Chapter 4
Chris
The conference room at Langley is cold.
Not just temperature-wise—though someone keeps the AC running like it’s protecting classified intel from sweating—but in that sterile, too-quiet way that makes everything feel one step removed from real life.
Like no one in this room ever fucks up so badly they bleed for five years trying to fix it.
I sit at the far end of the table, second seat, flanked by two career agency types who haven’t said a word to me since I came in. That’s fine. I’m not here to make friends.
The wall screen flickers once, then splits into panels.
Top-left: DEA-Los Angeles. Concrete-and-glass conference room.
Five people seated at the table, badges and body armor peeking from under jackets.
Top-right: Mason Black, calling in from what looks like the bridge of a private yacht with early morning light bleeding orange and gold across the Pacific behind him.
His shirt’s unbuttoned at the throat. Aviators on.
Arms crossed. Every inch the reformed cartel ghost turned domestic family man.
And directly across from me on the bottom center, DEA-Denver, and the person I didn’t let myself look for.
Wyatt.
His jaw is clean-shaven. Collar sharp. Posture military-perfect. Nothing to give away the memory of the hours spent tangled together with Nina in a hotel bed less than 48 hours ago.
Except his eyes. They’re not cold or blank—they’re careful.
I tell myself not to read into it. And then I do it anyway, because that’s what I do. I pick apart expressions like they’re codes that might save someone’s life.
Or ruin mine.
Someone coughs. The meeting begins.
I sit still through it all: briefs on Serbian movements, asset reclassifications, the post-Amador power vacuum.
Two objectives on the wall: reinstall a cooperative asset within the new regime, and stabilize the intel pipeline from Flores and Amador.
Someone passes out a paper with photos. One of them is Tatiana Petrov, and the caption beneath it makes my teeth clench.
Asset—Cooperative. Psychological Evaluation Pending.
She was the final thread in the Corluka takedown. A woman who escaped her father’s world by throwing knives over her shoulder, hoping one of them would land in someone worse than him. And one did.
Her intel fractured the Serb hierarchy from the inside out. Without her, we wouldn’t have tracked Bogdan Corluka’s logistics, burned his supply routes, or triggered a chain of events that rivaled the one that left Jovan Corluka and Gustavo Delgado flayed and left for display like failed gods.
My op. My debut performance. My chance to prove I wasn’t broken, just calibrated for something colder.
I should feel pride. I don’t. Tatiana’s intel came at a cost.
I watched her flinch when someone handed her water. Saw how she slept: shoes on, back to the wall.
Now they want to send her through the grinder again. Only this time, they’re calling it cooperation.
I already know what’s coming. I just don’t know what form the knife will take. But someone’s going to bleed for this. Again.
Mason speaks first. Voice steady, just smug enough to remind everyone he doesn’t need this.
They need him. He’s just here because he likes it.
“The intel flow from Flores and Amador is holding steady, but they’re dragging their feet.
We think it’s a pride thing. They don’t like admitting how much they know. ”
“Which is exactly the problem,” says McIntyre, a deputy director on our side of the wall, and one of the many suits who talk louder the less they understand.
“We’ve got two tracks and neither one has legs.
Petrov needs a psychological evaluation before we can even discuss reinsertion, and the intel pipeline is dying because we can’t get organic access to Flores and Amador.
We need someone in the room who isn’t holding a badge.
” He shuffles a page. “We’ve already flagged a handful of existing contractors with proximity to both families.
Denver, you want to walk us through the short list? ”
I open my mouth, ready to suggest encrypted uploads, dead drops, anything that doesn’t involve sticking another civilian into the mess, but I don’t get the chance.
Wyatt’s already talking. Running through names, qualifications, proximity to both families. I catch one in particular and everything after it turns to static.
“Nina Palmer. Licensed psychologist, extensive experience with trauma-informed work. Current DEA contractor. She’s known to both Flores and Amador through social circles. That familiarity would give her natural proximity.”
The bottom drops out of my stomach.
I can’t stop the reaction. It spikes through my bloodstream so fast I don’t even hear the next few words.
My pulse hits my ears. The air in the room gets thinner.
Wyatt’s still listing off other names, other credentials, but the sound is muffled, distant, like he’s speaking from the other side of a wall.
By the time I surface, McIntyre’s already made his choice. “Would Dr. Palmer pass our internal screening?”
“She’s clean. No flags,” Wyatt says. “Mason’s worked with her. I have too. She knows how to navigate volatile personalities without compromising her role.”
My throat locks. I force it open.
“She’s not trained for this.”
The words come out too sharp.
Everyone looks at me.
I ignore Wyatt’s brief glance. Ignore the flicker on Mason’s face. The small twitch of his mouth that says he already knows where this is going. Fucker.
