now that it was in the open, all she wanted to do was shove it back into the shadows.
Instead, she clicked her blinker with her pinkie, signaling a left turn. Trust was hard for her, maybe impossible, and for just cause. Once betrayed, twice shy. Still, he deserved an answer, so she gave him the only one she could. “I don’t know.”
“Since I hired on with you at Lost, Inc., you’ve put me through test after test—and you’ve poured on even more of them in our personal relationship.” He lifted a warning finger. “This is not the time for you to say we don’t have a personal relationship.”
She’d like to deny it, but she couldn’t. First, it wasn’t true. They did have a relationship. A mostly adversarial one, but after four months under horrific conditions, she had to admit there was also a spark between them that promised they could be very good together...maybe. Eventually. And, keeping it real and fair, she had tested him to the max professionally and personally. Every single time, he’d passed with flying colors. Yet even that hadn’t removed her doubts and resolved her trust issues.
“Not disputing the relationship,” he said. “That’s progress. Yet you don’t know what it’s going to take to trust me. And if you don’t know, then obviously I can’t know.” He sighed again. More deeply. “So let’s try a different question. How about keeping it simple—just tell me about this jaunt of yours tonight?”
Boldly stated, and a fair question. Right after the agency’s open house during the annual Fall Festival back in October, she’d been invited to the military installation and quizzed about a security breach at the Nest. It had been easy to see they were after someone to blame. She’d countered by hiring Grant. He’d just left active duty working in the Office of Special Investigations for the very commander and vice commander who had questioned her, and she needed to keep an eye on him. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Commander Talbot and Vice Commander Dayton were also the reason she was watching the Nest. She strongly suspected those two men had links to two civilian murders that unfortunately everyone except her deemed solved. The cases had been officially closed.
That was her initial connection to Grant Deaver. And while he hadn’t sold her out—yet—he had reported Lost, Inc., events back to Talbot and Dayton, purportedly defending her agency. Still, the commander had a security breach at the Nest, and he and his vice commander were trying their best to blame it on someone at her agency. With Grant reporting to them, how could she trust him?
Tempted to blast that question at him, she fingered the Purple Heart medal in her jacket pocket to steady herself. This would be a dangerous time to lose her temper. Trust him with the truth? Oh, how she wished she could. “I can’t answer that, either.”
He grumbled under his breath. “How can you be attracted enough to me to date me but not trust me at all? I don’t get it, Madison.”
“Neither do I,” she admitted, hating being put on the spot like this. “Ordinarily, I wouldn’t be attracted and I’d never put you on my payroll—”
“I think I’ve just been insulted.”
Two hundred pounds and six feet of bruised male ego she did not need. “That came out wrong.” She glanced at him then back at the road. “Of course I’m attracted to you. What woman wouldn’t be? What I meant was there’s something about you that gets to me, but I wish it didn’t.”
“Because I’m on your payroll.”
“Not really.” Oh, she didn’t want to get into this. Weary already, she didn’t want to resurrect old wounds.
He flicked at the door handle with his fingertips. “You know, I’d really like to get out of this car, walk away from you and never look back—”
Panic threatened. “Grant, don’t. Please.” She didn’t want him to go. She wanted... She didn’t know what she wanted, but she wanted him with her.
“I won’t.” His frown deepened to a scowl. “Because as unfair as this situation is, I understand, and I’m as conflicted about you as you are about me.”
The attraction was mutual...and mutually disdainful. That pricked more than her pride. It pricked her heart. “Sometimes God has a bizarre sense of humor.”
“Apparently.” He lifted a finger. “Watch that deer.”
Spotting it on the edge of the road, Madison slowed and veered into the other lane to give the animal a wide berth. “Listen, I admit that this case has me worked up, and I’m touchier than usual because of it. It’s also been a really long night. Can we talk about this later?” After she thawed out would be good.
“‘This case,’ you said. So you were at the Nest because of the David Pace and Beth Crane murders.” Grant’s frustration showed in his expression.
David Pace and Beth Crane were both reporters who’d been murdered after asking questions about the Nest. No one outside a very small group even knew the Nest existed. Pace and Crane were not in that loop. That much both she and Grant knew. She didn’t confirm or deny Grant’s suspicion.
“Madison, those murders were solved. Gary Crawford confessed to killing them both. What more do you need to let go of this obsession that Talbot and Dayton are responsible for their deaths?”
She pulled into the office parking lot, then turned in her seat to look into the face of the man she cared more for than any man in her life and trusted less than any man she’d ever let get within shouting distance. “I need the truth. I believe David and Beth were sacrificed. I’ve been sacrificed, and I won’t stand by and let it happen to them, too.”
Grant’s expression softened. “They’re not lost, Madison. They’re dead.”
Her heart clenched. “The truth about what happened to them and why it happened is lost. That’s just as bad. Their families deserve to know the facts.”
His mouth flattened to a slash and he stared out the windshield.
“Grant, you have to understand.” Her mouth went ash dry. Weary or not, she forced herself to open old wounds anyway. “When I was on active duty in Afghanistan, I was on a mission that went south. Because of my job, my superiors sacrificed me. You know I was taken prisoner, but there are things you don’t know.”
He knew she’d worked in the intelligence realm, and asked, “Like what?”
She worked hard to keep the anger still simmering inside her out of her voice. “They knew I was alive but classified me killed in action, anyway—to avoid an international incident, I was later told.” She cocked her head. “We can’t admit we have spies out there, you know.”
“That’s standard operating procedure.”
“Except when it happens to you.” The back of her nose burned. “I gave everything and I was disposable. Just one of many, and leaving me behind was expedient—”
“You were treated no differently than anyone else. Everyone in Intel knows that’s the way it works.”
“Exactly. Operatives and agents know, but my parents didn’t sign on to that. They’re not in Intel and they didn’t know. My family should have been told the truth—I believed they would be told the truth—but they weren’t. They were told I was dead.” A hard lump lodged in her throat. Her eyes stung. “For the next eighteen
