The Woman Left Behind: A Novel Read online

  “In pancakes.”

  She snorted, but said, “Got it,” and left him to it, hurried back to the kitchen. As it happened she was short on eggs—she had one—but she did have a Shake ‘N Pour pancake mix, and a couple of packs of precooked bacon. She got out her griddle pan and began getting it hot while she nuked some of the bacon. Because she was smart that way, she also started some coffee brewing.

  Poor Donnelly. She tried to think of the last time she’d seen him . . . maybe two weeks ago? They’d run into each other briefly, stopped to chat, nothing special. He was enjoying being on Kodak’s team. Some last meetings were humdrum, completely forgettable. The same with last words; she couldn’t remember what they’d said, specifically. The last time you saw someone should be special, marked in your memory by a sense of importance, but no; she couldn’t remember what they’d said.

  The dead guy in the jungle didn’t seem nearly as important now. Someone very much like him had killed Donnelly.

  The sad realization that she’d never see him again settled inside her. If he’d quit, moved to a different part of the country, she wouldn’t even have truly missed him, she’d have shrugged and moved on. Knowing that he was no longer alive was different, because he was truly gone; the part of the world that his soul and spirit had occupied was now empty.

  She had the first two pancakes plated and buttered when Levi came into the kitchen, dressed in the same pants and shoes but bare chested. She knew why; putting that dirty shirt on over his uncovered wound wouldn’t be smart. She wasn’t in the mood to ogle his naked chest anyway, despite how impressive it was. The sadness in her filled up the space that was normally occupied by lust. She lifted her brows at him. “Which do you want first, food or bandage?”

  “Food,” he replied, no hesitation.

  She poured two more rounds of batter onto the griddle pan, then took the plate with the two pancakes to the table, along with a fork, the bottle of syrup, and the plate of bacon. “Go ahead and get started, I’ll bring these two when they’re finished.” Then she took a cup of coffee to him, not asking if he wanted sugar or creamer because as far as she knew all the team drank it black; they kept things simple.

  “Thanks,” Levi said, his gaze on the pancakes. She understood; she’d felt that way about her plate at IHOP earlier.

  He was taking the last bite of the first two when she brought the second two to him. “Two more coming,” she said. “Tell me when you’re finished.”

  “Six should do it.”

  He was slower on the second two; there was still some left when she brought the last pair. She liked feeding him, she thought. She liked that he’d used her shower. If they were together this was how it would be . . . ah well, no point in dreaming.

  After setting the plate down, she took the time to look at the wound on his back. The piece of wood had left a jagged puncture that would definitely need stitches; the wound was deep, the area around it swollen and discolored, red and deep purple. “Hope you’re up to date on your tetanus shot,” she said. “You should have had that wound taken care of before you came here. But I know why you did . . . thank you.”

  There was something of the predator in the fierce darkness of his gaze that slanted toward her. “I am. You’re welcome.”

  While he was finishing she fetched her first aid kit, then he sat while she plastered an antiseptic pad over the wound and taped it. Afterward he pulled on his dirty shirt, took his dirty plate and fork to the sink. She let him, though a proper hostess would have protested. She wasn’t a proper hostess; she was a teammate, and teammates could take their own dirty plates to the sink.

  “Thanks for breakfast,” he said, turning toward her. His gaze flickered to her mouth, then his eyes shuttered; he turned and went to the door. When he reached it, he looked back at her.

  “I’m sorry about Donnelly. I’d tell you not to let it eat at you, but it will. It’s eating at me, too. You drone operators are supposed to be in safe places, but the truth is, on a mission, there aren’t any safe places.”

  No, there wasn’t. After he left, silently closing the door behind him, she crossed the room and secured the locks. The irony wasn’t lost on her. She could lock the door, but when it came down to it, Donnelly hadn’t been safe, and neither was she.

  Eighteen

  In April, the South African banker, Graeme Burger, cleared Customs with his family and for four days gave every appearance of being nothing other than a tourist, hitting all the usual historical sites in D.C. None of the GO-Teams were deployed to follow him; Axel MacNamara preferred to keep a level of separation between his teams and any domestic issues. Let the FBI handle it. That way any triumph was theirs, but so was any failure.

  Mac’s policy was proved to be a smart choice. On the fifth day, Mr. Burger somehow managed to ditch his surveillance. In D.C., where cameras were everywhere, that was an impressive feat for even the most experienced agent. For a banker from a foreign country to do it sent alarm flags flying at every intelligence agency in the federal government. He connected with his wife and children four hours later, smiling, and resumed doing touristy things.

  Joan Kingsley, alone in her big house, smiled too as she imagined all the intensifying interest being focused on Graeme Burger. The banker was garnering all sorts of attention, and as of now Axel MacNamara would double down on his efforts to find out what was going on. The bastard always assumed the worst, assumed massive, complicated conspiracies were going on all around him—and sometimes he was right. Like now. Only national security wasn’t the target this time, he was.

  She knew how it worked, because she had seen the system in action so many times. Now Devan would begin feeding them bits of crucial information that would pull Ace Butcher’s GO-Team into an ambush—the big step that would hook MacNamara himself.

  She could hardly wait.

  July came in hot and humid. Jina realized it had been a little over a year since she’d begun training, but whoop-dee-doo, something like that didn’t call for a celebration. It was a guideline for marking time, nothing more.

  On one level, everything continued as normal. Another drone operator was being trained to join Kodak’s team, and this time Kodak and the rest of his team were involved from the beginning. She thought that would become the accepted way of doing things from now on. Donnelly’s death had brought it home to everyone that the drone operators were only as safe as the situation allowed them to be, and that the situation could change at the drop of a hat. What could be done to ensure their safety was already being done, and when it came down to it, it was the team operators’ safety that was the most important, not the drone operators.

  As Levi had so pointedly told her on the first day of training, she was the least important member of the team. There was far more money and training invested in the guys, and their expertise was off the charts in comparison with hers.

  In the middle of July, they were notified of an upcoming mission into Syria.

  At the news, a heavy sense of dread settled in Jina’s stomach. Syria was one of the most dangerous places on Earth. She was more politically aware now than she’d ever been before, and she knew Syria was a war zone. Government forces had lost control of most of the country, battles continued with ISIS, and, boy, did she not want to get in the middle of that.

  At least they didn’t have to leave in the middle of the night. The mission required meticulous planning and timing, because of the uncertainty of the ground situation. They were to meet up with a Syrian sympathizer who would lead them to where an informant was hiding; their mission was to get the informant safely out of Syria, because he wouldn’t tell them what he knew until then. The first reaction had been to leave him there; if he wanted to play games when his own safety was ostensibly at risk, then his information likely wasn’t that valuable. Then he’d mentioned a name that had gotten their attention: Graeme Burger.

  What they knew about Graeme Burger was getting murkier, rather than clearer. First he had ties with the Suda