Hard to Trust Read Free

hire out. I would think they'd want to keep any potential messiness private."
    "Somebody has a soft spot for this particular agent and is reluctant to send the agency after her. She got shot in the shoulder in Afghanistan and passed out from blood loss. One of her best friends from The Farm was taken away and executed. They want to give her the benefit of the doubt, which is why they contracted out for the job." Jennings smiled. "And let's face it, you have a certain je ne sais quoi with the ladies."
    Even while the false notion he had a way with women stuck in his throat, Jake managed to speak. "When do I start?"
    "The minute you walked inside the door. I have a flight booked for early evening to Washington, DC." Jennings stood and shook Jake's hand. "Good luck. Don't disappoint me, Jake."
    "I'll do my best." He couldn't help but wonder that, if he failed, this might be his last assignment for The Alliance. He had a lot to prove. And even more to make up for.
     
     

CHAPTER TWO
     
    Alex .
    Tessa tried to keep the drumming of his name out of her head, but it didn't work. She couldn't help but remember their first days together as agents when they walked the halls of Langley before getting their first assignments. Fast friends. Committed from the start because of their similar backgrounds. Now he was dead.
    And she'd done a bad, bad thing.
    A little snooping led to a whole lot of trouble. And questions. More questions than she had answers. And she hadn't even officially gone back to work yet.
    Being debriefed and shrunk and debriefed again until she thought she might run from the building screaming hadn't put her on a positive trajectory. But she'd been a good little girl and played by their rules. Then she'd done something a whole lot worse when she snuck into the counterintelligence unit and retrieved shredded documents. Old habits died hard. But in the past she'd uncovered some gems while doing this maneuver. The computer could never be totally erased. Deleted documents were still hiding around inside somewhere. Print documents were safer because they could be shredded. If nothing else, she had a whole lot of patience.
    Yep, she'd done a bad, bad thing, all right.
    She plunked her head against the back of the tub and allowed the warmth to take over. Little by little her body was giving in to the pull of the soothing waters, loosening her ever-throbbing shoulder that still hadn't healed from the bullet wound. Bits of steam wafted around as she closed her eyes. If she could only get her mind to release some of the thoughts clogged inside.
    It had taken her the better part of twenty-four hours, but she'd painstakingly gone through the shredded documents piece by piece. As usual, she had to wade through grocery lists, tantalizing love notes, and whatnot to get to the good stuff. What was that old adage about curiosity killing the cat?
    Holding up the heavily taped piece of paper to the light, she read the transmission and nearly wept. It wasn't at all what she'd expected. She had to be losing it.
    Backgammon—Alex's game. He loved the strategy involved. Coincidence somebody was using that code name? Maybe.
    The idea was crazy. Ludicrous. This was all about not wanting to face the reality of losing her best friend. Who was she kidding? Her only friend.
    She propped her laptop on the side of the tub. Maybe if she played the video of his murder enough times, her brain would finally capitulate and make peace with what happened. Alex was gone. As in dead gone. She was alive, with enough gaps in her memory that didn't jibe with what she knew to be true. So she was making stuff up to appease her guilt. And there was that memory that wouldn't go away—part real, part fabrication, no doubt.
    As many times as she'd watched the grainy video, the jolt of the gunshot hitting Alex, sending his chair tumbling to the ground, jarred her to a point that she nearly forgot to breathe until the hitch in her chest reminded her. She played