Page 13 of Deep Cover

Jolie’s jaw tightened. Neither woman answered.

Fine.

“One more. Who told you not to talk to me—was it Cannon, or someone above him?”

Jolie made a soft noise, and Stina’s gaze snapped up.

There.

For one second, Caryssa thought she’d get her answer. Then Stina caught herself and looked away.

Nothing. Not a word left their lips.

Caryssa understood their silence wasn’t confusion or ignorance—but instruction. Somebody gave them exact boundaries, and they weren’t allowed to go beyond them.

“Okay. Nice talk.” She started to turn to go, knee protesting with the twisting motion.

On a normal day, she’d have had them talking in ten minutes. She knew how to work a silence, how to let it stretch until someone filled it just to make it stop. She’d cracked harder rooms than this one, including agents twice her age who thought a badge made them immune.

It wasn’t a trick. It was patience and reading the exact second someone’s resolve started to fray, and she was good at it.

She was better than good at it.

She just couldn’t find the thread today. Every time she opened her mouth to press, some part of her brain was still in that dining room watching Reid stand up and turn around.

And the two things couldn’t occupy the same space. Grief didn’t share real estate with anything, not even the job that had kept her upright for six years.

She was already calculating the distance back to Portland, wondering if the guy who’d mentioned the storm would drive her out and beat it.

“You can’t leave.” Stina pushed to her feet.

Caryssa looked between them, waiting for one of them to soften. “I hear there’s a storm coming. I want to get out before it hits.”

She did not want to spend one more hour under the same roof as Reid Rivers, breathing the same recycled air, feeling furious and shattered at the same time. But she didn’t have a car or clearance to walk out the front door on her own.

And apparently she didn’t have a choice.

She sighed, long and low, and let the fight deflate from her because there was no useful place to spend it.

“Fine. Then I need a room. And a secure connection to speak to my boss.” She thought of her luggage, somewhere in this secret maze. “And I need note cards, tape, sticky notes, whatever you’ve got.”

Jolie nodded.

“What time’s dinner?” Caryssa needed to know exactly which hours to avoid running into Reid.

“Six,” Stina said. “Whether the guys are there or not.”

Meaning they could deploy, leaving her trapped here even longer.

She shifted her focus to the other thing Stina said. At six o’clock the dining room would be crowded, but she wasn’t going to be in it.

She could eat early, late or a have damn granola bar from the bottom of her purse in whatever room they gave her to stay in. Anything to avoid crossing paths with Reid again.

Jolie and Stina watched her with caution, further proving her belief that they weren’t hostile—only told to guard secrets.

Hours ago she’d been at her desk in DC, telling her boss she was up for anything. She’d meant it too. Just hours before, she believed she had nothing left to lose and she thought the worst thing happened years ago.

Except that wasn’t true. And now she was gutted.