wasn’t sure who he was anymore.

Tate killed the engine and sat for a minute before he got out, probably debating how much he wanted to tell her. Well, he could debate with himself all he wanted. She was getting the whole story.

When he climbed out of the truck, his eyes caught hers across the hood, and the contact made it feel as though no time had passed. They were working an op together, prepping for the next step, well-honed partners in the fight to save the world.

Meghan swallowed hard and kneaded the back of her neck, her mind unwilling to grasp that the man she’d once loved stood here now, still alive. In odd moments, her world tilted and her past reality twisted in Tate’s reappearance. Her stomach swirled again, a strange mix of joy and the feeling she didn’t know anything about the world. What else was a lie?

“Where have you been hiding?” She sounded like a broken record, but really, how she sounded was the least of her worries. Maybe answers would erase some of the hurt and the anger over the sleepless nights she’d spent swimming in guilt for walking away from her partner before the op that had supposedly stolen his life.

All because she cared too much to stay.

“You really want to do this now?” The slight tinge of amused challenge was one she’d heard a thousand times before. It settled in and relaxed some of the tension, took the edge off her questions.

The setting was too much like all those moments in countries too far-flung to mention, when they’d decompressed together, evaluated their missions and talked about their lives. She’d told him things she’d never confessed to another living soul. Everything except the blackmail and the hack that had come back to haunt her.

Those were discussions when she’d felt closer to him than to any other person on earth. When she’d thought, more than a few times, there could be something more for them, something outside of battling the bad guys together. Something involving a house like this and...

Not that it mattered. She’d left the service and Tate behind when she could no longer hold back the things she was starting to feel for him.

And then he’d been killed.

“Now is as good a time as any. We have no idea what’s coming next, and you have to prove to me I can trust you.” A sudden surge rushed into Meghan’s throat, and her spine stiffened. She crossed her arms over her chest and squared herself in the doorway, blocking his escape. She needed to know how he could lie to her, how he could spend four years with no contact of any kind. How he could simply stop existing.

Now that she’d asked, the words refused to stop coming. “Ethan called and told me you were killed on an op gone bad. Nothing more. And then he all but vanished, too. I was shut out. Nobody would give me information and I missed...I missed your funeral. I spent months trying to reach contacts, trying to dig up what really happened. No one would tell me anything. You were more than my partner. And I spent a lot of nights staring at the ceiling thinking maybe if I’d been on the op with you, I could have had your back, done something to stop it.” The guilt choked harder, constricting her voice. She never cried. Never. But piling years’ worth of grief and guilt on top of a rapidly rising past had cracked her walls. She bit her lip. Hard.

“Nothing could have saved that op, and if you’d been there, you’d probably be dead the way I nearly was.” Tate’s voice was low, reassuring, the way it had always been. He slammed the door of the truck. When it failed to stay closed, he pulled it open and shut it again before facing her, features shadowed in the dim light, making him appear to be the biggest mystery of all. He rapped his knuckles on the peeling hood of the truck. “We had a mole in the system.”

“Who?” He had to be kidding. Their unit was small. Everybody knew everybody. Someone selling them out to the bad guys from within was akin to betraying family.

“Craig Mitchum.”

The name didn’t ring any bells, but it didn’t matter. White-hot rage burned her skin. If she ever found the man who’d betrayed Tate and her fellow team members—the only real family she’d ever known—he’d never forget the encounter.

“He came in on a secondary team around the time you left, assigned to a different op. He partnered with Ethan Kincaid on—”

Wait. No. Meghan held up her hands. “Ethan’s partner is Jacob Reynolds.” Jacob and Ethan had worked side by side with them on multiple ops, but he’d gone deep undercover on an op she wasn’t privy to. She’d always assumed his continued silence meant he was still dug in. “What happened to Reynolds?” Asking the question brought a knowing feeling, a sick sensation that the answer was about to tilt her world yet again.

Tate stared out the door toward daylight and the pasture beyond, but it was clear he saw something else. “Reynolds was overseas, gathering intel on a terrorist posing as a contractor. He was outed by Craig Mitchum and killed by a group of insurgents working for the terrorist.”

Meghan took a step back, the news a blow to the chest. She steadied herself on the truck’s frame, trying not to sway on her feet. Jacob Reynolds was one of those guys who was always smiling, who had your back whether the situation was a shoot-out in a foreign country or not enough change in your pocket at the fast-food counter. He didn’t deserve to be cut down by a traitor. “How?”

Tate didn’t say anything, didn’t even look at her.

“No. You don’t get to hold out on me now.” Their team was a family, a family she’d been cut out of, obviously, and one losing members without giving her a chance to grieve.

Tate pulled in a deep breath and released it slowly, his green eyes dark with barely sheathed anger. “He was taken off an outpost during the night. Tortured before he was killed.”

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