“What terrorists!?!” I yell at Reed and move to stand, but David calmly pushes me back into my seat.
“Muhammad Rafiq, Jair Baloch, Felipe Villanueva, and of course Caleb,” he says. “Do you or do you not, also have information about Demitri Balk?”
“I never said I knew him!”
“You said you knew where he’d be,” Reed says with a raised eyebrow.
“Miss Ruiz, please stop talking and let me handle this,” David says in an irritated tone.
“By the way,” begins Reed anew, ignoring my lawyer and focused on me, “Balk is suspected of having ties to arms dealing and narcotics trafficking. And until I know how you,” he jabs his finger in my direction, “are involved, you’re a suspect too. You can deal with me or I can let the DEA and Homeland Security in here and when they use Patriot Act against you, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“That is enough,” David said firmly, glaring at us both.
“Caleb is not a terrorist. I don’t know about the rest of them, but he’s not a terrorist! And neither am I! And–” A cold wave crashes over me. Felipe. I never said anything about Felipe. Reed knows things he’s not saying.
Caleb! Fuck!
I can’t breathe; all of the oxygen is suddenly being sucked from the room, from my f**king lungs! I keep taking deep, deep breaths, lots of them, but I can’t get any air.
My heart is racing.
I can’t breathe!
“Olivia?” says Reed and I can hear him shuffling around.
“We’re done here, Agent Reed. I’ll be speaking to your superiors.” David reaches for me and tries to get me to stand. I don’t like his hands on me. I can’t breathe! He’s suffocating me. I need to think. I need to breathe.
“Shut up! Everybody just shut up!” Reed and David go silent and I ignore them as I put my hands on the table in front of me and try to catch my breath.
You f**ked up, girl. Don’t make it worse.
I squeeze my eyes shut and will myself to breathe slower, deeper, calmer. My heart starts to slow in degrees until finally I feel only a fraction of my panic. Without looking up, I think about what I need to do.
How does Reed know about Felipe? Does he know more about Caleb? Is he really going to charge me with murder? It was self defense!
I have a feeling Reed would be a lot more amenable if my lawyer weren’t here. Still a prick, but less likely to push this hard. Dr. Sloan said he was a good guy and would do right by me. I don’t have much faith in anything anyone says to me lately, but a glimmer of hope is better than none. I take a sip of water when Reed slides the paper cup beneath my face. I hope he feels guilty, the son of a bitch.
David puts his hand on my shoulder and I shrug it off, “Don’t touch me.”
“I think I should take you back to your room now, Miss Ruiz,” he says.
“I want you to leave,” I whisper with my eyes still fixed on the table.
“Excuse me?” David says, indignantly. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea, Miss Ruiz. I strongly advise you to keep silent and let me do my job.”
“She wants you leave.” Reed says. He knows he’s won this round. He boxed me in a corner and I let him. I realize I should have assumed he knew a lot, not just about me, but other things too. I feel stupid, and angry and scared. But right now, I need time to think and Reed is the devil I know.
They argue for a bit, puffing their chests at each other in some National Geographic display of machismo. In the end David gathers his things and leaves. Reed and I are alone again. I have a feeling it’s what he wanted all along.
He sits quietly, relaxed and patient, unwilling to break the silence. He doesn’t want to lose ground. He wants me to come to him, and I know it’s exactly the way it’s going to play out. I need him on my side. Just the way I once needed Caleb.
My voice is soft on purpose. I need him to see me as fragile again. I need to bring out the alpha male in him. I need him to believe I’m his to protect, even if I already belong to someone else. Caleb would have been proud. I remind myself that I am now my own master. “You wouldn’t really let them take me to jail would you? After everything?” I let the threat of tears simmer beneath the surface of my words.
Reed exhales deeply through his nose and I hear his fingertip tapping softly against the table. “I would never put an innocent person in jail, Miss Ruiz, but I still need you to convince me you’re not guilty.”
“I thought I was innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around.”
