CHAPTER 27 THE CONNECTION HE MISSED
THE CONNECTION HE MISSED
MILES
Julian Rooke looks exactly like a man who has spent decades making sure nothing happens unless he intends for it to. Silver hair. Immaculate charcoal suit. No tie. One hand resting casually against the edge of the table beside the black case.
His gaze moves over me. It’s not quick or obvious, but I know what he’s doing because I’m doing the same thing to him.
“Mr. Shaw,” he says.
I give him Maxwell’s smile. “Mr. Rooke.”
The man who searched me closes the door behind us.
Nothing on me transmits. Nothing receives. Rooke can sweep me for electronics until sunrise and find exactly what Maxwell Shaw is supposed to have. Somewhere outside this house, though, Nora’s team is listening.
I just can’t hear them. Which means Charlie could know where Reese is right now. Ledger could have found her. Or... I shut the thought down. The team has no way of letting me know one way or the other.
Rooke gestures toward a chair. “Please.”
I sit. He doesn’t. Instead, he crosses to a sideboard and pours two glasses of water. He brings me a glass and sits opposite me with his own glass. “There was an irregularity during your evaluation at the hangar.”
Every muscle in my body wants to tighten. I lift my water instead. “If you’re referring to the woman wandering around outside, your people already questioned me about her.”
“I’m referring to the fact that she has become something of an inconvenience.”
“Then deal with your inconvenience.”
“We are.”
I set the glass down. Not too quickly or too carefully—the same way I would if he had told me his caterer had canceled or that he just made an appointment for a haircut.
Rooke watches me. Not my eyes, but my hands. Interesting.
“She won’t interfere with tonight’s transaction,” he says.
My heart slams once against my ribs. There are a lot of ways Reese could be made incapable of interfering.
I’m suddenly picturing her on the parking-garage footage.
The way her purse hit the concrete, the way she fought back.
I fight to put it from my mind and lean back.
There are moments when being good at reading people is less about figuring out what they’re thinking and more about figuring out what they need to see.
Rooke needs to see a man who doesn’t care about Reese. So, I give him one.
Rooke takes a drink. “People are usually easier to understand than they believe.”
“I’ve found the opposite. Most people are remarkably good at making themselves more complicated than necessary.”
His eyes hold mine, and for a second, it feels less like two criminals discussing a purchase and more like two men sitting across a chessboard. Except Reese might be bleeding somewhere while I move pieces.
Rooke finally looks away from me and toward the black case. Test over. For now.
He draws the case toward him and opens it. It contains one item—a small, black, ordinary flash drive. Radomir died because of what’s on that drive, and six other people could die if I don’t walk out with it.
Rooke removes it and inserts it into a laptop already waiting on the table. He enters a password, then another, and turns the screen toward me.
There are seven files. I make myself breathe. I know every name, every face, every detail Emerson drilled into me to prep for this moment.
I open the first file—it’s Radomir. His photograph fills one side of the screen, and the other side shows his name, occupation, last known residence, his relationship to the CSA, and the type of intelligence he supplied.
And the word Deceased.
I move to the next. Alive. The third is alive. I work through all seven while Rooke watches. The locations match what we know, and the relationships match. Every asset from the compromised operation is here. Seven people reduced to records someone decided could be sold.
I close the final file. “Seven,” I say. “That’s what was promised.”
Outside this house, Nora knows exactly what I just told her.
Rooke reaches for the laptop. “One is no longer actionable.”
I nod. “Radomir Vukovic.”
“Yes. The other six remain active.”
“And the locations?”
“Current within forty-eight hours.”
He says it casually. He’s talking about six human beings as if he’s talking about shipping information.
“And these are all confirmed sources tied to the agency?”
Rooke’s gaze settles on me again. “Yes.”
There it is—possession, knowledge, and intent. Everything we need. I let a few seconds pass, like Maxwell is considering whether he’s satisfied.
Then Rooke turns a second device toward me. The funds have been sitting in a secure holding account since this afternoon. Rooke verified they were there before he ever gave Maxwell the address, but he can’t touch them until I authorize the transfer.
I enter Maxwell’s one-time code, and we wait.
Rooke’s screen refreshes, showing that the payment has been released. The smallest change comes over him—it’s not relief. More like completion. Julian Rooke likes closed loops. Now there’s one thing left—the drive needs to be in my possession before the team moves.
Rooke reaches into the case and removes a narrow card. “This is your decryption key. Once the drive leaves this room, my involvement ends.”
I almost smile.
Then a phone vibrates in his jacket. He doesn’t move immediately, but when he finally pulls the phone from his pocket, he glances at it for a moment.
And for the first time since I entered the house, Julian Rooke loses control of his face.
Barely, and only for a small moment, there’s a tightening beside his mouth, and his eyes go still. Something happened.
Reese.
