Chapter 37
MIA
The hotel room feels foreign as I stand in the doorway for a long moment, taking in the space I haven’t seen in three days.
The bed is made—housekeeping has been through, no mint on my pillow though.
My laptop sits on the desk where I left it, the journalist props arranged just so.
The curtains are drawn against the city lights.
Everything looks exactly the same, but it doesn’t feel the same.
Because I’m the one who’s different.
I close the door behind me and lean against it, letting my eyes fall shut.
My body aches in places I’d forgotten could ache.
The bruises from the warehouse have layered over with new ones—fingerprints on my hips, a tender spot on my throat from when he held me over the edge, and I’m sure I have one down my arm from when he blasted into me at high speed, preventing me from falling to my death.
Bloody hell. I’ve always joked that agents have nine lives, like cats, but I have a feeling I’m down to my final one.
I push off the door and move to the bathroom.
The mirror shows me a woman I barely recognize.
I have dark circles under my eyes, a smattering of faint bruises, hair tangled from the wind on the rooftop, lips swollen from kissing a man who threw me off a building and fucked me before I hit the ground.
I look positively ruined.
I look absolutely alive.
I strip off my clothes and step into the shower. The water is wonderfully hot and I stand under it until my skin turns pink, until the heat seeps into my bones, until I can pretend I’m washing away everything that happened.
When I get out, I wrap myself in the hotel robe and sit on the edge of the bed, staring at my mobile.
I need to check in with Bayo. Protocol demands it. Three days of radio silence—three days since Vanguard ripped my earrings out and swallowed my comms like a fucking loon—and my team has been operating blind.
They must be going out of their minds with worry.
My thumb hesitates over Bayo’s contact. I think about what to say. How to spin it. The story Vanguard and I discussed before I left his penthouse, sitting across from each other like two generals negotiating a ceasefire.
“Tell them you were with me. That things got intense. That you needed to go dark to maintain cover.”
“And if they don’t believe me?”
“Make them believe you. I know how good of a liar you are.”
Easy for him to say. He’s not the one who has to look Bayo in the eye and lie about everything that matters.
I press the call button.
Bayo answers on the first ring.
“Mia.” His voice is sharp with relief and fury in equal measure. “Where the hell have you been, loca?”
I smile at his Jacob impression. He can’t be that mad. “I’m fine, Bayo.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I close my eyes, forcing the white lie. “I was with Vanguard. Things got…complicated. I had to go dark for a few days.”
Silence on the line. I can picture him at the safehouse, surrounded by monitors, his jaw tight with the effort of not yelling.
“Complicated,” he repeats. “You went dark for three days because things got complicated.”
“He found the earrings. Started asking questions about the tech. I couldn’t risk it.”
“And you couldn’t find another way to contact us? Another mobile? Carrier pigeon, even?”
“Bayo…”
“You know how long three days is for us. Kat wanted to storm his building. I had to talk her out of it four separate times. There’s no way she would have been able to without getting caught and causing an international incident.”
Guilt twists in my chest. “I’m sorry. I should have found a way.”
“Yes. You should have.” A pause. “Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Is your cover intact?”
The lie sticks in my throat. “Yes.”
Another silence, longer this time. When he speaks again, his voice is quieter. Less angry, more worried.
“What happened, Miss Mia? Really?”
I don’t even fucking know.
We start over. Not as anything we were before.
“I handled it,” I say. “That’s what matters.”
“Mm-hmm.” He doesn’t sound convinced. “We need to debrief properly. Tomorrow. We’re expecting more news from Mank in the meantime. I’d transcribed and sent over the recording you made from the warehouse.”
“I’ll be there.”
“And, Mia?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t go dark on me again. Please.”
The please gets me. I can feel it.
“I won’t,” I say, and this time I mean it.
“Or we’re going to have to send in enforcements to get your extraction.”
“I understand.”
I end the call and toss the phone onto the bed. My hands are shaking slightly—adrenaline crash, exhaustion, the accumulated weight of too many lies pressing down on my chest. This is the first time I’ve really lied to my team and it makes my stomach churn.
I need sleep. I need food. I need about a week in a dark room with no one asking me any questions. I just need to be alone.
The next morning my body forces me to sleep in, but I still feel tense when I wake, so I take a long bath, pouring nearly the entire contents of the hotel body wash into the tub.
