“No, sir,” she said quietly.
“When I came out of the forest on a run one morning and saw you practicing. Sleep is a premium during training, but you gave up some so you could practice. Why do you think I helped you in the gym?”
She looked at his face. “You helped me? On purpose?”
He shrugged. “You had determination. I wanted you to succeed.”
“But you were so hard on me.”
“I was hard on everyone, Sanders. Who do you think granted your appeal on the obstacle course?”
She stared at him. Had she been misreading him the whole time? She thought for a moment, then voiced the question that had troubled her for days. “Did you really request me on the mission?”
“Yes, and I’m glad I did.”
He stood up and in the blink of an eye, the pleasant man she’d been speaking with disappeared. He placed his hands on his hips and glared down at her. “What the hell were you thinking? You let some snot-nose macho kid take charge when you knew he was wrong?”
His quick change in personality left her gasping. “I…I…”
“Well? Explain it. You’re smarter than most of the agents. They’re not going to like you for it, Sanders. So what? Get over it. Do your job. You’re no good to the agency if you’re dead.”
She sprang to her feet. “I made a mistake.”
“You’re not allowed mistakes. Why did you do it?”
“I thought I could keep track of where we were.”
He leaned toward her. “Why did you do it?”
“Because I—” Her eyes began to burn. Dammit, he wasn’t going to make her cry. “Rick’s a friend of mine. I didn’t want to make him feel bad, okay?”
“Not okay.” He grabbed her shoulders and shook her.
“Never okay. If you know you’re right, be right. Follow your instincts. When the skin on the back of your neck crawls, do something about it. If Rick or any other man is heading in the wrong direction, speak up. Use your brain, your intuition and every other ability you’ve been given. Because if you don’t, you die.”
She swallowed hard. “I was confused. I didn’t know why he was acting like that.”
Zach leaned closer, until she could feel his breath on her face. “He acted like a jerk because I ordered him to. It was a test and you failed.”
She brought her hands up and knocked them against his forearms, pushing his hands off her shoulders. She stepped back because the alternative was to slug him high and hard in the rib cage, just as her track coach had taught her. One part of her mind noted that Zach let her break his hold. She knew he could have taken her easily.
“Bastard,” she said, her voice low and angry. “Who gave you the right to play games with my life?”
“My job. I suspected this would be a weakness for you. You failed the test this time, Sanders, but you’ll never fail it again.”
She was speechless. Betrayal, pain and anger all swirled together. He’d set her up. Worse, he’d used a friend to do it, damn him.
“Get out,” she ordered.
“Not yet. There’s one more piece of business we have to discuss.”
“I have nothing more to say to you.”
“Don’t blame Estes.”
She glared at him. “I don’t blame Rick. I blame you.”
She turned away and walked to the window. From here she had a view of the capitol, but she couldn’t see the historical building or even the traffic snarling below. She couldn’t focus on anything except the fact that Zach had set her up.
She wasn’t mad at Rick. He’d just been following orders. But Zach. She’d hoped for something else from him. She grimaced and stared at the view. Funny how the broken dreams still had the power to hurt her.
“I did it because you can be more,” he said quietly. “You can be the best. Rick will stay with explosives. He’ll be a good man to have on a team, but he’ll never do the thinking.”
“Oh, and I will?”
“Maybe. Go ahead and be mad at me all you want. Just don’t forget what you learned. Next time I might not be there to rescue you.”
“May I remind you, Agent Jones, that I’m the one who saved your sorry hide?”
“I know.”
His voice was gentle. Too gentle. She felt her defenses slipping away. She tried to hold on to her anger, but it faded, leaving her vulnerable.
She didn’t hear him move, but she sensed him come up behind her. She stiffened.
“You have to deal with it,” he said softly. “Now. Or it’ll eat you up inside.”
She closed her eyes. “I’m not going to think about it.”
“That’s what the psychiatrist told me you’d said.”
“So much for confidential patient information.”
“You aren’t a patient. You were being debriefed. Dammit, Jamie, you killed one man and watched another die. You have to talk about it.”
She would have been fine if he hadn’t called her Jamie. “You never said my name before,” she whispered.
“Sorry. Sanders.”
“No, ‘Jamie’ is fine. I—Do we have to talk about it?”
“Yes.”
She swallowed. She didn’t want to even think about it. The horror was too great. Seventy-two hours later, she could still see the man falling to the ground. She could still feel the recoil of the pistol and the way her stomach had clenched and rebelled. She could see Havers’s body lying there.
When she’d spoken with the agency psychiatrist, she’d answered questions about the mission and her part in it. When the elderly man had tried to bring up the killing, Jamie hadn’t wanted to talk about it. She still didn’t.
“It wasn’t what you thought,” Zach said, still standing behind her. “You imagined killing someone, but it was different.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
She’d slammed the door shut on those thoughts, but his words opened it a crack. The first flicker of feeling swept through her, and she shuddered.
“You’re surprised because the killing is easy. It’s the forgetting that’s so hard.”
She turned to face him. He was close enough to touch. Large and looming, but he didn’t frighten her. Not anymore. “How do you know?”
“I’ve been there, Jamie. I want to tell you it gets easier. In a way, it does. But just when you think you won’t have to pay a price again, a death will hit you hard. Then you deal with it all over again.”
She had thought of him as uncaring, mean-spirited, even cruel. But at this moment, he was the kindest man she’d ever known.
“I can’t close my eyes,” she said. “I don’t see him falling anymore. But I can’t sleep. I’m afraid I’ll dream. I’m not sorry he’s dead. I just didn’t think—”
Zach reached up and stroked her face. His fingers brushed away tears. She touched her other cheek, shocked she was crying.
She spun away. “I’m sorry. I never cry.” She blinked hard, but the tears continued to fall.
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. I’m stronger