Rhys’s expression grew dark, and Maisie knew he was only seconds away from doing something incredibly reckless. Her stomach dropped.
This is not good.
“I’ll fight all of you,” he said, deadly calm. “Don’t think I won’t.”
“No!” Maisie cried, grabbing his arm. “Rhys, please. It’s not worth it. I can’t be with you if you’re dead or in prison.Please.”
Rhys’s fists clenched, and Maisie could see the tendons straining in his neck. He was clearly barely holding himself back.
Likewise, the agents were all tense, ready to spring at any moment.
This is getting nasty. Fast.
“Please,” she repeated.
The moment lingered, the air thick with tension, the silence so complete that it seemed shockingly loud as Rhys’s phone buzzed.
A split second later, a series of other buzzes and message notification sounds rang out, the agents looking around in confusion.
What on earth is going on?! Did someone just send them all a chain email?
The sounds seemed to signal a temporary ceasefire, as everyone reached for their phones, some of them pulling them out of places she really wouldn’t have thought phones could be easily concealed.
Maisie watched Rhys’s face as he read whatever message had showed up, the line between his eyebrows slowly disappearing as he started to relax somewhat… though he still seemed on edge.
“What is it?” she asked, scarcely daring to hope it could possibly be good news.
“Here,” he said, showing her the phone. Maisie wasn’t sure she should be looking at secret agents’ work communications, but, well, if it was being shown to her, then it wasn’t her fault, right?
Stand down,the message read.Repeat: stand down. New information has come to hand. The target was misidentified, and is to be released from your custody immediately with no further action taken. The culprit has been apprehended. Stand down and await further instructions.
She looked up at Rhys, hope unfurling inside her. She couldn’t quite believe her eyes – and it was entirely possible too that this was some kind of secret agent code, and it meant the opposite of what it looked like.
But if it doesn’t…
“Rhys,” she whispered. “Does this mean –?”
“Yeah,” Rhys said, and for the first time in far too long, he smiled. “Seems like someone finally got the message. You’re a free woman.” He looked up, presumably to check that the other agents had actually gotten the same message. Maisie followed his gaze, to see that the agents were in a shambles, milling about aimlessly and looking at their phones while bitching to each other. It seemed like the immediate threat had passed.
She turned back to Rhys, gazing into his golden eyes – and then practically fell into his arms. He caught her, of course, holding her up in his safe, warm embrace, and she rested her cheek against his chest, letting her eyes fall closed with a sigh of happiness.
“It’s over,” she murmured.
“Yeah,” said Rhys. “It’s over.”
There was something in his voice that didn’t sound quite convinced, and Maisie made a note to herself to ask him about it.
But… that can come later. Right now, all I want to do is go home.
Chapter 20
The last thing Rhys had felt like doing was bringing Maisie with him to the Sydney office of the Agency.
Robb and James had been clear, though: no one was after her anymore, and they both needed to come in for debriefing, and to try to make clear what their side of the story was.
I already tried that,Rhys had growled down the phone when Robb had called him and told him his suspension was canceled, and he needed to explain what had really happened.Didn’t get me very far, did it?
But between them, Robb and James had managed to persuade him this wasn’t a trick or a ruse to get Maisie into their clutches, and given that Robbhadcalled off the agents who’d been pursuing them after receiving the information that it had been Aaron Merrett, and not Maisie or whatever they had thought, who’d been behind everything, Rhys had decided to trust them.
