The coffee was cold.
I stirred the sugar into it anyway, hoping it dissolved. I didn’t think it would, but I was afraid if I left the table, Adrian would move away.
He sat across from me at the long dining table, with him at one end and me at the other. As far away from each other as possible.
Paris had been wonderful. But as soon as we’d returned, it was as if the night in Paris never happened. There was an odd sort of resignation about him, like he’d given up on something.
I’d tried to enjoy Paris as much as I could, but the payments kept cropping up in the back of my mind. I told Marge about them, but she knew even less about the orders than I did.
I cleared my throat and tapped the sugar spoon on the rim of my coffee cup. “Good morning.”
“Morning.” He kept his eyes fixed on the newspaper in front of him.
“I’m leaving today.”
“I am too.”
“Where are you going?”
“Somewhere.”
“Where?”
“It doesn’t concern you.”
I suppressed the urge to huff in indignation. And the urge to smash my coffee cup against the wall, to demand what on earth had happened to him since Paris, why he was having such yo-yo mood swings, and what had I done to him.
Instead, I drank my cold coffee.
I rifled through my documents. A contract to negotiate with a news mogul who wanted his ex-wife removed because she knew about his shady business practices. Classic case, textbook contract. I’d be back in three days, I guessed. Would he?
I glanced back up at Adrian. This was so not how I wanted to leave.
“Why have you been acting so distant?”
He flipped over a newspaper page. “I took you to Paris, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but ever since then you’ve been avoiding me. I’m not blind. I know when you’re upset about something.”
“You don’t know anything.”
I swallowed hard, his cold tone taking me aback. “Excuse me?”
He folded the paper up and put it back onto the table. Adrian peered up at me with a menacing glare. It was like something within him had snapped. “You think you’re so in control of yourself. You think you know everything, and you can manage it all on your own. Guess what? You can’t.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I got you the position as the contractor for the Rome contract, and your next position, and your next. It’s not because you’re good at being an executive, it’s because I’ve been getting you your contracts.”
My heart sank. All those payment details and the hidden knowledge the CEO was Adrian’s father rushed back to me. It doesn’t matter anymore, I tried to tell myself. Nothing he says matters anymore. He’s keeping secrets from you. Don’t bother wasting your heart on him. Maybe if I repeated the words enough I’d truly believe them.
Adrian’s own face fell after he’d said those words. “I didn’t mean it.”
“If you didn’t mean it, then why would you say it?”
“I never meant it.”
I glanced back down at my coffee. The air around us settled into a thick, tense silence. Neither of us seemed to be able to say anything else. I felt his gaze on me. Whether it was apologetic or resentful, I didn’t know. I didn’t want to find out.
I stood up from the table. “I’ll be going now.”
The chair creaked as Adrian got up from his seat. “Let me drive you.”
“Don’t.” I held a hand up, my eyes still downcast. “And don’t give me any more contracts. I don’t need your pity or your help.”
“I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have said that.”
“But you did, didn’t you?” I suppressed the tremor threatening to shake my tone. “I never wanted a leg up in my career from you. You don’t have to do all those favors for me because you’re CEO. I never wanted any favors, Adrian.”
“Janey, no, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
“At least you were being honest with me.” I laughed, low and mocking. “The kiss with Emma? When were you going to be honest?”
“I didn’t kiss her. It was no big deal.”
“And it was a big deal when Tristan kissed me?” I threw my hands up in the air. “Why did you never ask me afterward whether or not I wanted Tristan to kiss me?” The anger I’d trapped inside bubbled to the surface. “You can’t keep this relationship on a double standard. You can’t lie to me and then expect me to be honest with you.”
Adrian opened his mouth to reply, but then shut it, thinking better of it. He glared back at me with an expression as frustrated as my own.
“We drive each other crazy.” I lifted my hand with the ring, the diamond sparkling in the sunlight. “Why would you want to marry me? Emma would love to take my place, and she’s much more willing to abide by your secrecy.”
“Why do you keep bringing Emma into this? She has nothing to do with this. It’s you and your petty jealousy.”
“Me, jealous? You think I’m jealous?” I scoffed. “Like how you were with Tristan? The reason you wouldn’t talk to me for those months because you never bothered to ask what happened?”
