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

the link, he’d find the leak, he'd find whoever was searching her houses. He'd find her.
    He’d make amends for their final, bitter confrontation. Then they’d be done. He could move on.
    If the process ripped a hole in his heart, so be it. He’d right the wrong.
    As he left the Pearsons' house, Jordan could swear he smelled the faint scent of gun oil.

NINE
    September 15
    Nassau, Bahamas
    The Nassau airport hallway had an industrial feel, walls either a soft, pale yellow or a warm cream, dingy from years of incessant heat, dust from the field along the airstrip, and the insidious dirt of thousands of travelers.
    Security personnel inspected every bag with a languid, inattentive sweep of the bomb detection cloth and less interest in the luggage contents than a teenager listening to their parents drone.
    They waved me through, and I made my way to the gate. My insides heaved but I kept down the bile rising in my throat. Acid burned through my esophagus, igniting a sharp pain. I rubbed my breastbone to soothe the ache.
    I couldn’t afford to throw up. If they thought I was sick, they might not let me on that plane.
    Sunlight streamed through intermittent windows. Guards in pairs sat in metal folding chairs at regular intervals, their burnished ebony skin gleamed with sweat as their gazes skimmed with a routine boredom over the passengers herding toward the gates.
    Ceiling fans circled lazily, swishing the oppressive heat in new directions, doing little to cool off the long bare hallway. An occasional gust of wind, a precursor to the approaching tropical storm, would swirl through the windows and grant momentary relief.
    I had my cover story in place. My passport was Bahamian, and I was a fifty-year-old black woman going to visit her sister in Philadelphia.
    From Philly, D.C. is a short two hour drive.
    The sheen of perspiration should be taken for perpetual sweating, not the uncharacteristic nervousness that gripped my stomach.
    I’d planned for one more week of treatments to change the amount of pigment in my skin. Fortunately, I had turned even darker in the past twenty-four hours, because after Jordan’s visit, I decided to step up my timetable and get out of the Bahamas now.
    I’d told Neli to stay permanently away until I figured out what the hell was going on. She was happy to do so after her run-in with Jordan.
    Poor thing. She’d barely recovered. Jordan continued to call Neli every day to check in. Every day he pressed harder.
    He wouldn’t hurt her and I told her so.
    After their altercation, I wasn’t sure whether he’d been involved in my capture, or not. His reaction to Neli, his desperation, had come through with every movement.
    I wanted to hope the desperation was for my safety. Not for my harm.
    I wanted to believe he’d come to the Bahamas to help me. Wanted to believe far more than was wise.
    On one level I couldn’t believe he had anything to do with my imprisonment and torture. On another I knew plenty of operatives before me had been exploited and betrayed and there would be plenty more afterward.
    Any type of physical relationship left an agent vulnerable to undue influence and betrayal.
    If he wasn’t involved, he needed to shut up about me, or someone was going to notice him asking questions.
    First things first, I had to figure out who was after me and why.
    In the brightly woven canvas bag slung casually over my shoulder, a USB flash drive was sewn into a false lining. The information on the drive was the ticket to discovering why I’d been targeted.
    Thank my paranoia for making a copy of the file I’d compiled on Department 5491 and putting the storage device in the bank on my last visit here.
    The file consisted of details on me and eleven other people.
    An unusually high percentage of people on the list were currently in government service. A few with the NSA and CIA. One with the DIA. One college student. One with very little information beyond a name. She’d dropped off the