He chuckles a little, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He really is stunning. “I think most people subscribe to the better-safe-than-sorry philosophy these days.” He leans forward, conciliatorily, “The truth is, I think you’re just a girl who got caught up in a whole lot of awful shit. I think you did what you had to do to get back home and I think that makes you incredibly smart, and incredibly brave. You don’t have to be brave anymore, Miss Ruiz. You don’t have to protect anyone. You’d save yourself, and me, a whole lot of grief if you’d just tell me the truth so I can make sure what happened to you doesn’t happen to someone else.”
It would be so easy to believe him. I’m more tempted than I’ve ever been to just spill my guts to Reed and let him figure out what to do. It’s no wonder he’s so good at his job. “I wish I could trust you, Reed, but I know I can’t.”
His brow furrows in confusion, but there is a wry tilt to his lips, “Why?”
I give him a small smile of my own, “You think you’re different from men like Caleb. You see everything in black and white, you don’t care about the whole story; you don’t care about the gray. Some stories aren’t black and white, Agent Reed.”
He shakes his head a little, obviously amused, but still professional, “In my experience…the only time a woman wants to tell you ‘the whole story’, is when she wants you to make a decision based on emotion instead of logic.”
My eyes narrow and I stare at the surface of table, the scars not visible at first glance but clearer as I stare, unblinking, “Maybe,” I begin, my voice hollow and far away, “but if it weren’t for emotions overriding logic, I wouldn’t be here.”
Reed’s smile is gone, his gaze intent, “Meaning?”
“Caleb. It wasn’t logic…what he did for me.” The words are a revelation. I hadn’t been expecting to say them, but I know they’re true. Caleb might not love me, but he cared. He kept his promise to keep me safe, even if it meant we couldn’t be together.
It makes the pain so much worse.
“I’ve been doing this a long time – manipulating people to get my way. That’s why you think you love me. Because I’ve broken you down and built you back up to believe it. It wasn’t an accident. Once you leave this behind…you’ll see that.”
“Please. Please Caleb. Don’t make me do this, don’t make me go back to trying to be someone I don’t know how to be anymore.”
“It’s time for you to go, Kitten…”
Reed’s voice jolts me back into reality, “What did he do for you?”
I wipe my eye, sweeping away the tears pooled there, “Everything,” I say through a pained smile, “but it had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with emotion – revenge, honor, betrayal, lust, even love...all of these things stem from our emotions.” I paused. “I’m sure you’re not doing what you do without some kind of emotion, Agent Reed.”
“You made your point,” Reed says softly and leans toward me, “but I’ve been around and seen some shit.”
“Why should that matter to me? Is that supposed to make me trust you?”
Reed shrugs. “What other choice do you have?”
“How do you know about Felipe?”
He smiles, “I thought that might get your attention. I’m good at my job, Miss Ruiz, and I’ve been digging through anything I can find on Muhammad Rafiq. What I’ve found so far is pretty damn disturbing. Looking through his known associates, and cross-referenced with those in Mexico, it didn’t take me too long to find Felipe. As far as I can tell, the man is quite…eccentric.”
Eccentric wasn’t quite the word I would have used. “Wait…if you know where he is, why haven’t you–”
“Mexico, isn’t the US, Miss Ruiz, we can’t go rounding up every criminal in another country based on suspicions we can’t substantiate. Also, he’s left the country and gone who knows where. Maybe Pakistan?”
I look up and shake my head. “Hard to say.” I wonder if they’re all dead: Felipe, Celia, Kid, and Nancy. I’d like to believe Caleb wouldn’t hurt Celia, but then I remember the blood and I wonder if…. No, I can’t handle it.
“Miss Ruiz, where’s the auction?” Reed’s words are sharp and serious. This is his end game. I really would have to make a choice.
“I don’t really know, Reed. I don’t. Not specifically, but I could probably give you an idea. Maybe if you listened to the whole story you could figure it out for yourself. You probably know more than I do.”
