Suicide Mission (Guarded Secrets #1)

25: "Sara, people are coming."

"Tessa, I know you're in here," Jax's voice lulled as he walked through the room. His footsteps echoed through the concrete room and bounced off the walls around us. Tessa and I crouched down to the ground, each giving the other a look that said it was time for us to cooperate with each other. "Speak up now and I can kill you quickly."

"There goes the family love," Tessa said before she slapped her hands over her mouth, clearly not meaning to have said that out loud.

"Come on, Tessa, I know you have questions." Jax was baiting her in an attempt to get her to speak out. "Don't you want to know how I got your dad to do one final run? I'm sure he had told you that he hadn't run since the first few months when he joined us. Your mother was dying, and he had to pay for her medical bills and for you. He needed the money, and we offered him lots of money, and all he had to do was those runs. He paid for the medical bills, the funeral, and your schooling. But you came back to us, couldn't pay for college, and you needed the money now."

I glanced at Tessa to see her reaction; I wished that I hadn't. She looked like she was fighting between a destructive anger and tearful sadness. The tears won out, and she let one slip down her cheek before toughening up again and forcing herself to listen to his words. I just hoped that she wouldn't blame herself as I had, it was too painful and even she didn't deserve that.

"I offered him more money than he could refuse," Jax continued. "It would have been enough for your first year of college, all he had to do was finish a few runs for us then you would have been out of here. Could have gone to school out of state, and been far away from us." Tessa put her hand over her mouth to control her cries. "All he wanted was for you to be safe, and out of harm's way. I guess he didn't think you'd actually take an interest in the business. Maybe that's why he told you it was a family business, he didn't want to break your innocence and break the news that you were doing work for the cartel. But I'm curious, when did you find out you were selling drugs?"

She let out a small whimper, there was too much coming at her at once and it was taking over and clouding her thoughts. Her tears were filling her eyes, and she was starting to shake. I placed my hand on Tessa's shoulder to offer some form of comfort, but Jax just kept throwing punches. It was clear that since he wasn't leaving, he knew we were in here and just waiting for her to take the bait so he could find us.

"I remember the day he found out you knew about it," Jax said. "He was disappointed, wasn't he, Tessa? He found out you liked being a part of this, that you liked what we sent you to do, and enjoyed it. He tried to embrace it, but mostly he tried to make you hate it. He told you about the people we killed, but you thought we were family and could do no wrong. Soon you were thinking like us, anything to protect the family, right?"

"Those people," Tessa cried. "They are dead, because of them." She let out a few quiet sobs, unable to stop the tears from falling anymore. "I protected them and their actions."

"You didn't know, Tessa," I said, I couldn't believe it, because I wouldn't be able to stand by while innocent people died, but it seemed true from what Jax was saying.

"Tessa, don't you want to know what your father said right before he died in my arms?" Jax continued, interrupting me without knowing. His voice reverberated off the walls, and danced around in the silence around us until he filled it. "He didn't even know I was the reason he died, even in death he was ignorant. Just like you," he said, causing Tessa to let out an angry growl as she forced herself to stay put. Luckily, Jax was interrupted by his phone ringing and gave Tessa time to calm down slightly. I heard him release a loud groan as he went to answer the phone. "What do you want?" he questioned gruffly.

"No, I haven't found them yet," Jax answered, waiting for the other person to reply. I couldn't see his face, but the chuckle he let out told me it was good news. "Thanks, yeah I will look for the other one too." "Hey, Sara," he said, causing me to glance at Tessa in shock. How did he know my name? "Yeah, I know your name. We looked it up in our files. One of the hit men we use seems to have a rather large file on you, but he seemed to have lost track of you over the years. I can see why now," Jax said. "You accepted being recruited into the agency, was it to find the man that took your family away from you? We wondered what he was doing that night he left here. He was going to kill your family. Man, having a hit put out on your family. That must have been a rough childhood. You're back on his radar, so it's only a matter of time before you die."