Up ahead of me, I spot her down the hallway, just about to turn the corner and disappear out of sight. “Agnes!” I call out to her.
Agnes’s entire back stiffens. Even without seeing her face, I read the indecision playing out in the set of her shoulders, the lines of her body. I can just imagine her internal dialogue. Can she play it off, pretend she didn’t hear me and still make her escape?
“You obviously heard me,” I inform her dryly. “Come on. We need to talk.”
Agnes doesn’t turn around, but she doesn’t leave, either. I make short work of the distance between us, circling around her so that we’re face-to-face.
No matter how hard I try to brace myself, it still feels like a punch to the jaw with brass knuckles when our gazes finally meet.Those eyes.
Despite everything, I think I’m doing a pretty good job of keeping my expression schooled. She isn’t doing quite so well. Her face is pale, her hands gripping tightly to the tub of props. Her eyes dart over my face rapidly before dropping downward, like she can’t bear to look at me. She’s terrified.
I swallow back the hurt of that, welcoming in the anger, instead. Way easier to cope with that emotion. What right does she have, to act like I’ve hurtherin some way, when she was the one to abandon me without so much as a goodbye?
“Not happy to see me, I guess.” I don’t bother to hide the snark from my tone. I always turn into a sarcastic bastard when I’m hurt. What other chance did I have, growing up idolizing Han Solo?
Agnes’s eyes dart up to mine, then away again. She shifts, like she’s thinking of running for it. “What are you doing here?”
“What amIdoing here?”Ma’am, the audacity. “What areyoudoing here? Last time I checked, television shows don’t hire nuns for their wardrobe department.”
“I’m not a postulant. Not anymore. Not since we ...” A flush works its way up to Agnes’s cheeks that might be distracting if I weren’t so pissed off.
Okay, it’s still distracting. I can’t help but remember the last time I saw her face this rosy, the way she pressed her lips to mine, her small hands smoothing over my chest—andthatpisses me off even more. “Made out in prison?” I finished for her, my voice nonchalant. “I guessed you must’ve left the convent, since I never heard from you again.”
Agnes glances around the hallway, like she’s worried one of the invisible people around us will hear her dirty little secret. Her flushed skin darkens. “It was ... complicated.”
I shrug, like itisn’tthe very memory that still haunts me when I wake up early in the morning in the throes of an anxiety spiral. Realizing that Agnes wasn’t coming back to the Bible study. Knowing I would never see her again. “Buyer’s remorse. I get it. It happens. A letter would have been nice, but ...” I shrug again, which probably is overselling my insouciance. But hey, she still isn’t looking at me, so what does it hurt? Aside from my heart, that is.
I’m about to call her out for her lack of eye contact when all of a sudden, her gaze snaps back up to mine. It’s another sucker punch, straight to the jaw. I can see she’s been steeling herself up to this moment by the way she sets her mouth and raises her chin.
“Why does the call sheet list you as Nate Russell?” she asks me.
Whoops.
That’s all I can think of. Because yeah, when I chased Sister Agnes down this hallway, I guess I didn’t fully plan out the conversation—how she might find itstrange that the ex-con she’d met in prison was suddenly sporting a radically different look and going by a completely different name. Probably should have thought that one through a little more.
“Uh . . .” I stall, eloquently.
She takes a step toward me, and I instinctively back up. Which is ridiculous since she’s five foot nothing and probably weighs about a hundred pounds wet, but ... damn. Thoseeyes. “And why, when I tried to look up an inmate named Cass to write you a letter, did the prison have no record of you?” Her dark eyes search mine. “Who are you?”
This is really not a conversation for the hallway. NowI’mthe one paranoid about all the people who might overhear us—or come wandering into the middle of a discussion that requires high-security clearance. I make a quick assessment of the corridor, spotting what appears to be a utility closet. Without pausing to think, I take the tub out of her hands, set it on the floor, then pull her after me into the room.
As soon as we’re shut up together in the confined space, I realize my two mistakes. The first, I overestimated the size of the closet. It’s small enough that we’re going to basically have to spend the entire time trying to consciouslynotbe pressed together.
The second is that I’ve touched Sister Agnes’s hand to pull her into the room with me, and her skin is ridiculously soft and smooth and warm. She smells good, too, dammit. Like rose petals.
Releasing her quickly, I curse out my dumb self internally. I really should have debriefed with Morrie before attempting this conversation, but here we are. I don’t know if I’ll get another chance at this before Agnes tells someone that I’m going by a fake name. Sienna and Raquel are already aware of the situation, but we asked them to withhold that information from anyone else unless absolutely necessary. That means none of the other producers, crew, or production staff know. So if Agnes mentions something to someone else in the wardrobe department, and the rumor gets around ... sure, Raquel and Sienna might be able to intervene, but that won’t squash the intrigue over why I’m lying about my identity. And I very much need to be able to fly under the radar if I have any chance at getting into Aaron Miller’s inner circle.
If I’d talked it through with Morrie, I might’ve been able to think of some plausible excuse to give Agnes as to why I’m going by a new name. Why my formername wasn’t in the prison system. Why my neck tattoo has completely disappeared.
But the combined factors of having no time to prepare and unexpectedly seeing the nun I used to love in secret? It’s all thrown me for a loop. So I just blurt the first thing that comes to mind, which happens to be the truth.
“My name isn’t Nate Russell. And it was never Cass Demonte.” Fun fact—everyone in prison thought “Cass” was short for Cassanova, but in the background I’d put together for my character, it was short for Cassian, like Cassian Andor fromRogue One. Morrie had no idea I snuck that one in there.
But I digress. Steeling myself, I take a deep breath. “It’s Wes Ackerman. I’m an undercover FBI agent.”
Chapter 11
Nina
