Hearts Under Siege by Natalie J. Damschroder Read Free Book Online Page B

climbed in, and took the few extra seconds in the rain to round the front of the Jeep. Normally, they’d fire barbs at each other for a few minutes, but when he climbed into the driver’s seat and put the vehicle back in gear, the air was far too heavy to allow banter.
    “Ask me anything you want,” Molly said after they’d driven for a minute or two. “I’ll tell you what I know.”
    Brady blew out a breath and shoved his hand through his hair, sending droplets of water flying around him. Molly didn’t flinch. “I don’t even know where to start.”
    “How about with Chris being recruited by SIEGE?” she suggested. “Remember the consulting job—”
    “Yeah.” He felt stupid, gullible, that he’d never figured it out. “Right out of school. How did you know?”
    “They told me, when they recruited me. Used him as an example when they described what SIEGE does.”
    Brady remembered his own recruitment. The phone call, the interviews, his excitement at being chosen. Hell. He probably hadn’t been hired on his own merits after all, but because of his brother. The interviewers told him they got his résumé off a job site, researched him, and found him to be an ideal candidate for their information brokerage. All lies? Why not? That’s what espionage was all about, wasn’t it? As unfair as it was, as much as he hated himself for feeling it even for a second, he hated Chris for taking this from him, too. Just as he’d taken so much already.
    Stupid, Fitz . It didn’t matter how Brady got the job. He was a damned good operator. He’d been awarded two commendations for his role in taking down a couple of terrorist cells and derailing a rising dictator’s campaign for power. And the things he’d lost, he’d lost by himself. Chris hadn’t done anything to be blamed for.
    Brady realized Molly was watching him, waiting patiently for him to get out of his head again. “Sorry.”
    “It’s okay. Anyway, they told me about both of you. Not details, just that you were agents, and that because I knew people in the field, I’d have incentive to do a good job as a conduit.”
    Brady snorted. “Is that why you agreed? Because they sold you some bill of goods that you’d be helping me and Chris?” But the idea warmed him, until she shook her head.
    “No. I agreed because I was dissatisfied.” She stopped talking abruptly, and when he looked at her, she was bouncing her knee, her arms folded across her chest. Classic signs that she was holding something back, or about to.
    “Dissatisfied with what? Music?”
    “No. Well, kind of. Not the music itself, the traveling.”
    She’d alluded to that several years ago, when she told him she was opening a store because she wanted to stay home. Their conversation had been cursory, though, not the in-depth discussion it would have been a few years earlier. His fault. And suddenly, he regretted the last twelve years more bitterly than he had at any moment during them. An unfamiliar burning seized his heart for a few seconds. His fault. Everything was his fault.
    Don’t choke now. You need to get home. People need you. Jessica needs you.
    The self-lecture didn’t help Brady pull himself together, but somehow he managed to refocus, to squeeze out a question about how she’d incorporated SIEGE into her store. He half listened while she talked about having no staff, so she could keep the information and objects safe that were passed through her, not only between SIEGE agents, but from SIEGE to other agencies, and vice versa. She told him about the training she’d insisted on after making a case for someday becoming a target or collateral damage, and needing to be able to take care of herself as well as the items entrusted to her as go-between for the various government and private agencies who passed information through SIEGE.
    Slowly, Brady reached equilibrium again, Molly’s talk of training enabling him to grab on to it, to compartmentalize everything that hurt,