Page 9 of Fear No Evil

“Lena!”

Behind her, she could hear Jake muttering something to himself in Gaelic. Tears clogged her throat as she practically flew down the echoing stairwell.

Jakedidknow her. He had just articulated what the fearful voice inside of her was saying. But shehadto be ready. Mike and Jay were her colleagues. It could have beenshewho’d been kidnapped by the FARC, her life and her future snatched away from her. Not seizing this chance to help them smacked of cowardice.

Pushing out of the stairwell a moment later, she glimpsed the back of Jake’s head through the double glass doors as he left the building. A sigh of relief escaped her. She needed to pull herself together before running into him again.

Forcing a smile for the security guard, Maggie collected her Ruger.What now?She didn’t need two hours to get ready for her dinner with Jake and Charles. She would find somewhereto sit by the East River and use the time to silence her uncertainties.

If she didn’t want to be a liability in this rescue operation, she needed to get over her experience in Morocco and move on.

CHAPTER 3

Sitting across from Charles du Lac, the French Secret Service agent, Maggie struggled to retain the composure she’d summoned earlier by the river. The restaurant, located just off the hotel lobby, screamed art déco, with geometric patterns on the red carpet, chairs covered in gold and red upholstery, and crystal chandeliers cast a muted light onto every table, concealing‍—Maggie hoped‍—the tension creeping back into her.

Gripping her hands under the tablecloth, she kept up her end of a conversation with Charles while fighting her awareness of a silent Jake, to whom she hadn’t spoken a word since their exchange by the elevator. Given the discerning glint in Charles’s dark eyes as they swung from her to Jake, he could sense the undercurrent. But he didn’t bring it up until their salads arrived.

“Forgive me, but I’m noticing a wall between the two of you.” He drew an invisible line with his fork. “Perhaps you should get to know each other a bit better before passing yourselves off as man and wife.”

Since Maggie had just taken a bite of her salad, it was up to Jake to respond to that. He turned his head, considering her profile. Her cheeks grew warm. “Actually, we already know eachother. We both studied abroad during our junior year in college. Lena was my girlfriend.”

Jake placed a hand on her back without warning, nearly causing Maggie to choke as she swallowed.

“Ah.” Charles stabbed a fork into his salad while coming to private conclusions. “You call her Lena, that’s good. You can keep doing that. And since we’re all supposed to be French, let us assume that tongue from this moment, going forward.Ça va?”Okay?

Jake answered with a typical French shrug.“Oui, ça va.”

Maggie glanced over, surprised that even that smidgen of French sounded native, not at all like the stilted way he used to speak. “What language will the peacekeeping team be using?” she asked Charles.

“Spanish exclusively. Although everyone is probably conversant in English, I’ve told them neither of you speaks English well. I don’t want them hearing your American accents and wondering if you really are French‍—unless you can pull that off.”

Maggie tipped her head at Jake. “He can.” He’d made her laugh more than once, imitating a Frenchman speaking English. “But not me.” Meeting Jake’s eye, she added, “Did you go to language school for Spanish, too?”

He answered in French. “Non.I picked it up in the Peace Corps.”

Oh yes. He’d been working in Guatemala that one time she’d looked him up. “How long was your French language course?”

“Only six months, and I don’t have native proficiency yet, but‍?—”

“You speak it well.” She could give him that much. “With a perfect accent.”

“Merci.”

Across the table, Charles smiled as he stabbed at his salad again. “Well, this is more like it.” He persisted in his native tongue. “May I recommend you two sit at the bar after dinner and catch up?” His tone grew subtly harder. “I cannot have you airing your differences in front of the UN team and jeopardizing our mission.”

As Charles popped his fork into his mouth, Jake studied him with that same deceptively soft gaze Maggie remembered from Paris. Now that he was a SEAL, not just a twenty-year-old linguistics major, he didn’t seem so harmless. Charles wiped his mouth with his napkin while regarding Jake warily.

“Sure,” Jake finally responded. “We could have a drink at the bar after this.” His gaze landed on her.

Maggie, who’d offered that very thing earlier, turned him down. “Actually, I don’t drink.” At least not while she was still taking antianxiety medication.

Charles frowned at her. “I’m sure they have nonalcoholic options.”

Of course, they did, but sitting alone at the bar with Jake wasn’t going to resolve the tension between them because he would use that time to try to talk her out of this assignment. She didn’t need him undermining her wavering confidence.

Fearing the meal would last forever, she willed their waiter to bring their main course. But Charles proved adept at getting others to talk. Even before their entrées came, he had both Jake and Maggie offering up their opinions on current events. It came as no surprise that Jake’s outlook was similar to Maggie’s. They’d been equally like-minded in college‍—with one exception. Jake was a man after God’s own heart, while Maggie simply had no use for religion.

Not hearing him mention God, not even once over dinner, she wondered if his faith had waned over the years.Oh, I hope not.She’d admired him for it.

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