Eve opened her eyes and pulled away from Zane, but before she turned, she caught the look on his resolute face. The one that said, Don’t worry, I’m not leaving you. The one that sent ripples of awareness all through her body.

They moved down the path and into the trees, and when Carter felt they were far enough so that no one could hear him, he stopped and turned their way. “I could get into serious hot water for this, but fuck it. You two are already in so much hot water it’s boiling. Roberts is gunning for the deputy director position within the Company. He’s got sway within the Agency. Big sway. Whether he had a hand in Aegis’s appointment to that op, I have no idea. But I will tell you this. He’s got no love for your boss Ryder. If you’re asking me on the record if he set Aegis up to take the fall in Guatemala, I’d say that’s bullshit. Everyone in the Company wanted Humbolt back alive. Off the record, though, I’d say most of us thought it was a suicide mission. No black ops team has ever infiltrated that cartel’s stronghold without major casualties.”

Eve’s gaze slowly slid Zane’s way.

His jaw tightened, but he didn’t look at her. His intense gaze was locked solidly on Carter. “Did Roberts know Eve had been tipped off that the op had been compromised?”

“I don’t know.” Carter frowned. “It’s possible, I guess. He might have known.”

So all of this—the Agency coming down on her—she was being punished because of Zane’s connection to Aegis? No. That was too . . . fucking simple.

She looked up at Carter. “Humbolt is the key to all of this. What was he working on?”

“I—”

“Eve.” Zane’s hand against her arm drew Eve around, and she looked down the path, toward a redheaded woman wearing slacks and a white blouse rolled up to her elbows, heading their direction.

“That’s Natalie,” she breathed.

Natalie tucked her shoulder-length hair behind her ears and eyed their group. When she caught Eve’s gaze, she nodded, then sat on the bench. But her eagle eyes were watching every move Zane and Carter made, and Eve knew she was surprised to find the players had multiplied.

Eve didn’t know the woman well. Natalie was in her midthirties and had been in the business a little longer than Eve, but her agency had always been more than willing to cooperate when Eve needed help, and over the years she’d been a solid contact Eve could count on.

They headed her direction. Sitting next to Natalie on the bench, Eve nodded toward the two men. “This is Carter and Sawyer.”

Natalie’s dark gaze locked on Zane. “I recognize you.”

“Don’t believe everything you see or read,” he said with a wink. “It’s never true.”

A wry smile curled her lips. “I never do.” Her humor faded as she focused on Eve. “People within your organization are asking questions. My agency’s been able to head them off so far, but it won’t be long before they discover we met.”

“I appreciate that. Natalie, I need to know about the file Tyrone Smith was supposed to sell to me. It’s at the root of all of this. It wasn’t a list of compromised agents like you led me to believe.”

Natalie’s wary gaze drifted to Zane, then Carter.

“It’s okay,” Eve assured her. “They’re safe.”

Natalie was silent a moment, looking them both over again, and Eve’s adrenaline surged over the possibility the woman might not tell what she knew.

Finally, Natalie’s gaze settled on Eve once more. “No. It wasn’t. I—”

“That was my doing,” Carter cut in.

Eve’s gaze snapped his way. “What?”

He glanced toward Natalie and then focused on Eve. “CSIS has been in contact with the Agency about this since before Humbolt was killed. When we realized Smith was the middleman Humbolt was using, we needed someone to get close to the file. ADD Roberts suggested you. He thinks quite highly of you, Juliet. Or at least, he did.”

Eve’s brow lowered. “What does Humbolt have to do with all of this?”

“A few years ago,” Natalie said, “a research team at the State University of New York chemically synthesized an artificial polio virus from scratch. You might have heard about it in the news. They started with the genetic sequence, which they found online, then created small DNA strands, which they combined to reconstruct the viral genome. They then added a chemical cocktail that brought the entire pathogenic virus to life. Polio, as you know, is an ineffective biological weapon, but Humbolt was applying their research techniques to other viruses.”

“What kind of viruses?” Zane asked. “Ebola, Marburg, Venezuelan equine encephalitis . . . all of those have been considered as biological weapons but ruled out because of a lack of efficient delivery method.”