“Excuse me?” says the woman to my right, a Langley-side HR rep. Gray blazer, neutral voice, deadly polite. “Dr. Palmer’s credentials are in the system. She’s passed Tier-2 clearance and has an open file with the Agency.”
“She’s not trained for deep cover,” I clarify, too late. “You send her in, she gets burned, we lose the intel. And maybe more than that.”
“Which is why we’re not sending her in alone,” Mason says, as if it’s obvious. “We embed her under existing surveillance. She plays therapist. They play along. It’s cleaner than a front company, and it gives us emotional access.”
“She’s not…” I start, then stop. This operation’s been bleeding out since August, and my own logic is doing the same.
She’s not safe. She’s not over me. I’m not over her. I slept with both of them and now I’m expected to sit here like none of it meant anything?
The table keeps talking. On the bottom panel, Wyatt hasn’t blinked. He could be watching anyone in this room. But I know exactly where his eyes are.
And I can’t stop thinking about the last thing Nina said to me. Or maybe it was the way she looked at me. Or maybe it was nothing at all, and that’s what’s killing me.
The meeting moves on. The decision’s been made. Palmer is going in.
I sit there, nodding where I’m supposed to, pretending my skin isn’t screaming.
Because I built this goddamn scaffolding.
And now they’re hanging her from it.
I don’t make the decision so much as I spiral into it.
At first, I try to play it smart. Keep busy. Handle logistics from the Langley side. Sit in on briefings, read ops plans, act like I belong in this suit, in this building, in this life I can’t seem to settle into.
But it doesn’t take long for the cracks to show.
By day three, I’m living on coffee and raw nerves.
Sleeping in shifts I can’t sustain. Training just enough to bleed out the edge but never enough to dull it.
I keep waiting for the next update on the operation, hoping it’ll be the one where they change course.
Pull the plug. Realize this is all a mistake.
But the plan just keeps moving forward.
The office is being prepped. Surveillance gear tested.
Tatiana’s extraction is on the schedule, but the rest is already in motion.
I heard yesterday they’ve discussed wardrobe for Nina.
A neutral palette, calming tones. Therapist camouflage.
Makes her more palatable to the men she’s there to monitor.
To Vicente.
I shut that thought down before it gets teeth.
It makes me fucking sick.
The days blur. Nights are worse. Every time I close my eyes, it’s her mouth on mine. His fingertips digging into my hips. That moment in the dark when everything I thought I knew about control collapsed under the weight of want.
I keep reliving the part where she looked up at me while Wyatt was inside me.
Not because she said anything.
Because she didn’t.
She just watched. Her pupils blown wide. Her breathing shallow. A flush rising up her chest like a fire spreading fast.
She wasn’t surprised. Or scared.
She was with me. Right there in it. Letting me fall apart, and catching me without touching me at all.
And I can’t stand the thought of her being in that office now, with no one to catch her.
The final straw is Mason’s message. Just a forwarded ops note with time stamps and flight details. A list of final prep milestones. Nina’s name is attached to everything now. Embedded.
I close the message and stand up.
No bag. No real plan. Just a gnawing in my gut that if I don’t get to her now, I’ll never get another chance.
Langley to Denver is a short flight, but it’s long enough for every bad decision I’ve ever made to weigh in.
The cold hits the second I step out of the terminal.
It’s not bitter, nothing like Chicago or the Baltics in winter, but it’s dry and sharp, threading through my sleeves and catching in my chest. I grew up here.
I know this cold. But now it feels like walking through a memory that doesn’t recognize me anymore.
Nina’s address is burned into my brain. She never gave it to me, but that’s never stopped me when it comes to her.
I shouldn’t be here.
But I am.
The building is nicer than I pictured. Modern, sleek, with brushed steel numbers and coded buzzers and a clean concrete stairwell that smells like fresh paint and bleach.
I don’t know what I expected. Some part of me still thinks she should live in a walk-up with bad lighting and cracked tile, because that’s the version of her I left behind.
I find her door without thinking about it. Stand there like an idiot, second-guessing everything I told myself on the plane.
This is reckless. Selfish. Pointless.
She’s probably not even here.
I raise my fist.
The door swings open. Wyatt’s mid-step, trash bag in one hand—he sees me and stops dead.
Shirtless. Sweating. His chest rises and falls from exertion. The scar on his right shoulder catches the light—the one I kissed without asking where it came from.
My jaw clenches before I can stop it.
For a split second, all I can see is him inside her. Then him inside me. Doesn’t matter. I see it too vividly. Hear the sounds. Feel the echo in my own goddamn body. Jealousy and desire tear through me in the same breath.
Then I glance past him, and I see the boxes.
Half-packed. A few sealed. Sharpie labels in Nina’s handwriting—Books, Office, Bathroom.
She’s gone. Or going.
Not here.
My pulse drops, then spikes again. Wyatt hasn’t moved. Neither have I.
And suddenly the hallway feels a lot colder than it did before.