Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Brie
Leave. Just go.
Every trained reflex screams for distance, but my body betrays me—heat where there should be adrenaline, his touch pulsing through my blood.
A million tiny pins prick my skin, my chest constricts, and while my eyes burn I can’t seem to break away. It’s fear. Clean, bright, humiliating.
Plain and simple. Only cowards succumb to fear. Fear is information. It isn’t a verdict. (My father’s voice. My training. None of it accounts for the ache.)
What exactly do I fear? Getting close to someone who’s willing to risk something—an investment—for me? Someone who looks at me like he’s willing to climb over any wall I erect? Or worse—someone who’ll wait at the gate until I open it.
He said no one else came close. That every woman after me had been measured against something I never agreed to become. The logic of longing is cruel—comparison dressed up as devotion.
“Brie? Is something wrong?”
I blink, breaking our locked gaze, as it hits me that I zoned out, pulling away, and forgetting the assignment.
There’s no professional need to withdraw. The private group I work for touts work-life balance—unlike the CIA, there’s no demand that I sever ties. Not that I had many to sever this time around. Unlike when I gave up my world for a job.
He leans closer, concerned…and, if I’m honest, insistent. There’s no doubt, if I got up and made my excuses, disappeared—which I’m trained and skilled at doing—he’d find me. Comfort settles over that certainty, blunting the edge.
Watching emotion ripple across his features—unguarded, uncalculated—I feel the ache of my own defenses.
I’m tired of living behind reinforced glass, watching life happen on the other side.
Tired of giving everything to my goals, or worse, someone else’s.
That’s why I left the CIA. It wasn’t just that I questioned the leadership.
While that definitely factored into the decision, I want more from life.
“Why don’t we go back to my place?” My hand finds his wrist—steadying myself on him as much as choosing him.
He answers with a searing kiss, the kind that eradicates fear, panic, even thought.
After the kiss, his thumb swipes my lips, and he springs to action.
His grip is firm, not possessive—urgency wrapped in care.
He steers me through corridors washed in amber light, the kind that flatters sin and secrets alike.
The golden glow soothes, even as our steps quicken, fully aware others will see us exiting together, but he’s not keeping me a secret.
We will be seen. Let them. He isn’t hiding me; I’m done hiding from myself.
If Eddie bothers with viewing the footage to learn where Adrien and I got off to, he may raise an eyebrow that he didn’t take me upstairs to a room, but he’s just as likely to assume Adrien’s plan is to take me in the back of his limousine.
Chances are Eddie doesn’t care what his boss does.
After all, he’s not suspicious, yet. Let him catalogue exits and angles. He’ll misread what matters.
We exit the building on the side, cross the street, hands linked, and as if by magic, a car pulls up to the curb and Adrien opens the back passenger door.
“How’d you do that?”
“I messaged in the restaurant. You were so lost in your head you didn’t notice.”
“You knew I’d invite you back to my place?” The idea that I’m so transparent to this man… Almost no one reads me correctly. I don’t even think I knew I was going to invite him into my home.
“No.” He sits in the car beside me, closing the door. “I knew I needed to get you out of there. My place or yours, the location—immaterial.” He waits, watching my face, like he’ll change course if I ask. I place my hand over his in answer.
His fingers lace with mine; heat coils low when our thighs align.
He presses a button and the divider between us and the driver rises.
The quiet that follows is decadent. The low purr of the engine fills the space, and the city’s neon staccato paints his face in pulses of blue and gold.
For a moment, I let the world blur and listen—to the heartbeat that might be his or mine, synced like a metronome set to something wickedly slow.
“Is this your personal car?”
“One of the clubs. They’re on call for members.”
“So any member could take a ride in one of these cars?”
“We have membership tiers. Only the highest level has unlimited, on-demand access to private transportation in city centers.”
“And there’s a divider?”
“Do you honestly care if all of our limousines have dividers?”
His sharp eyes take me in, calling me out for what I am often guilty of, which is staying on task.
The driver turns onto the avenue, and we seem to be in time with intersection lights, our speed fast enough that the storefront lights blur into multi-colored streaks.
