Truth In The Lie (The Leonidas Corporation Book 2) Read online

  Truth In The Lie

  The Leonidas Corporation - Book 2

  Tarina Deaton

  Tarina Deaton, LLC

  Copyright © 2019 by Tarina Speidel

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. With the exception of limited quotes used for the purpose of reviews, no part of this book, whether in print or ebook format, may be reproduced, scanned, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means - electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author. Please do not participate or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  Editor: Jessica Snyder Edits

  Cover Design: Lori Loves Books

  Also by Tarina Deaton

  The Combat Hearts Series

  Stitched Up Heart

  Half-Broke Heart

  Locked-Down Heart

  Rescued Heart

  Imperfect Heart

  Holiday Heart (only available to newsletter subscribers)

  The Jilted Duet

  Make Me Believe

  Believe In Me (Coming Soon)

  The Leonidas Corporation

  Found in the Lost

  Truth in the Lie (Coming Soon)

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Tarina Deaton

  Chapter 1

  Iraq

  “Attention on the JOC floor. The time is now zero two hundred hours. This is the current operations briefing.”

  Major Addison Foster clicked on the chat window blinking a new message from her friend Elise.

  JOC23 (Elise): Do you have to pay attention to this brief?

  HUM04 (Addison): Yes. One of my targets.

  JOC23: Boo. Who am I going to kill time w/now?

  HUM04: lol. I can still chat. Just need to pay attention to the other windows.

  JOC23: Cool.

  While the briefing droned on through the mission timeline, communications channels, and weather, Addison checked in to the four chat rooms she monitored during operations—Search and Rescue, Reconnaissance, Current Operations, and the team chat. The last group tended to be the most amusing. She didn’t know any of them personally since they were located at a different Forward Operating Base, but she interacted with the analysts enough that she felt like she knew them.

  HUM04: Checking in

  SOF69 (Team Liaison Officer): Hey. How’s it hanging?

  HUM04: It doesn’t.

  SOF69: lol. Never gets old.

  “Ten minutes to target.”

  JOC23: Did you ever hook up w/Petrov?

  HUM04: Ew. No. Where did that come from?

  JOC23: He just asked me if I wanted to go get coffee at Green Bean. Why ew?

  HUM04: He’s a man whore, that’s why.

  JOC23: Maybe that means he can get me to the big Oh

  HUM04: Doubtful. Guys like that aren’t in it for your gratification. Only theirs.

  HUM04: Besides, do you really want his petri dish near your incubator?

  JOC23: Ew. And cynical much?

  “Five minutes to target.”

  Addison’s stomach fluttered, and she glanced up from her computer screen to the floor-to-ceiling bank of monitors. The close-up black-and-white IR image of the Special Forces team fast-roping from Black Hawks greeted her. The image flickered to the panned-out view to include the compound and all three helicopters.

  Her pulse kicked up a notch. Shit. Braedon was on one of the teams. She knew he was in theater, but she hadn’t known where since their locations and movements were classified. Even with her top secret clearance, she never knew where her brother was until after the fact.

  HUM04: Is Braedon Foster on one of the teams?

  SOF69: You know I can’t tell you names.

  Shit. Shit. Shit. Something was wrong. Her stomach somersaulted the same way it had when he’d fallen off the slide behind their house and broken his arm.

  “Three minutes to target.”

  HUM04: Something is wrong. Call off the mission.

  SOF69: What? No. Who is this?

  HUM04: Braedon Foster’s sister. Something is wrong. CALL OFF THE MISSION!

  Her gaze snapped to the big screen. The team was in position, ready to enter the compound.

  Her heart thudded in her chest, threatening to burst through her sternum. She looked over her shoulder and up to the top of the theater where the Joint Operations Center, or JOC, commander paced across the walkway.

  Pushing back from her chair, she took the stairs two at a time.

  “Sir? Sir!”

  “What is it?” Colonel Jefferson asked.

  “You have to call off the mission,” she said.

  “What?” He removed the left cam of his headset off his ear.

  “You have to stop the mission,” she repeated. “Something is wrong.”

  “What exactly is wrong?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s a feeling. I can’t explain it—I’ve never been able to explain it.”

  “I’m not calling off a mission because you had bad food at the chow hall,” he said.

  Captain Petrov stepped between her and the commander. “Major, you should go back to your station.”

  Addison glared at him hard enough that he shifted his weight and looked at Colonel Jefferson over his shoulder.

