You Only Love Twice (Masters and Mercenaries #8)(3)

“In what?”

James’ s shoulders went back, his pride evident. “The Agency. I’m going to be a spy and you could be, too.”

A spy. Yeah. That sounded cool.

Cooler than anything else she was going to do. When James turned and walked toward the house, she followed. It was all she could do to not take his hand.



13 years later



“Hey, Phoebe.” Ten walked into the room, his presence almost a nuisance.

God, she hated that, but she felt that way. She didn’t want to see him, didn’t want to see anyone. She wanted them all to go away so she could fade. She wanted to do nothing more than lie down and utterly fade away. Maybe if she didn’t eat, didn’t drink anything, she could see him again.

She didn’t reply to Ten, simply stared at the wall.

“Everyone’s leaving. I thought you might want to come out and say good-bye.”

She hadn’t wanted them to come over anyway, so she figured the hoard of visiting vultures could find their way out on their own. They had been Jamie’s co-workers, people who knew their dad, but she hated them. She hated everyone.

“Don’t do this to me.”

She ignored him.

“Goddamn it, Phoebe. Don’t you dare f*cking do this to him.”

Her eyes came open as if of their own accord. Ten had said “him” and her body responded. “I’m not doing anything.”

The words came out on a growl. She was resentful. He shouldn’t be here. He’d only been Jamie’s brother. He hadn’t been his wife, his lover. Ten hadn’t been trying to have Jamie’s baby.

“You’re f*cking giving up, Phoebe.” She could practically feel Ten’s will as he paced across the floor. Ten’s cowboy boots thudded along the hand-scraped hardwoods as he continued to move. Ten always had trouble staying still. He paced when he was anxious. He’d been really anxious since that moment that they’d heard Jamie had been captured by jihadists. Ten had spent months trying to find him, months in the deserts of Iraq. And then more time trying to find his body because the f*ckers had moved them, likely hoping their bodies would never be found, that the families would never be able to give them a proper burial.

The jihadists caught Jamie with an Army unit after their convoy had been hit by an IED. Jamie had been working on tracking a terrorist sect using a group of Army grunts as cover.

It hadn’t been cover enough.

Her precious husband had been brutally killed along with every single one of his teammates.

All except for one. When Ten had finally found the place where Jamie had been held and murdered, there had only been one of the soldiers left. Jesse Murdoch. Why had he survived when her husband had been murdered?

Did it even matter since he was gone? It was so much easier to lie here. She didn’t want to eat, didn’t want to drink. She’d even stopped hurting. Her body was utterly numb.

She didn’t move, didn’t react because it didn’t matter.

“Phoebe?”

She wanted him to go away. If she ignored him, maybe he would leave. It hadn’t been real until she’d gotten Jamie’s body back. For a year, she’d been able to pretend that he was simply on another job. The whole time they’d been married, they had both worked for the Agency. They often spent more time apart than together, so it was easy to fool herself. It had only been very recently that they had talked about getting out, settling down and starting a family. Even after they had the intelligence that stated he’d been captured, she’d been able to pretend that Jamie would be home as soon as the Agency could arrange it.

But the world was changing and the jihadists were more serious. It wasn’t about ransom money now. It was about ideals, and they recruited more and more soldiers when they killed Westerners.

Ten had been the one to ID Jamie’s body.

Why had Jesse Murdoch survived? Some people thought he sold the rest of them out. Had he sold Jamie out?

She hoped Jesse Murdoch died a rough death.

“Goddamn it, look at me. You are not this sad sack bitch who simply fades away because something bad happens.”

That got her sitting up. “Something bad?”

Ten was a son of bitch who always played things down. Always. He’d done it since they were kids. He’d done it when their father had a heart attack and died. She wasn’t about to let him do it now.

He leaned in. “Yeah. Do you think this is what Jamie would want for you? Do you think he would want you to lay here and die because you wouldn’t get up and f*cking fight?”

“Fight? Who do you want me to fight, Ten? Are you ready to send me to Iraq? Because I’m ready to go.” It was everything she wanted. She could find the group that killed her husband and rain hellfire on all of them.

But it was harder than that. She was a woman. She’d worked in intelligence for years but she’d been in Asia and Europe. Her father had kept her out of the real war zones. She’d lived on and off for years in China, working on the political situation there and in Japan and Korea.

For the spy it had been a cushy assignment. Despite tensions with China, they always played the game. She’d been caught once and spent a few nights in a Shandong prison. Her interrogation had included a nasty bit of torture, but it hadn’t been long before they’d traded her for a Chinese spy. She’d been back at work two weeks later. The Middle East was different. There were no rules to the spy game there, and she’d always known that Jamie was in danger.