Brenna woke up the next morning, a big smile on her face. As she slipped from bed, she winced at the soreness. They’d woken up, made love, and then crashed, several more times. Now she just felt renewed, blessed, and complete in so many ways. She had a quick shower, and, when she came out, he was sitting up, rubbing his face.
“The shower’s empty, if you want to jump in,” she said. “I’ll get dressed.”
He nodded and had the fastest shower she ever thought possible. When he came back out, she was still drying off and working on her hair. He smiled. “Do you still take forever to get dressed?”
She chuckled. “I didn’t think so, but according to you, maybe.” She pulled out the last of the clothes that they had been given and went to shake it out, when something fell free. She looked at it in surprise. “Oh, my God,” she said. She dove to the floor and picked it up. She held it out to him. “This is Jessie’s.”
He took it from her.
She picked up the pants, studied them, and said, “These are Jessie’s pants.”
“You mean, your clothing got mixed up?”
“Yes,” she said, “obviously.” She looked at the underwear and said, “The underwear and the bra’s mine, but the T-shirt and the pants are hers.” She quickly dressed in her underwear and pulled the T-shirt over her head. It was tight because she was bustier than Jessie was. “But this is hers.”
He looked at it and crossed his eyes. He dressed just as fast and asked her, “Can you wear her pants?”
She struggled into them and said, “They are damn tight.”
He grinned and gave a wolf whistle. “They also look damn fine.”
She rolled her eyes at him, and they quickly raced out to the living room.
Killian was there. He looked up and grinned when he saw them. “Well now, maybe you’ll be easier to live with.”
“We weren’t hard to live with at all,” she said. “Look what we found.” Jerricho held it up and explained.
Killian looked at it and asked, “Is that Jessie’s USB key?”
“Yes,” Brenna cried out. It was like a little flute, like a charm for a woman’s bracelet or a chain. Brenna pulled it open, and inside was the digital storage microdisk. Immediately they walked to the laptop. As soon as they brought it up, she whistled. “This is exactly the footage out of China. So that’s what Jessie was trying to take back out of here?” Brenna asked.
“I don’t know if it would have been all that dangerous for her to take out of the US,” Jerricho said, “but it certainly would have been dangerous if China knew.”
“And maybe that’s all it was. Maybe she was doing it for China,” Brenna said quietly. “Or maybe Jessie was using it to blackmail them.”
“If she was trying to fund a new life,” Killian said, “she might have been that foolish.”
Just then Brenna’s phone rang. She put the Unknown Caller on Speakerphone.
They all heard the distraught voice of Jessie. “Have you got it?”
“I just found it,” Brenna said. “No thanks to you though. You sent somebody to kidnap me.”
“He was supposed to get the key,” she said. “How the hell did you end up with my pants anyway?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s not as if we had much time together before we parted ways.”
“I know. What will you do now?”
“This will go back to where it came from,” she snapped. “And you, if you had anything to do with my kidnapping, you had better run and stay the hell away from me. Because now it’s not just me who has a copy. It’s already been uploaded to the cloud for safekeeping,” she lied. “The question is whether we’ll give it to MI6.”
“The government’s paying me,” she said dully. “And that money was supposed to fund my husband’s military career.”
“You mean, the army he’s building?”
“He’s in espionage,” she said. “He wanted the weapons for home.”
“It doesn’t matter where he wanted the weapons for. You’re not getting this,” Brenna said. “Where are you?”
“Like I’ll tell you,” she said, “but I’m not in England anymore.”
“You may not want to stick around your boyfriend either, depending on how he feels about all this.”
“He already knows,” she said and then cried out slightly.
“Did he hurt you?”
“Yeah, of course he did,” she said, “but I snuck out, away from him. I’m heading onto one of the smaller islands, where I won’t get recognized and where nobody will care. I failed. He punished me. He doesn’t want me, and, if I’d stayed, he’d have likely killed me. I’ll be left to raise this child alone.”
“If you’re even pregnant,” Brenna snapped, not sure where the deceit started and stopped with her supposed friend.
“I am,” she said, “but I don’t know if it’ll survive the beating.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “As long as you’re away and safe, you should be able to heal.”
“I will. I was just hoping I could have that key, so I could fund my life, when I get wherever.”
“You could try a job,” she said, “an honest one this time.”
“It will take forever,” she said.
“You get no help from me,” she said. “Now that we have this, I don’t have to worry about you coming after me.”
“No, they don’t believe you have it. They think I lost it. If I ever had it at all. Nobody believes me anymore.”
“You should have never had it. That’s on you,” Brenna said. And inside, she felt her heart breaking for the future of her former friend’s child. And, if there was one certainty in life, as Jessie had already said to Brenna, Jessie was a predator; she would survive. Brenna just hoped to hell that Jessie didn’t ruin somebody else’s life to make it happen. After reminding her of that, Jessie hung up. Brenna looked down at her phone and then at Killian and Jerricho. “Is it over?”
Both men nodded.
“I’m sure it is,” Jerricho said. “The two who kidnapped you are both dead, and, as you’ve told her, the intel’s already uploaded to the cloud. If anybody contacts her, that’s what she’ll tell them. She doesn’t have the key, and she’s taken the punishment for it, so she’s out. As for her husband, all we can do is pass on the information to MI6 and see if they can track him down. But he’s been on that wanted list for a very long time.” Just then his phone rang. And it was Jonas.
“Found the husband this morning,” he snapped. “He’s dead.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” he said, “looks like he took a beating too.”
“Interesting,” he murmured, “because Jessie just phoned Brenna too. Asked if she had the key, and, when she told her it had been uploaded to the cloud, Jessie was pretty upset.”
“I’m sure she was.”
“She also said she’d taken a beating.”