The text message has photos attached to it. A lot of them. They’re scans of pages from a file that I recognize, and at the top is a name. My name, my real name, with not very much redacted on each page.
Jason and I both get out of the car at the same time, squaring off. He still has my Glock and I have my Sig. How the fuck did it get to this?
He glares at me. Before he can say anything, Wilson bursts through the door from the stairwell, running toward us at full speed.
“She’s CIA,” Wilson spits.
“Settle down,” I say as calmly as I can muster. “You didn’t need to rush down here. You’re being played. Obviously.”
Wilson doesn’t take his eyes off me, but his tone shifts as he addresses Jason. “You can’t trust her.”
“I don’t,” Jason says evenly, and something in my chest shifts.
Back to feeling hollow, I guess. I swallow hard. It’s fine. I lift my voice to a definitely-not-affected-by-that note. “That makes two of us.”
He laughs humorlessly. “Now is not the time, Melinda.”
“So we’re back to given names again?”
“I don’t know.” He circles around so he’s standing beside Wilson, and that hollow feeling gapes wider. In his hand is a weapon I just gave him, like a fucking fool. “Tell me who you are.”
“You know who I am. I’m a journalist. I write as Melinda Gray. That’s not a lie.”
Wilson’s lips are so tense, they’re white. “You aren’t from Chicago.”
I hesitate.
Jason swears under his breath.
“No,” I whisper. “I’m not.”
“Where are you from?”
“What on earth does it matter?”
“Why are you back in D.C.?”
“I’ve already told you.” I glance at the Glock. “Can you put that away?”
“Or what?”
I give them a level look. “If you think I’m CIA, you can answer that one for yourselves. Do you really want this to end in a shootout beneath your offices?”
Jason swears again.
Slow footsteps approach.
“She’s armed,” Jason calls out.
Cole grunts. “So are we.”
I pivot just enough to include him in my arc. “Oh great, now it’s a party. I mean, we can do this, but we’re doing it without the threat of someone losing an eye. Got it?” I glare at Cole first, betting that Jason is the less likely to shoot me. Sure hope so. “Gun down.”
Cole doesn’t move. “You first.”
I don’t move either.
Jason growls at me, but gestures for Cole to relax. “Listen to her. This is obviously meant to get all of our backs up, and it worked. Let’s go upstairs.”
Wilson protests.
I ignore the sharp pain in my chest at realizing just how easily I was made the bad guy here.
“All of us,” Jason repeats. “Upstairs. Ellie, after you.”
“Oh no,” I drawl. “After you. I insist.”
They file onto the elevator, all except Cole, who insists on taking the stairs.
Heart in my throat, I join them in the elevator. Tag swipes his card, and up we go.
We all go into the boardroom, and I reluctantly set my Sig on the sideboard. Jason does the same with my Glock.
Cole refuses to disarm himself, but at least puts his pistol back in the holster he’d put on when we were “coming in hot”. Ten minutes ago, when I was still on their team and Jason was doing his utmost to protect me.
“Facts as I see them,” Jason starts. “This morning, Ellie and I both independently came to the same conclusion that she is most likely the target of the bad actor in all of this.”
At least he doesn’t see me as the bad actor, which is a relief.
“Last night,” he continues. “When I said, who would want to be out to get us…I should have asked, who would want to get Ellie. So…” He glances at his phone. “Melinda Boyko? Care to start listing your enemies?”
Relief is short-lived.
“Those page scans are a distraction,” I repeat. “I am a journalist.”
Jason kicks the chair beside him. “A lie of omission is still a filthy fucking lie, Melinda. Who the hell were you before you were a journalist?”
I take a deep breath. “I worked in the foreign service for a few years. That’s how I met Caroline.”
“Is that the first honest thing you’ve ever said to me?”
No. The first honest thing I ever said to him was way back when he thought I was his receptionist, and he fucked me in secret in the kitchenette whenever he had the chance. When I told him I needed him no matter how reckless, no matter how foolish it might be.
I needed him then, anyway. I don’t need him now. I can’t need him now.
I lift my jaw and glare at him.
