Dark Deceptions by Dee Davis

“He’s dead.”
    “I’m sorry,” he murmured automatically.
    “Don’t be,” she snapped. “Turns out he wasn’t the man I thought he was.”
    “I see.” Silence stretched between them, the others in the room seeming, for the moment, to have disappeared.
    “I think,” Tom said, clearing his throat to break through the building tension, “that we’ve gotten a bit off track. What’s
     past is past. There’s no need to rehash it here.” He paused, his eyes dropping to Annie, and Nash frowned as something passed
     between the two of them.
    He started to object, but Tyler cut him off. “The key here is for us to figure out who’s behind this and stop them.”
    “The
key
is to find my son,” Annie snapped, her lips compressed with anger.
    “That’s not your call,” Tom said. “You pulled yourself out of the equation when you decided to act on your own.”
    “The hell I did.” She rose to her feet, every muscle in her body ready for a fight.
    “Again, we’ve gotten off point.” Avery’s voice was deceptively calm, but Nash recognized the tone. “Our task was to neutralize
     Ms. Gallagher and trace the plot to its source. I see no reason we can’t make rescuing the boy part of finding the culprits.”
    “As long as he doesn’t get in the way,” Annie said, clenching her fists.
    “I have never knowingly put a child in harm’s way, Ms. Gallagher.” Avery’s eyes narrowed as he studied Annie. “And I don’t
     intend to start now.”
    “I wish I could believe that.”
    “Well, for the moment, we’re all you’ve got,” he said. “And I’d submit that it’s in your best interest to suspend hostilities.
     The only way any of our objectives are going to be accomplished is if you give us whatever you’ve got on the people behind
     your son’s kidnapping.”
    Annie held Avery’s gaze for a moment, still defiant, and then with a sigh sank back into her chair. “What do you want to know?”
    “Everything,” Tom said, pulling up a chair to sit in front of her. “No detail is too small.”
    From his seat on the radiator cover, Nash listened as she told them about discovering her son missing, and the first phone
     call from Rivon. Her pain was evident, her fear for her son coloring every word. Despite all that Annie’d done, she didn’t
     deserve this. And even if she did, the boy certainly didn’t.
    Nash quashed the conflicting emotions battling inside him, forcing himself to concentrate on the conversation instead.
    “The initial call came from Rivon?” Tom was asking.
    “I think so, yes.” Annie nodded. “Although he didn’t identify himself at the time.”
    “And the call came right on the heels of your discovery that your son was missing?” Tyler was transcribing the conversation
     on a laptop, presumably linked in to Hannah at Sunderland.
    “Yes. It was maybe fifteen or twenty minutes later. I’m not sure exactly. I was pretty frantic.”
    “And you never considered calling for outside help?” Nash asked, shifting so that he could better see her face.
    “Of course, I thought of it. But as I said before, I wasn’t certain who I could trust.” Her words zinged across the room,
     taking on a life of their own. “And once they called, all I could think of was getting to Adam.”
    “And there was no mention of Ashad?” Avery asked.
    “No. They made no effort to identify themselves.” She shook her head. “You mentioned Ashad earlier. Are you certain they’re
     behind this?”
    “We have credible intel that links them to Rivon,” Tyler said, looking up from the computer. “And there’s chatter connecting
     you to them as well.”
    “Well, I didn’t even know it was Rivon until I got to D.C. And he’s never mentioned anyone specifically. Just the ever-present
     ‘they.’ Frankly I’m surprised I’d be on their radar. Not only has it been eight years, but most of my career was spent in
     Eastern Europe.”
    “You know as well as I do that these groups have