34. Love, Locks, and Awkward Confessions
CHAPTER 34
LOVE, LOCKS, AND AWKWARD CONFESSIONS
ZOE
I breathe heavy as I look at the three unconscious men on the ground. I recognize one as one of the Barno brothers who has been stealing the Trust pieces. Hopefully the second one is somewhere here, too.
Charlie comes on my comms to tell me that the command center isn’t far. I put my hand on my healing rib and spleen and step over one of the men on my way to the east wall. It’s moments like this that make me realize that I’m not operating at one hundred percent. My leg’s a little sore, too, so I shake it out, then place the surveillance device on the wall, just below a map. Then I head to the opposite wall. There’s enough stuff in this room that I want to make sure the cameras can pick it all up.
Just like this whole mission, I’m constantly thinking about the three devices in the side pocket of my utility pants. The device that will jam communications in the command center as I work so no one can stop me remotely, the drive I’ll plug into their server to download all their data, and the drive with the virus that will take down their system, making it unusable to anyone else once I release the communications jam.
And I try to not think about Ledger and everything that Director Lancaster said when she showed up in my kitchen-disaster apartment. But since that has been running on a loop in my head non-stop, it’s been a bit difficult.
I place the second surveillance device and am catching my breath a bit as I head over to a big planning table in the middle of the room. It’s filled with so many plans, and I know from past missions to not just assume that all the information can be gathered later just because that’s the plan. So I aim my body camera at it so it’ll go straight to the agencies now. I hear a bunch of Whoa s and gasps from all three handlers.
The Barno brothers weren’t just a couple of guys who were good at scavenger hunts and that was why they were almost set to be gifted Aragundi’s empire. They’re not just good at being art thieves, either. These guys have plans to sow chaos and destruction across the world that would make even Aragundi proud. It’s amazing that they’ve been able to fly under the radar for so long.
Through my earpiece, I hear Kella shout, “ Ledger ! Behind you!” and I freeze for the briefest of moments, then I start to run. I race around tables and leap over one of the downed men as I’m heading toward the door. Someone near Ledger growls something in a language that I can’t understand.
There’s grunts, then the buzzing sound that I know is a stun gun. Then I hear Ledger scream. It goes straight to my heart, and I know it’ll be burned there forever. I shout, “ Ledger ! Ledger !” as I run, slamming into the door that doesn’t open as fast as I’m running and head out into the corridor, racing in Ledger’s direction. As soon as I round the bend to where Ledger is, I see the bottom half of Ledger’s legs quite a distance down the corridor just as they drag him around a corner.
“ Zoe !” I hear Ledger’s voice in my comms, but it’s strained, cracking. “ Finish the mission!” And then I hear a high-pitched squeal that tells me someone just pulled out his comms unit and stomped on it.
I run faster. As I pass a panel in the wall, I glance long enough to see that it leads to a secret passage where I’m sure the men were hiding before they grabbed Ledger . “ Miles !” I shout. “ How close are you?”
“ I’m close. I’ll go after him.”
“ No . I need you to get the devices from me to download the data and finish the mission. I’m going after Ledger .”
“ Are you sure?” he asks.
“ Yes !” I can tell my leg isn’t liking this punishment, but I’ve got adrenaline on my side. And a very intense need to get to Ledger . To keep him from harm.
“ Okay ,” Charlie says. “ Zoe , keep heading in that direction. Miles , take your next left. Yeah , that one. Okay , about halfway down this corridor, there should be an opening. Go right, and you should intercept Zoe .”
I pull the three devices out of my side pocket. Miles emerges from a corridor to my left just before I get there, and I slow just long enough to get them into his hands without dropping them. Then I run. I round a corner, thinking I should be catching up to them, but don’t see them anywhere.
“ Back !” Packston calls out in my earpiece. “ There was a corridor you missed. It’s hidden in a kind of alcove.”
I head back in the direction I just came from, slowing just a bit as my spleen makes its displeasure at my activities known. I breathe through the pain, trying to calm my body when it wants nothing even close to calmness.
“ A little further. Do you see it?” Packston asks.
“ Found it!” I say and hurry down that corridor. This time, I don’t run blindly. Our tech ops have the surveillance cameras we placed on their screens and they have the one on Ledger’s chest, so they are seeing so much more than I do. I just need to trust that listening to them will get me to him more quickly than I can on my own.
Packston directs me to a door that leads down to holding cells, and I can hear the slam of a prison door closing echo up to me. I stop and take two measured breaths in an attempt to calm my body before I head down. Normally , I’m good at calming myself as needed. But when the man I love is in danger, apparently none of that works.