“You didn’t either. Don’t blame this on me.”
“I never said I was blaming anyone!” I jabbed a finger into his chest. “If I blame you for anything, it’s you returning home to me each night with blood on your hands.”
“It’s a business! Don’t act like you don’t understand.”
“This isn’t working anymore.” My voice quieted. “We’re not working anymore.”
“You don’t mean it.”
“You can’t keep telling me what to do. We’re done.”
“We’ve already broken up, what, two times already? And we just get back together again.” Adrian pleaded, his voice straining. I heard his footsteps stride toward me. “There’s something that brings us back together, Janey.”
“What could possibly keep us together?”
He lifted my hand from my forehead and brought it down to my side. He took his other hand and tilted my chin upward. I finally yielded and examined him. “You’re impossible. You’re so stubborn. You’re always curious and always brave and always exactly what I need. You challenge me. You’ve been my best friend since we were six, terrified in the foster home and nervous during our first CO mission. No matter how worked up I get, you find a way to calm me down. I love you, Jane Lu.”
I drew in a quick intake of breath. He’d never said those words to me before. A raw emotion filled me, pure and unadulterated.
Fear.
“You don’t have to say it to keep me from leaving,” I murmured.
“I mean it.” He brushed my lower lip with his thumb, sending an electric thrill to the spot where he touched me. “I love you.”
“Adrian.” I shivered. The air was warm, but my heart was cold. I couldn’t keep doing this to myself. I couldn’t keep letting him yank me back and forth like a yo-yo, playing with my emotions and whispering sweet words to comfort me. “I don’t believe you.”
His hand dropped from my lip. “What?”
“You don’t love me.” Ice water replaced warm blood in my body. The distant voice I’d practiced was finally nailed and I sounded as cold as he had before. “If you loved me, you wouldn’t keep lying to me. You wouldn’t say those three words after an argument just to calm me down. You don’t mean them.”
“What can I do to prove it?” Adrian grabbed my arm as I started to walk away. “No, no, we need more time…”
I yanked my arm from his grasp. “I have to go. We’ll talk when I get back.”
“You can’t leave!”
His cry was cut off by my slam of the door. I stormed away from his apartment, down the elevator, and out the double glass doors. I wiped away the traitorous wetness streaming my eyes without considering why I was crying. There wasn’t time. I had a mission more important than figuring out where I stood with Adrian.
Or so I tried to tell myself. The entire time I walked to the executive headquarters and rode the elevator up to the seventh floor, all I could think about was him. When I stepped out of the elevator and walked down the hallway, he still occupied my thoughts. Entering the quiet office spaces for the executives and sitting down at my computer, he was still on my mind.
This is ridiculous. I moved my mouse, whirring my computer back to life. At least he wasn’t my screensaver. I pushed the thought of Adrian and our broken relationship out of my mind, into a dark corner where I wouldn’t worry about him and wouldn’t have to see his face flashing behind my eyes.
His face flashed in front of my eyes instead.
Oh great. I forgot how I set my desktop wallpaper to a picture of him and me at Paris. The Eiffel Tower twinkled behind us. He’d kissed me then, like in my dream.
Stop it, Jane. I shook my head, banishing the memory from my mind. I pulled out my flash drive and inserted it in the computer. Folders appeared on my desktop screen. In one the folders was a detailed record of all of CO’s murders and clients in the past two years. At the least, the CIA and FBI could clear the names of innocents accused of being murderers and could keep an eye out on the clients’ activities.
As soon as the folder copied, I ejected the flash drive and pulled it out of the computer. I breathed a sigh of relief. Now I needed to catch the flight to…
I froze.
Emma.
She stood in front of me, her arms crossed in front of her chest.
“Hi, Emma.” I gulped. “What are you doing here?”
She pointed to my flash drive and raised an eyebrow. “Why did you copy the file?”
“I wanted a backup.”
“To take to DC?”
I shrugged and tried to move around her. She blocked me on both tries.
“First you couldn’t kill the FBI agent, then you start talking about how you shouldn’t murder anyone during the debate, and now you’re taking important CO files to Washington?” Emma’s voice wasn’t menacing anymore, it almost sounded afraid, like she feared what she would find out. “Please tell me what’s going on.”
