Chapter Eleven

Harvard

I wanted to kiss her. As I left Sami standing there in front of the dorm, the urge to drag her into my arms and fasten my mouth to hers had been close to overwhelming. Which was exactly why I walked away.

Even now, as I leaned against my kitchen counter, eating a cold slice of leftover pizza, the thought of her mouth on mine made my dick twitch. It had been a long time since I’d had sex. A few years ago, in Afghanistan, I’d had a thing with an American woman who worked at a women’s shelter in Kabul, but that had faded to friendship once we parted ways. And after Zina, I hadn’t found anyone who interested me enough…

Until three months ago, when I walked into the airport and spotted Sami.

With my ass already on the line, kissing her would be playing with fire. I wouldn’t just risk a burn. No, if this thing exploded between us, my whole life was bound to go up in a fireball. A life I had scraped and lied and cheated to get. A life I finally loved. No woman was worth losing everything I have now.

Sami is, a voice whispered in the back of my mind. I recognized that voice. It was the same self-destructive devil that had insisted I disobey a direct order during our last mission. He was full of awesome ideas.

Appetite gone, I set aside my pizza and walked over to my desk. I had fixed Jean-Luc’s computer, but I still had a patch to write to make sure no more viruses got through. I also wanted to go through every byte of my network security. I fully intended to buckle down and get it done, but instead I found myself revisiting old haunts, combing hacker message boards and the dark web to see if I’d been exposed. Last night, telling Sami the little bit about my life before the CIA had left me feeling vulnerable. And with this virus attack, I had to make sure I was still protected.

Looked like it. My past was firmly buried, exactly where I wanted it to stay.

I sat back and breathed out in relief…

Then my cell phone rang. I should’ve known right then the shit of my past was about to hit the fan and splatter.

Without thinking much about the call, I picked it up from where I’d set it on the wireless charger. Dread clamped icy hands around my chest and squeezed when I saw the 203 area code.

No.

I threw it down and stared as the Connecticut number taunted me for several long seconds. Finally, the screen went black again. I still didn’t move, continuing to stare like it was a snake ready to strike.

Which it kind of was.

The screen lit with an alert bubble. New voicemail.

Against my better judgement, I rubbed my sweaty palm on my jeans and slowly picked the phone up. I accessed my voicemail and waited…

“Eric, honey, it’s Mom—”

Fuck. I shut the phone off, took it to the kitchen, and found a hammer in the junk drawer. I put the phone on a cutting board and beat the hell out of it until it was nothing but splinters of plastic and electronic components. Then I dumped the pieces into the garbage disposal and flipped the switch. The grinding, crunching sounds coming up from the drain should have been satisfying, but a cold sweat had broken out all over my body, and I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t up-chuck the little bit I’d eaten.

I was wrong.

My past had finally caught up to my present.

Even though the phone was dead and chewed to bits, I kept waiting for it to ring again. Or for my email to chime. Or…something. If she found my phone number, it wouldn’t be long before she managed to find other ways to contact me.

Should I run? It had always been my first instinct when the past caught up to me. I left the CIA and joined HORNET the last time the egg donor who called herself my mother tracked me down. Because if Kimberly Dyer—or whatever her last name was now—had managed to find me, it wouldn’t be long before the other skeletons in my closet started spilling out, too.

Running was probably the smart thing to do. My career with HORNET was on shaky ground anyway. I could leave and save them the trouble of firing me. I had plenty of money squirreled away and could go underground for at least a couple years before I’d have to find a new job. I had a contingency folder on my computer filled with places I’d already researched where I could easily disappear, but none of those options seemed like a good fit now.

I didn’t want to leave. I’d miss my teammates. I’d miss Sami.

No. I wasn’t going to let my mother scare me away from this life I’d built. Let her come. Let her try to destroy it. She couldn’t do anything to hurt me anymore.

And I had fucking work to do.