Free Betrayals (Black Cipher Files series Book 2) by Lisa Hughey

,
    “heard,” gasp ,
    “car.” Her eyes rolled back in her head and her body went limp beneath his hands.
    “Shit.” Jordan lowered her carefully to the wicker chaise lounge. He put two fingers to her neck and felt the rapid fluttering of her pulse. She’d be okay in a second. Terrific. He’d scared a little housekeeper so badly, she’d passed out.
    Jordan rubbed the back of his neck and from his crouch swept his gaze around the patio. He couldn’t get rid of the feeling of being watched.
    A camera could be hidden anywhere in this mess. If they’d wanted to make a move on him, they’d had ample time.
    He stood, stretched.
    Jordan bent down and checked on Neli again. Her breath was slow and deep, her eyelashes fluttered.
    “The Pearsons' house,” he repeated. Jordan pictured the layout of the street in his head, stared into the floor-to-ceiling plate glass window, and then toward the neighbor’s house. Where Neli had been working, where she’d looked when he said Staci might be dead.
    The neighbors.
    Jordan pounded down the shell driveway, shoes crunching loudly as he sprinted toward the other house.
    He ripped open the side door of the Pearsons' house and tore through the elaborate kitchen and ornate rooms.
    But the house was empty.
    A lone can of lemon furniture polish and a rag rested on an end table near the windows. Jordan lifted the rag and looked toward the window. From here, there was a clear view into Staci’s house.
    Maybe it really was that simple. Maybe Neli had been cleaning here, happened to see him walk in, and come to talk to him.
    Shit. This had been a total waste of time.
    But he wouldn’t, couldn’t give up on finding Staci.
    He refused to believe the decapitated woman in the picture was Staci. It wasn’t. It couldn’t be. The scar was missing.
    Staci was alive.
    He felt the truth in his soul. He would know if she were dead, he thought fiercely. He wouldn’t rest until he found her and made sure she was okay.
    Jesus, he was a mess. His sniper's calm was completely trashed by worry. He needed to slow down and think.
    Little things had started to add up after their fight, after she’d left, after he’d learned she worked for the CIA.
    She had been more paranoid, more protective of her privacy and more cautious than he’d ever realized. As each detail stripped away his blinders, he acknowledged he’d been taking note subconsciously and ignoring signs from the beginning. Her requests to keep their relationship private, their almost clandestine meetings in places other than D.C.
    What he’d intuited as a sense of adventure and travel had really been attempts for them to be together outside of her main home city, Washington.
    Reviewing their conversations, discussions about how to deal with the threats against the United States, he had begun to piece together what she really did for the CIA and his suspicions weren’t pretty.
    If he was correct, she’d been a recruiter, recruiting on several different levels. One level for the CIA and on another level, she’d recruited potential terrorists. He figured the CIA tracked and turned those recruits later on, assuming they could catch them before they committed a grievous act against the US or their allies. Those recruits would be infiltrating groups who wished the U.S. harm, without realizing that the government was watching them and recording their contacts.
    Where Jordan had been working to mitigate and eliminate terrorist threats, Staci had been actively developing new recruits.
    Jordan and Staci’s positions really had been polar opposites. He’d just ignored the clues. And while he actively disagreed with what she had been doing, in the end, her job didn’t matter to him. What mattered was Staci was in trouble.
    He was honor bound to help her, without tipping off the CIA that he knew she was alive. He’d go home. And start trying to dig into those private computer files he knew existed in her hidden office in the attic. He’d find