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CHAPTER 15
Evan
On Sunday,Red found more pressing work to do in the medical bay. I planned to spend the afternoon doing a solo workout and catching up on some reading about upcoming projects at Sentinel, but Red’s team took pity on me. Li kicked my ass at Jujitsu, Kessler taught me some basic moves of Krav Maga, then Penn spotted me while I lifted weights. After my shower, Jensen knocked on my door and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.
“I need a break from the IT room, so I’m starting dinner prep. Any interest in being my sous chef?”
Ten minutes later, I was scrubbed, wearing a black apron with white letters that said “Kiss the Cook,” and standing in front of a cornucopia of vegetables that needed to be washed, chopped, and braised.
“Braised, not sautéed,” Jensen repeated. “It’s very important to the recipe.”
While we worked, he circumspectly asked me about my time in the military, my younger sister and her career, and my volunteer work with the vets-in-crisis hotline. In return, he regaled me with tales of his misspent youth, specifically his black-hat hacker days.
“You’re bullshitting me,” I said at one point. “You did not walk in the back door of the DIA system. You’d be in jail.”
“To be clear, it was the system on the low side,” he said, referring to the unclassified network, “and while they highly suspected it was me, they couldn’t prove it. I was on their radar because I was a little careless when I was a teenager and they’d heard rumors about my skill set. But I’m not like those asinine braggarts who leave digital fingerprints when they break into a system. I sneak in, look without touching, and back out slowly.” He pointed a lemon zester at me. “That, my friend, is how you stay out of jail.”
“And how is it you go from high crimes to government service?” I asked, then popped a piece of carrot into my mouth.
“Ah, well, that came out of the same incident. Like I said, the feds suspected me, and a couple of men in black dropped by my apartment one afternoon to ‘pick my brain’ about some hypothetical system breaches. In their bull-in-a-China-shop kind of way, they suggested I might enjoy being paid by my government more than being detained by it.”
“And you ended up here?”
He nodded. “Eight years ago. The agency was in its infancy. X had founded it just a few years before. I was nearly a child myself, barely of age to drink.” He sighed. “And already in love with Shannon Polner, and suddenly making enough legitimate bank, the kind that didn’t have to be hidden in sketchy Greek financial institutions, to marry her.”
“Married at twenty-one?” I whistled through my teeth. “I wasn’t even out of college by then, and my deployment was still some vague, nebulous future obligation.”
“Yeah, we were young and stupid, but it was really good for a while, despite, you know.”
I did know. “The lies.” My gut clenched with guilt. I breathed through it and moved the vegetables from the sauté pan to the casserole dish and covered them with stock.
“What’s next?” I asked.
When I turned toward Jensen, he was pouring hot water over a silver tea diffuser in a delicate white cup. “Next is my alone time in the kitchen, during which I will turn all this into a masterpiece.” He held out the cup to me. “And you take this to Doc. It’s loaded with antioxidants. She could probably use the break by now. Remind her she just recovered from a concussion if you have to.”
I pulled off my apron and took the cup and saucer. “No way. I’ve faced down enemy combatants in their own territory, but I’m not stupid enough to give Samantha Bond medical advice. Not again.”
Jensen laughed. “I can’t believe you tried it once. You look smarter than that. Tell me you weren’t dispensing expertise you got from Google.”
“Pleading the fifth and heading to the medical bay.”
“Thanks for the help today,” Jensen called after me. “And for rescuing Doc last week. I don’t know what we would do without her around here.”
Unwittingly, he’d stuck another knife in my gut to twist around the guilt. I was hiding my secret from Red, I was hiding her secret from HEAT, I was hiding HEAT’s existence from Kerri. Far from burying my secrets into oblivion, I was carrying them around like a grenade without a pin, and any minute the damn thing might detonate in my hand.
* * *
Samantha
The only reasonanyone ever visited the medical bay on a non-mission day was for medical care. Since none of my teammates’ monitors had beeped to alert me of distress, the visitor knocking at the partially opened door could only be one person.
“Come in, Hero,” I called.
Evan entered the room, all tall, broad man wearing a tight, navy-blue tee shirt and hip-hugging jeans. The scent of his soap stirred my memories of standing in his shower and daydreaming about having his company in his big, comfortable bed.
“I thought you’d forgotten that unfortunate nickname you gave me when you were out of it Friday night.” He stopped a few feet away from me. A grin spread across his face. “Remind me to play poker with you next time. Strip poker. Your impure thoughts are written all over your face.”
I glanced down. “Is that for me?”
