His fingers close around mine. Warm. Solid. Alive.
Neither of us says anything else.
Maybe there’s nothing else to say.
CHAPTER 37
MIA
The hotel roomfeels foreign as I stand in the doorway for a long moment, taking in the space I haven’t seen in three days. The bed is made—housekeeping has been through, no mint on my pillow though. My laptop sits on the desk where I left it, the journalist props arranged just so. The curtains are drawn against the city lights.
Everything looks exactly the same, but it doesn’t feel the same.
Because I’m the one who’s different.
I close the door behind me and lean against it, letting my eyes fall shut. My body aches in places I’d forgotten could ache. The bruises from the warehouse have layered over with new ones—fingerprints on my hips, a tender spot on my throat from when he held me over the edge, and I’m sure I have one down my arm from when he blasted into me at high speed, preventing me from falling to my death.
Bloody hell. I’ve always joked that agents have nine lives, like cats, but I have a feeling I’m down to my final one.
I push off the door and move to the bathroom. The mirror shows me a woman I barely recognize. I have dark circles undermy eyes, a smattering of faint bruises, hair tangled from the wind on the rooftop, lips swollen from kissing a man who threw me off a building and fucked me before I hit the ground.
I look positively ruined.
I look absolutelyalive.
I strip off my clothes and step into the shower. The water is wonderfully hot and I stand under it until my skin turns pink, until the heat seeps into my bones, until I can pretend I’m washing away everything that happened.
When I get out, I wrap myself in the hotel robe and sit on the edge of the bed, staring at my mobile.
I need to check in with Bayo. Protocol demands it. Three days of radio silence—three days since Vanguard ripped my earrings out and swallowed my comms like a fucking loon—and my team has been operating blind.
They must be going out of their minds with worry.
My thumb hesitates over Bayo’s contact. I think about what to say. How to spin it. The story Vanguard and I discussed before I left his penthouse, sitting across from each other like two generals negotiating a ceasefire.
“Tell them you were with me. That things got intense. That you needed to go dark to maintain cover.”
“And if they don’t believe me?”
“Make them believe you. I know how good of a liar you are.”
Easy for him to say. He’s not the one who has to look Bayo in the eye and lie about everything that matters.
I press the call button.
Bayo answers on the first ring.
“Mia.” His voice is sharp with relief and fury in equal measure. “Where the hell have you been, loca?”
I smile at his Jacob impression. He can’t be that mad. “I’m fine, Bayo.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I close my eyes, forcing the white lie. “I was with Vanguard. Things got…complicated. I had to go dark for a few days.”
Silence on the line. I can picture him at the safehouse, surrounded by monitors, his jaw tight with the effort of not yelling.
“Complicated,” he repeats. “You went dark for three days because things gotcomplicated.”