“Why should I? You haven’t exactly been a friend to me lately.”
Emma unfolded her arms. “You don’t exactly have many friends anymore.”
So maybe I didn’t. Emma had befriended Jenna and several other girls in our executive class, but I’d remained distant from all of them. I’d thought Emma hated me! And by association the girls she was friends with didn’t exactly talk to me either. I didn’t care about being alone, since my free time was occupied by negotiating contracts and sending information to Marge. I was fine being by myself.
Maybe I didn’t have any more friends aside from Adrian and Lucy. Emma didn’t need to rub it in. My shoulders tensed, bracing myself for more biting words.
“Look. I don’t like you being with Adrian, and I don’t understand how you have so many contracts when I’m better than you in class.” She rolled her eyes. “But we can still talk to each other.”
“Uh, thanks Emma.” This was new. Maybe Emma still wasn’t nice, but at least she wasn’t hostile. “I’ll keep your words in mind.”
“So you should tell me what’s going on.” Emma’s eyes searched mine for answers. “You’ve been acting weird.”
Before I could stop her, she’d grabbed the flash drive from my hands. I snatched it back, but not before she’d seen the letters embedded on the outside—CIA.
Her eyes widened.
“It’s nothing.”
Emma backed away from me, shaking her head.
“It’s the initials of an organization I belong to. Current Information Access. Just a news source I subscribe to.” My words tumbled out as fast as I could manage.
“Or the Central Intelligence Agency. Jane, are you working for the CIA?”
“No!” It sounded more forceful than I’d intended. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a news source, Emma. There’s more than one organization with those initials.”
“Right.” Emma’s eyes remained dark. “You’re right.”
I checked the time on my watch. “I have to go, Emma. But I do want to be friends with you again.”
Emma didn’t seem concerned about friendship anymore, though. She was too busy studying the flash drive in my hand.
I’ll have to deal with her later, I thought as I walked to the airstrip where the jet waited for me.
Yet I had a feeling ‘later’ would never happen.
****
“Doesn’t the CIA have headquarters in D.C.? Why can’t we meet there?”
“Because nothing should disturb your deep cover. Anyone could be watching you.” Nevertheless, she pressed a phone into my palm, not exactly the most innocent thing if someone was watching me. Adrian’s payment plans still haunted me. Could he be watching me right now?
As if she could read my mind, Marge answered, “I am concerned about the payments he made before your attacks. This phone connects you to both the CIA’s number and mine. If anything should happen to you, another CIA agent will pick you up and take you back to the nearest headquarters.”
I nodded and pocketed the phone. “I’ll call you when I have my newest contract information on the flash drive too.”
Marge pulled the scarf around her head tighter and pushed up her clear frames. Her many disguises were always completely different. Today she rocked a cheetah-print scarf and big librarian glasses, the kind Skeers wore. Her fur coat and pencil skirt lent her the look of an Upper East Side socialite. “Yes. As soon as the contract is finished, please call to say the flash drive is ready to be picked up. And please call if anything goes wrong.”
I closed my hand around the phone in my pocket. Nothing would go wrong. I was fine on my own.
“I have a meeting with my client soon.” I slung my bag over my shoulder as I stood up from the bench. “See you afterward, Marge.”
“Nonsense. Follow me.”
I raised an eyebrow as she got up from the bench and beckoned me toward a recently parked black car. The car wasn’t locked, and a driver waited inside. I followed her into the car. She tapped the driver’s shoulder from the back seat and, without a word, he started driving.
“Where are you headed?” She asked as she pulled off the disguise and restored her normal appearance. I handed her the address of my client, and she read it to the driver. “Now. You know the terms of the contract with the CIA. One year, no more and no less. Should your contract end prematurely, I hope you understand you will have to serve the additional time for Central Intelligence through another mission.”
“I understand.” I managed a small smile in response. “I’m just glad for the chance of a new start from the CIA.”
“And you shall receive one, Miss Lu, as soon as the contract is over. You will not be sent to prison; you will not face criminal charges; you will receive payment and a new lease on life from the government. You will have a chance to start over.”
The promise of her words enticed me. “No more murder, no more secrets.”
