“Where did they move you?”
“Wait. No comment about how I’m being paranoid?”
“I don’t see the point. The enemy knew where my team was and they had to have found out somehow. If there’s more to it than the weak spots in your plan, then I’d like to know. I have to admit when I saw you at the Wind River Mountain training, I was hoping you were there as a CIA operative and you were going to give a lecture or something,” he said. “Not to become part of the Brotherhood Protectors.”
“Well, aren’t you a surprise,” she said. She had always believed the mole had been one of their own. Someone working on either his mission or the extraction team. Walker believed there’d been a flaw in her plan. “Are you saying you now believe there was a mole?”
“No. But I’m not ruling it out.”
“When you were debriefed in the hospital, and again during your discharge, you were adamant you believed the breakdown came in during extraction. You were given my plan and you pointed out its weak spots in detail and you told my boss that’s why it failed.”
“I did.” He nodded. “However, you obviously don’t believe that and there must have been something to your thoughts because they kept you on it.”
“Until they didn’t,” she said, letting out an exasperated sigh.
“Are you saying that I’m part of why you left the CIA?”
“No,” she said firmly. That was the truth. He had nothing to do with it. Whoever decided she might be the mole had everything to do with why she’d left and she doubted it had been Walker.
He was a lot of things, but one thing she knew for sure was that if Walker had something to say, he had no problem expressing it.
“To be honest I was burned out and needed a change.” That wasn’t a total lie. After Operation Nashville went belly up, she’d realized how much of her life had been taken over by the CIA. She had no social life, no love life—not that she wanted one—but when she’d had her credentials stripped and was forced to sit at a desk doing administrative work, she realized that outside of the CIA, she had nothing.
Nada.
Zilch.
She needed a hobby.
Working for the Brotherhood Protectors, if they took Beck and her girls, that would give her some free time for snow skiing. Of course, she needed to learn how first.
“So, you’ve given up looking for the mole?”
“Not entirely,” she admitted. There was no point in lying to Walker. Two of his brothers-in-arms had died. “But my resources are limited.”
He pushed from the vehicle and ran a hand across the top of his head.
She had to admit she liked his longer hair, which he’d let grow almost to his collar. It was thick, wavy, and dark blond in color. From the moment she’d laid on eyes on him, she’d found him attractive. Perhaps it was the sultry eyes. However, just because he was sexy as hell, and he’d managed to find his way into her fantasies, didn’t mean she’d invite him into her bed.
Nope. Besides, she’d learned a long time ago that it was never a good idea to mix pleasure and work. Sex and missions were always explosive, and in the bad kind of way.
“I’ve had to come to terms with what happened. I want you to know that I don’t blame you and that I shouldn’t have said some of the harsh things I did when we were debriefed and again at Wind River.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Now, for whatever reason, Hank believes you and I make for a great team. You think we can prove him right?”
She laughed. “I hope we don’t prove him wrong. History does not need to repeat itself.”
* * *
Walker held open the door,letting Fay enter Gunny’s Watering Hole first. He let his gaze take in her beauty. It was hard not to. She had long dark hair which she wore in a ponytail pulled tight at the nape of her neck. She had an athletic build and she looked damn hot in a pair of jeans, formfitting T-shirt, and damn cowboy boots.
“So, Jake Cogburn runs the Colorado branch of the Brotherhood Protectors,” Fay said.
“He’s point man, but make no mistake, we answer to Hank Patterson.”
“Understood.” She planted her hands on her hips. “I might like this town,” she said. “Or at least this place.”
“Best food around. Everyone comes here.”
“That’s good to know.” She glanced over her shoulder and gave him a weak smile.
A year ago he’d been lying flat in a hospital bed after she and her team managed to evacuate them from behind enemy lines.
Fay had saved his life.
He had no doubt about that.
However, for a long time, he had blamed her for the death of two of his buddies and the bullets that tore through his body that ended his career as a Navy SEAL.
He hadn’t liked her plan the moment her voice crackled over the radio. He and his men had already been under attack.
Twice.
Their location had been compromised and he hadn’t been able to figure out how that had happened.
But that wasn’t her fault because she had nothing to do with the reason his team was in an undisclosed area in the first place. Which meant if there was a mole, it hadn’t come from her end of things, and that took some time for him to accept.
“What do you know about the case we’ve been assigned to?” Fay asked.