“Correct,” Natalie said, looking up at him. “But Humbolt wasn’t concerned with those viruses.”

“What was he concerned with?” Eve asked.

Natalie focused on her again. “Our intel says one particularly nasty virus that was eradicated more than twenty years ago. One that’s officially only stored at two high-security laboratories in the world. One of which is in Russia. And the other—”

Shit. “The United States,” Eve breathed.

“Bingo,” Natalie answered.

“Smallpox,” Zane said, his gaze growing more serious. “You’re telling us Humbolt was working on the production of an artificially produced smallpox virus.”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Eve asked. “Why waste his time creating something for the government they already have access to?”

“Because he wasn’t working for the US government, Juliet,” Natalie said. “Adam Humbolt was a French citizen. Our intel says he was preparing to shop what he had to the highest bidder for a large sum of cash.”

“Holy shit,” Zane muttered.

Holy shit didn’t even begin to cover it. Slowly, Eve’s gaze slid back to Zane. He’d been right. The US government had set Aegis up. They’d needed that op in Guatemala to fail. They’d wanted Humbolt dead. And Zane had been caught in the crosshairs.

Her throat grew thick. She had to focus on the here and now. She faced Natalie again. “So the file—”

“We think it contained Humbolt’s research notes,” Carter answered. When she glanced his way again, he said, “We knew Smith was feeling out the competition and that Humbolt was ready to sell what he had to the highest bidder. The smallpox genome has over two hundred thousand base pairs, so creating an artificial virus is still years away, but his research would cut that time in half with the right scientists working on what he’d already found. The Agency was concerned and sent you in to get it back.”

“Without my knowing.”

“Let’s just say there were . . . questions”—he glanced toward Zane—“about where your loyalties rested. After the incident in Guatemala, Roberts wanted to make sure you were still committed to the Company. And then all this happened with the Chechens and Sawyer and you—”

Eve’s temper shot up. “I’m not in league with any Chechen terrorists.”

“I know that,” he said on a sigh. “But someone’s setting you up to make it look like you are. The big question is why.”

Eve’s pulse shot up. If anything, this little meeting had created more questions than answers.

That file was going to save her life, though. If she wanted to clear her name—clear Zane’s name—she needed to find it and prove her loyalty to the United States. She looked at Carter. “So where is the file now?”

“That, we don’t know.” He tucked his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “Smith was supposed to make the drop with you. The fact that he didn’t leads us to believe someone got to him before we did. Your disappearance from the scene of the bombing led to questions. Originally the Agency just wanted to pick you up to find out what had gone wrong. But after that cash was dumped into your account, and with the file still missing, well . . . let’s just say your involvement in all of this has jumped a few notches.”

A shriek echoed from the direction of the playground. Zane turned to look. From where he was standing, he had a better view through the trees than Eve did on the bench, but when he muttered, “Fuck,” under his breath, she knew a child hadn’t simply fallen off a swing or been hit by a Frisbee.

“What’s going on?” Eve asked, slowly pushing to her feet.

Zane pulled the Beretta from the holster at his lower back. “We’re about to have company.”

“Who?” Eve asked, reaching for her weapon. From the corner of her eye she saw Carter and Natalie do the same.

Zane shot her a we’re fucked look over his shoulder. “Your friends from the warehouse.”

17

Landon stared at the small, well-kept two-story home on a quiet street in the Fremont district of Seattle. The lawn was neatly mowed, the fence was freshly painted, and the iron chairs on the wide front porch were decked out with new seat cushions.

Not your typical safe house. Then again, that didn’t mean it wasn’t the right place. Every curtain was closed tight, blocking the inside from view, and the fence was taller than your standard six-foot fare, reminding him of that house in Cleveland where those three women had been held captive by a monster for years on end.

His stomach tightened as he sat in the shade of an oak tree and watched the house. When not a single person came or went in an hour, he decided to take a closer look.

His mind drifted to Olivia Wolfe as he crossed the street, and he couldn’t help but wonder what she was thinking. What she was feeling. Fear and trauma weren’t things that could be measured in time. Whether it was a day, a week, or ten years, a person’s life could be changed forever by one single moment. He knew that better than most because usually he was the cause.