it,” she guessed, that ache in her chest tightening further at the suspicion as she accepted the phone when he handed it back to her. “Now, who would have done that?” she asked mockingly. She could only think of one person who could believe she was capable of betrayal.
Killian and his team had been at the base several times before she and Jordan had left. It had been their job to clean their sat phones of the agency protocols, e-mails, or mission notes before returning them. Only Killian’s team and Killian himself had had the opportunity to tamper with the phone.
Jordan sighed. “It was developed specifically for the Ops by our techs. No other agencies have anything like it.”
“Well, then, that tells me something, doesn’t it?” It told her she was no safer at base than she would be here. Hell, Killian Reece would feed her to her enemies a piece at a time if he could, which meant she was safer taking care of herself.
“I’ll know who did it,” he told her, his voice icy cold. “I promise you Tehya, I’ll get to the bottom of it.”
As far as she was concerned, she knew exactly who had done it. There was no getting to the bottom of it. Only one person would have been capable of distrusting her to that extent.
“I think we’re both well aware who it was. Why the hell do you think he agreed to have me at base? So he could destroy me and made it stick. Not out of friendship for you, a sense of decency, or anything else.”
“I’ll find out.” His voice couldn’t have gotten any harder.
Tehya gave a small, almost silent snort. “And you think I’d be safe there, do you? Killian and I understand each other, and you keep refusing to believe it. He hates me. I stay out of his way and understand that he’ll always place Sorrel’s sins on me.”
She actually liked Killian Reece. He was hard-core, stone-cold, paranoid, and damned dangerous. He was the perfect commander for the new Elite Ops team. And she knew, in his position, she would have felt the same. She respected the hell out of him, but she was well aware of the fact that he saw her as the enemy. She would have seen him as no less if positions were reversed.
Sorrel had murdered Killian’s wife and unborn child; there was no way in hell Killian would ever trust the bastard’s daughter.
“Tehya, you can’t stay here,” Jordan stated simply. “You know yourself what could happen if it’s Sorrel’s enemies that are after you. If it’s his associates or allies, then it could be far worse.”
“Naw, I’m too old to be trainable as a sex slave,” she assured him. “If it’s his associates, then they simply want vengeance. I killed Sorrel and his son Raven, and helped to all but destroy the organization. Why would they care now, more than eight years later? It doesn’t make sense.”
“And you think they’ll simply kill you?” His blue eyes seemed brighter, harder. “Tehya, these are men that Sorrel funded, that gave him their loyalty. The same men who were determined to capture you and your mother for all those years. These men aren’t out to thank you, baby. They’re out to torture the hell out of you and make you beg to die because you destroyed the man and the organization they were so fanatically devoted to.”
They hated her because she had killed Sorrel and Raven, men she knew as her father and her brother. She hoped they were burning in hell.
“I’ve been running since I was five, Jordan.” She sighed wearily, exhaustion crashing in on her at the thought of even attempting to live again as she once had.
The last two weeks had been harder than she had realized. She hadn’t slept well; the fear that she was being stalked, that she had been found by her father’s friends, or his enemies, had weighed on her, she realized.
“Tehya, there are other places besides the operational base. Just let me hide you until we can reset your identity. We’ll do a full facial reconstruct and fingerprint alteration. When we’re finished, no one will find you, I swear it,” he said. And perhaps, if there had been a hint of emotion in his voice, the thinnest vein of desperation, she might have considered it. But that was all she would have done, considered it.
“The fingerprint alterations rarely work, and there’s still DNA. I’m tired of running,” she