I sit there and disassociate, something I’ve learned not to interfere with.
After an agent goes through a traumatic event, like being captured, we often need time to just stare at the wall and process what happened without actively thinking about it.
For me it means staying in the bath until I’m one giant prune, then wrapping myself in a robe and doing the same on the couch, though this time I have coffee and a Beatles documentary I half pay attention to.
I lie there for hours, eating minibar snacks, and rotting until there’s not much left in my brain and I’ve become one with the cushions.
I dread the moment my alarm goes off and I have to leave this cocoon for the debriefing at the safehouse.
There’s a knock at the door.
I freeze, waiting for someone to say “housekeeping” but no one does.
It has to be Vanguard…but why not just appear on my balcony as always?
My heart rate spikes. Part of me—the part I’m trying very hard to ignore—wants it to be him. Wants him to have followed me, to have changed his mind about keeping distance, to be standing on the other side of that door with that look in his eyes that makes me forget everything I’m supposed to be.
And just realizing how loud that part is makes me know how damn close I am to throwing in the towel and giving it all up for him.
I cross to the door and check the peephole.
My stomach drops.
It’s not Vanguard.
It’s Cal.
What the hell?
I open the door slowly, keeping my expression neutral even as my mind races.
He’s standing in the hallway with a duffel bag over one shoulder, looking exactly the way I remember—tall, lean, that shock of dark hair falling across his forehead.
The furrow between his brows that appears when he’s worried.
And he’s worried now.
“Hi,” he says.
“Uh, hi Cal.” I step back, letting him in. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“That’s the greeting I get?” He sets his bag down, his eyes doing a quick assessment of me—the hotel robe, the wet hair, the dark circles I couldn’t hide. Those faint bruises. “No ‘good to see you, Cal’ or ‘how was your flight, Cal’ or—”
“How did you even know which room I was in…Cal?”
“I have my ways.” He shrugs and I can tell he’s holding something back. “Mank sent me.”
“Mank sent you,” I repeat, frowning. “All the way here? Why? As backup?”
“As support. You know there’s a difference.” He moves further into the room and looks around. “Nice digs. Magazine journalism must pay better than I thought.” He turns to face me, and the lightness drops from his voice. “You look like hell, Mia.”
“Gee, thanks. You really know how to flatter a girl.”
“I’m serious. You look…” He trails off, searching for the right word. “Exhausted. Like you’ve been run over by a lorry who then went back and did it again. You look bloody wrecked. No offense.”
I look wrecked because I’ve been taken apart and put back together wrong.
“No offense, of course,” I say with a snort. “It’s been a trying mission.”
“So I gathered. Three days dark—that’s not like you.”
“Did Bayo call you?”
You got here awfully fast if so.
“Bayo doesn’t know I’m here yet.” He says it casually, but something about the phrasing makes my antenna twitch. “I came straight from JFK. Wanted to see you first.”
“Does Bayo know you’re coming at all? Kat?”
A beat. “They will.”
The twitch intensifies. Standard protocol would have Cal coordinating with the team on the ground before making contact. Showing up unannounced, going directly to my hotel instead of the safehouse—it’s not how things are done.
But this is Cal. We have history. Maybe he just wanted to see me privately first, before things got awkward in front of the others. Maybe he…
Oh damn. He knows about Nate, doesn’t he? He knows about how close I’ve gotten to the target. That’s why he’s here. He’s jealous. Hurt, even.
“You should have called,” I say, moving to the minibar. I need a stiff drink, stat. “I could have met you somewhere.”
“And miss the chance to catch you in a bathrobe? Never.”
The joke falls flat, both our smiles stiff and awkward.
I pour two mini cognacs and hand him one. Our fingers brush during the exchange, and I feel nothing. No spark, no heat, just the familiar warmth of an old friend.
An old friend who told me he loved me. Who offered to live without ever kissing me, just to be with me. Who I turned down because I was scared.
And now I’ve found someone I can kiss.
Someone who isn’t Cal.
“So,” he says, settling into the armchair by the window. “Tell me everything.”
Where the fuck to begin?
I give him the sanitized version.
The cover, the approach, the slow cultivation of access to Vanguard’s world. Then I talk about the warehouse, Marsh meeting with Kozlov, the trafficking connection, the references to “subjects” and “consciousness transfer.” The intelligence that suggests Global Dynamix is building human weapons.