Vicki Hinze - Torn Loyalties

“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 months, I was a POW and they mourned my death.”

“Eighteen months. I knew you’d gotten a Purple Heart, but I had no idea you were held that long.” Grant stilled. Stared at her. “How did they finally get you out?”

Her heart twisted. “Did you not hear me? They did nothing but forget me and leave me to rot in a four-by-six cell.” She hiked her chin. “I got myself out. I watched, waited and learned. They had me working in the kitchen, which included going to market. I studied everything, watched everyone, looking for weaknesses and information I could use. There was one guard who was particularly slow on the uptake. He’d escort me to the market now and then. One day when he did, I spotted an opening, and I took it. I escaped.”

“Totally on your own?”

“Totally.” The bitterness at that surged in her. Mingled with the anger, it proved too strong to fight. “It took me four months to make my way back to the States.

“No one would officially help me, Grant. I didn’t exist.”

“So you had no money, no papers, and yet you managed to get back home?”

“Money can be earned and papers bought.” It hadn’t been easy. Parts of the ordeal had been horrifically dangerous and difficult. Getting out of Pakistan had been a nightmare, and the ship... She shuddered just thinking of the ship. Old and moldy—she was posing as a young man and working as a deckhand—it had been awful. And yet she had prayed through it and made it. “I prepositioned funds and papers but it took time and finesse to get to them. Yet that’s not the point. The point is that for all the time I was held captive and trying to get home—until the moment I knocked on my parents’ front door and my mother answered, my parents thought I was dead.”

Never would Madison forget the ravages of grief in them, their utter shock at seeing her, or their overwhelming relief of her still being alive and coming home to them.

“I can imagine their relief.” He frowned. “You’re cold.” Reaching over, he adjusted the heater to take out the chill. “So what happened when you showed up at headquarters?”

“They gave me a Purple Heart and offered me a promotion with a stateside slot.”

“You kept the medal but departed the fix.”

She nodded. “No way was I staying active duty after they abandoned me. But the medal was different.”

“You’d earned it.”

It’d taken months for her physical wounds to heal. But the emotional ones cut even deeper and some remained raw. “I did earn it, but no.” She let him see the steel in her gaze. “I still believe in the spirit it embodies. I trust that spirit and the medal reminds me that there are others out there like me.”

“That’s why you opened Lost, Inc. To bring the lost home.”

She nodded. Now maybe he’d understand why she couldn’t just drop the Pace and Crane murders.

“I’m sorry you went through that.” Grant clasped her hand.

“Me, too.” She gave him a bittersweet smile. It was a time of trials but also a time that solidified her faith. She’d done the impossible then, and no one knew better than she that she couldn’t have done it alone, though she was still working at not being bitter that God hadn’t spared her from the trial.

“I understand why you want the truth on the murders, Madison, but I believe you already have it. What I still don’t understand is you going out to the Nest.” Grant squeezed her hand. “I mean, what can you learn by staring at the outside of the facility that will prove anything?”