Page 30 of Protecting You
“What does Alyssa have to do with any of that?”
“His daughter just happens to have contracts with terrorists. You really think that’s an accident?”
“More likely, Ghazi targeted her because of her father. Or her cousin, Michael. He's had run-ins with Ghazi. That doesn’t make Alyssa guilty.”
“Doesn’t make her innocent, either. And whatever her status, she’s in it now. If she refuses to help… Well, we’ll know where her loyalties lie.”
Callan already knew where her loyalties lay. Didn’t he?
He replayed all the conversations he’d had with her in the last twelve hours. There was nothing in her words or her tone that led him to believe she’d known who Ghazi was.
No, whatever her father was into, assuming he was involved at all, Alyssa was innocent.
And Malcolm wanted to turn her into a pawn.
“And we’ll know whereyourloyalties lie too.” Malcolm’s voice was smug as he added the threat.
“I have nothing to do with anything.”
“You impeded a federal investigation.”
“I understand Ghazi’s being surveilled, but I wasn’t impeding anything. I joined an old friend at dinner because I was concerned for her safety.”
“Maybe. But if you want to keep your job—and your freedom to take care of your daughter—you’d better get Alyssa to work with us. Your future is at stake here.”
Malcolm ended the call, leaving Callan to stare at the blank screen.
What in the world was going on?
More importantly…what was he supposed to do now?
CHAPTERSEVEN
Alyssa was being irrational.
She set down the dryer too hard in the hotel bathroom and yanked her brush through her hair.
Wasn’t identifying the problem the first step toward reaching a solution?
She couldn’t help her irrationality, though.
It irritated her that Callan was right about Charles—the terrorist, Dariush Ghazi.
It irritated her that Michael had agreed with every one of Callan’s pronouncements.
It irritated her that Callan knew more about Ghazi than she did, considering that the man had attacked her family.
When Michael had called at just after five that morning, he’d apologized for not getting back to her sooner. He and Leila had been sailing off the coast of some remote Indonesian island. He hadn’t checked his phone in hours because, you know.
Newlyweds.
He’d filled her in on the role Ghazi had played in the attack on his family’s Maine vacation home the previous Christmas.
Alyssa still didn’t know much about what had happened, though she’d seen the house after the fact. Bullet holes and shattered glass. Second-floor rooms had caught fire, thanks to a Molotov cocktail lobbed through a window.
The beautiful home her uncle’s family had built, one nail at a time, had been a mess, but between Uncle Roger, Aunt Peggy, the six Wright brothers and their wives and girlfriends and kids, plus Alyssa and her sisters and Mom and Dad, they’d had the downstairs cleaned up and the upstairs mostly rebuilt in time for Christmas.
No easy feat, that.
