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JAMES
James Thomas stared at the photograph, his breath slow and steady despite his racing pulse.
Five long years he’d looked for her, giving up only when the evidence had indicated she’d been killed in an explosion he’d caused. An explosion created to trap her—and kill her.
But yesterday, at ten thirty in the evening, she’d dined at a restaurant one block from his house.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
James didn’t believe in ghosts.
Why now?
The CIA thought she was dead.
The world thought she was dead.
She could’ve stayed in hiding and lived her life.
James opened his eyes.
He could lie to others, but he couldn’t lie to himself. He knew why she was back: Black Widow had unfinished business.
“Thoughts?” Samuel asked, pulling James from his reeling mind.
He lifted his eyes to his team—to the people he trusted, the people he would give his life for, the people who looked at him now with a strange look that was both excitement and fear. It was a look only someone who had lived their lives could understand.
“It’s her,” James said with a nod. “It’s Black Widow.”
A long, silent yet palpable pause followed. The energy in the room shifted. It had been years since they’d faced a threat like this.
“She’s very... close to our headquarters...” Samuel said, then cleared his throat. His next words decidedly more upbeat. “Well, things were getting boring around here anyway. She should spice it up nicely.”
James looked to Deacon, Cami, and Jarrod. They held his gaze a moment then, like an orchestra falling into sync, smiles stretched across their lips—more so at Samuel’s enthusiasm than anything else, James suspected.
“What does she want, James?” Cami asked, getting straight to business.
James’s eyes dropped to the photograph, to the woman who had haunted his dreams. He exhaled a long breath then looked back to her. “Me.”
“Because she’s pissed you tried to kill her,” Cami said, more of a statement than an answer.
Jarrod grinned. “That’d do it.”
“We followed her from the restaurant using CCV footage,” Samuel said, “and the good news is she didn’t stop by the headquarters to scope us out. But as we say... we don’t like—”
“Coincidences,” James finished for him. “This is not a coincidence. She knew exactly what she was doing. She’s not wearing any form of disguise, not even a baseball cap to obscure her face. She wanted to be seen. We need to know why.”
“Agreed. We followed her to the Tivoli Hotel and we haven’t seen her leave,” Samuel said.
James nodded. He knew the hotel. It was where people like him stayed, people who needed the bathroom cabinets stocked with emergency supplies instead of cosmetics, where the buffet was weapons and ammunition instead of croissants and pastries. He knew it well—he’d never forget it—it was the hotel he’d taken Mak to, the night her car had been attacked and he’d later married her on the rooftop. But it was the night her car had been attacked that had changed everything—the night he’d broken every rule he’d made for himself by falling in love and allowing himself to be in a relationship, and it was the best decision of his life. Now, he had only one rule:Some rules are made to be broken.
For the life James Thomas; his brother, Deacon Thomas; and his team led, it wasn’t possible to live in perfectly designed boxes and squares with a neat set of rules. They lived by their own rules, and when those rules needed to be broken and new ones made, they did exactly that.
And that was how he conducted his new role as the director of the CIA. Deacon, Jarrod, Cami, and Samuel ran Thomas Security now, largely without him, while James spent the majority of his time at CIA headquarters. Samuel had also become an integral member of the CIA team, but he never entered the headquarters, working fully remote from Thomas Security. It was an arrangement that worked for them all, but every now and then something popped up that required his attention. Or rather,someone—because that’s the thing about the past, you can never truly leave it behind.
“Of course,” Samuel said, “I amnottapping the Tivoli Hotel’s cameras, but I am watching every exit and every street within a mile radius. I want to know where she goes and who she speaks to. We’re going to refer to her asWidowfrom now on. Black Widow is too long, it’s inefficient,” he said, matter-of-factly.
The corner of James’s lips turned up and he nodded in agreement. But his smile faded as he thought of the Tivoli Hotel—the only system in the world Samuel didn’t dare hack. The hotel had rules and if you broke them, they killed you for it. That was not a game James was interested in playing, despite his chances of winning. And besides, he enjoyed staying at the hotel when needed.