I still manage to walk quietly down the winding stone staircase, my stun gun raised, as the sounds of the men talking carry toward me. Even if it’s not as supportive, I have never been so grateful for my new boot as I am while sneaking down the stairs. With my previous boot, the sounds of me clomping down these stairs would’ve been bouncing off the walls, alerting the entire fortress to my actions. With this one, I’m almost silent.
I slow as I reach the bottom of the stairs and peek around the last corner. I see both guards, talking and gesturing to each other and the cell where they’ve put Ledger . I lift my stun gun higher, take aim, and then tag both guards, one right after the other. They both drop to the ground, unconscious.
I run toward the cell. The area has stone walls, floors, and ceiling. Rusted metal bars run from the floor to a low ceiling, separating Ledger from me and the guards. My eyes rove all over his perfect body. “ Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”
He’s standing. Well , leaning against the bars for support, but standing, which gives me immense relief. I can’t stop scanning him for damage.
“ I’m just Tased .” His voice is still cracking, so he clears his throat. It doesn’t help much. “ I’ll be sore for a day, but I’m fine. You didn’t get the data? Plant the virus?”
“ No ,” I say as I step over one of the guards.
“ You didn’t finish the mission? You weren’t supposed to sacrifice the mission for me!”
I shake my head. “ I passed it off to Miles . Did you really expect me to stay when they were hauling you off?”
“ Yes ! That’s exactly what I expected!” It’s the smile he’s trying to hide through his electrocuted-moments-ago exhaustion that makes me realize that he’s saying to me almost exactly the same things I said to him when I found out he sacrificed the mission in Ankara to save me .
So I give my own little smile back as I shuffle sideways in the small space between the guards, shaking my head, and say what I remember he said to me. “ Never going to happen. I will choose to save you every time.”
He lifts an eyebrow. “ Oh , yeah?”
I nod and step over the second guard so I can be right next to the cell’s bars. Over my comms, I hear Miles say, “ I’m activating the localized signal jammer, so I’ll be dark until the download is complete, then I’ll check in.”
Then Jace says, “ I’m almost to Miles . I’ll watch his back.”
I remember that Ledger no longer has an earpiece, so I tell him, “ Miles is in the command center now, downloading the data. Jace is watching his back.”
“ So ,” Ledger says, “you’re saying you sacrificed getting the most credit for the mission for me? You sacrificed the win?”
I grab hold of the bars separating us. “ I think I would sacrifice pretty much anything for you.”
He had asked the question in almost a teasing, flirty way, but I can see how much my response is affecting him. It tells me that until this moment, he wasn’t really sure that I would. Maybe I wasn’t sure I would myself.
No . I knew. If I’m being honest with myself, I’ve known I’d sacrifice anything for him for quite a while now. There is so much I want to say to him. So much I’ve figured out over the past couple of days that I want to share with him. I just don’t even know how to start. I wish I was better at this kind of thing. “ Your mom came over to my apartment last night.”
“ Yeah ?”
“ You knew she did?”
He nods. “ But she wouldn’t tell me what you two talked about.”
“ She told me that if you say you love me, I can trust that it’s true.”
“ And here she said she wasn’t going to be my wing-man.”
“ In all fairness to her, she didn’t bring you up. I did.”
He reaches between the bars and brushes his knuckles lightly across my cheek before tucking a lock of hair behind my ear and into my braid, just like he had after giving me my repaired necklace. I close my eyes as the touch sends shivers through my whole body. When I open them, he’s looking deep into my eyes, like he knows me. All of me. Then he says, “ I love you, Zoe Steele . More than I ever knew I could love someone.”
Emotion wells in me, and I can feel the truth of his words soaking into me. Filling me to every corner. Settling in my core. Nourishing every part of me. Even the parts of me that I thought had withered and died long ago. It’s all coming back to life. I can feel all of it.
“ I know,” I whisper. And I feel the conviction in my own words deeply. I can trust all of it. For the first time, I know that I am loved. All of me. Not just the parts Ledger has seen. He loves even the parts of me he hasn’t seen yet. The parts of me that maybe neither of us knows exist yet.
I’m not sure how to even tell him what I’m feeling. Just like with shopping for house things, I am not skilled in this department. But I open my mouth and speak from my heart anyway.
“ And I love you. I have loved you for a long time— I’m pretty sure I’ve loved you since Moldova . It’s just grown so much since we left on that plane for Dublin . A lot. More than I thought I was capable of loving someone. I didn’t realize, though, how many things were holding me back. Even though I didn’t truly believe that I could be loved, I didn’t think I’d been limiting how much I could love you .”
I shake my head in frustration. “ I don’t even know how to put into words how I’m feeling.” I look up at nothing, searching for a way to explain, because Ledger deserves to know. This man has given me so much of himself; he should know how much I love him.
