Chapter 7
ARCHIE
Give me my phone.”
“No.”
“Whittaker,” I say, my voice heavy with frustration.
“Archie.” He doesn’t look up from the security monitor. “You’ve asked me four times today. The answer is still no. You know the protocol. No personal devices while on assignment.”
I know the protocol, and I know I can’t do anything personal on the ops phone I was assigned, because they’re all closely monitored.
I can’t even look up her Instagram or email her, unless I want to get fired.
It’s a good protocol, but it doesn’t stop me from wanting to put my fist through the drywall and dig my phone out of the equipment case with my bare hands.
Instead, I pace. The safe house living room is twelve steps from the window to the hallway. I know because I’ve been counting them for a week.
“Sit down. You’re making me twitchy.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You look like you’re going to jump out of your skin.” He swivels the desk chair to face me, arms crossed. “You’re pacing so much, you’re wearing a groove in the carpet. What the hell has gotten into you?”
He knew the moment he looked at me when I showed up after getting called in. I came through the door in a wrinkled tuxedo with my bow tie stuffed in my pocket and my shirt untucked, and Whittaker took one look at me and said, Who were you fucking?
“Is this about the woman?” he asks. “The one whose pussy we could smell on you when you walked into HQ?”
My teeth clench. “Don’t talk about her like that.”
“I’m not talking about her. I’m talking about you. You showed up to an extraction detail in a tuxedo, reeking of sex, with lipstick on your collar. You haven’t been right since.”
“I’ve done the job.”
“You’ve done the job perfectly, but you’re also distracted. It’s lucky everything has been quiet here.” He studies me. “What happened that’s got you twisted up like this? Do you actually have a girlfriend you haven’t told anyone about?”
I pause. Whittaker is a good man, and everyone at Heartline talks a lot, but talking about women is not something I ever like to do. I like to keep my private life – or lack of it – private. “We were at that gala at The Gilded Heart Hotel when I got the call. I left without explaining.”
“Surely you said it was work calling you in.”
I press my thumbs into the knots at the base of my skull. “She doesn’t know what I do, Whit. All she knows is that immediately after we slept together. I get a phone call, and I’m out the door. It’s killing me not to be able to tell her what happened.”
The assignment has been quiet—that’s the problem.
Our principal, Silas Moorfield, biotech CTO, had a credible threat.
We brought him to a safe house, and this week has been procedural, babysitting a man who complains about the coffee in a bland corporate apartment that he’s repeatedly told us is smaller than his office.
I keep replaying the way I left. The phone ringing. Cassian’s voice. The way my brain switched over like a breaker tripping—one second I was holding Tessa in the humid Conservatory, her breathing slowing against my shoulder, and the next I was calculating drive time.
Whittaker is quiet. He knew Rachael—not well, but enough.
“Mission in one box. Feelings in another.”
“Yes. And the person in the box suffocates.” He shakes his head. “Your crisis brain treats people like logistics, Arch. Secure the perimeter, deal with the human element later. That works when the human element is a principal. Not when it’s a woman you just fucked for the first time.”
He leans back. “You could have taken thirty seconds and said it was a work emergency. That you’d call when you could. Thirty seconds.”
“I know. I’ve rehearsed that speech about forty times this week.”
“She’s not going to sit in a box waiting for you to open the lid when it’s convenient.”
“I know.”
“Do you? I remember what happened with Rachael.”
The company phone buzzes. I want to lunge for it, even though I know it could never be Tessa calling. Whittaker picks up the phone and nods once before handing it to me. I read it twice, and the third time, the words register.
Suspect in custody. Federal charges filed. Threat assessment downgraded to minimal. Principal cleared for travel effective immediately.
“We’re clear.” My voice sounds strange.
Whittaker reads the message over my shoulder. “I’ll call it in to Cassian. Moorfield will want to leave yesterday.” He pauses. “You okay?”
“I need my phone.”
“You can have it when we’re airborne. Then we deliver the principal and debrief at HQ. Do the job right, then sort out your mess when it’s wrapped up.”
The next hours are the longest of my life.
We brief Moorfield, pack the equipment, and sanitize the safe house.
