The CIA operative with the sexiest voice he’d ever heard. He remembered how much he’d loved talking to her, that rasp drawing him in like a siren’s call. Her first words over the line always gave him chills as they grazed his ears, and each subsequent sentence stoked the warmth higher and higher.Disconnecting from her calls always left him a little sad. And horny as fuck.
When he’d quit over her, he’d actually fallen into a full-on depression at never hearing her voice again. Didn’t help that he was still worried as hell about how much danger she was in.
Looking back at her texts, he pondered what to do.
He could just ignore the texts. He no longer worked for the NSA, so it wasn’t his problem.
But she said she’d been burned. The CIA had cut her loose, which was why she was forced to look for other avenues for help.
His fingers moved over the old keyboard setup as fast as if it were a laptop.
M: GOOD TO HEAR FROM YOU. (Message received.)
M: I’M NOT SURE ANYONE’S HIRING, BUT I CAN ASK AROUND (I don’t have any exit contacts anymore, but I can maybe call in a favor.)
M: HOW SOON CAN YOU START? (Threat level?)
G: YESTERDAY. (Extreme.)
Fuck. That meant whoever was after her was closing in fast. Probably less than a day.
M: YOU HAVE ENOUGH FUNDS TO GET YOU THROUGH FOR A DAY OR TWO? (Are you somewhere safe for the next hour or two?)
G: QUESTIONABLE. (Maybe.)
M: ILL NEED TO ASK AROUND. (I’m going to need time to come up with something.)
G: WHATEVER YOU DO DON’T TELL MY MOTHER I LOST MY JOB. SHE’LL FREAK OUT. (Don’t call the CIA. Not safe.)
M: I WONT. (Understood.)
M: KEEP YOUR PHONE CLOSE. (Stay hidden.)
M: SHOULDN’T BE MORE THAN 5 DAYS. (I’ll contact you in no less than 5 hours.)
G: THANKS M. (Understood.)
M: YOURE WELCOME. (Talk soon.)
The cursor on his phone blinked at him. Mocking him.
Holy shit. He’d just offered help to a burned CIA agent. He hadn’t demanded any explanations, any burden of proof, nothing. Just took her at her word that she was worth helping.
Had he lost his goddamned mind?
There was probably a fucking good reason why she’d been cut free. The CIA didn’t just do that.
Well… yes, they did.
“What the fuck am I fucking doing?” he murmured to himself.
He stared at the blinking cursor again.
“I’m a fucking idiot.”
Idiot or not, the world suddenly came into sharper focus. He hadn’t even realized how cloudy things had been. It was as if he’d applied a filter to his point of view that had warped things just enough to go unnoticed until it was removed. When had he done that?
No lying to himself—he chastised himself with a disgusted shake of his head. He knew exactly when he’d done it. When Tilly died, it had rocked his world. His brain couldn’t make sense of it, couldn’t rationalize it, couldn’t process it. Couldn’t deal with it. So he’d softened the blow for himself by laying guilt over the events. A guilt that shouldn’t be there but made it easier to cope. If those events were somehow something he could lay blame at his own feet for, then he could move forward because they now made sense in some perverse way.
