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“Thanks. It was really shitty for a long time. And isolating. I had to prove myself, so I couldn’t accept help, not from anyone, not even Aiden. He was still my friend and my cheerleader, but in some ways, I even shut him out. I kept moving forward, onto the next lead, the next corruption case, the next story. It paid off. I won more awards and got more raises. And most importantly, I earned the respect of most of my colleagues.”
“I’m glad,” I said. “I’ve read your work, and I wasn’t lying last Sunday when I said I’m a fan. But as far as a plan, I still don’t understand...” Or maybe I did. Almost but not all of her colleagues respected her. Which meant she still had detractors at The Sentinel who would fan the flames of doubt about her ability to do the work if given the slightest chance.
She stared down at her hands. “If you were in Kovac’s position, trying to discern whether I was a threat, what would your next step be? Assuming I hadn’t asked any untoward questions, hadn’t tried to break into Izak’s office as proved by the security tape and the decoy who returned to the party last weekend.”
“Jensen showed you the tapes of our agent acting as you while I was following you to Kovac’s office?” I’d authorized Jensen to do so if she asked to see them. She was a reporter. Of course, she would ask.
“Yes, and Kessler explained the operation to me.” She glanced at me. “Pretty impressive. The woman was so similar to me, I almost doubted my own memories for a minute.”
“Only on the security footage or from a distance.” I glanced at her nose. “She doesn’t have your freckles, which weren’t totally obscured by your make-up.” I didn’t know why I’d said that.
Ashlee quirked up one side of her mouth. “Lucky her.”
I shook my head. “Not the way I see it.”
There was that blush again, and I wanted to trace my finger over her cheeks to follow it. She cleared her throat and pulled me out of my fantasy.
“So,” she continued, “with all the evidence pointing to my innocence, again, if you’re Kovac, what do you do next?”
My stomach dropped. “HUMINT,” I answered. “Human intelligence. I’d hire someone to poke around at the newspaper, chat up your colleagues.”
“That’s where my plan comes in. He’ll start digging. He needs to find colleagues who will swear I was only riding Aiden’s coattails all these years. Then, during our meeting, I’ll be all sweetness and light, and it will be apparent I’m not investigating corruption or even more sinister crimes.”
“Ashlee, you’re amazing at what you do, and Aiden was right about the world needing your talent. You can’t ruin your career to fool Kovac. The cost is too high.”
“I built my career from the ground up once. I can do it again.”
“Last time, though, you weren’t overcoming a destroyed reputation.”
She shrugged. “What I’m buying is my life, my real life, and my family’s safety. If Luka believes it, it will be worth anything I pay for it.”
I couldn’t argue her point, although I was sure the cost would be more than her career. It would be a piece of her soul. But how could she weigh that against keeping her loved ones safe and in her life?
She scooted a foot closer to me and took my hand. “I’ve set it up perfectly.”
I cringed, remembering my own words to her on Sunday morning. “The fluff pieces you’ve been writing.”
She nodded. “My voluntary demotion to the lifestyle section has led to some speculation among the most vicious gossips. Jayna has been tamping it down and holding open my position for me while I’ve been looking into the Carbonados. If I ask her, she can go the other way, start a whisper campaign, hinting that it’s no coincidence I haven’t written a single hard-hitting piece since Aiden died.” She swallowed hard. “She can start looking for my replacement.”
She was right. As far as achieving our shared objective of keeping her life intact, it was a good plan. As far as every other metric we should consider, it was a life-altering, career-ending, heartbreaking plan. But unless and until we came up with something better, it was the only thing standing between her and a WITSEC death.
I scrubbed my free hand over my face, suddenly desperate for sleep. “I’ll present the plan to my team tomorrow at our daily briefing. I’ll let them poke holes in it, refine it, run odds on the success.”
“You’re saying yes?” she asked.
“No. But I’m not saying no, either.”
“TJ, thank you!” She launched herself into my arms.
I didn’t have time to think with the logical part of my brain, so I instinctively wrapped her in a hug. And then she was climbing onto my lap, and I was running my hands up the sides of her body, and she was kissing the pulse in my throat, and I was kissing her lips and her neck, and then we were pulling each other’s T-shirts up over our heads and dropping them to the floor.
Now was the moment to do the right thing, to say no to my desperate need to slide my naked skin against hers. I had responsibilities, and keeping her safe was one of them. She was now part of an official HEAT mission and strictly off-limits. But all my reasoning abilities abandoned me like they had the last time I’d started kissing her. She ran her fingertips down my bare chest, setting every nerve ending on fire. She reached for the string on my sweatpants.
That’s the moment I knew there was no way in hell I was going to do the right thing. I was going to say a lot of things to Ashlee Armand that night, but not a single one of them was going to be no.
11
Ashlee