“Peace and quiet.” Marge’s face filled with compassion, and even a little sympathy. “A civilian life.”
It’s funny, isn’t it? Something so normal—a calm, civilian life. It was what I wanted more than anything in the entire world. To me, everyone else seemed so lucky to have a chance of normalcy. Everyone else woke up every morning without worrying about how they’d organize the next assassination. Quiet lives were taken for granted.
The car pulled up to a black-windowed building and slowed to a stop. Marge opened the door for me and gave me one last reassuring look. “Keep your goal in mind. Remember the life you want.”
I stepped out of the car and strode toward the entrance. The details of the contract played inside my head again as I reminded myself about the questions I needed to ask my client. The revolving doors loomed closer. I pushed through them and stepped in to the lobby of the building.
Odd, there was no receptionist. My eyes skimmed the lobby. There was no one else either. Weird.
I settled down into one of the chairs and crossed one leg over the other. I’d wait then, until the receptionist came. I checked the time on my watch. The meeting was definitely supposed to be starting soon. Where was everyone?
“We got her, boss!”
Rough cloth slid across my face and pulled down against my shoulders. I screamed. Someone yanked my wrists behind my back and tied them together with coarse rope. Another set of hands bound my legs. How many were there?
I struggled to make contact with a body, swerving from side to side with wild abandon in spite of my inability to see anything. What worried me most wasn’t the people trapping my body or the sudden needle injected into my neck which slowed my thoughts and faded away my consciousness.
It was the voice next to my ear—cold, hard, and determined.
“You’re right on time,” Adrian whispered.
****
Freezing ice water snapped my eyes open.
I blinked away the unconscious haze, my hair and face dripping from the unwelcome drench. The first thing I noticed was the boardroom, similar to the ones I negotiated contracts in. But there was no contract here—only a long, empty rectangular table and looming executives and agents on either side.
In front of me stood Adrian, his expression unreadable as he studied me.
“I tried to stop you.” His voice reminded me of the cold water dripping from my clothes. “I warned you.”
“By hiring assassins to scare me? I thought you knew me better. Nothing scares me.”
“Death should.”
“You know I never wanted to be…” I swallowed hard. “This.”
“I changed Covert Operatives for you.” Emotion leaked into his voice, brimming with frustration. “I developed the new structure around raising families within CO. That was what you wanted.”
“And force them to work for CO their entire life?” I spat. “I think not.”
“When did you switch sides?”
“When I was arrested, Adrian. It was after our mission went wrong. The CIA gave me a choice. Go to prison and face the death sentence or work for them.”
He gritted his teeth. “The CIA? You’re afraid of the CIA? You know as well as I do that CO can keep you away from them.”
I glared at him. “And hide away for the rest of my life?”
His shoulders stiffened. “No one would be hiding.”
“I want a life removed from murder. The CO job was always temporary! It was never what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.” I averted my gaze from him. “Don’t you know there’s only one way this can end? Kill me or let me go.”
“I thought the spying missions were over. I gave you those contracts. I thought if I built up your career, you wouldn’t want to leave. Then you stopped.”
“I did.”
“There was no activity or botched missions for an entire month. I thought you’d finally let it go and decided to be with me.” Adrian laughed. It sounded bitter and hopeless. “Then the missions started messing up again, and I knew you’d started spying again. After everything we’ve been through together, you betrayed me?”
I held my chin up, blinking away the tears threatening to fall and weaken my resolve. “I’ve chosen my allegiance.”
“Did you ever think about asking me where my allegiance lay?”
“Stop it! You love power as much as your father does. No wonder you’re going to be CEO. Love doesn’t mean anything to you anymore.”
Adrian ran a hand through his hair, his jaw clenched. “I shouldn’t even be surprised. So you’ve been spying on me, too.”
“Emma told you, didn’t she?” The memory of her seeing the flash drive surfaced in my mind. “She told you I was the spy.”
A look of genuine confusion crossed Adrian’s features. “Emma? Emma didn’t tell me anything.”
I drew in a quick intake of breath. She hadn’t betrayed me; she hadn’t told Adrian about me being part of the CIA. It would have been so perfect; she could have spent more time with Adrian. But she’d chosen to keep my secret. I bit my lip.
She’d stayed my friend after all.
