Page 49 of Resurgent
“So do I,” Liam says.
…
High on the excitement of scuba diving, I hit the shower as soon as we get back to the resort while Liam takes advantage of the resort’s cell coverage—which is pretty unreliable on the island—to research the shop Gary told us about. When I come out of the steaming bathroom, wrapped in a towel, Liam is on the phone. It doesn’t take long to figure out he’s talking to Anthony. I sit down across from him, trying to decipher the entire conversation from his clipped responses, which consist of “yes,” “I see,” and “got it.” It’s impossible.
He hits the red end call button a few minutes later and shoots me a triumphant smile. “Anthony called,” he says unnecessarily. “The message didn’t come through until I had service.”
“Well?” Judging by the look on his face, he has good news.
“I didn’t illegally sell weapons to the cartel. Or more accurately, I sold them to the cartel all right, but I was working undercover for the CIA.”
I jump up and throw my arms around him, a grin splitting my face. “I knew it! Well, not the CIA part. Just that you wouldn’t have illegally sold guns.”
There’s a look I don’t quite understand on his face. He shakes his head and traces my cheekbone gently with his forefinger. “Thank you for believing in me and trusting me, even when you didn’t know for sure. You haveno idea how much that means to me.” We stare into each other’s eyes for one long minute, then he jumps up. Pacing the small living area of the villa, he fills me in on the conversation.
“According to Anthony, I texted him and asked him to meet me in Malaysia to dive in January. That would have been two months before the explosion in Pakistan. While we were diving, I told him that a month before, the CIA agent had contacted me and I had agreed to a highly classified sting operation to take down La Frontera. No one knew about it but me, the CIA operative who I met with, and his boss. The deal was I would broker an arms deal with El Gato, the head of the cartel, smuggle some guns out of Iraq, where I was scheduled to ship out to shortly after the meeting, and then when I delivered the guns, my job was to frame El Gato and send him to jail, or if necessary, assassinate him. My CIA contact promised the U.S. would turn a blind eye to it all.
“Of course I wouldn’t blindly trust the CIA on a mission no one knew about but me and a couple of CIA operatives, especially since it could land me in jail, so I recorded our conversation, told Anthony to meet me here to dive, and gave him the tape as a safeguard. I also had a necklace made that matched his tattoo, so if something happened and I got killed, it would get to McKenzie and she would be able to find Anthony and learn the truth.”
“‘So she’d know the kind of man you are,’” I say slowly, repeating what Steve Morris had told McKenzie Liam said when he gave him the necklace to give to her. “You didn’t want Kenzie to know you were a hero. You wanted her to know you weren’t a traitor.”
“Exactly. Turns out Anthony talked to Walker and Gemma a few days ago at The Dominion. He’s a regular there. He goes by the nickname Valor.”
“That’s why the Dominion was on the bucket list!”
“Yep. He says he told me about his involvement with The Dominion when were in Malaysia. I clearly wanted Kenzie to talk to Anthony. I don’t know if my bucket list is a map to the guns or not, but it was definitely a map to Anthony, which might be the same thing.
“According to Anthony, my CIA contact—a guy named Martin Gray—set up the drop point for the guns, which is here in Malaysia. We were right. Anthony said that after he and I dove, I was meeting Gray at a warehouse near Mabul and leaving the guns there until I got back from Pakistan. He thinks the exact location is on the tape I gave him. He’s going to get the tape from the safety deposit box he rented and then he’ll call me back, although it will probably be tomorrow morning our time before I hear from him.”
“And then what?”
“Then I finish the mission.”
“And this is all over?”
He nods. “Yep. You can go home and back to your life. And all that will be left for me to do is deliver the guns and have El Gato put away for life.”
Back to my life. I should be thrilled that everything is resolved and I can go home. But all I can think about is that my time with Liam is about to end.
