Chapter 5
JETT
The Hamburg job came at the perfect time. I couldn’t get Locke Maris off my mind and had been on the verge of doing something very stupid, like knocking on his front door and begging him to fuck me, when Rocky called me in for an emergency meeting that stole all my focus.
Today’s shoes were Big Bird–yellow Crocs thrown on over thick, mismatched wool socks and worn with jeans and an MIT hoodie. Her ensemble, more than anything else, indicated how serious this case was.
“I need you to relocate to Germany for six to eight months,” she said, clicking her laptop keyboard until a giant case file flashed on the giant wall monitor at the end of the room. “We have a situation developing near Bremen, but we believe it involves water routes near Hamburg.”
As she began explaining the developing situation—environmental activists serving as a distraction for a weapons smuggling ring using the Elbe and Weser Rivers—I felt a familiar excitement wash over me.
This. This was why I’d joined ESP.
I wanted adventure and excitement, challenge and intrigue. I also wanted to help. To make a difference. To be one of the global good guys. And an opportunity like this was pretty rare for an agent without years of experience.
“Why me?” I asked, quickly adding, “I mean, I’m thrilled and totally here for it, but I’m curious why you picked me.”
“We think the best position for gathering intel is through an organization called Climate Direct-Action Network, which is primarily comprised of college and grad students. Your cover is Jonas Vogel, a disenchanted marine-biology student taking a gap year between undergrad and grad school to travel around Europe.” She slid a tablet over to me.
“Here’s the bio, but we’re sending it to your portal as well.
You have three days of travel to study it and become this guy.
Your job is to get to know the other members through seemingly random meetings, like striking up conversations at pubs and stuff.
Express your discontent with your country’s efforts at environmental policy, et cetera. ”
As she clicked through various images of the leaders of the group and explained the situation, I got a clearer picture. My part in this wasn’t a rush. It was a long-game mission to gather intel.
“Why the urgency?” I asked when she took a moment to steal a sip of her coffee. “It seems inconsistent with a six-to-eight-month op.”
She blew out a breath and met my eyes. “That’s the second part of your mission.
We already have an undercover agent in the group, a young woman from the office in Munich.
The flow of intel from her has slowly dried up, meaning her reports went from detailed and helpful to vague and useless. We believe she may have been turned.”
“Is she okay?” I asked, surprised and concerned.
“Yes. We’ve seen her and have verified she’s healthy and safe. We’ve even offered to swap her out in case she needs a break for any reason. She insists she’s fine and still working hard in the effort.”
Rocky met my eyes. “We need you to figure out what’s going on with her.
Has the organization truly stopped colluding with the smuggling ring—in which case, why isn’t she asking to be reassigned?
Is she being kept from the inside information for some reason—in which case, we need to extract her?
Or is there something else going on? You know from your training that the most likely scenarios when an agent has been turned are that they disappear completely or they start feeding just enough information to keep the home office from getting suspicious.
That’s what seems to be happening here. We just can’t be sure. ”
I nodded. “And if you simply pull her off the op, you’ll never know.”
“Right. We need to know what information she has access to and compare it to what she’s passing along to us.”
It was exactly the kind of assignment I’d dreamed about. And I was ready.
“Let’s get it done,” I said, leaning forward to begin studying my cover.
It took me ten months to finally get proof of Mira Stein’s double cross. In that time, I’d had to sink deep into my cover, becoming an angry asshole who spent more money on beer than food, and who got into bar fights at the drop of a hat.
There’d been times I hadn’t been able to get in contact with ESP, times I’d had to miss key check-ins, and times I had to spend my cash on bribes instead of food.
By the end of the mission, I was starving for more than just a decent meal. I was starving for sleep in a comfortable bed instead of a blanket-covered pallet in a run-down warehouse, time back home with my family, sex with any man who would have me, and affectionate touch, if I could get it.
My plan was to head to Rabbit Island for a couple of weeks after my debrief in the office.
Back home, Mav and Beau would feed me, I’d be able to roast in the white-hot sand of August, and I could get as many hugs as I wanted.
My sister, Becca, would probably even agree to give me a shoulder rub as long as I binge-watched whatever show she was into while she did it.
