“I knew there were tunnels down here,” Ham said.
“They lead all over the mall area, but this one in particular leads to White’s favorite restaurant, the Hamilton.”
“I like the name.”
He followed Logan down the corridor, up another flight of stairs, and into the back room of a kitchen. Logan walked through the area without blinking and came out into a larger room that reminded Ham of an old speakeasy, with a long, deep walnut bar, chandeliers, and cigar chairs.
Logan led him into a back room and closed the door.
Senator Isaac White sat alone at a table, drinking a cup of coffee. He was impeccably dressed, of course, in a gray suit and blue tie, but Ham easily remembered the day when White wore muddy BDUs and night-vision goggles. The man cleaned up well, his blue eyes warm as he met Ham’s grip. “Thanks for meeting me, Ham.”
“Anytime, Senator. Or should I say, Mr. President.”
“Isaac, please, and it’s too soon for that. But thanks for the sentiment.” He laughed, though, and offered Ham a seat.
Ham would have preferred to stand, the buzz under his skin nearly lighting him on fire. “So, what is this all about?”
Isaac ran his thumb around the edge of his mug. “Logan, can you give us the room?”
Logan left, the door closing softly behind him, and Isaac leaned forward and reached into his pocket. Pulled out a piece of paper. “This is a copy of an email I was forwarded from a contact I have in Europe. It’s a request for contact from one of our operatives in deep cover. The operative calls himself simply Three, and we think he or she has the NOC list. The contact claims that they stole it from the Russians and need to get it into safe hands.”
Ham picked up the email. “Who did you get this from?”
Isaac considered him. “The Prince. Also known as Roy.”
The name punched Ham, and he drew in his breath. “Royal Benjamin.” He glanced at the door. “Does Logan know this?”
“Yes. He is aware that Roy has been working as a blacklist operator for a few years now.” Isaac didn’t continue, but Ham had a sense that Logan knew it because of his run-in with a rogue CIA group at work inside the company—a story he’d told Orion a year ago when he showed up shot in Alaska, on the run and in trouble.
Ham didn’t ask how Logan had hooked up with White, but the senator had told him once that Logan was safe, so . . .
“Then why did you have him step out?”
“Because I wanted you to be free to say no,” White said.
“No?”
“Roy sent me a message and told me the meet went south. He was there, scoping out the scene before the meet, but so was someone else—possibly a rogue agent. How he found out about the meet, Roy doesn’t know. Just that he intercepted Three, and when Roy tried to chase the operative down, he failed. Which means the NOC list is still at large.”
“And where do I fit in?”
“Somehow, Roy was compromised. He said that the operator won’t trust him, and that he needs someone Three might agree to meet with on sight.”
Ham frowned. “I don’t understand.”
Isaac sighed. Nodded. “I remember what happened in Chechnya, Ham. That you lost your wife.”
Ham took a breath.
“I also know about your daughter, and the idea that your wife didn’t die, but in fact embedded with a rebel Chechen group for the last ten years.”
His heart had begun to drown out Isaac’s words.
“We have reason to believe that . . . well, Three is in fact Signe Kincaid. Your wife.”
His wife.
And although he suspected it, even longed for it, the words out of Isaac’s mouth flattened Ham. He had nothing, even when Isaac produced a picture on his phone, laying it in front of Ham.
It was blurred, and just a side view, so it was hard to tell, but the woman wore her blonde hair tied up in a bun, a pair of sunglasses, and her profile . . .
Yeah, Ham would know Signe anywhere. He bit back the crazy urge to cry.
“If we can reestablish contact with her, would you be willing to set up a meet and recover the NOC list?”
Oh, he’d do much more than that.
You can’t fix this, Ham.
Oh yes, he could.
He would bring her home.
Jenny should probably quit the team. Because it didn’t take a doctor of psychology or a former CIA profiler to recognize the pain her very presence caused Orion.
Just like the pain his presence caused her. Because the man cleaned up oh, so very well. He wore a black suit, white dress shirt, and navy-blue tie, and had shaven. Frankly, one look at him made Jenny want to turn around and leave the ballroom, despite the glitter of the event with its golden chairs, white tablecloths, and ornate chandeliers dappling magic around the room, enhanced by the classical music playing from the small ensemble at the front.
The Red Cross knew how to throw a gala. She thought she spotted a few celebrities in the audience—Trace Adkins, Sara Evans, and even Eli Manning milling with the crowd.
None of them caught her eye like Orion Starr. He’d walked into the room with Jake, a hard set to his jaw, and when he looked her way, she’d averted her eyes.
She simply didn’t know what to say to him.
Oh, what a debacle.
Now, he sat across from her, with Jake, Scarlett, and Ford between them to her left, Ham and his Red Cross friend Pete Brooks with fiancée Jess Tagg on her right. Which meant Jenny had a nearly unobstructed view—save for the orange bird-of-paradise flower arrangement in the middle of the table—of Orion and the way he just wouldn’t look at her, either.
It was all her fault.
She could have handled her response to Orion’s sweet proposal much, much, much better.
She’d simply panicked—a reaction, really, that had been building for the nearly twenty-four hours after she’d watched him rescue Aggie and the two other children at the carnival.
Of course he scrambled up that Ferris wheel after Ham.
Of course he rescued the two other children in the other basket.
And of course he’d relish darling Aggie’s affection, the way she called him Uncle Ry.
Watching him teach Aggie how to shoot baskets had nearly turned Jenny into a puddle. He wasn’t just devastatingly handsome, with his dark brown hair, those pensive green eyes that could see right into her heart—or most of it—but he had a rescuer’s heart.
She’d always known that, birthed in the days she’d watched him deploy and rescue soldiers working in-country in Afghanistan as a pararescue jumper.
Yes, Orion was a hero.
But he was downright dangerous to her heart. Because inevitably—and shoot, she should have known this would happen—he’d want more.
Marriage. Family. Children.
It wasn’t until she saw him with Aggie that that last truth had clicked in and destroyed everything.
“Are you finished, ma’am?” A waiter gestured to her half-finished chicken cordon bleu, asparagus, and mashed potatoes. She nodded and turned to listen to the speaker just being introduced.
Presidential candidate Isaac White’s running mate, Senator Reba Jackson. An impressive woman with blondish-red hair, tall, striking, dressed in a white pantsuit with a blue-and-white handkerchief around her neck. She had taken the podium after the welcomes and talked a little about how the Red Cross had saved lives after the Hurricane Lucy disaster in the Keys. And how, once she and White were elected, they would continue to support the work of the Red Cross, blah, blah, blah . . . Jenny had tuned her out, every cell of her body focused on Orion and his comments to Pete during today’s introductory training.