Chapter 7: Jamie

Thursday. Task Force Headquarters, Washington, DC.

JAMIE SAT IN LOGAN'S office, the lights out, the evening playing in his head.

Tabby had given him a dozen opportunities to make his move and complete his objective. Instead of doing what he was sent here to do, Jamie had allowed himself to get lost in playing his part, in the getting close to her stage of things, he hadn't realized just how far he allowed it to go until it was too late.

Sitting here in the dark it was easy for Jamie to see how things would have gone if he didn't have the task of bugging Tabby's phone. Their chemistry had brought them together, but it was her inclination to laugh, to see the good in things that had kept conversation rolling. He'd been interested in her, what she said. And yeah, the packaging was hot as hell.

If it were just up to him, he'd have taken her back to his place or gone to hers. He'd have called into work and done everything in his power to woo her into giving him a chance. Things would be hot and heavy for a while, but then she'd realize some things were more important than him. Like her career or whatever else a woman of that caliber did.

The lights flipped on, bathing the room in harsh yellow light.

"What the fuck?" Logan stood at Jamie's side staring down at him.

"Hey, TL." Jamie rubbed one eye with the heel of his hand.

Logan snorted and moved around the desk. "I take it last night was a success?"

"No, actually." Jamie glanced down at his hands, his tie wrapped around his left palm. "I couldn't go through with it."

"Come again?" Logan's chair creaked.

Jamie glanced up at Logan leaning toward him, lips tightly compressed, dark eyes locked on him. "I couldn't do it.

"You what?"

Jamie pushed up out of the chair, the sudden restlessness driving him to move. "Bugging her phone is wrong. We don't have a warrant. It's illegal. It jeopardizes the DoD's relationship to HiTech. Nothing about this plan was a good idea."

"Silva, our job is to follow orders," Logan said slowly, command threaded through each word.

"I know that." Jamie stopped, facing his TL. "I also know I got out so I could question my orders."

Logan leaned back and shook his head. "What else? I'm going to have to update Zora when she gets in. I don't want any surprises because she's already going to hate hearing this."

Fuck.

This was the part Jamie knew there was no coming back from.

"I told Tabby we needed her help. Not why or anything, just that-"

"God damn it, Silva." Logan covered his face with his hands and groaned.

"It was the right thing to do."

"Go. Get out of here before Zora gets here. The others should be in the gym. Join them for PT. I'll come update you with our next move, which might be hauling our asses back to Seattle."

Jamie grimaced, but there was nothing more he could say. He didn't regret not following through with his orders, but maybe he could have simply left instead of coming clean. All he'd known at the moment was that he had to try to salvage things. Not for himself, but for the job. He'd made his bed where Tabby was concerned and that door was shut.

He left Logan's office. There were more people around, trickling in as the day began in earnest. It was so damn quiet in here. He couldn't stand it. Fleeing to the gym was far preferred to standing in a silent room while people played spy.

The gym occupied part of the basement level. In the week they'd been in DC Jamie had only seen a few agents make use of the gym. By and large it was left to their team to use as they needed.

He changed into workout clothes kept in a locker. Even just removing his suit helped ease some of the weight from his shoulders.

Harper and Evan were out on the basketball court. Judging by the sweat dampening their clothes they'd been there for a while.

"Look what the cat dragged in." Harper lobbed the basketball at Jamie.

He caught it, dribbled a few times then shot a layup toward the hoop. The whoosh of the ball through the net at least told him he'd been able to do one thing right in the last twenty-four hours.

Harper rounded up the ball then returned to the line. "Did you go home at all?"

"Are we going to play ball or gossip?" Jamie spread his arms.

Harper snickered and made some comment to Evan, but that was it. They settled into a game that had no rules, no real purpose except horsing around.

It was moments like these when Tucker's absence was most notable. He might not talk a lot, but he'd always played a little dirty. Always pushed them to compete harder, sweat more.

"Let's get some water," Harper said after more than an hour had passed.

Jamie was finally feeling truly awake and more like himself. He crossed to a cooler containing bottled water and pulled one out. Harper and Evan sat on the bench lining one wall of the court.

"Hey." Harper glanced up at Jamie, squinting at him with one eye. "You heard anything about Tucker?"

"No. You?"

Harper wrinkled his nose. "Nah."

"He'll show." Evan tilted his head back, eyes shut.

"Even TL hasn't heard from him in two weeks. You seriously think he'll just show back up like nothing happened?" Jamie tipped his bottle up and drank half the contents.

Evan shrugged.

"You know what I did hear?" Harper glanced over his shoulder, then up at the ceiling.

Yeah, they'd covered the suspicion that someone was always listening to them in this building. Jamie took a step closer and Evan turned to face Harper.

"I heard Ethan was moved," he said.

Jamie froze.

"Ethan, the guy you brought back from the Middle East?" Evan peered up at Jamie.

He cleared his throat. "Yeah."

Jamie had only heard of Ethan before a few months back. Supposedly the guy had died while on assignment around the time Jamie had been hired by Aegis Group. A framed picture of the guy had hung in the lobby of their training hall, a reminder that even this job cost lives. Harper and Jamie had pitched in to help Lepta Team with a job going sideways when they'd learned what really happened on Ethan, only the man they'd met wasn't the man they'd heard about. Jamie wasn't sure what had been done to him, but he wasn't normal anymore. NO human moved like Ethan did, not to mention the fact it had taken some heavy duty tranquilizers to keep Ethan sedated enough to bring him home. The little Jamie had heard about the guy since then hadn't been good.

"Where'd they move him to?" Jamie asked.

Harper shook his head. "No idea. I hadn't heard anything until now. I was kind of hoping you knew something?"

"No, man." Jamie blew out a breath. "That was a crazy ass op."

Harper groaned. "Tell me about it."

Ethan snorted. "Maybe someday I'll be popular enough other teams want me."

"In your dreams, book worm." Harper flicked water at the other man.

"Promise me this?" Jamie looked at Evan then Harper. "If that happens to me, if I'm brainwashed, you'll shoot me?"

Harper barked a laugh. "What?"

Jamie locked eyes with Evan. The man had immigrated to the US from Ukraine with his family as a teen. He'd grown up with stories, seeing things the rest of them hadn't.

Evan slowly nodded his head. "Yeah. Okay."

Harper's laugh faded and he stared at the side of Evan's head. "You're serious?"

"It's what I'd want you to do for me," Evan said.

"You two are crazy." Harper shook his head.

"I wouldn't want to live not knowing who I was, maybe even hurting people I cared about." Jamie pushed the memories of Lebanon into the back of his mind. "You weren't there, Harper. You didn't see him."

"Someone did that to him. We have to be able to undo it. I wouldn't want to give up hope, so count me out of this." Harper pushed to his feet.

"You didn't get up close to him like I did. If I thought I was going to be a risk to my family like that guy is, I sure as hell would want one of you to stop me."

Harper wheeled around. "Stop you. Not kill you. There's a big fucking difference, man."

Maybe there was, but deep down Jamie wasn't willing to risk the safety of others on his account. He loved his family that much.

"Silva." Logan's voice reverberated through the gym, followed by the staccato tap tap tap of a woman's heels.

"Oh, shit," Harper muttered.

Jamie flinched and turned to see Logan and SSA Zora Clark headed straight for him. Neither appeared pleased and he had a pretty good idea why.