“What would Emma tell me? What else have you found out?”
“Nothing. She knew nothing.”
“Just cut it out!” Adrian slammed his fist against the table. I’d never seen him so angry before. “I gave you everything! I gave you marriage, a future, a career. Did all that mean nothing to you?”
Pain and frustration contorted his features into a look of suffering. My heart ached, as much as I tried to tell it not to. I suppressed the urge to wrap my arms around him, to embrace him and go home and pretend we had never reached this place of unavoidable truth.
“I want peace in my future, not murder. What Covert Operatives does is wrong, I know now. Maybe I was wrong for lying so much. But what you need to know is, I mean, I did, I lied about everything…” I paused and shook my head. “I didn’t lie about how much I loved you or how I felt about you.”
He opened his mouth to reply.
But the door suddenly burst open. Heavy boots stormed into the boardroom. In walked five bodyguards and the CEO himself.
Adrian walked toward the CEO. “I need more time. Just five minutes!”
“Time’s up.” Jack lowered his sunglasses to shoot a warning look at his son and made a dismissive hand gesture. “My turn.”
Adrian stepped back, but not before he shot me a panicked look. My heart lurched.
Jack grabbed my chin and turned my face toward him.
“Our little spy, eh?” He smirked. “Thought you were so clever.” The CEO hitched a thumb to point back at Adrian. “My boy found out about you the night you kissed that CIA agent.”
I wrenched my chin from Jack’s grip and focused my gaze on Adrian. “You heard my conversation with Tristan? Then why would you give me the contract for Croyden?”
Jack answered for him, his bored voice in a complete deadpan. “Because my son actually gave a single worthless thought about you. He begged me to give you a second chance. Me? I’ve wanted you dead since December.”
I saw Adrian flinch out of the corner of my eye. Dread settled over me as I watched Jack pull out a gun. But the gun wasn’t his to shoot.
To my horror, he handed it over to Adrian.
“My son, you have the honors.” Jack raised an eyebrow at me. “Clever girl, though. You found out the family secret. Adrian’s never been an orphan. He had the family photos. He recognized me as soon as he saw me.” He shrugged. “Gave me a nasty shock at first, but I need an heir.”
“Why so soon?”
His jaw clenched, and fear flickered on his face for a single moment. What was he afraid of? “A CEO won’t last forever. I need my blood to carry on the legacy of the company.”
“Why admit all these secrets?”
The sneer of a sociopath twisted on Jack’s face. “Dead agents tell no tales.”
Adrian raised the gun, his finger on the trigger. There was no mask of unreadable emotion anymore. There was no wobbling of his hand and no tremor in his voice. He held the weapon with a firm grip while he entered the stance of a trained professional.
My boyfriend’s next assignment? Murdering me.
A steady beeping shattered the silence. Jack pulled out his phone and frowned. He put the phone away and headed for the door. “I’m late for an appointment. Finish her off.” One of his escorts opened the door for him and followed him out.
As soon as the latch clicked shut behind them, I let out a bitter laugh. “A real great dad, isn’t he?”
Adrian scowled. “You wouldn’t understand. He’s family. He’s all I have. At least he hasn’t betrayed me.”
“I wasn’t trying to betray you.”
“And what were you doing then? I kept giving you chances to quit!” He narrowed his eyes at me. “After I heard what Tristan said, even when I thought you’d cheated on me, I gave you a contract. I gave you a career; I gave you reasons to stay.”
“Nothing could make me stay at CO.”
“Especially not me.”
I breathed out in short pants, working hard to suppress the threatening tears. “You were the only reason I considered staying.”
“You’re lying!”
The fierceness in his voice nearly caused the tears to stream down my cheeks. No, I couldn’t cry. I blinked them away. Better the bullet hit me than admit to Adrian how much I needed him in my life. “Seems like we were both lying to each other, weren’t we? We were great at secrets.”
“What else could I have done?” His fury transformed to begging, and the gun in his hand lowered ever so slightly. “What would have made you stay?”
“Nothing.” My voice broke. “I couldn’t have stayed. I was never supposed to stay.”
“You were.” Adrian’s voice lowered. “You were supposed to stay with me.”
