I can’t stop the reaction. It spikes through my bloodstream so fast I don’t even hear the next few words. My pulse hits my ears. The air in the room gets thinner. Wyatt’s still listing off other names, other credentials, but the sound is muffled, distant, like he’s speaking from the other side of a wall.
By the time I surface, McIntyre’s already made his choice. “Would Dr. Palmer pass our internal screening?”
“She’s clean. No flags,” Wyatt says. “Mason’s worked with her. I have too. She knows how to navigate volatile personalities without compromising her role.”
My throat locks. I force it open.
“She’s not trained for this.”
The words come out too sharp.
Everyone looks at me.
I ignore Wyatt’s brief glance. Ignore the flicker on Mason’s face. The small twitch of his mouth that says he already knows where this is going. Fucker.
“Excuse me?” says the woman to my right, a Langley-side HR rep. Gray blazer, neutral voice, deadly polite. “Dr. Palmer’s credentials are in the system. She’s passed Tier-2 clearance and has an open file with the Agency.”
“She’s not trained for deep cover,” I clarify, too late. “You send her in, she gets burned, we lose the intel. And maybe more than that.”
“Which is why we’re not sending her in alone,” Mason says, as if it’s obvious. “We embed her under existing surveillance. She plays therapist. They play along. It’s cleaner than a front company, and it gives us emotional access.”
“She’s not…” I start, then stop. This operation’s been bleeding out since August, and my own logic is doing the same.
She’s not safe. She’s not over me. I’m not over her. I slept with both of them and now I’m expected to sit here like none of it meant anything?
The table keeps talking. On the bottom panel, Wyatt hasn’t blinked. He could be watching anyone in this room. But I know exactly where his eyes are.
And I can’t stop thinking about the last thing Nina said to me. Or maybe it was the way she looked at me. Or maybe it was nothing at all, and that’s what’s killing me.
The meeting moves on. The decision’s been made. Palmer is going in.
I sit there, nodding where I’m supposed to, pretending my skin isn’t screaming.
Because I built this goddamn scaffolding.
And now they’re hanging her from it.
I don’t make the decision so much as I spiral into it.
At first, I try to play it smart. Keep busy. Handle logistics from the Langley side. Sit in on briefings, read ops plans, act like I belong in this suit, in this building, in this life I can’t seem to settle into.
But it doesn’t take long for the cracks to show.
By day three, I’m living on coffee and raw nerves. Sleeping in shifts I can’t sustain. Training just enough to bleed out the edge but never enough to dull it. I keep waiting for the next update on the operation, hoping it’ll be the one where they change course. Pull the plug. Realize this is all a mistake.
But the plan just keeps moving forward.
The office is being prepped. Surveillance gear tested. Tatiana’s extraction is on the schedule, but the rest is already in motion. I heard yesterday they’ve discussed wardrobe for Nina. A neutral palette, calming tones. Therapist camouflage. Makes her more palatable to the men she’s there to monitor.
To Vicente.
I shut that thought down before it gets teeth.
It makes me fucking sick.
The days blur. Nights are worse. Every time I close my eyes, it’s her mouth on mine. His fingertips digging into my hips. That moment in the dark when everything I thought I knew about control collapsed under the weight of want.
I keep reliving the part where she looked up at me while Wyatt was inside me.