Moorfield’s company has a helicopter standing by at the local private airfield, and we escort him across the tarmac in the late afternoon sun while my skin crawls with the effort of not running.
Before we board, Whittaker pulls me aside.
“Ninety minutes of flight time. Don’t waste it composing another speech in your head. Just figure out the truth and say it.”
“The truth is, I fucked up.”
“Then say that. Women generally appreciate a man who can say I fucked up without stapling a bunch of excuses to it.” He claps me on the shoulder. “Get on the bird.”
I climb in and strap down. The city drops away beneath us.
Once we’re at altitude and Moorfield is absorbed in his laptop, I unzip the equipment case. Open the Faraday bag. Power on the phone and wait.
Forty-three notifications.
A text from my sister: What the fuck did you do?
My stomach drops. Margie doesn’t send messages like that without reason. I almost open it—then I see the next notification, and nothing else matters.
One message from Tessa. Sent five days ago.
Hey. I know this is probably weird, but I’ve been staring at my phone trying to figure out what to say. So I’m just going to say it: I can’t stop thinking about you. About Valentine’s night. About where you disappeared to. What happened? Is everything okay?
The knot in my gut releases so fast I have to press my fist against my thigh.
She reached out. Even after what I did, she put herself out there. And her words aren’t angry—she’s reaching out across the distance I created.
My thumbs find the keyboard.
Tessa. I’m so sorry. I’ve been on a work assignment with no phone access for the past week. I’m sorry I didn’t have time to explain. Being with you at the Conservatory was amazing. I’m on my way back to Cupid City right now. I need to see you. Please.
I hit send. The message shows delivered. I lean my head back against the seat and exhale—a long, shaking breath from somewhere deep. Whittaker catches my eye from across the cabin and raises an eyebrow. I nod. Sent.
I watch the screen. Waiting for the dots.
The dots don’t come.
After we’ve dropped off Moorfield, we touch down on the helipad at HQ, and I’m unstrapped before the skids settle.
Still no response.
I check the screen when I’m clear of the helicopter.
No dots. No read receipt—and Tessa has read receipts turned on.
I noticed it when we were messaging before the gala: the little Read timestamps under every message.
My reply has been sitting here for over an hour, marked Delivered, and she hasn’t opened it.
She’s not the kind of person who ignores her phone on a Monday afternoon.
Dread coils in my gut.
I pull up her contact and hit call.
One ring. Straight to voicemail. Hey, you’ve reached Tessa. Leave me a message, and I’ll get back to you!
I hang up. Redial. Voicemail again.
I keep trying to call and keep getting voicemail. The short, truncated redirect that means the call is going to a phone that’s been turned off or a number that’s been blocked.
Tessa strikes me as the kind of woman who puts her phone on silent, not the kind who turns it off completely.
Dammit. I think she blocked my number.
I stand on the helipad with the rotor wash dying around me and my phone showing call ended for the third time, and the relief I felt twenty minutes ago turns to fear.
She reached out five days ago and got silence. Then she did the only sane thing a woman in her position could do: she protected herself. Closed the door.
I can’t blame her. I know about walling yourself off after you’ve been hurt. It’s exactly what I did after Rachael.
I open Margie’s text again. What the fuck did you do?
My sister doesn’t come at me like this unless something is seriously wrong.
I start to type a reply and stop. What would I say? The truth is just as damning as whatever Tessa thinks happened.
Whittaker appears beside me. He takes one look at my face, and the humor drops from his.
“She’s not answering?”
“I think she blocked me.”
He’s quiet for a beat. “You sure?”
“One ring. Voicemail. Three times. And the message I sent hasn’t been read—she has read receipts on.” I look down at the phone.
For once, he doesn’t give me shit.
“What do you need? I got your back.”
“I need to see her,” I say. “The moment we’re done, I need to find her.”
Whittaker nods once.
“Okay. We still have to go back to HQ—drop the equipment, debrief with Cassian. That’s going to take an hour, maybe two.” He holds up a hand before I can argue. “You know we can’t skip this, Arch. After that, I’ll drive you wherever you need to go.”
I can hold it together for that long.
I think.