  “You need to listen to the captain, Major, before I have you removed from the floor.”

  “Ready to breach.” This came from the team on the ground.

  “Please, sir. I am begging you to call off this mission.”

  He settled the cam back over his ear and adjusted the microphone near his mouth. “You are a go.”

  Her stomach plummeted, and only her iron will kept her knees from buckling. She spun and faced the screen. At the bottom of the theater, Elise watched her with worried eyes.

  A five-man team breached the compound and hugged the walls around to the back of the main building.

  “Team One is set.”

  The second team set up at the front of the building. Ten seconds later, the first team entered the building from the rear and their heat signatures disappeared. Two minutes after that, the second team entered.

  An eternity later, the call out. “Target is clear.”

  The colonel turned to her and cocked an eyebrow. “See, Major? Nothing to worry about.”

  No. Something was still wrong. Very wrong. And now she knew for sure. “Get them out of the building. Get them out of the compound.”

  “It’s fine, Major,” Captain Petrov said.

  “It’
s not. The house should not be empty.” The intelligence said the house and compound were a main staging base for ISIS. “Get. Them. Out.” Her clenched teeth acted as a barrier to keep her scream inside.

  The image on the wall of screens, all twenty of them—half as large as an IMAX screen—exploded in a bright ball of white light. Seconds later, the boom, caught by the mics of the men outside the compound, reverberated through the room.

  “The house is gone! Repeat. The house is gone,” came the report.

  Addison’s breath stuttered in her lungs, and she sank to her knees. Chaos erupted around her. The commander shouted orders at someone next to her. Someone entered her field of vision. She could see his mouth moving, but it was as if he was speaking to her underwater. Pushing at him, she stared at the wall of monitors, watching the men still alive run toward the bright flames of the target building. Watched while they got as close as they could. Watched the insurgents racing toward the survivors. Watched the tracer rounds from the close air support strafe the enemy forces. Watched the remaining team sprint for the helicopters that landed to retrieve them.

  And she saw none of it.

  Her twin—the other half of her whole—was gone.

  Addison sat in the center of her bed with her legs crossed, picking at her nails. The mission had ended hours ago. She wasn’t even sure how she’d made it to her room, vaguely recalling someone leading her. It might have been Elise.

  She should feel something. Hollow, maybe? There should be an emptiness yawning wide in place of her heart, but that wasn’t what she felt.

  There was a knock at the door, then it swung open before she responded. She glanced up as her commander entered. He moved the camp chair from the foot of her bed to in front of her and sat down, resting his arms on his knees and clasping his hands together.

  He was an attractive older man, but he looked tired. Older. As a full-bird colonel, he was probably less than ten years older than her. Rank came with its own worries and tonight it showed in the deep lines of his face.

  “Major Foster—Addison. We haven’t confirmed all the team members or contacted all the family members yet, but I wanted to tell you personally. Your brother was on the mission. He was with the first team that entered the building.” He paused. “There were no survivors.” He rubbed one hand over his close-cropped hair.

  “I understand, sir,” she whispered.

  “I’ve got the front office working on getting you on the first transport back to the U.S. You should be home with your family within the next forty-eight hours.”

  He stood, and she felt the weight of his gaze. He had questions—the same questions everyone always had. How had she known? Had she always had a connection to her brother? Had it ever happened before? Did he have the same thing?

  “We’ll do our best to retrieve your brother’s remains, but insurgents have overrun the area. It may be some time before we can get back in there and when we do…”

  She swallowed hard and nodded. When they did, there would be nothing to find.

  “I’m truly sorry, Addison.” He left, closing the door softly behind him.

  She closed her eyes and concentrated on the feeling deep inside her. It didn’t matter if they sent the entire 101st Airborne Division to look for the bodies of the team—her brother wouldn’t be there.

  He was hurt, but he was alive. Now she needed to figure out how to convince someone to believe her.

  Chapter 2

  Arlington National Cemetery

  Addison clenched her fists by her side and dug her nails into the palms of her hands while the honor guard lifted the flag from the gleaming coffin and stepped to the side.

  The soldiers at each end snapped the flag tight and folded the corners together, turning the flag with precise, choreographed movements. How many hundreds of times had they done this? Too many, she was sure. And completely unnecessary this time, because her brother was alive.