I grab hold of the only metaphor I can find. “ It’s like my heart was a hotel room. It had everything I needed— a place to sleep, a mini fridge and microwave, a little table, a bathroom, a closet. I pretty much kept the door shut tight for most of my life, but I still had it, you know? Then you came along, and I opened the door, and I loved you with my whole hotel room heart.
And then my heart became an apartment, and I suddenly had a kitchen and a living room, too, with a couch, and pots and pans—”
“ And even garbage cans,” Ledger says.
“ And even garbage cans,” I say, letting out a little laugh as I dab a knuckle under my eyelid. “ And suddenly, my heart was so much more open. I had so much more capacity to love you. More than I ever thought was possible. And I loved you with my whole apartment heart.”
I’m not even sure I’m making sense at this point, but it’s the only way I’ve got to explain, so I press forward. “ But I didn’t know that my heart was bigger than my apartment. I still didn’t believe that you could love me because I didn’t know I was actually lovable. I knew that what you were offering me was unconditional, but I thought that it was only because you didn’t know yet that I wasn’t worthy of your love. And once you found out I wasn’t, that would be it for us.
“ But now I know. Now I get it. I know that you love all of me. Now that I finally understand, it’s like you came along and opened all the doors to places I didn’t even know were there. Ledger , my heart is a freaking mansion! And I had no idea that it was. But now that it’s all open, I know that I love you with all of it. My whole mansion heart.”
My sinuses are swelling and my eyes are getting watery, but still, I chuckle at how ridiculous this must sound. I shake my head and look up, hoping that will help with my eyes and my sinuses and my emotions. “ Gah . I am so bad at relationships. I think I’m getting this all wrong.”
I meet Ledger’s eyes. They’re soft. Sweet . Full of emotion. Full of love. In a choked voice, he says, “ You’re doing so much better than you think you are.”
He puts his arms through the bars and wraps them around me, pulling me as close as we can with this prison wall between us. Then , with both of our faces in the space between two bars, he plants the sweetest kiss on my lips. It feels like trust and a promise, and like the lock pendant on my necklace represents, it feels like it’s anything but temporary. It feels like it’s a kiss promising forever.
Through my earpiece, I hear a throat clear, then Miles says, “ I really hate to interrupt this love fest, because, honestly, it’s the greatest thing I’ve heard in a good, long while. But I just need to report in that I’ve got everything copied over to the drive, and I’ve uploaded the virus. It has finished its thing, and we have what we need.”
“ Copy that,” Packston says. “ I’m clearing the extraction team to go in.”
My face instantly heats to the temperature of the sun, and I cover it with my hands to cool it and block out everything.
All of that. I just said all of that with two of Ledger’s brothers listening. And his sister. And both our tech ops. I had completely forgotten that I had my mic on. I uncover my face and my eyes go wide as it hits me that with a mission as large and involved as this one, we are up on the big screens at both the CIA and the CSA . Our directors heard all of that. Our coworkers heard it.
And not only did they hear it back home, but they saw it. Both of our body cams are on. I shut off my mic and my camera, and Ledger shuts off his camera. “ I can’t believe I did that,” I say, pulling at my collar. It’s suddenly so much warmer in here. “ I didn’t mean to embarrass you like that.”
He smiles at me and tugs me closer. “ It didn’t embarrass me.” A smile spreads across his face, then he turns my mic on and says, “ In case any of you were wondering, I love Zoe Steele with my whole mansion heart, too.” Then he turns it back off.
I swat at his arm. Then I grab him by the collar, pull him close, and press my lips against his.
There is only so much kissing you can do when your cheeks are hitting prison bars, though, so even though I don’t want to let go of this amazing man, I do so I can start searching the guards for the keys.
I’m looking through the pockets in the first one’s vest when Ledger says, “ So … funny story. I don’t think they’ve been at this fortress for long. The guards and I don’t exactly speak the same language, and you got down here really quickly— impressively quickly— so there wasn’t exactly a verbal conversation going on. But from what I gathered, I’m their first lockup. I think they realized after they shut the cell door that no one has the keys.”
I turn in my crouch to look at Ledger . “ Are you serious? No keys?”
He nods. “ No keys.”
I turn back on my mic. There’s been a lot of action on the comms as the extraction team moves from room to room, guided by our surveillance mapping, clearing any of the Barno brothers’ people, gathering all physical evidence as they go. I wait for a break in the conversation and say, “ Um , it looks like we’ve got a problem here. There are no keys to Ledger’s prison cell.”
He leans closer to my mic and says, “ I’m hoping that the extraction team brought lock picks. Or maybe the distraction team has some kind of explosive? Or , you know, maybe someone has a master key that works on ancient fortresses.”
“ We’re on it,” Charlie says. “ It could be a bit, though. We have to clear everywhere on the main level and in the towers before we can get someone down there. Just hang tight.”