Maisie bit her lip. Everything that had happened at Michael’s place was a bit of a blur in her mind, given the information overload she’d been going through at the time. But shedidrecall now that Rhys had mentioned something about being suspended – and that hadnotsounded good.
“So… what happened?” she asked – if she wasn’t allowed to know, she guessed he’d tell her, but she also couldn’t deny she was pretty much being eaten up by curiosity.
“It was my mistake…. I guess,” Rhys said slowly, looking out over the ocean. “I was monitoring communications for a mission another agent was on. They were deep undercover – they’d been building up an identity as a rich businessman. Shady as fuck, always in need of a loan and happy to deal with anyone to gettheir hands on more cash, you know the type. Anyway, he was putting it around that he wanted to get in on the weapons trade, make some big bucks through illegal sales. Stuff like that. After a while, of course, some arms dealers came knocking, thinking he was some doofus with more money than brains, which is exactly what we’d wanted all along.”
Rhys paused, grimacing.
“It tookagesfor him to build up that identity and get into a position where the arms dealers would meet with him – and they were real nasty types as well, the worst of the worst. All shifters, too, one huge wolf pack working together. So as soon as the authorities would start to get hold of them, they’d just shift into their wolf forms and lay low for as long as they needed to to throw people off, and then they’d just get right back to work.”
Maisie blinked. This sounded dangerous. Of course, she’d kind of gotten that from Rhys falling through her bedroom window covered in blood, but it was starting to hit home for real now. She waited, cold tension curling in her stomach despite the warmth of the sun and the sound of the sea on the sand.
“Anyway, like I said, my colleague, Agent Merrett, was the one who actually had his arse in the fire – he had to meet these guys, and if they didn’t like the smell of him they wouldn’t hesitate to tear him apart, and I mean that literally. I was supposed to be monitoring their communications to see if they’d caught on to anything being fishy about him.”
Maisie nodded. “Okay. Sounds reasonable. So what happened?”
Pulling in a deep breath, Rhys grimaced. “While I was poking around in some of their recent messages to each other, I came across a photo – it was of Agent Merrett, at one of the Agency’s Christmas parties a couple of years ago. It was the kind of thing that was supposed to be totally scrubbed before he’d gone off to make his new identity. But somehow, these gun runners had it,and it proved he wasn’t who he said he was. Or at least, it’d put enough doubt in the gun runners’ minds that they’d probably kill him rather than risk it.”
“Oh,” Maisie said, her eyes widening. “That sounds… not great.”
She got that that was kind of an understatement, but she didn’t have much experience of this kind of thing. As hectic and sometimes dangerous as the hospital could be, it wasn’t likethat.
It was a whole new world to her.
But then,allof this is new to me.
Until the other day, she’d had no idea there was any such thing as griffins or quokka hackers, either. Or cassowary bodyguards, for that matter.
Rhys shot her a quick grin. “Yeah,not greatis one way of putting it. Anyway, when I found that photo, putting my agent friend in a place that, according to his new identity, he couldn’t have been, as far as I knew his cover was blown and he was about to get killed. So then my mission changed from monitoring the mission to getting him the hell out of there. But by doing that, I basically had to blow his cover anyway – but it’d be better than him getting killed, right?”
Rhys ran a frustrated hand through his hair, shaking his head. Maisie could practically feel the anger radiating off him.
“Anyway, that was why I went charging in to extract him – if they knew who he really was and they were meeting him anyway, chances are they had every intention of killing him. It’s a pretty big score for those kinds of criminals, killing an agent. It makes them look tough and like they’re not afraid of anything. It’s a big deal to bring one down.Hugebragging rights.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Maisie said. She waited for Rhys to continue.
“Anyway, of course when I intercepted him just before he got to the meeting, his cover was totally blown. Just completely fucked. And it would have been anyway, since you don’t get second chances with these guys – if you miss the meeting, they’ll never meet with you again. So it was our one and only chance to get in with these guys and make them think that Merrett was really one of them. And I messed it up, because I wanted to save him.”
Maisie frowned, leaning forward. “Sounds to me like you did the right thing,” she ventured. “I mean, his life is more important right? These guys sound like they really would have killed him… or worse, maybe.”
“Yeah.” Rhys nodded. “That’s what I thought. But it seems like my bosses don’t agree – or at least, they don’t think it’s possible the gun runners could ever have had that photo to begin with, and I just… fucking hallucinated it or something. But itwasthere, in their servers. I know what I saw. But getting anyone tolistenis another thing entirely.”
“So…that’swhy you’re suspended? Because you saved someone’s life?” Maisie asked.
“They have to do an investigation about it,” Rhys said. “You have to understand, millions of dollars and a lot of time went into setting this up, so it’d be weird if theydidn’tinvestigate it. That part I don’t care about. It’s just the fact no one seems to want to listen to me that gets my back up. And no one seems to be asking any questions about how the gun runners even got the photo to begin with – they don’t even seem to think it existed in the first place.”
Maisie swallowed, looking down. She could hear the frustration in Rhys’s voice, and she didn’t blame him.
But to me, he did the right thing. He saved someone’s life. I don’t care about all that money and time – he did what he had to do to save someone.
Reaching out, she placed a hand on the bare skin of his thigh. An electric shock jumped between them, sharp and tingling, and Maisie gasped as she felt the sensation run up her arm, like a pleasant little fizz in her blood.
But alongside that, she could feel the beat of Rhys’s heart, strong and steady, but burdened with pain.
It’s almost like it’s my pain too,Maisie marveled.Is this part of what it means to be someone’s fated mate?
“I still think you did the right thing,” she said firmly. “Would you have felt any better if you’d let it go, and then your friend reallyhadbeen torn to pieces by the… the gun runner wolf pack?”
Rhys shook his head. “No, of course not. And IknowI did the right thing. It’s just hard to swallow that doing the right thing might cost me everything.” He looked at her, pain glimmering in his golden eyes. “Being in the Agency is all I’ve ever known. And now I have you… how am I going to take care of you the way I should, if I get turfed out on my arse?”