Every part of me screams her name. Begs me to run to wherever she is. It takes everything I’ve got to keep my expression bored.
Rooke looks up from the phone and meets my eyes, then looks back down. He types a short reply before looking back at me. “I was just informed that my ‘security problem’ won’t be causing any further problems.”
“Good,” I say. I have no idea if that means Reese is safe or that she’s dead. I know only that whatever just happened wasn’t good news for Rooke.
Rooke studies me for long enough that I know he’s looking for the thing he couldn’t find before—a connection.
I let impatience show. Nothing else. Not fear about what that means. Not worry about Reese. Not a fiery impatience to leave and go find her right this second.
Finally, he slips the phone away and says, “Here’s the goods,” as he slides the drive and credentials toward me. I pick them up, and his eyes drop to my hand. That’s the last condition. Somewhere outside this house, the team is moving.
When he meets my gaze again, something changes in his expression. Not because I moved wrong, but because I didn’t.
He knows people too well. Maybe that means he also knows when someone has stopped needing to convince him.
“Who are you?” he asks.
A crash sounds from the front of the house, and the door behind me flies open. “Federal agents!”
I look at him. And this time, I don’t give him Maxwell’s smile—I give him mine.
Everything happens at once. Rooke’s security man reaches beneath his jacket, and I’m out of my chair before his hand gets there, catching his wrist and driving him into the wall. More agents flood the room.
Rooke doesn’t run. He simply watches me while an agent pulls his hands behind his back.
He’s studying me. Really studying me. I can see him recalculating every answer Maxwell gave him tonight, and every detail his people collected during the vetting.
Rearranging information he’d already accepted now that one fundamental fact has changed.
His expression changes. “The woman at the hangar,” he says.
I give him nothing.
His eyes narrow. “She didn’t know Maxwell Shaw.” He pauses a moment. “She knew you.”
He’s too late. I don’t answer.
The second the room is secure and I’m outside, someone puts a phone in my hand. Charlie is already on the line. I don’t even say hello—I just say, “Reese?”
“She’s safe.”
My knees nearly stop working, and I put one hand against the brick of the house.
Charlie keeps talking. “She got herself out. Ledger’s with her—she’s back at the CSA.”
I close my eyes. She’s safe. The words move through me like oxygen after I’ve been underwater too long.
“She got herself out?”
“Yep—climbed out a bathroom window, banged on a neighbor’s door.”
A laugh breaks out of me, rough and completely involuntary. Of course she did.
Charlie adds, “There was also a shrub and a missing shoe. You can get the full story from her.”
I press the heel of my hand against my eyes. “She’s really okay?”
“She is, Miles. She’s a little banged up, but safe.”
For the first time in hours, I can breathe.
By the time I get back to the CSA, the roster has been secured, all six living assets are being moved or placed under protection, and Julian Rooke is no longer anyone’s problem to solve. I should feel victorious.
Instead, I’m just desperate to see one person. I step onto the main floor, and there she is. Reese is sitting on the edge of Charlie’s desk in borrowed socks, a blanket around her shoulders and a cup in her hands.
She looks up, and everything inside me stops. Then she smiles.
I cross the room so fast someone wisely moves out of my way. Reese barely sets her cup onto the desk before I pull her into me.
Her arms go around my waist, and I hold her tight. Carefully. Somehow, both. And she buries her face against my chest.
“Hi,” she says.
My throat closes. “Hi.” I kiss the top of her head. Her temple. Her lips. Then I pull back just enough to look at her.
She has a black eye. Scratches run along one cheek and both forearms. There are red marks around her wrists. I touch my thumb near the bruise without touching it. “They did this?”
“Well, the trash can did the eye.” She gives me a tiny smile. “The can and I fought a bathroom window screen, and it won one round.”
Normally I would laugh, but I can’t.
Her smile fades. “The scratches are mostly shrub-related.”
My gaze drops to her wrists—something that’s definitely not shrub-related.
She sees where I’m looking, and says, “Miles, I’m okay.”
I know. And I know she got herself out. I also know she was brilliant and adaptable and so completely Reese that she turned kidnapping into a story involving a bathroom window and one missing shoe. But none of that changes why she had to.
They took her because she followed my car to my operation. They tied her wrists because they were trying to figure out how she connected to Maxwell Shaw. She is standing here, bruised and scraped, because of my life.
I knew this could happen. It’s the one thing I spent years refusing to risk. I let myself believe that honesty changed the equation. It didn’t change what my life could do to her.
Reese slides her hands into mine. “You got Rooke?”
I nod.
“And the six people?”
“Safe.”
Her whole face softens. “Good.”
She says it like the cost was worth it. Like it was hers to pay. And maybe it was—maybe she really does get to decide that.
But standing here, looking at the marks around her wrists, I don’t know if I can survive letting her ever pay it again.