Free Fatal Pursuit (The Aegis Series) by Elisabeth Naughton Page B

soldier?”
    Okay, maybe he wasn’t quite as lost in thought as she’d assumed. “Ronan told you he was in the military?”
    Jake crossed his arms over his chest beside her, his thick biceps straining the thin black T-shirt he’d changed into just before they’d left Puerto Asis. “He didn’t have to. Once a soldier, always a soldier.”
    He recognized the stance too. That made sense. “The reason you didn’t know is because he’s not my father’s son. We’re half siblings. Through our mother.”
    “I thought your mom was dead.”
    “She is.”
    “Sorry. That was blunt. I meant—”
    “I know what you meant.” Marley’s good mood took a nosedive. This was not a story she enjoyed rehashing, but since Jake was here, helping her when he didn’t need to be, she decided there was no reason not to tell him.
    “Ronan’s a year younger than me. Omega Intel was just a fledgling company back when we were both born. My dad’s whole focus was building it up, gaining contracts, making a name for himself. He was gone all the time. Off running secret covert ops through different contracts with the government and private clients. My mother was lonely. I don’t blame her. I mean, I know what it’s like to live in this world. It’s stressful and secretive and isolating at times. And he didn’t make it easy on her. She was stuck on the outside looking in because my father didn’t tell her anything. Maybe he thought he was keeping her safe that way, I don’t know.
    “Anyway, I was just a baby at the time, so I don’t remember any of this, but according to my aunt Ginger who passed away from cancer a few years ago, my mother was in Nashville at the time visiting a friend and met some guy. My dad was somewhere in Africa at the time on this long mission—four months, I think. She hit it off with the guy and, well, got pregnant with Ronan.”
    “Ouch.”
    “Yeah. Ouch. Kinda hard to pass off a surprise pregnancy when your husband has been gone that long. She stopped seeing the guy in Nashville, but my dad didn’t want to have anything to do with her. He kicked her out. The divorce got ugly, but he had a much better attorney and got custody of me. She moved in with her parents and had Ronan, but the guilt of it all got to be too much for her. She killed herself when Ronan was only a year old.”
    “Oh man.”
    “My dad never talked about her. For a long time I thought she’d died of cancer when I was a baby. It was only when I was in college that my aunt filled me in on the whole story. I didn’t even know I had a brother until then.”
    “That must have been a shock.”
    “A good shock. I always wanted a sibling. I went and found him. He, as you can imagine, wasn’t thrilled to see me. Unlike me, he knew all about my family. He was a pretty screwed-up kid then—raised by his grandparents, his dad was never in the picture, and he had a lot of anger—but I was persistent. Didn’t let him push me away.”
    Jake chuckled. “Yeah, I can totally see you doing that.”
    Marley smiled in the darkness, remembering how resistant Ronan had been to her friendship at first. He still acted like he never wanted her around, but she knew it was all a façade. He wouldn’t have hopped on a plane to help her if he didn’t care.
    “Just what did you say to him to get him to leave anyway? Ronan never would have left me in Colombia alone if you had threatened him.”
    “Yeah, well.” Jake shifted on the tarp beside her.
    “Yeah, well what?” She turned to look at his shadowy outline again.
    He exhaled. “I just told him he didn’t need to stick around.”
    No, there was more. She sensed it. “You recognized him, didn’t you?”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    Marley looked back up at the makeshift ceiling. “I’m not stupid. I know SEALs run missions with DELTA guys now and then. You don’t have to pretend as if you don’t know who he is.”
    Jake was silent a minute, then said, “It just