"I'm fine." But her voice cracks slightly. "This is the job. I understand the job."
"Understanding doesn't make it easier."
"No. It doesn't."
We finish dinner in near silence. I pay the check, help her with her coat, walk her to my car through cold February air that burns in my lungs.
Outside her building, I kill the engine. Neither of us moves.
"When you come back," Sarah says quietly. "When the timing's better. We should figure out what this is."
Not if. When.
"Yeah. We should."
"Promise me you'll come back."
I can't. We both know I can't. But I reach across the console and cup her face, thumb brushing across her cheekbone.
"I promise I'll try."
It's not enough. We both know that too. But it's all I can offer.
Sarah leans into my touch, eyes closed. "I'll be here when you get back."
"You don't have to?—"
"I'll be here, Micah."
Before long I'm on a transport to Romania with a new identity, backstory, and mission parameters that require complete immersion in Committee operations. No external contact. No backup. No extraction protocol unless the mission is compromised.
It means extended silence while Sarah waits and wonders if I'm alive.
I tell myself she'll be fine. She's strong, capable, used to the demands of intelligence work. She'll focus on her job, maintain operational security, maybe move on to someone who can actually promise tomorrow instead of maybe.
Sarah doesn't move on easily, though. She'll wait, same way she waited through our entire relationship while we were both too terrified to ask for promises.
Deep cover work moves faster than anticipated. I make initial contact with Committee operatives quickly. Before long I'm running weapons shipments through Bucharest and Prague. I earn enough trust to access their communication systems.
Sarah's intercept analysis was right. Committee leadership is consolidating power, expanding operations, preparing for something big. I feed intelligence back through orchestrated dead drops, coded messages that make their way to Langley through cutouts and intermediaries.
Time stretches on. The mission's too valuable to abort. Their networks are opening up, revealing structure and operations that could cripple their entire Eastern European presence if we play this right.
Weeks become months. Winter becomes spring becomes summer. Sarah's waiting for me to come back, counting days that stretch into weeks that stretch into silence so deep I can barely remember what her voice sounds like.
Committee leadership trusts me now. I'm running operations, coordinating shipments, sitting in planningmeetings where they discuss expansion into new territories. Every week brings intelligence that could save lives, dismantle networks, cripple their infrastructure.
Every week I stay is another week Sarah could think me dead.
I feed more intelligence through dead drops. Financial networks. Leadership structure. Everything Langley needs to take them down when the time comes.
Just a little longer. Just until we have enough to destroy them completely.
Sarah's still waiting.
I promised I'd try to come back. And when I do things will change.
3
