“There’s nothing to talk about,” I tell him. “The mission is progressing. I’m gathering intel. That’s all.”
“That’s all.” He repeats it flatly. “Right.”
I can hear him breathing. I can picture him too, the way he’d be standing, one hand in his pocket, the other pressing the phone too hard against his ear, the furrow between his brows that appears when he’s worried, the lock of hair across his forehead. Is he at work? Suddenly, I’m acutely homesick for the haphazard SOE office, a place I had dreaded going to for those three months I was out of the field, and now, I’m realizing it was the only real sense of home and family I had felt in a long time. Thank God Bayo and Kat are here in New York, or it would really gut me.
“Listen,” I say, forcing lightness into my voice, “I appreciate you checking in. Really. But I’m handling it. You don’t need to worry.”
“I always worry about you.” He clears his throat. “I mean—we all do. The team. Roger. Everyone. We’re all worried. That’s why I’m calling.”
Right. The team. Of course.
I think about how I walked through Times Square my first day here, surrounded by millions of people, and wanted to call someone—anyone—to tell them how the lights looked, how the city smelled, how strange and wonderful and terrifying it all was. I’d scrolled through my contacts and realized there was no one, not a single person I could call just to share something, just to connect, just to sayI’m here and I wish you could see this too.
Everyone in my phone is work. Every relationship I have is built on lies or violence or both. Even Cal—sweet, steady Cal, who loves me despite everything—is calling because he got a report, not because he was thinking of me over his morning coffee.
That’s the job. That’s the life I chose. I know that. And I know they feel like family too.
But sometimes…it just hits differently, that in this business, you are ghost who will never have a normal life.
It reminds me that what I have with Vanguard is all just make-believe.
“Tell the team I said thanks,” I say. “And tell Roger the next report will be on his desk by Friday.”
“Mia—”
“I should go. This article won’t write itself.”
A long beat of silence. Then, a sigh. “Just be careful, alright? Whatever’s happening over there, whatever you’re not telling me…be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
“No, you’re not. You’re reckless and stubborn and you think you can handle everything on your own.” A pause. “I don’t want to come there, Mia. I don’t want to have to fly across the ocean because this mission went sideways. I want to trust you. Tell me I can trust you right now.”
The words hang in the air, heavy with everything we’re not saying.
I think about Vanguard’s hands on my body, his mouth on my skin. The way he looked at me after, like I was something worth keeping.
I think about Kat’s warning:When this is over, someone will have to put him down.
Like a fucking horse at pasture.
I think about all the lies I’ve told—to my targets, to my team, to myself—and how this one might be the worst of all.
“You can trust me,” I say.
I want to believe it.
“Okay.” Cal exhales slowly. “Okay. I’ll talk to you soon, yeah?”
“Yeah. Soon.”
“Bye, Mia.”
“Bye, Cal.”
I end the call and stand in the doorway for a long moment, the phone clutched in my hand, the rain starting to pick up. A woman walks past with a dog on a leash, laughing at something on her own phone. Two teenagers under a shared umbrella argue good-naturedly about which pizza place is better. A man in a business suit rushes by, narrowly avoiding a puddle, already late for something.
Normal people. Normal lives. Normal connections.
