Page 34 of Acting on Instinct
“I’m going to repeat what you’ve already been told and is one hundred percent true: Ty didn’t want to be part of the mission. I wasn’t sure he’d go along with his orders, which would land him in the brig. He didn’t have a choice. But then he metyou, and he turned into the damned dragon at the gate to protect you.”
Kira skipped that last part. “He had a choice. He didn’t want the consequences. Of course, I see that he needed to manipulate me to get where he needed to be for the greater good. That greater good was specific to me as well as the hundreds of people who might have been affected by the terror that Omar was involved with. Still …”
“Still?”
“You know what you could have done to get to the same place? You could have trusted me. You could have told me what was happening and why. You could have just told me what you needed from me. I would have done everything in my power to help you. I would have taken anyone who needed to be in that compound with me.Iam brave, too. I’mallowedto be patriotic, too.”
“Of course you are,” Lula whispered. “But the mission was constrained by who was allowed to know what. Those decisions weren’t mine. They weren’t even my superiors’; they came from very high up the food chain.”
Lula actually was a damned hero, Kira thought. She’d been out hunting terrorists when she made a business connection between the bad guys and William Davidson. Lula had gone forward with the case as “Lula” instead of being under cover as “White” because she’d known the Davidson family since she was a kid, and it was the patriarch of that family, William Davidson, that Lula targeted for access to the terrorist organization.
By exploiting her childhood connection to the family and heading the mission that brought the bad guy down and brought Ty and Kira together, Lula risked her safety for the rest of her life. That mission was something Lula deemed worth dying for.
Kira felt so small and petty when she thought of those sacrifices.
And yet, she couldn’t let go and trust.
Her family, via Uncle Nadir, betrayed her. Her friend Lula betrayed her. Her boyfriend, Ty, the man she loved, betrayed her.
And while she could laud and appreciate, at the same time, she couldn’t trust.
Ty hoped they would marry one day, but Kira didn’t think she could.
Maybe with time.
Maybe not.
“You two worked as a team and played me like a fiddle, and who wants to think they’re such suckers to manipulation? My intelligence was insulted. And my sense of self-preservation. I guess as much as anything, that’s the truth. I don’t trust my own instincts, and that’s a terrible loss.” She took a few paces in silence before Kira added, “Here’s an interesting one. Maybe you can explain this to me. All my life before something bad happens—”
“Give me an example of bad,” Lula asked.
“My dad fell in the snow, hit his head, and died.”
“Okay, that’s not just bad, that’s horrific.”
“Before something bad happens, I get tinnitus in my ears.” Kira swirled her hand near the side of her head. “And my nose buzzes.”
“Weird.”
“Yeah.” Kira audibly swallowed. “It happened to me off and on in the lead up to Tanzania, but it always went away when Ty was there. It happened to me as I was getting dressed for London’s party, but I brushed it off.”
“What did you imagine might happen there?” Lula asked.
“I thought, William’s old enough to be London’s dad instead of her husband. After what happened at his compound, the stress of that and the long flights right after, maybe he’d just up and die. I honestly thought William might have a heart attack. I even bought a defibrillator, and I put it in the kitchen and had the caterer tell all of the servers where it was.”
“Where do you buy a defibrill—never mind. Listen,” Lula said. “I can’t explain why you get these body sensations.”
“No, that’s not what I want you to explain. It’s that for the last couple of days maybe a little over a week, it’s been happening. The tinnitus and the nose buzz. But today, when we drove into the city to go to my friend’s jewelry shop, I heard nothing, and my nose was just fine.”
“And you were fine at the shop. No one touched you.” Lula pointed out.
“True.”
“But you feel it at your house?” Lula asked.
“Yes. Sometimes.”
“Now?” Lula turned her head, scanning slowly.
