Chapter 32
JETT
My phone battery had long died by the time I made my way to the palace and pled my case. Honestly, if the princeling hadn’t been coming back from a fucking polo match or some shit and recognized me, I would have been screwed.
“Jett?” Chris asked incredulously.
“I need help,” I said, suddenly feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. Even though we weren’t exactly close, we were distantly related through our great-grandfathers and had spent several kick-ass family reunions and celebrations together over the years.
He took me in and treated me like a royal guest—which I guess went without saying—but once I was cleaned up and well rested, he and his fathers demanded answers.
“I need help getting home,” I said. “I lost my backpack that had my wallet and passport in it.”
King Lior nodded. “Of course. I’ll send you home on one of our planes with a diplomatic pass.”
Uncle Felix smiled, his face open and welcoming as usual. “You’ll stay for a visit first, though, right?”
I shook my head. “I really need to get back. I was in the middle of a case at work, and there’s some follow-up I need to do in the office.”
He looked disappointed, which made his husband frown. “You will stay for dinner, at least,” Lior said.
Chris elbowed me. “That’s his commanding voice, in case you didn’t realize it was supposed to be scary.”
His fathers both shot him a look, but Chris only grinned. He was known in our family as a showboat, which didn’t surprise anyone, considering the immense wealth and privilege he’d grown up with here in Liorland and Uncle Felix’s huge, irreverent Wilde family in America.
“I’m suitably terrified. But also hungry, so I accept. Thank you.”
The evening that followed was a nice break from reality, but as soon as I got back to my room, my now-charged phone was buzzing like an angry yellow jacket stuck between a window and the screen.
The first call I returned was to Rocky, who answered the phone with a “Jesus Christ, Jett! Where are you?”
“Liorland.”
She huffed out a breath. “Liorland? What the fuck are you doing there?”
“Well…” I blew out a breath.
On the train here from Maiori, I’d had nothing but time. Time to think, and rethink, and overthink.
Time to look over that warning text I’d received from an unknown number the day of the bombing and remember that Rocky didn’t know I was staying at Locke’s house.
Time to remember Liyana saying, Thank you, Jett.
I hope someday to repay your kindness. Time to realize that good and bad, truth and lies, loyalty and honor, weren’t the black-and-white concepts I’d thought they were when I’d first become an agent.
I’d had time to regret, too.
I’d foolishly gotten way too involved with a supposedly heterosexual billionaire.
A man who literally controlled the world like pawns in a game.
A man whose determination and responsibility were melded into his very soul.
A man who’d stood alone, acted alone, for so long, that when I’d begged him to leave, he’d stubbornly insisted on staying behind—alone.
No loyal ESP agent would risk his career over Locke Maris by being less than a hundred percent honest with his boss…
Unless that agent had a damn good reason, like being head over heels in love with the man and determined to protect him at all costs.
“I’m visiting my cousins,” I lied with no compunction whatsoever.
“They invited me, and I figured, ‘Hey, I’m on vacation, and Rocky specifically told me to stay out of trouble, so why not?’ But don’t worry, I’m heading back to Italy first thing tomorrow.
I’ll collect the package you sent to the post office and set up surveillance—”
“No!” she almost shouted. “Jesus, no. Under no circumstances should you go back to Maiori, Jett. I mean it.”
I sat on the bed, stacked the pillows behind my head, and tried to think what the Agent Jett Marian that she knew might say. “What? Why not? Come on, Rocky! It’s been almost a week. I’m so relaxed by now my muscles are starting to atrophy!”
“Have you not checked the news in the last forty-eight hours?” she demanded. “There’s been a blockade in the Kiel Canal.”
“No way.” I sank further into the pillows. “You mean… you think the convo I overheard was actually them… what? Plotting something? Shit.”
“We don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s not related to the explosion near the canal.
That’s confirmed by CJ and the others. The official cause is a software glitch.
If there was an unofficial cause, we haven’t figured it out yet.
But listen, Jett, Trevi said you contacted him for information about a company… ” Papers rustled in the background.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Malik Makida. I remembered someone mentioning that at lunch, too. Trevi said it’s owned by Saleem al-Qadiri, so it makes sense that’s why they mentioned it, right? Did that have something to do with the canal thing?”