“Do you check them? Regularly?” If I were building a honey trap, this is where I’d tuck the wire.
It seems to me that the back of a limousine, especially one with no direct connection to the occupants, would be as good a place as any to have private, discreet conversations, and a valuable resource should someone care to monitor.
His muscles stiffen, and his head shifts an infinitesimal amount, such a small degree of motion I might’ve overlooked it unless in close proximity.
He sinks back against the cushion, his gaze flicking to the blur of lights, and now it’s my turn to watch as awareness washes over him and his thoughts scatter through implications.
For a heartbeat the city fades. Only his thumb tracing the back of my hand, the air thick with things we haven’t said.
We ride together wordlessly up the avenue until the driver slows in front of my building.
Our shoes click against the aged marble, sloped in the center, grooves worn by other lives, other choices.
I push the key into the lock, first the deadbolt, then the bottom lock, scanning the perimeter for signs of intrusion, a habit that shall probably never die.
Once we step across the threshold, I proceed with removing my shoes, wincing, as I watch him taking in my space.
The configuration is a slightly odd one, probably because this floor used to be one home and someone came along decades ago and split it into three apartments.
I suspect someone came along more recently and tore down some of the walls, leaving me with a short entry hall that opens into a much larger living area, with another hall that leads to two bedrooms with a bathroom at the end.
The small kitchen is bigger than many in Manhattan, but there’s another hallway that leads to a small room.
I liked the place for the high ceilings, spacious and plentiful windows, and the fact there’s no fire escape leading into the apartment from the outside, leaving only one exit point, if one doesn’t count the two-foot-thick walls.
(I do. I always count the walls as emergency exit points.)
I pad barefoot, heels dangling from one finger, and join him where he stares at the blank wall in my living area.
“No television?”
“One day I’ll put a piece of art there. If I watch television, I usually watch on my laptop.”
“I take it you don’t possess a media room?”
I bite back an amused smile. “Have you visited many Manhattan apartments?”
“Fair point.” He taps the tip of my nose. “So you may not be an art curator but you’re an art lover. As such, what would you choose to fill the void?”
It’s an interesting word choice. Void. As if he can see the negative space I live around.
“The room is perfectly styled. Comfortable furnishings, a creamy soft rug, muted colors to imbue a soothing environment, and you’ve left this space open, awaiting something…what do you see?”
He’s not wrong. I’ve envisioned the art hanging in a white oak frame, but the piece I envision would be expansive and likely challenging to move. And my tastes change.
Instead of getting pulled into a discussion of local artists and the pieces I’m considering, knowing we’re now in my home, that we can now talk freely, I say, “Moira Kelly.” The name tastes metallic on my tongue. “Ring any bells?”
He studies me, thoughtful, but I sense he’s more surprised by my change of subject than the name.
“No. Is that who Eddie met in the park?”
“She’s a former MI5 operative turned private intelligence broker. It’s not who Eddie met with in the park, but we identified the woman he met with and she’s widely believed to work for Moira Kelly.”
I tap on my phone, accessing the KOAN portal and the file, then the photo. He takes the phone from me, enlarging the photo with his fingers.
“Kelly is widely known to be a broker of information. Corporate competitors, foreign intelligence services, political operatives. Based on this, it would seem Eddie doesn’t sell directly to the extortionists, rather he’s selling raw intelligence to brokers.”
“Plural?”
“Kelly represents one entity. We suspect that if he realizes his commodity is valuable, he shops it. He’s got quite the setup.”
“Jesus.” He rests a thigh against the back of my sofa and hands the phone back to me. “I recognize her.”
“You do?” I take the phone from him, looking at the photo of Moira Kelly for the hundredth time.
She’s in her seventies but stunning in a Helen Mirren way.
Time has been kind to her, leaving her silver-streaked shoulder length hair and elegant poise, even when in line at an event.
The photo had been taken outside of a London theatrical premiere—a red carpet of convenient associates.
With the right AI, threads tie themselves; you simply choose which to pull.
This photo and so many others over decades.
A connective task that might have taken weeks but with the help of our analysis algorithms, we achieved in hours.