Page 6 of Love at First Rep

Rafe smirked at the move. It had been twenty years since Garrett had laid eyes on the man, but he was exactly as he remembered, except for the dark stubble covering his square jaw, crinkles in the corners of his eyes and touch of gray in his dark hair at his temples. He was still as beautiful as Garrett remembered, dressed in nondescript clothing, plain jeans and a dark coat and hat, probably because he was hiding. That reminder made Garrett want answers.

“Talk,” Garrett demanded.

“I didn’t die that day,” Rafe said with a sigh. He appeared as haunted as Garrett felt for the last twenty years. “It was a coverup to get me out of there. I got recruited, and the guys in the marble halls decided I needed a cover story. I needed to disappear without a trace.”

“Recruited by who?” Garrett whispered, the truth of Rafe’s words threatening to choke him.

“The CIA.” Garrett’s breath hitched. “Or an offshoot of them anyway. An ethnically ambiguous guy like me who spoke fluent Arabic, Farsi and Spanish was bound to draw their attention.”

Garrett’s eyes fluttered shut as he considered how much sense that made.

Rafe was born in Guatemala and moved to the U.S. with his parents when he was an infant. If Garrett remembered correctly, he was also part Cuban, and the mixture made it hard for people to guess where his family originated from. Throw in the fact Rafe was a damn polyglot, and he was a wet dream for the CIA.

Garrett should have guessed something like that would happen after Rafe successfully infiltrated an Iraqi village searching for members of al-Qaeda during one of their missions.

“So the explosion that night, all of it was theater to fake your death?” Garrett asked, failing to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “You’ve been with the CIA this whole time?”

Rafe winced. “Well, not the whole time. I left a couple years ago.”

“And you couldn’t find the time over nearly twenty years to let me know you were alive?”

Rafe’s eyes widened.

“You didn’t get my messages?” he asked.

Garrett furrowed his brows. “What messages?”

“The threads, the sour candies, they were all to let you know I’m alive. Where else would they have come from?”

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Garrett breathed, reminding himself that murder was bad and illegal before he shot Rafe in anger. “I thought you were haunting me! I had a legit ghost following me around for years tormenting me.”

A snort escaped Rafe, and Garrett was just about ready to ignore the whole bad and illegal aspect of murder and kill Rafe. As a homicide detective, he could probably figure out a way to get away with it…

“Dude, you thought you had a ghost? What the hell?”

“I thought I had PTSD and hallucinations or it was all in my head or someone was fucking messing with me. I almost had myself committed when I thought I lost it completely.”

Rafe deflated, all the humor leeching out of him.

“Shit, man, I didn’t think…” Rafe said, turning away for a moment. “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you, Garrett. I was just trying to let you know I was okay and I still had your back.”

A burning sensation hit Garrett’s eyes. He tried to blink through it to keep looking at Rafe.

“Why couldn’t you tell me you were alive this whole time? Why couldn’t you contact me like a fucking normal person?”

“You think I didn’t want to?” Rafe said, holding up his hands to try to center himself or show Garrett he wasn’t a threat, Garrett wasn’t sure. He took a deep breath and continued. “I couldn’t contact anyone in my life, not you, not my family, not anyone, no matter how much I wanted to. It could have blown my cover and led to the deaths of innocent people. I was in too deep, man.”

As a police officer, Garrett had dealt with similar situations. There were lots of details he couldn’t tell people about his job in order to protect investigations, witnesses and victims.

But to cut ties with everyone for twenty years? Garrett couldn’t imagine doing something like that. It had to be difficult for Rafe to walk away from everything at twenty years old. Following orders was a hell of a thing, even when they were legal.

“Did you know?” Garrett whispered.

“Know what?”

“Did you know it was coming? Did you know I was about to lose my best friend that night?”

It was impossible to sit there with Rafe and not think about the night fate took him away forever, the night Garrett lost his best friend in the world, someone he hoped could be more. At least Rafe had shut that down. That would have been so much worse.