Chapter Thirty-Four
Noah
Instead of the usual homey scent of bread and flowers, a stench of acrid dust hits me when I open the door to Bobbi’s house around six p.m. The kitchen tiles are ripped out, and I run a hand over my face. The notification on the app had a post complaining about construction noise next door, and I knew exactly what she was doing after I left. It took all my self-control to not barge in and take over the task.
“Bobbi, I thought you were going to wait,” I say.
Intellectually, I understand she needs to use her body. She isn’t one of those people who likes to sit at a desk and sign papers. She was chafing at what she called my overbearingness. But seeing her bleed was like being hit in the solar plexus with a baseball bat, and it’s my prerogative to take care of her to my heart’s content when she’s injured, even though she believes she’s immortal. People are incredibly fragile. If she’d had her arm angled differently, the knife could’ve sliced the radial artery in her wrist, which could leave her blacked out in half a minute and dead in as little as two.
Just thinking about it makes me want to encase her in metal armor…except she’d run the other way, calling me crazy. So I’ve been hovering between the desire to hide her away in a padded room with nothing that could hurt her and the desire to accept what my brain has been telling me—that she’s fine and I need to back the hell off unless I want her to lose her temper and throw my ass on the ground just to make a point.
“I was, but then I wanted to prove to you that my arm’s fine.” She sounds stiff, probably defensive, since she must be expecting me to be upset. Not moving from the couch in the living room, she gestures at the box with the old tiles. “All yours.”
“Well, glad you waited for me to take them out, at least.” I grin to let her know I’m not upset with her.
“No, I mean you can have them.”
“What?” Finally I register the tight set of her jaw and mouth, the ticking of the muscle under her right eye. “What’s wrong?”
I start toward her, but she doesn’t meet my eyes. Instead, her heel bounces in that way she has when she’s preoccupied with something that she doesn’t want to think about.
My gut shivers with warning. I’m in the presence of a ticking time bomb. Just what the hell happened after I left?
“Do you really call your guns cheetahs?”
It takes a moment for my mind to process the abrupt question. My blood turns to ice. My brain says I should act dumb and give her my most charming and lighthearted smile. As I start to grin, her eyes meet mine, and I freeze, unable to continue with the ruse.
She knows.
“Here,” she says, giving me a microSD card. “What you’ve been looking for.”
I stare at it like it’s a leech.
“My father’s papers,” she adds when I don’t move to take it from her. “You weren’t being fully honest before.”
“Bobbi—”
“You aren’t a wildlife photographer or an adventurer. Who do you work for?” She looks at me like she doesn’t recognize me, and that shrivels my heart. “Who are you?”
I should deny everything, except she’s seen the dossiers. Fuck. She must’ve found them in the floor, but how? My team and I went through everything, including the floor, which was the first place we looked. But we found nothing. “Where did you get the memory card?”
She grabs my hand and slaps the card onto my palm. “It was hidden in a groove inside one of the tiles.”
Shit. No wonder we didn’t find it.We were very careful to rip out each tile without breaking it. Otto picked out the ugliest tiles, ones that couldn’t be replaced, and we didn’t have the time to replicate them.
“So who are you?”
Desperation mounts. I’ll lose her if I say a single wrong word. “Bobbi. I’m still the Noah you know.”
“No, you aren’t. You’re an asset. For who?”
“For the United States government. I belong to an agency nobody knows about because we do things that other known entities like the CIA can’t get involved in.”
Two beats that feel like an eternity. “Did you approach me for the papers?” she asks, her voice hoarse.
I wish I could say anything but the truth. “That was part of it.”
She pales. “Why didn’t you tell me, then? I would’ve cooperated.”
“We weren’t sure if you were colluding with an enemy state.”
Her eyes narrow. She’s working fast to put things together. “Did my father…” Her voice hitches. “Did he take the dossiers to sell?”
I exhale harshly. I never wanted her to find out. “Yes.”
“To a foreign state?”
“Yes.”
“So he was a traitor. Were you ever going to tell me?” Her voice cracks.
“No. It’s irrelevant. Why torture yourself with the knowledge?”
“It isn’t irrelevant,” she hisses. “You approached me for the dossiers. You thought I might be a traitor. Is that why you kept ghosting me? Because you couldn’t be sure?”
“No!” My denial rings like a wild gun shot.
“When you came back…” Her breath shudders, and she stops for a moment to gather herself. “Was it because you wanted another shot at the dossiers? You know yours is included, don’t you?”
“Yes, but I didn’t come back for the dossiers. We thought they were gone.”
She regards me. “But our meeting in Mexico. That wasn’t a coincidence.”
Fuck. I wish I could make up some story, but I respect her too much. Furthermore, she’s too smart to buy my lies. There are enough pieces for her to get the full picture. “Our first meeting”—I run fingers through my hair—“was a setup. The thugs who attacked you weren’t really thugs. They knew what they were doing, and they just wanted to scare you, so I could come to your rescue and get close to you. Instead, you kicked their asses, and that was that.” My palms go clammy with cold sweat. Desperation fuels me as I look into her eyes. “Please, Bobbi. I fell in love with you.”
Her composure crumbles a little, and underneath the crack, I glimpse immeasurable pain. Remorse pounds at me. I should’ve done better. Found some way to keep her heart protected.
“But you couldn’t tell me the truth. Even after you came back and said you wanted another chance…” Her jaw trembles, and she clenches her teeth.
“I couldn’t. I’m sorry. Everything I’ve done… What I am…” I sigh heavily. “It’s all classified at the highest level. Not even my brothers know.”
“Your mother knows.”
“Because I report to her. She’s an asset as well.” Regret and self-recrimination congeal in an ugly, bitter mixture. I wish Bobbi hadn’t found out. I wish the dossiers had remained hidden. The hurt and confusion warring on her face isn’t worth it.
“My father’s death… Was it an accident or…” She struggles for the right word to describe what she instinctively knows happened.
Oh sweet Jesus.Terror runs through my veins. If I tell her, she might never regard me the same way again. Maybe even despise me. Otto Bright was a damn traitor, but he was still her father. She and he weren’t very close, but still…
She seems to have guessed the answer from my hesitation. “Did you have something to do with it?”
Don’t tell her. Lie. She’ll never find out.
Even if she never does, I can’t play her for a fool. She deserves better. “Yes.” My voice is hoarse as I struggle to speak through the tight ball of fear, panic and regret lodged in my throat. “He was my mission. I had to stop him from selling the dossiers and retrieve them.”
“So you shot him.”
A beat as bitter despair that I’m going to lose her spirals upward from my gut, all the way to my racing heart. I resist an urge to wipe my clammy hands. “Yes.”
A tear falls from her eye. Panic that she’s slipping away blazes through me. I reach for her, wishing I could soothe her and cling to her at the same time, but she pulls away. The rejection twists a knife in my heart. I tighten my jaw to contain a groan.
“Stop. I just…can’t.” She raises her hands, palms out. “I need some time to myself. I don’t know what to make of us—of this—anymore.”
“How long, Bobbi?” I say, my whole body numb with a certain defeat.
She looks at me, her eyes glazed with tears. “I don’t know. But right now, I can’t do this.”