Instead Elena had dragged Jamie back into another Agency-fucked mission.
John C. “Jamie” Jameson lay in bed next to Elena but could not sleep. The room was pitch-dark, but still he stared at the ceiling, which he could barely make out.
Why the fuck was he going along with this shit?
The answer to that one was simple: Elena. She was going back to Pakistan again, and he couldn’t let her go there on her own. He just couldn’t. He didn’t know how to turn his back on her even when walking away was obviously the smart move. It now seemed as if they’d been together forever, born joined at the hip, and he couldn’t abandon her.
But he also knew that made no sense. He was a free man with free will. He did not have to walk into a buzz saw just because Elena was doing it.
So why are you doing it?
And where had it all started?
* * *
He knew where it had started—when he had met Elena in Pakistan. He had run some missions for the Agency, and she’d been his control. He’d even rescued her once from a Pakistani hellhole, after the TTP had abducted her.
They’d hit it off, one thing led to another, and they’d become lovers.
While in Pakistan, Elena had worked closely with the NSA to locate targets and enemy emplacements. She had introduced him to the NSA’s world of cyberwarfare, showed him how it worked, and it turned out he had an instinctive affinity for it, a true gift for understanding and for maneuvering in that realm.
He was already putting in his fifth tour in Afghanistan, and when he came home, he was burned out on the whole Mideast. Resigning his marine corps commission, he took a job with a cyber-defense firm, and before long he was personally designing cybersecurity systems for them. His systems were astonishingly successful, and demand for them was heavy, globally. Elena had encouraged him to set up his own shop. She was still working for the Agency—still running the Pakistan desk—and had set him up with some top Agency and NSA people, who hired him to set up systems for them. Soon clients from around the world were beating down his doors. Three of the systems he created revolutionized cybersecurity globally, and he held the patents on them.
In six years he was a billionaire, his firm designing and installing cybersecurity systems for half the countries on earth, particularly for their military and intelligence agencies as well as for the world’s top transnational corporations.
Then he and Elena had stumbled onto a TTP plot to nuke D.C., and in their attempts to hunt down the terrorists, they, the hunters, had become the hunted. A corrupt White House and CIA Director had even issued shoot-to-kill orders on Elena, Jules, and himself.
They had eventually survived the attempts on their lives—in part by fleeing to Sweden—and they were eventually cleared of all wrongdoing; still all three of them had sworn never to return to the U.S. But now they had broken that vow, were heading home, and, boy, was he ever sorry. He’d made his fortune, and had wanted to kick back and enjoy it—and maybe find out if this life had any true serenity in it, any real happiness.
Instead Elena had dragged Jamie back into another Agency-fucked mission.
* * *
God, was he pissed.
Why the fuck couldn’t he just tell her no? he asked himself.
Because there’s no way you can stop her, and if you walked away and she got hurt, you’d never forgive yourself.
Because you love her more than life itself.
And so Jamie lay there, furious at himself, but not knowing what else to do. Staring at the dark, unseeable ceiling, he was still unable to sleep.
He waited for the gray of predawn to lighten the windows.