“This is a tragedy.” I couldn’t stop the tears from flowing. I’d have done anything to make them stop. Through choked emotions, I managed to cry, “Do it! Kill me! You’re supposed to, aren’t you? This is what we've come to. Betrayal and murder.”
A shot rang through the boardroom, and I braced myself for the bullet to puncture my flesh. I clenched my entire body, my eyes squeezed shut, my eyelashes pressed against my tear-drenched cheek…
And no bullet hit me.
Instead, one of the CO agents gasped, and then another shot rang out. Another gasp, another cry. There was a punch, a scream, a yell.
When I opened my eyes, I saw unconscious CO agents slumped against the ground. Their heads lolled back to the wall, their bodies limp.
I glanced back at Adrian. His fists were still clenched from the punches he’d thrown, and dark spots of blood stained his once immaculate suit and smeared his hair. He was beside me in a second. He pulled a knife from his pocket and cut the heavy-duty ropes on my hands and ankles.
More CO agents busted open the door and attempted to thwart Adrian’s efforts. But the ropes slipped off my skin, and I was free.
He tackled one of the guards to the floor. I hit one of them, not enough to kill but more than enough to knock him unconscious. I heard the blast of one guard’s gun as my fist connected to his chin, but his bullet went wide.
Adrian remained locked in a struggle with a burly agent. His gun had been thrown to the other side of the room. I started forward to retrieve it and throw it back to him, but he yelled in protest.
“Go, Jane! Just go!”
“No!”
But I paused in the doorway, my gaze flicking between the long hallway down which I could make my escape and back to Adrian pushing back the agent crushing him. Here’s my chance. I could call Marge and return to the safety of the CIA. I could leave now and never see him again.
Adrian finally shoved back his adversary, and the agent’s body slammed against the wall. Then the agent launched himself back and threw his weight at Adrian with enough force to send him reeling a few steps backward.
Adrian inclined his head, eyes on the agent but his words aimed at me. “Leave!”
“Not without you.”
I delivered a brutal chop to the back of the agent’s neck. His limp body slumped onto Adrian’s shoulders as his knees buckled beneath him.
Adrian grabbed my hand as we both hurtled down the hallway and away from the scene. I raced down the stairs with him following close behind me. Before I could open the door to the first floor, he blocked me from the exit.
“More agents are waiting there, take the basement.” He led me further down the stairs. He opened the door, and we ran through the abandoned lower floor and toward the rear of the building. My feet flew against the pavement faster than ever above. There wasn’t enough time to stop and distinguish the footsteps between guards chasing us and us making a desperate escape.
After what seemed like years of running, we both spotted light shining through an open door at the end of the hall. We followed the light until we made it outside.
Adrian slammed the metal door behind us. We both slumped against it, gasping for air to fill our collapsed lungs.
“Scan the area,” I wheezed as I pulled out my phone. “I’ll call someone.”
Marge answered my call on the first ring, and a car pulled up to the building within the next minute. I tumbled into the back seat and pulled Adrian in behind me. Tires squealing, the car sped away as soon as he shut the door.
“This is crazy,” he panted. One hand held mine and his other ran through his golden hair. His shoulders tensed as he sat at the edge of the seat. “Covert Operatives is never going to stop looking for us.”
“Let them look.” I squeezed his hand. “We’ll find them first. I’m just sorry your father…”
“He’s my father in blood. A real father would never make his son kill his best friend.” He drew a shaky breath.
I bit my lip. There was so much more when it came to his relationship with his father. There was love, need, admiration—all those emotions could not be wiped away in a split second. “It’s okay to miss him, you know.”
“I think I already knew the truth, all along. I knew he’d place me in this position.”
“What position?”
His shoulders remained straight, thrown back into a rigid pose. “At some point, I was going to have to choose either you or CO. I’ve made my choice.”
Warmth flooded my chest. “You don’t have to work for the CIA, you know.”
“I don’t care about that.” He shook his head. “I just don’t know if you can forgive me for killing all those people for Covert Operatives.”
“You’re not the only one at fault here. We’re both guilty.”
“You said this all came down to betrayal and murder.” Adrian leaned in to kiss me. He paused right before brushing against my lips and whispered to me. “It doesn’t have to, and it won’t. Not anymore.”