“I’ve done the job.”
“You’ve done the job perfectly, but you’re also distracted. It’s lucky everything has been quiet here.” He studies me. “What happened that’s got you twisted up like this? Do you actually have a girlfriend you haven’t told anyone about?”
I pause. Whittaker is a good man, and everyone at Heartline talks a lot, but talking about women is not something I ever like to do. I like to keep my private life – or lack of it – private. “We were at that gala at The Gilded Heart Hotel when I got the call. I left without explaining.”
“Surely you said it was work calling you in.”
I press my thumbs into the knots at the base of my skull. “She doesn’t know what I do, Whit. All she knows is that immediatelyafter we slept together. I get a phone call, and I’m out the door. It’s killing me not to be able to tell her what happened.”
The assignment has been quiet—that’s the problem. Our principal, Silas Moorfield, biotech CTO, had a credible threat. We brought him to a safe house, and this week has been procedural, babysitting a man who complains about the coffee in a bland corporate apartment that he’s repeatedly told us is smaller than his office.
I keep replaying the way I left. The phone ringing. Cassian’s voice. The way my brain switched over like a breaker tripping—one second I was holding Tessa in the humid Conservatory, her breathing slowing against my shoulder, and the next I was calculating drive time.
Whittaker is quiet. He knew Rachael—not well, but enough.
“Mission in one box. Feelings in another.”
“Yes. And the person in the box suffocates.” He shakes his head. “Your crisis brain treats people like logistics, Arch. Secure the perimeter, deal with the human element later. That works when the human element is a principal. Not when it’s a woman you just fucked for the first time.”
He leans back. “You could have taken thirty seconds and said it was a work emergency. That you’d call when you could. Thirty seconds.”
“I know. I’ve rehearsed that speech about forty times this week.”
“She’s not going to sit in a box waiting for you to open the lid when it’s convenient.”
“I know.”
“Do you? I remember what happened with Rachael.”
The company phone buzzes. I want to lunge for it, even though I know it could never be Tessa calling. Whittaker picks up the phone and nods once before handing it to me. I read it twice, and the third time, the words register.
Suspect in custody. Federal charges filed. Threat assessment downgraded to minimal. Principal cleared for travel effective immediately.
“We’re clear.” My voice sounds strange.
Whittaker reads the message over my shoulder. “I’ll call it in to Cassian. Moorfield will want to leave yesterday.” He pauses. “You okay?”
“I need my phone.”
“You can have it when we’re airborne. Then we deliver the principal and debrief at HQ. Do the job right, then sort out your mess when it’s wrapped up.”
The next hours are the longest of my life. We brief Moorfield, pack the equipment, and sanitize the safe house. Moorfield’s company has a helicopter standing by at the local private airfield, and we escort him across the tarmac in the late afternoon sun while my skin crawls with the effort of not running.
Before we board, Whittaker pulls me aside.
“Ninety minutes of flight time. Don’t waste it composing another speech in your head. Just figure out the truth and say it.”
“The truth is, I fucked up.”
“Then say that. Women generally appreciate a man who can sayI fucked upwithout stapling a bunch of excuses to it.” He claps me on the shoulder. “Get on the bird.”
I climb in and strap down. The city drops away beneath us.
Once we’re at altitude and Moorfield is absorbed in his laptop, I unzip the equipment case. Open the Faraday bag. Power on the phone and wait.
Forty-three notifications.
A text from my sister:What the fuck did you do?
