She brushed an errant lock of hair off her cheek. “I won’t walk away from this case.”
Now they were getting to the real issue.
“You won’t walk away, or youcan’t?”
Streaks of red washed up her throat, delicate fingers of color stretching over her jaw and extending to her cheeks.
Then he saw the truth.
“There’s something besides devotion to your job driving you. Isn’t there?” He kept his voice low and neutral, knowing that any strong response from him would be echoed in her.
Her throat worked as she swallowed. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m only here because I was sent to that bank to investigate the explosion.”
His mind tracked what she was saying just as much as what shewasn’t. “But you have your own interest in the matter.”
She searched his eyes for only a heartbeat before pushing to her feet. He held back from going to her, even though he could see the struggle quivering in her body.
“I understand how people get so deep in ops like this,” he said.
“Do you?”
His jaw tightened, and he gave an imperceptible nod. Then he began talking.
He didn’t tell her that he once got in too deep. He didn’t tell her about Melina.
He started talking about an event that had been weighing on his mind since they arrived at that house. He told her about Apollo.
She listened to his simplified version of the tale that shook Charlie but also rippled outward to grip every Blackout team on the map.
“And it hit me too. I knew Apollo.”
She nodded. “Go on.”
He continued through the dark days where Charlie fought on, one man down. Then whispers about Apollo being spotted started to circulate.
Ellory pressed her fingers to her lips, eyes round as she listened.
“We found out the rumors were true—Apollo was alive.” After a few more minutes of explaining how he’d faked his death in order to go deeper underground and finish off a terrorist, his throat tightened.
“It was incredibly brave. Noble. And stupid as hell. Do you know why I say that, Ellory?”
“No.” She twisted her hands.
“Because without each other for support, we’re weaker.”
Some high emotion blazed in her eyes a split second before she dropped her stare to the floor. Tension stiffened her spine.
Her voice was barely a breath. “My brother…”
His gut steeled in preparation for what she was about to tell him.
She gulped and rushed on. “He was undercover, working Cipher’s network. He disappeared.”
He wanted to get up and go to her, pull her tight against his chest and make it all go away. But he remained where he was and let her tell the story on her terms.
“It’s been thir—thirteen months.” Her voice broke, then came out stronger. “Over a year of silence, Angelo. The week before I got the call to go to the bank, I learned that his handler was killed. Now…I have no way to reach him at all.” She held her palms up.
She was trying so damn hard to be strong, but her hands weren’t steady, and that killed him.
