Page 41 of Acting on Instinct
White. He should have guessed that if she was that close to the fort, she was heading their way.
White had brought up his job potential at Iniquus. She had vouched for him, and Ty wasn’t convinced that it had given him an advantage.
They knew that Kira was a CIA asset. A means to check in on what was happening with Nadir.
There was an acronym they used in Delta Force and the intelligence world to manipulate people into giving up whatever they needed—a ride, a name, it didn’t really matter. It was simple, and it worked. MICE. White hadn’t needed it to manipulate Kira. Kira was simply friends with White, as Lula LaRoe, and they talked about life. Sometimes, White’s conversations were more pointed than others. Kira knew and didn’t care as long as it helped keep the women of her family safe.
He wasn’t as pure as Kira.
M was for money, that was the easy one. Find someone in debt, someone who was greedy, hungry. The CIA had cabinets full of cash and handed it out like team parents handed out snacks at his childhood games.
I, on the other hand, stood for influence. And influence was hard. You had to know what you were doing with that one. Who did they hate? What did they want to see happen? What did they believe in, and who did they align with? When it came to Ty’s work with area chieftains and warlords, the affiliations were important to know. Who was a momentary money-driven ally, and who might just be playing him because of the almighty “I.”
C was for compromise – or coercion, depending on your personality and that of the person you were working with. This was the world that he was dragged into by White. He wasn’t exactly a honey trap. He wasn’t trying to bed Kira and get a video of it. That would have been a flat no from him. But he did make Kira feel frightened about heading out to her friend London’s place in the wilds of Tanzania, and then he dangled the prospect of protection. It was a conflict that wrestled in his psyche until today. For all the good that came of it, for all the ways he and his military K9, Rory, were able to protect Kira, he was profoundly grateful. But every tightly scripted manipulation he performed lived in his gut.
E in “MICE” was ego. And as polite as Dr. Banyon had been with him, Ty knew that White had used the big E on him. It wasn’t the standard desire for recognition or a sense of self-importance that drove Ty. It was his ego that said he could successfully handle the mission and make the stranger love him. He had no doubt in his head—ego. And it was the other component of ego, a damaged ego that wanted the opportunity for revenge.
Banyon had called it.
Revenge for Ty might not be the right word, but it was close. Their target, Omar Imadi, might be cleaned up. He’d obviously made new and important friends. But he was still the man who had ordered the capture of Storm Meyers. He’d ordered her to read a sign and ordered her to be beheaded in asnuff film. It was a miracle that he pushed through the tent as the tango positioned his knife in front of Storm’s neck.
His body did what it was trained to do—triple tap.
Too late.
The razor-sharp blade slid through Storm’s neck.
Ty didn’t even remember doing it. Trained to perform an emergency trac, he did what he had to do, cutting into Storm’s neck below the sword slice. He’d dragged his pack from his back, cutting off a section of tubing from his water bladder and forcing it into the hole of his make-do tracheotomy.
Those circumstances were dire.
Storm had been awake and aware the entire time. The sound of her gurgling blood was just one of the fucking nightmares that woke him with regularity.
Storm survived.
What he didn’t tell Dr. Banyon, because it was none of her goddammed business, was that when White showed him the picture of Kira way back before he’d met her in person, and Ty knew that she would be near Omar, the picture of Storm on her knees, her hair knotted into the tango’s fist with his sword glinting under the camera lights, roared into Ty’s consciousness.
Kira was innocent. And he would protect her because his ego said he could, and his anger said he would.
Something was wrong, and Kira wasn’t confiding in him.
There was danger near her, he knew it in his gut.
All he wanted was to do the required training and get back to her side. Roll up like a beast with gnashing teeth to protect her, fierce and efficient, like Rory had been at the robbery.
But here was White.
And now, Ty had a mission to complete.
Chapter Thirteen
Ty
The plates were stacked on the table. The men sat with mugs of hot cider between their booted feet. White cleared her throat, and the team fell silent.
“Sometimes it’s the best choice to bring in the people who have a stake in the game. Sometimes, that makes people so driven by their emotions that it becomes an impediment. I tend to believe that Echo has their shit together enough that they can maintain their sangfroid.”
“Sang what now? What do you want us to sing about?” Jeopardy asked.