“And when you worked in the foreign service? Were you trained by the CIA?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you leave the foreign service? That’s good cover.”
“They don’t like loudmouths.” I shrug. “I used the Dissent Channel one too many times.”
“You used the Dissent Channel.” He prowls toward me. “Spoke truth to power. That’s quite brave.”
I laugh. That’s such an idealized way to look at it, and I didn’t expect that kind of naivety from Jason. “Tell that to my career.”
“You were fired?”
“Encouraged to resign. There was no upward momentum for me.”
“How old were you?”
“Twenty-seven.”
He pins me to the wall, and I force myself to keep breathing. I only have one good play here, and it’s convincing him I’m not the enemy. “How the fuck old are you now?”
I may not be the enemy, but I’m not a great sport about demands. “It’s rude to ask a lady her age.”
“You are no fucking lady.”
“Are you trying to figure out how long it took for me to leave the foreign service and reinvent myself as a journalist looking for a story from behind your reception desk?”
“Yes.”
“You won’t like the answer.”
His eyes glitter as he waits me out. I hold his gaze. We have so much history. But the reason I met him will forever be tainted if he finds out the truth, and I’m not sure I can bear that.
“Everyone get out,” he growls. “I think what Ms. Whatever Her Name Is Here has to say, I think it’s for my ears alone.”
It’s a testament to their bond that the other men don’t question him. As one, they get up and leave.
But if I thought that it would be easier once we’re alone, I was mistaken. I don’t know what I thought. I’m having trouble keeping all my emotions in check right now. “Jason,” I whisper.
“Shut up.” He lets go of me and steps back. “I don’t like any of this. I don’t like that you lie as easily as you breathe. I don’t like that I still want you, no matter how many times you dart away from the truth, Melinda.”
“Why do you say my name like that?”
“Because I should have known sooner than I did that something wasn’t on the up and up with you. It was too easy, the way you wormed your way back into my firm.”
“I didn’t know where else to go,” I hiss at him. “And you know it.”
“Lie to me again, Melinda. Lie to my face.”
“I hate you.”
He kisses me, hard, his mouth a crushing press against mine.
A sob rips from my chest, and he catches my face in his hands.
“What are you scared of?”
“You.” I spit the word at him.
He doesn’t blink. “Is that supposed to hurt?”
I shrug.
“Because I think you are scared right now. I think I scare you, and that means we’re finally getting somewhere close to the truth. And that will never slice me as deep as all the lies you’ve told me with ease.”
“I can’t tell you who is behind this. You won’t believe me. I need to show you.”
“I might believe you.”
I shake my head. “You said it yourself downstairs. You don’t trust me.”
“How can I? I don’t know you.” His jaw clenches. “But I want to trust you. I’m listening.”
My mind races. How can I show him what I think I know? “I went to Harvard. I was a scholarship kid, very smart. Too smart. I worked at the Crimson and broke a couple of good stories, but then I wanted to write a story that got killed. And that was my first experience with learning just how powerful money is, and what it can shut down.”
“What was the story that got killed?”
“It’s weird, you know. On one hand, it’s a college experience like any other. Okay, not quite like any other, and I knew that. But on the other hand…sometimes you find out that a classmate’s relative funded the overthrow of a government of a country that you have other classmates from. It’s fucked up. You see that intense difference in the absolute upper classes right up close in technicolor.”
“What country?”
I tell him, and his eyes go wide. “You tried to write about the financier of a revolution?”
“Kind of foreshadowed how my career in the foreign service would go. Because the grandchildren of billionaires either actively work to never be a billionaire themselves, or they think they can overthrow governments for sport. There is no in between. It’s hereditary toxic bullshit.”
Jason frowns. “I feel like you’re leading me somewhere with this.”
I try to swallow and I can’t, my throat is too dry.
“You’re the grandchild of a billionaire,” I say weakly.
“And I have no interest in being one myself.” His frown gets darker. “What is your point?”
I can’t say it.
The darkness in his glower gathers into a full-force gale. “Ellie, what are you saying?”
“Mack,” I whisper. “It’s Mack.”