“I’m talking about Alisa Hayes.”
It was the first time he’d spoken her name aloud, and it struck him so hard he nearly staggered.
“I don’t know who she is,” she said.
“She’s the woman who died because of me.”
“Zack, calm down…”
He could feel his hands trembling. His heart pounded like a piston in his chest. Staring into Emily’s pretty eyes, all he could think was that he would give his own life to keep her safe.
“Tell me what happened,” she said.
Even after two years it hurt to speak about that night. It hurt because Zack knew her death was his fault. The old pain taunted him. Guilt churned in his gut. He could feel himself shaking. His hands. His legs.
“She was an operative with MIDNIGHT.” His voice was so rough he barely recognized it. “We were to infiltrate a terrorist group that had set up camp in the west Texas desert. They were smuggling weapons through Mexico and selling them on the black market in the U.S. and Canada. MIDNIGHT got involved when Internet chatter indicated they were planning to sell material for a dirty bomb to a terrorist group with plans to hit a major Southwestern U.S. city.”
“I never heard of any of that.”
“Nobody ever hears of any of the things MIDNIGHT gets involved in.”
“What happened?”
Zack laughed. “What didn’t happen?” he said, his voice sounding caustic even to him. “Everything that could have gone wrong did.” Remembering all too clearly, he tasted bile at the back of his throat. “This was a dangerous group, Emily. One wrong move and they would take you out into the desert, bind your hands and shoot you execution-style.”
“You infiltrated the group?”
“It took us a year, but Alisa and I were finally in. We were accepted by the group. We were relatively comfortable.” His mouth curved into a humorless smile. “As comfortable as you can be living with thirty murderers with sociopathic tendencies.
“We knew something big was about to go down, but the kingpin kept the details close to his chest, telling only a couple of his closest associates what it was.”
“It sounds like you were doing exactly what you’d been sent in to do,” she said.
“I did a hell of a lot more than I’d been sent in to do.” Zack shook his head. “Alisa was a thrill seeker. Just about everyone at MIDNIGHT gets off on adrenaline in one form or another. But Alisa was…over the top. We were camped about fifty miles east of El Paso. Most of us used tents. The kingpin was so paranoid he slept in an underground bunker. Most of the weapons were stockpiled in underground bunkers, as well. So there we were, in the middle of the godforsaken desert, scared and bored and surrounded by killers. And Alisa…we were friends, you know? I knew her well. I liked her. Respected her as an agent. She was good at what she did, and we worked well together. Then one night she just showed up in my tent. I was sleeping. When she came in, I thought something was wrong. I went to her and the next thing I knew…” Remembering, he gritted his teeth. Being with Alisa Hayes had been like jumping off a cliff and landing hard. “We were together for the first time that night.”
“Zack, you had been working under extremely stressful circumstances for a long time. I don’t think it’s terribly unusual for two people to turn to each other at a time like that.”
“It didn’t stop after that night, Emily. She came to my tent every night. I knew I should stop her. I was getting distracted. She was, too. I couldn’t keep my mind on the mission because I kept thinking about her. I was beginning to…I was starting to care for her.” Feeling the old pain twisting in his gut like a dull knife, he closed his eyes. “But I couldn’t stop. We were burned out. Scared. Lonely. Being together was the only thing keeping us sane.”
His gaze met hers. “By the time I realized I’d fallen in love with her, it was too late.”
LOVE.
The word rang hollowly in the confines of the cabin, and Emily felt it like a physical punch. The slow, uncomfortable burn of jealously singed her. She knew it was small and petty of her to be jealous of a woman from Zack’s past. Especially when the woman was nothing more than a ghost that haunted him. But she was.