Maybe I’m done with this life. Perhaps I should’ve been done a year ago.
The door opens behind me in the observation room.
Agent Ruiz steps in with a file. “Delacour. Hale. We’re starting.”
Kiera steps forward, all business. I stay rooted to the spot.
Through the glass, Enya lifts her eyes—and for a split second, she looks right at me.
She can’t see me. I know that. The mirror on her side is one-way.
But I still feel seen.
My hands roll into fists.
Ruiz clears his throat. “Dom, you sure you don’t want to join us?”
I drag my eyes away from her. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
Is that my voice? It’s so rough, like I haven’t used my vocal cords in a long while.
Kiera and Ruiz look at each other for a beat, and then at me.
“You understand this is just routine,” Ruiz says.
He’s known me a long while, too, so he’s probably seeing what Kiera refuses to see—that I fell for my target. Ruiz would know. He’s fallen for a couple.
I frown. “Yeah.”
No, this is not routine.
This is a clusterfuck, and you’re going to hurt Enya when you talk to her about me, ask her if she’s told anyone what she knows about me, about her father…anything.
After that, she’ll go back to her life. And she’ll never know my real name. She’ll remember a man named Nick Smith, one who said he loved her, and then used her to catch a traitor.
3
THROUGH THE GLASS
ENYA
Itry not to look at the stretch of glass along the wall, hearing the faint, constant hum of something electrical behind it. I have watched enough crime shows and movies to know that the mirror in the room is two-way.
I suspect he’s on the other side, the man whose real name I probably don’t know. That makes me completely pathetic, doesn’t it? To be used so thoroughly—to have allowed it.
I have forced my body to relax. I’m sitting with my legs crossed, my hands resting on the table like I do this all the time—walk into interrogation rooms on a regular basis.
If he is on the other side of the mirror, I won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me upset. He doesn’t get that, not after all that he’s taken.
“Ms. Cahill, I’m Special Agent Victor Ruiz,” a man introduces himself.
He’s dressed like one of those agents from Men in Black. He’s got a faint Latin accent. He’s nice-looking, handsome, like Nick. He smiles pleasantly.
I don’t buy what he’s selling.
“Which agency are you a special agent for, Agent Ruiz?” I ask coolly.
Agent Ruiz looks perturbed, but it only lasts a nanosecond. It’s understandable. He has more experience with interrogations than I do. I’m acting, he’s not.
