Page 80 of With One Breath (Blackhawk Security)

Chapter 25

Mel stopped in her tracks and stared around the room. Laila was here. And so were Cody and Dev.

Her gaze lingered on Dev for a long moment, then she looked at Jase. “I came by to see how you’re doing, Jase, but you have a lot of visitors right now. I’ll come back later.”

“No,” Dev said, curling his fingers into his palms. “Stay. I was just on my way out the door.”

He held out his fist to Jase, and after a painfully long moment, Jase bumped it. Dev hurried out of the room without looking at her or anyone else.

As the door snicked closed behind him, Cody stood up from the second chair and shoved it in Mel’s direction. “Have a seat, boss. Tell us why you kicked Dev to the curb.”

Mel narrowed her gaze on Cody, then glanced at Jase. “Is that what he told you?”

Cody shrugged one shoulder. “Said you tossed his ass out the door.”

“Not exactly what happened,” Mel said, anger rising inside her like a wave. She bit her tongue to keep from saying more. “Jase. How’re you doing?”

“Oh, I’m peachy keen, boss,” he said, waving his arm over his injured leg. “I’ll be dancing by next week.”

Mel walked over to Jase’s bed. Touched his hand. “I’m so sorry this happened to you,” she said softly.

He shrugged. “War. Shit happens.”

“Yeah, it does.” She wanted to tell him it didn’t have to define his life, but one look at his face was all it had taken for her to realize it was too soon. He was still wallowing in his pity party.

“What’s next for you, boss?” Jase asked. “Where are they sending you?”

Mel wanted to jolt him out of his ‘make nice’ party manners. “No one’s sending me anywhere. I just quit my job.”

The other three people in the room all gasped at the same time. Laila was the first to recover. “How come, Mel?”

Mel stared at her hands for a long moment, then looked at Laila. “You ever meet my boss, Cliff Kingsley?”

“I don’t think so,” she said, shaking her head.

“I know Jase and Cody have.” The fury and grief that had been roaring through Mel since she walked out of her office thundered to life again, and she struggled to tamp it down. “I quit my job. I put my furniture into storage and I’m heading out to visit my sister in Seattle while I figure out what I want to do next.”

“You’re driving to Seattle by yourself?” Laila asked quietly.

Mel clenched her teeth as the familiar pain stabbed into her heart. She’d hoped Dev would drive with her. “That’s the plan.”

Laila’s eyes softened, and she reached for Mel’s hand. Gripped it gently. “I’m sorry, Mel. That really sucks. But why did you quit your job? I thought you loved what you did.”

“I loved working in the field with agents like you and Jase, Dev and Cody. Working at CIA headquarters? Not so much.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Laila asked. She smiled. “I was taught to keep secrets by the best, and I know Jase and Cody were, too. So you know we’d never repeat what you say.”

Mel began to say no. But resentment at Cliff bubbled up inside her again, and she realized that the only way to get past it was to lance the boil and let all the ugliness out.

“There was a reason you never met my boss Cliff Kingsley while you were in Afghanistan. I told him nothing about my agents, including their identities and where they worked. It was for security reasons. The fewer people who knew who they were, the less chance you could be betrayed.”

“You’re right,” Laila murmured. “I don’t think I ever even heard his name.”

“He continued to be my boss when we came back to Washington.” She sighed. “He must have heard that Dev... that we weren’t together anymore, because he started to ask me out. I said no. But Cliff had trouble taking no for an answer, and he continued to press me. In retrospect, I reacted badly. I tried to hide it, but I have nothing but scorn for Cliff. He’s a bureaucrat. Never did any field work. Just managed people and shuffled paperwork.”

Mel sighed. “He didn’t take my refusals well. Cliff is the vindictive sort, and I was afraid he’d retaliate. So I backed up all my work on a new computer that I never connected to the internet.” She smiled, but there was no humor in it. “I left breadcrumbs on my work computer and found that Cliff’d been hacking into it and stealing my work. Then I charted his meetings with his boss, and realized he was presenting my work as his.”

Laila leaned closer. “So what did you do?”

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