“No. But…” Rocky hesitated. “Saleem al-Qadiri was killed by a car bomb at a villa just outside Maiori yesterday.”
“What the fuck? I was just there! I left first thing yesterday morning. Damn it. I knew I shouldn’t have left—”
“No, it’s probably better that way. But that’s why you can’t go back. The investigator showed your picture around to the owner and staff at the villa—”
“Why?” I didn’t have to feign shock now. I sat up on the bed and glared at my phone. “Why the fuck would he do that and blow whatever cover I would have had?”
“Because I couldn’t get in touch with you! Because we were concerned that you might have tried to get close to the players. And that you might have been hurt in the process.”
“Jesus Christ,” I groaned.
I wanted to say that she should know me better than that… but based on recent events, she obviously knew me exactly the right amount.
“Anyway, if you go back to Maiori, you’ll raise a whole lot of suspicion. And anyway, the investigation’s not centered there anymore. Chatter says al-Qadiri upset the wrong people in the process of a power grab from his father-in-law. They’ve got a couple leads they’re following up in Qadara.”
I closed my eyes. I was sure that story was a plant, and I raised a mental toast to the Paxis Council.
“One thing that’s bothering me, though,” Rocky mused. “Two of the ships involved in the blockade were Maris ships. And al-Qadiri was assassinated at Locke Maris’s house.”
Interrogation 101: don’t answer questions that weren’t asked.
I waited her out until she finally said, “But then again, there were other ships involved. So there’s no clear evidence pointing to Maris.” She sighed.
“Do we have a mandate here?” I wondered. Because we could be curious cats all we wanted, but if there was no indication of danger or illegal activity that could lead to global instability, then what was our interest in al-Qadiri’s death? “I can look into it?” I tried to sound eager. “Ask around—”
“No. God no. Go back to your vacation. Keep staying out of trouble. We’ll see you in a week and not before.”
I hung up the phone and squeezed my eyes shut.
I should have felt like I’d crossed a Rubicon, I was pretty sure.
Yes, I was not Rocky’s most rule-following agent.
Yes, there were times I’d taken risks—like staying under way too long in Germany—that she didn’t agree with.
But I had never overtly disobeyed an order.
I’d never questioned or tested my loyalty to ESP.
But if I were being brutally honest, my frustration with the job had been a constant drip, drip, drip that had, over the years, built into a tidal wave.
So many times, I’d seen higher-ups—people who’d never had their boots on the ground in the agency—make decisions that enabled small-time criminals like Ronald Gillen to keep living their best criminal lives, with no thought to the people they hurt.
So many times, I’d been pulled from cases right before they broke because diplomatic channels broke down and our authorization to operate was yanked.
I’d joined ESP because I wanted to do good in the world. I’d told myself that it was worth all the sacrificed time with my family and friends. That it didn’t matter that I’d lived more of my adult life as a made-up persona than I had as Jett Marian.
But more and more often, I’d felt caged.
Worse, I was afraid I’d started to forget who Jett Marian even was or what he wanted…
Until Locke Maris had helped me remember.
The following morning, I flew home from Liorland in a private plane and spent twenty hours asleep in my own bed. Then I woke up and caught a ride to the airport.
If I didn’t get the hell out of this city, I would drag my pathetic ass to Locke’s doorstep and throw myself on his mercy.
If Locke was still being watched, which I had to imagine he was, this would have made it very clear to my employer that I was a lying asshole.
None of which I needed right now as much as the loving arms (and horrible Dad-joke humor) of my parents.
The sun was setting as I drove over the bridge to Rabbit Island. The familiar expanse of my hometown was like serotonin mixed with Valium. The stress began to melt away as if I were passing through a protection barrier that surrounded the island.
The streets were peppered here and there with kids riding their bikes or people walking a dog after supper, but when I got to the house I’d grown up in, the one that had been in my dad’s family too long to remember, no one was outside.
I climbed the stairs to the front door and opened it, not surprised it wasn’t locked since doors on Rabbit Island rarely were.
Inside, my family was shouting at each other. Familiar voices raised in incredulity competed for dominance.
“You scratched me!” Becca wailed with all the drama of a telenovela.
“To be fair, sweetheart,” Mav said calmly, “Gabe’s still bleeding from the last round where you smacked his face instead of his hand.”
Gabe’s friend Hunter muttered, “And yet you won’t let me murder her.”