Page 17 of Deep Cover

Every single one of them, according to every database she had access to, was dead.

Not missing. Not off-grid. Dead, with dates and causes of death filled in, stamped with the finality that had tormented Caryssa when it came to Reid. Only O was a wild card, since she didn’t have a name to go off.

Now, it tormented her even more. At least dead had an ending instead of this giant question mark hanging over her head and her heart.

The men on this list were alive, breathing, talking about being shot. But every official record on earth said otherwise.

What sort of place was this?

She picked up her phone, and before she could talk herself out of it, she called Doyle. He answered on the third ring, and she could tell by his breathless tone he was on the treadmill he hit nightly after work.

“What kind of base did you send me to?” she demanded.

He was quiet for a second. “Blackout.”

The word meant nothing to her.

He was quiet for a second. “The kind filled with the men who take the most dangerous operations nobody else can touch. The kind where nobody’s expected to make it to retirement. They can’t have families. Won’t be missed when something happens to them.”

His words struck her like daggers, and she pressed her hand to her chest for three whole heartbeats before she recovered. The phone dug into her ear.

“You knew this when you sent me here.”

“Your assignment is to draw connections, Lane. These men can provide intel.”

She pushed out a breath. What else was there to say? She was here to do a job. She could work on her existential crisis afterward.

“On it.” She hung up without saying goodbye, which wasn’t her style. But nothing about today was.

She dropped her face into her hands and let the pieces click into place. Grief clogged her throat. Fury came right behind it.

He’d rather be dead than married to her. That was the only thing that made sense. The man wanted out of their relationship bad enough to fake his own death.

Rather than tell her he’d changed his mind, he’d let her mourn him for years. Rather than sit across a table from her and say the words I don’t want this anymore, he’d broken her.

She dug through her memories, searching for evidence to support this claim. Some sign she’d missed, some hesitation, some look he’d given her. But she came up with the exact opposite.

Reid had been the one talking about buying a house together. He’d been the one who told her one more mission and he was out. He’d held her hand and stared down into her eyes and made the promise.

The door opened without a knock.

She jerked her head up. The instant she saw Reid stood in the opening, she jolted to her feet, spine snapping straight.

Her senses zapped, and the room seemed to whirl around her.

My god. Look at him.

His hands were loose at his sides and his angular jaw—god, that jaw—was set as if he was holding back whatever he wanted to say.

“Ryss. I want to explain—”

She bounded across the room, and instead of the words that had been building since the moment she saw him, she threw herself into his arms and kissed him.

He let out a low noise that drew her even closer and slanted his mouth over hers. His kiss was familiar in a way six years hadn’t managed to erase. Chemistry hadn’t died, even if everything else between them had.

Underneath the caress ran a sharp current that hurt. Even as she kept kissing him, she knew this wasn’t going to lead anywhere except to a bigger ocean of pain.

He’d made his commitment to the government, not to her. He’d chosen a mission over telling her the truth, and no kiss in the world was good enough to let him hurt her again.