Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 145091 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145091 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
What he was about to do to his mother would make him look worse to Taylor, would remind her of all of his lies.
He hated what he was about to do, but there was no way around it.
He didn’t have another choice.
His cell rang, and he slipped it out of his pocket. Lydia. He slid his finger across the screen to accept the call. Anything to put off the inevitable. “Hey. What am I looking at?”
“Your mom is freaked out.” Lydia sounded a little freaked out herself. “I tried to explain to her that this had to be some kind of scam.”
That would be the way the Agency would handle the situation. Lydia didn’t know about the fact that his sister had come back from the dead, but she knew how to handle a freaked-out parent of an agent. “Of course it is. Tell me again exactly what happened and when.”
He was well aware he wasn’t alone in the room. Everyone was looking at him, and he wished he could tell them all to leave, but that wouldn’t foster the trust he needed for this op to work. Unfortunately, his family was the op this time.
Anger at his father threatened to boil over. His father had put him in this position and now refused to have anything to do with it. He didn’t even want to talk about Julia. In his father’s mind Julia was already dead, and he’d put his feelings aside like a real man should. He probably wasn’t even awake for this freak out. They’d had separate bedrooms for the last decade, and his mom wouldn’t want to bother him.
“About an hour ago I got a call from your mother,” Lydia explained, tension in her tone. “She was practically hysterical. Like I’ve never heard her so upset. She’s always calm.”
His mother had been a woman in politics for forty years. She’d learned to be calm in even the most emotional of circumstances. His mom had stared down protestors screaming in her face and calling for her head and never raised her tone. “I’m sure having her dead daughter call her in the middle of the night was disconcerting.”
“She was trying to call you, but you weren’t picking up your cell.”
Because he’d left it in the locker room, and once he’d realized there was a problem, he couldn’t simply call her back without coming up with a plan. “I was indisposed. But I think I would have probably handled this poorly. I’m glad I’m going into the situation knowing what’s going on. I could have screwed it up.”
“That’s not true.” Lydia’s voice went soothing. “No one would have handled this better than you, Drake. It’s a hard thing to deal with. I know you wanted a vacation, but it might be time to come home. We have the job in London coming up, and I think we should talk about sending someone else. I’ll stay here in DC with you, and we can figure out how to deal with your mother. I can’t imagine this is the only time someone is going to try to scam her.”
He was absolutely sure Lydia was right about Julia not stopping, but he couldn’t cancel the London trip. The London trip was about more than his cover. He hated that he needed cover from his own tech. She thought he was going to England to gather intel at the conference that would bring Rebecca Walsh to London and allow Taylor to begin her dangerous mission. As far as Lydia knew, though, this was a routine intelligence-gathering op. “I’m fine. I’m not the one going into the field. So what exactly did the caller tell my mother?”
“I’m not entirely certain,” Lydia said. “I didn’t hear the conversation. Honestly, I’m surprised this took so long. Everyone in DC knows about the senator’s missing daughter. You know she’s gotten letters where the writer claims to have seen Julia and tried to demand a reward. This is just another person looking to exploit your mom’s grief.”
“What did she say?” He knew this wasn’t a scam. This was Julia’s next move, and he should have been ready for it. Her first had been to show herself to Kyle and go after MaeBe. She’d surely known where they all were since they hadn’t exactly been hiding. They’d thought she was dead, and she had the power of surprise on her side.
It had only been the fact that Boomer had managed to follow her that they’d been able to save MaeBe and Deke Murphy’s fiancée, Maddie Hill. Otherwise, Julia would have gotten what she needed out of Maddie and killed her and used MaeBe to force Kyle to her side. What she would do with him once she got him there was anyone’s guess.
He wondered if she’d known he was involved in that op or if her own brother hadn’t mattered at all.