Page 12 of Fear No Evil

“So, I’m going,Jacques. Have I been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress? Yes, but it’snota disorder. I’ve got it under control.”

That she confessed as much took guts; he had to admire her honesty.

“Ihaveto do this,” she continued. “For them. All I can do is promise you that I won’t let you down. So please stop undermining my self-confidence and be supportive, okay? That’s how spouses are supposed to act.”

Spouses.He hid a bitter smile. She didn’t want to be his spouse‍—except in pretend. Then again, pretending might be all he ever got of her, so, okay. He couldn’t lie. He was thrilled to be able to work with her, at last. “You’re right, Lena.”

While she silently processed his agreement, he powered down his machine, then stepped off it, putting himself within inches of her. Her eyes widened, and her body stilled like that of a wary doe.

Well, this is new. She saw him as a real man now, someone to be reckoned with. It was a heady thing to realize he could grab her and kiss her, and she would probably soften and kiss him back. But that wasn’t how Jake rolled. He took her earbud from his pocket and held it out.

She snatched it from his hand, as if afraid to touch him.

“I’m going back to bed,” he told her. “Don’t run too long, and remember to hydrate. We have that procedure in the morning.” He patted the railing of her treadmill. “Good night.” He headed for the door.

As he strode past the glass wall seconds later, he could see that she’d yet to resume her run. She was staring at the treadmill display, clearly muddled by their encounter.

Jake tamped down a smile and counted her confusion as a win.

Maggie regarded the two Advil in her palm, lit up by the sunlight beaming through the airplane window next to her. The 747 jumbo jet she had boarded three hours earlier sliced serenely through the atmosphere at an altitude of fifty thousand feet. She and Jake were on their way to Bogotá four days after their briefing in New York. Soon, something as simple as pain medicine might be unattainable, especially if the FARC seized all their possessions. Advil she could do without, but what about her antianxiety pills?

She’d joined up with Jake at New York’s JFK Airport, in the international terminal. Wearing a white rain jacket identical to hers, he’d been easy to spot. The last time she’d seen him was when they’d gotten their microchips implanted three days before. Strangely, one look at Jake’s broad shoulders and grounding stare, and a large portion of her nervousness subsided. She was alive today because of him. In his presence, nothing bad would happen to her, with or without her pills. Unless the FARC shot him dead.

Stop that.

Squelching her PTS, she asked a passing flight attendant for more Sprite so she could swallow the tablets. As she waited, her thoughts went back to the phone call she’d shared with her father at the crack of dawn that morning. He’d called to wish her well, to caution her not to rub any of the FARC leaders the wrong way with her feminist remarks.

“I want you coming home in one piece, Mags.”

His reference to the beating she’d suffered at the hands of Farid hadn’t helped her confidence. “Hey, Dad, I’ve got a question for you, and I want an honest response.” Jake’sinsistence that he’d texted her after Paris had been eating away at her. “After the bombing in Paris, when I got a new cell phone, did you block Jake Carrigan’s number without my permission?”

“Whose number?”

“You know who I’m talking about‍—my boyfriend in Paris. You should know he’s the SOG who pulled me out of Venezuela and Morocco and got me to safety.”

Her father’s startled silence had said it all. “So, you did,” she concluded.

He’d heaved an audible sigh. “You had to finish college strong, Mags, not be distracted by a love interest.”

“Yeah, well, I had no idea he texted me after Paris. You had no right to do that.” She’d hung up on him, inexplicably furious. It wasn’t until she’d calmed down that she acknowledged her father had saved her from years of suffering as she tried and failed to strike a balance between growing her career and growing a relationship.

Jake cut into her thoughts as he dropped into the seat beside her, startling her with his swift return from the lavatory. His gaze went straight to the tablets in her palm.

“Qu’est ce qui te fait mal?”What hurts?

Since joining him for this flight to Bogotá, they’d spoken nothing but French.

She answered in the same tongue, “I have a headache.Merci‍—ah, thank you,” she said to the flight attendant handing her a Sprite.” The truth was the spot on her right hip, where her microchip had been implanted, was still irritated.

Behind prescription-free lenses similar to the glasses he’d worn back in college, Jake’s blue eyes narrowed. She’d learned the Navy had paid for him to have laser surgery. The glasses he wore now were part of his cover, meant to downplay his over-the-top physical fitness and to make him look more harmless.Thanks to his intelligent demeanor, he almost pulled off the illusion.

“Are you sure it’s not your hip hurting?”

His acuity brought her startled gaze back to his. “Why? Does yours hurt?”

“No.”

Oh.She swallowed down the tablets to hide her concern.