Jae's Assignment by Bernice Layton Read Free Book Online

immediately on his feet trying to still her movements. “This isn’t good. You need to rest while those sutures take hold.”
    “I-I need my bag from my car,” Jae said holding on to the nightstand for balance.
    Trevor placed a hand on her shoulder until she sat back down. “I checked the trunk of your car last night. There is no bag.” When her eyes narrowed, Trevor was quick to explain. “Your clothes were blood-soaked, so I checked your car thinking I’d find something for you to wear.” Hesitantly, she told him she had a travel bag beneath the spare in a locked compartment. The key to open it was on her key ring.
    Wait a minute. What if he takes off in my car?
    “If I was going to leave, I wouldn’t be here,” he said as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. Trevor picked up the key ring from the dresser and walked to the door.
    He returned in less than five minutes and placed her bag on the bed. “Again, what was your assignment regarding me?”
    “To escort you to a safe location,” Jae said, rummaging through her bag. Finding her spare ID card, she showed it to him.
    “Where’s my new location?”
    She told him it was classified and he wanted to know why. That same thought caused Jae to stop her movements and meet his serious gaze. She was recalling Grainger giving her a GPS route to take Grant to the safe house. Then minutes later, he’d sent her them to her cell phone. But how could that be when she’d decided to take an alternate route at the last minute when that sedan started following her on I-95? “I don’t know why the location was classified,” she said slowly.
    “Then what do you know that you can tell me, Agent Randall?” Trevor didn’t hide his frustration. “Is that protocol for the FBI concerning a witness in their relocation program? You know nothing. You tell me nothing, not even my new location or my new name?”
    Witness protection program? Jae felt the air stirring. “What…you’re in the witness protection program? Since when? I didn’t know that. None of us did.”
    “If I am your assignment, why are you in the dark?” Trevor paced the floor.
    “I wasn’t given that information.” Jae started checking both of her cell phones again. She scrolled though her agency phone for the message with the alternate GPS coordinates Grainger had sent her. But it wasn’t there. It had been deleted from the GPS tracker, and if she believed that the doctor hadn’t touched her phones, then it had been removed remotely.
    At that point, Jae stood up and grunted over the pain. “We need to leave here. Now.” She had to get them out of there. Looking down at herself, she cared little for her state of undress.
    Somebody set her up and she knew it. There was no other explanation. Trevor watched as she made her way across the room, stopping at the closet door. “Talk to me. What’s going on?” Jae braced her back against the wall for leverage and slid her feet into her sandals. “Who at the FBI would set you up or who would have an interest in seeing me killed in a crowded hotel lounge?”
    Jae couldn’t believe he’d voiced a fleeting and horrifying thought that settled in her head and wouldn’t let up. In fact, the thought grew bigger as the clock on the nightstand ticked on. The fact that the GPS coordinates appeared to have been deleted from her FBI-issued smart phone was proof that it was done for a reason. Her questions now, among many, were why and more importantly who would do that? Walking into the bathroom and pulling the back off of her smart phone, Jae snapped out the network card and battery, dropping both onto the tile floor. To her surprise, Grant stood at the door watching her.
    Moving her aside, and using the heel of his heavy black boots, Trevor stomped the pieces before scooping them up and dropping them into the toilet. One flush sent the pieces away.
    Returning to the bedroom, Jae pressed against the wall and pulled her pants and shirt on. She didn’t