Special Ops Affair by Jennifer Morey Page B

The one who never let her down, and trusted her implicitly. He waited for her to tell him now. But she couldn’t. She was too afraid.
    “What do you want me to tell Jag?” she asked instead.
    “Don’t tell him who Roth is. I regret ever telling you.”
    That stung. But he disconnected before she could say more.
    She lowered her phone and stared down at it in her hand. How was she going to avoid telling Jag? The strange thing was…she wanted to tell him.
    “Well?” he said.
    “He doesn’t want me to tell you.”
    Jag sighed hard. “That figures. I should be getting used to this by now.”
    She looked over at him. “Roth is connected to TES.”
    He stared at her. “What?”
    Odie’s heart hammered hard and fast. “He’s the one who asked Cullen to look into Hersch.”
    Jag just stared at her.
    “That’s way more than I should have told you. If Cullen found out, he’d ruin me. He goes to great pains to keep the identities of his contacts in the government secret. It’s imperative to the survival of TES.”
    “I won’t say a word, Odie. And if you can tell me that, why can’t you tell me about your father?”
    In that instant, she knew she could. “Because I’m afraid he’s linked to Hersch somehow. I know something that could prove he was involved with someone really terrible, but I’m almost ninety-nine percent sure he was set up.”
    “Almost?” He sounded angry. “Who might he have been involved with?”
    It scared her to even say the name. “Abu Dharr al-Majid. He heads a Zaidi rebel group believed to be funded by the Iranians.” She hesitated. “I’ve done some digging and it looks like…it looks like…” She couldn’t finish.
    “It looks like what, Odie?” Jag demanded.
    She looked over at him. “I recently found ties to…other…more well-known terrorists.”
    Jag’s mouth tightened and she could tell he fought his temper. “And you kept that from TES?”
    “Dharr was on our Watch List.”
    “But ties to terrorism removes them from the Watch. He belongs in Surveillance now. You hindered that progress by keeping it a secret. Dharr could have been stopped long before now.”
    He was furious.
    “I would have turned him in to Surveillance. But I got that package. I just wanted to check some things out first.”
    That wasn’t enough to placate him. He still looked at her with disgust and anger.
    “Jag, please try to understand what I was dealing with. My father wouldn’t have gotten involved with someone like that.”
    “Your father is dead.”
    “Yes, and even in death someone out there wants him to be their scapegoat. I want to uncover the truth, but I don’t want his reputation tarnished.”
    “What makes you think he met with Dharr?”
    “Kate found pictures of him meeting him in Yemen. An anonymous source sent them to her after she did some fishing.”
    “So someone wanted you to find out.”
    “Yes. And that’s what convinced me it was a setup. My father looks like the bad guy, when in fact he’s not.”
    “Or so you hope.” His disgust with her hurt more than she expected. “How long have you known this?”
    “Kate found someone in Yemen last year. That someone went to the anonymous source and that’s when we received the photos. But there’s more.” She hesitated. This wasn’t going to go over well. Jag looked over at her and cocked his head in disbelief. “After my father was killed, I found an email he’d sent.” She didn’t want to finish.
    “What did the email say?”
    “It said, ‘Meet me at my house. We’ll discuss logistics there.’ A time was specified and it matches when he was killed.”
    “So, you think someone other than your father sent it from his computer.”
    “Yes.” Dharr. “I was able to trace it to Yemen, but I never located the source. I think Dharr sent it and then killed him.”
    “What did you do with the email?”
    She pressed her lips closed and looked out the window.
    “You got rid of it?” He sounded