Taken

Zoey (Chapter27)

It was a little awkward hearing Chris say that to us. I was also a little angry.How much did he know,or think he knew? John had told me he thought Chris knew

something, but he hadn't said what, and then there was

that whole incident where they made me ride in a

separate car then them…assholes. I wasn't sure why it

bothered me so much, it’s not like I saw us really going

anywhere. In fact, I was viewing him spending the night as a comfort gesture, nothing romantic. He saw I was nervous staying by myself, so he stayed over. End of story. But then there was the kiss…and the other kiss…

"So,” I started as I walked closer to Carson so he could hear me better above all the noise of the street. “What are you supposed to be telling us?”

“Right,” Carson responded as we stopped in front of a little cart that was selling handmade jewelry to “examine” the work. “I guess I should start from the very top. You see, Daniel and I weren't sent here on a case, we came here on our own. We had a lead on a terrorist group, and we were determined to follow it. Have you guys heard of the Serpents?” John and I shook our heads. “Didn't think so,” Carson continued. “They are the organization we were after. They haven’t actually committed any terrorist acts against America, but they are suspected to. We’d been after them for the last couple years, but could never get anything on them. So when Daniel and I got the lead, we were ecstatic! The

only thing we had to do was get cleared to come over here to follow it and we would be golden. But the C.I.A. didn't clear us to go.”

“Why not?” John asked. “How could they not clear you when the people you were after were suspected of terrorism?”

“That’s what we wondered. But it got worse. The information, the lead, we had on the Serpents just vanished. I checked every file I had saved to my computer and so did Daniel; it was gone. I asked the tech people if they could find the backup copy that had been made and they couldn't. It was like it had never existed.”

We continued walking and stopped at a little clothing shop. The majority of the clothing was hijabs, the dresses that most women there wore. I slowly went through a rack as Carson continued talking.

"We knew something was up,” he continued. “Files don’t just disappear; we knew someone had intentionally gone through and deleted them and their backups.”

“To do that you have to have a pretty high security clearance for it not to have raised any red flags,” John stated.

Carson nodded. "And when went to see who had deleted them on the computer, we found nothing. That’s when we began to think that the terrorist had help from the inside.”

“A traitor,” John said grimly.

Carson nodded. “So we decided to go to the last place that the terrorists were suspected of hiding out,” he gestured around us, “which was here. The only thing

was that we didn't have permission to come.”

“Wait,” I interrupted. Something wasn't adding up. I turned to John. “Didn't the C.I.A. tell you that they had sent them here on a case?”

“What?” Carson asked. “Who told you that?”

“My dad…” John responded hesitantly. My mind jumped to conclusions, one of them being that Michael was the traitor. But I didn't say anything.

“Who told your dad?” Carson pressed.

“I don’t know, I didn't ask.”

“So whoever created this story that the C.I.A. sent you could be the traitor?” I asked.