  In the six weeks since she’d returned from Iraq, she’d failed to convince anyone. Not her parents. Not his unit. Not the Navy. No one believed her. They chalked it up to survivor’s guilt. Shock or PTSD. An ultimate refusal to accept the truth. She’d even been ordered to undergo a psych evaluation. She’d waited until her request to resign her commission had been accepted before telling her commander to go fuck himself.

  The honor guard finished folding the flag and presented it to her mother “on behalf of a grateful nation.” Fuck the grateful nation. That same nation was leaving her brother out there somewhere to rot.

  One by one, her brother’s teammates approached the coffin, knelt beside it, and pounded their SEAL trident pins into the lid. Each one echoed with a sense of finality that was as devastating as the continued refusal to believe her. They were sealing his fate as surely as if they were pounding nails into his coffin.

  Addison couldn’t take it anymore. Couldn’t watch an empty box be lowered into the ground while the bugler played “Taps” and the honor guard fired the volley. Spinning on her heel on the green carpet laid over the soft ground, she only got a few steps before her uncle grabbed her upper arm and stopped her.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked in a low voice.

  “I’m not staying here for the rest of this farce,” she whispered.

  “You need to quit being so selfish. Do you understand what this is doing to your parents?”

  She glanced to her left. Her mother sat with her head bowed, clutching the folded flag to her chest, tears streaming unchecked down her face, her father’s arm wrapped tightly around her shoulders. She knew exactly what it was doing to them. They were too immersed in their own grief to deal with her. She understood and didn’t blame them—in their minds, they’d lost their son—but it left her isolated and alone.

  Looking back at her uncle, she said, “They wouldn’t be going through this if someone would just believe me. He’s not dead.” She wrenched her arm away and marched off.

  Her heels clicked on the wide, paved sidewalk as she left the grass. The signpost ahead pointed toward the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

  How many families went to the Tomb wondering if their loved one was one of the many unidentified remains interred in the Tomb? How many families spent years coming to terms with the reality they would never know what happened to their missing father, son, brother? How long did it take before they gave up and moved on with their lives?

  She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. She was looking into private investigators, ones with military experience, to help her figure out what happened to Braedon and find him. Finding one that wouldn’t feed her a line of bullshit while robbing her blind appeared to be the biggest obstacle.

  The hair on the back of her neck prickled and she glanced over her shoulder. A man in a dark suit walked several paces behind her. He’d been at Braedon’s sham of a funeral and had been one of the first to pound in a trident. His longish dark hair, combed back from his face, short beard, and lack of uniform said he wasn’t active Navy. She’d caught him looking directly at her during the funeral. It could have been because she wasn’t sitting with her parents, but she hadn’t gotten Judgey McJudgerson vibes off him like some of the other attendees, especially her parents’ few country club friends who’d made the trip from Texas.

  Looking back again, he was still there. Still keeping pace with her. His relaxed, hands-in-pockets, casual stroll didn’t fool her. He held himself the same way Braedon did. Tight and loose at the same time. Like a coiled snake in that moment before it strikes—mesmerizing and deadly.

  Addison stopped and turned to face him. “Can I help you?”

  Devon stopped a few feet from her and shook his head. “Just want to make sure you’re safe.”

  “I can take care of myself,” she said.

  His lips twitched. “I know you can, Addison.”

  She cocked her head, and the corners of her eyes tightened. Not quite a full squint, but she telegraphed her distrust well enough.

  “Have we met?” she
asked.

  “No. I’m Devon Nash. I was teammates with your brother.” The soft skin of her palm felt like silk in his when she took his outstretched hand.

  “You were on the op in Syria with him?”

  “No.” He shook his head, releasing her hand. “I wasn’t there. We served together on our first tour.”

  “How do you know my name?” she asked.

  “Braedon talked about you a lot. He showed me your picture once.” A picture Devon had printed out and stuck in his wallet. Faded and worn through at the creases, he’d carried it around for almost a decade—along with his infatuation with his teammate’s twin sister.

  She nodded and glanced off in the distance before shifting her weight to turn away from him.

  He stepped closer, willing her to stay. “I overheard what you said to your uncle. What did you mean when you said Braedon isn’t dead?”

  Crossing her arms, she dropped her head back before nodding it forward and shaking it. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does. Why don’t you think he’s being buried right now? Other than they never recovered his body.”

  “Why? So you can tell me I’m delusional or selfish like my uncle did?”

  “I have my reasons, but I want to know yours first,” he said.

  Her eyes jumped back and forth as she searched his face. He didn’t know what she was looking for, but she must have found it. “You know we’re twins, right?”