As for the sex, I wasn’t willing to wait. As soon as I got to the airport hotel in Amsterdam, I headed to the bar to grab a bite to eat and scroll a hookup app before even checking out my room.
I got lucky as soon as I took a stool at the bar. The man finishing his drink next to me seemed just as eager for attention as I was. As soon as I finished my meal, he invited me up to his room.
Fuck. Yes.
“Let me close out,” I said, gesturing to the bartender that I was ready for my check.
The man gave me his room number and excused himself to the restroom. As soon as the card machine spat out a receipt for me to sign, I heard a familiar voice behind me, filled with surprise.
“Jett?”
I turned and nearly fell off my stool. “Locke? What are you doing here?”
His eyes devoured me, roving up and down my body as if taking inventory or making sure everything was where it was supposed to be. When his eyes returned to mine, they were filled with heat.
Locke Maris and his frown were absolute catnip to my touch-starved, normalcy-starved self. I wanted to inhale the fuck out of him and ride the high as long as possible.
I quickly signed the receipt, so distracted I probably signed my real name by mistake, before grabbing my backpack and Locke’s hand and pulling him into a nearby alcove half-hidden behind a heavy velvet curtain.
And then I lunged up and kissed him, full on the mouth. My hands clutched at his suit jacket lapels tightly enough to pull him off-balance. He slapped one hand on the wall and reached the other around my back to hold me close.
His mouth stayed on mine, kissing me back with as much pent-up desperation as I had after ten months of celibacy and sacrifice.
“Please take me to your room,” I begged. “Please.”
I didn’t want the handsome stranger from the bar. I wanted familiarity. Someone dominant enough to make all the decisions so I didn’t have to think. And someone whose presence overwhelmed me enough not to leave room in my head for anything else.
Locke pulled back and studied me. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”
At that point, I would have said whatever I needed to say to get him to agree. “Yes.”
I didn’t even feel guilty for the lie because it wasn’t one. I’d just spent the better part of a year in life-or-death trouble. I was troubled to the edges of my teeth. And right now, all I wanted was to leave it behind for a night.
“Let’s go,” he said gruffly, pulling my hands off his lapels and straightening his jacket. He placed a hand on my lower back and steered me toward the elevators, taking my ratty backpack out of my hands and throwing the strap over his shoulder.
Within moments, we were in a large suite with walls of glass probably overlooking something impressive. I didn’t care. All I wanted to overlook was Locke Maris, preferably naked.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” he demanded as soon as we were alone behind a closed door.
“Nothing, I just…” I blew out a breath, feeling more vulnerable than I cared to admit, even to myself. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”
He studied me while setting my bag down, pulling off his jacket, and laying it neatly on the back of a chair. “You look awful. Where have you been?”
I let out a weak laugh. “Thanks. Way to romance a guy.”
“Is that what I’m trying to do?” He crossed his arms. “Funny. I wasn’t aware.”
“I want to be fucked,” I said, needing to keep this from turning into a conversation about me and what I’d been through the past almost year. I avoided sounding whiny, but only just.
His nostrils flared. “Not happening. Tell me why you’re in Amsterdam.”
Was I still Jethro Davis, go-go boy from the Candy Bar? Or was I allowed to be Jett?
I knew better than to tell him my last name was Marian. When you meet someone on an op, your connection to them will always be traceable to the op. Which meant I could never be Jett Marian to him, junior consultant for a “global solutions” company.
So I chose to do what my training demanded and stay under the cover he knew.
“You remember the guy I was with at the restaurant in New York?”
His forehead crinkled. “Your date? I never saw him.”
“Probably for the best. Anyway, he hired me to go on a business trip with him, only his wife found out about it. He gave me some cash but then took off.” I shrugged.
“I’ve been traveling around a little, hoping to see some things, but I found a killer deal on a flight home I can’t pass up, so I’m heading back tomorrow. ”
He uncrossed his arms and stepped toward me, tugging up the hem of the plain black T-shirt I wore.
“You’re skin and bones,” he said, nostrils flaring. “Haven’t you been eating?”
I yanked my shirt back down, suddenly embarrassed. “That’s none of your fucking business. And if you don’t like what you see, I can take it out of your sight.”
As I turned to leave, I tilted my head up to keep the stupid tears in my eyes from spilling out.