This Elena was completely different.
Her dark hair was disheveled, as if she’d been running her hands through it for hours. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, and there were tear tracks still visible on her cheeks. She looked exhausted, frazzled, and completely out of sorts in a way that was so fundamentallyhumanit took his breath away.
It actually made him feel better, which was probably a terrible thing to admit. But seeing her like this—vulnerable, broken, real—somehow balanced the scales between them. She wasn’t the untouchable ghost he’d been mourning. She was flesh and blood and pain, just like him.
Not to mention the fact that she’d said he was an answer to her prayer.
He doubted that. Reed Star, an answer to a prayer? The man who’d built walls so high around his heart that even hisown brothers sometimes couldn’t reach him? The man who’d just spent the afternoon throwing the woman he loved out of his office because he was too much of a coward to face his own feelings?
No. If God was answering Elena’s prayers, He was probably looking for someone a lot more worthy than Reed.
They both stood in silence, the weight of five years and too many unsaid words hanging between them. Reed found himself studying her face, noting the changes time had carved there—new lines around her eyes, a harder set to her jaw, a wariness that hadn’t existed when she was thirty. But underneath all of that, she was still so vibrant, so alive, so utterlyfocusedthat it made his chest tight with recognition.
Sure, she was a mess right now. Her mascara was smudged, her clothes wrinkled, and she was holding a gun like she expected someone to break down the door at any moment. But it was Elena, and she was gorgeous in the way that had nothing to do with makeup or perfect hair and everything to do with the fierce intelligence burning in her dark eyes.
Reed sucked in a long breath, trying to get his own composure under control. Being this close to her, breathing the same air, seeing her alive and real andhere—it was doing things to his carefully constructed emotional walls that he wasn’t prepared for.
Elena scowled at him, and the expression was so achingly familiar that he almost smiled. “Why are you here?”
Reed hated that she was so skeptical of him, but then again, he’d earned it. He had dismissed her like she meant nothing to him when the truth was she’d never stopped meaning everything.
He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I’m here... to help.”
The skepticism fell from Elena’s face like a mask being removed, and before Reed could react, she rushed at him, wrapping herself around him in a fierce embrace that knocked the air from his lungs.
For a few moments, Reed was frozen. The scent of her hair, the warmth of her body pressed against his, the way she fit perfectly against his chest—it was like traveling back in time to his apartment kitchen five years ago, to coffee and promises and a goodbye kiss that had haunted his dreams for years.
His arms came up automatically, holding her close, and for one perfect moment, the world narrowed down to just this: Elena, alive and safe in his arms.
Then she pulled back abruptly, blinking rapidly as if she’d just realized what she’d done. “Sorry,” she whispered, stepping away and putting distance between them. “I didn’t mean to—I just?—”
“It’s okay,” Reed said quickly, his voice rougher than he’d intended. His arms felt empty without her, but he forced himself to respect the space she was creating. “Elena, it’s okay.”
She nodded, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. When she looked at him again, the professional mask had slid back into place, but not completely. There were cracks in it where her genuine emotion showed through.
“I need your help stopping Marcus Webb,” she said, her voice gaining strength with each word. “He’s the deputy director who recruited me for Project WATCHDOG, and he’s the one who’s been selling my technology to the highest bidder for the past three years.”
Reed’s jaw tightened. “Your mentor.”
“Yes.” Elena’s voice was bitter. “The man I trusted completely. The man who convinced me that faking my death was the only way to keep the technology—and you—safe. He’s been using WATCHDOG to blackmail politicians,silence journalists, and make inconvenient people disappear. The system I designed to protect national security has become a weapon against innocent people.”
“What do you need from me?”
Elena began to pace again, her movements sharp and agitated. “Webb has deep government connections and resources I can’t match on my own. But he doesn’t know that I survived the Prague incident last month. He thinks I’m dead—again. That gives us a small window of opportunity.”
“What kind of opportunity?”
“There’s going to be an auction,” Elena said, turning to face him. “Webb is selling access to WATCHDOG’s core systems to foreign intelligence services. It’s happening at a private estate outside Vancouver. If those codes get out, if hostile governments get their hands on this technology...”
Reed could see where this was going. “Game over.”
“Not just game over,” Elena said grimly. “It would be the end of digital privacy as we know it. Every phone call, every email, every text message, every online transaction—all of it would be vulnerable. Entire populations could be monitored and controlled with the click of a button.”
“And you need my help to stop the auction.”
“I need your resources,” Elena corrected. “Your security team, your connections, your technical expertise. I can’t do this alone, Reed. I tried for five years, and all I managed to do was stay one step ahead of Webb’s people while innocents died.”
Reed studied her face, seeing the weight of guilt and responsibility she’d been carrying. Five years of fighting this battle alone. Five years of watching her life’s work be perverted into something monstrous.
