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“Did Nick know?” Spencer asked. “Or were you lying to your husband the whole time you were married?” How very like the team’s sniper to zero in on the biggest hole in her defenses.
“I never told him,” she admitted. “He knew I had…secrets. I’m not sure if he realized they were about my work. He probably thought they were about my past.”
“What past?” Kyle asked.
Natalie shook her head, her stomach churning. “Is that really relevant?”
“Everythingis relevant if you want us to trust you,” Kyle bit out. “Nick might have let you get away with keeping secrets, but I’m sure as hell not making that mistake.”
From the hard looks all the men were giving her, she knew she couldn’t get away with dodging the question. And lying was out, too. They’d undoubtedly have Hayley fact-check anything she said, and if they found any discrepancies, that would be it—they’d never believe a word she said again.
“My mom had a drinking problem,” she said, trying to keep it as simple and straightforward as possible. “Drugs, too. I’m not sure when it started, but it got worse the older I got. Our living situation kept going downhill, and by the time I was fourteen, I had to get out. It wasn’t safe for me to stay any longer.”
“Your mom was abusive?” Scotty’s voice was gentler than she’d heard it in quite a while. Natalie remembered Nick mentioning that Scotty had been a foster kid. In his case, it had happened because he’d been orphaned, but he’d probably been housed with plenty of children who had come from situations a lot like hers.
“No,” she said softly. “But some of her boyfriends were. And some of them were…aggressive in other ways.” From the way every man in the room tensed, she knew they’d understood what she meant.
“Where did you go?” Gage asked.
Natalie shrugged. “Shelters. Bus stations. Soup kitchens. Abandoned buildings. Anywhere I could find, really. I got good at pickpocketing and shoplifting—good enough to keep from starving, anyway. And that was how I got through the next two years.”
“What happened then?”
She mustered a weak smile. “I stole a briefcase. I thought there might be cash in it, or something worth selling, but it was all papers.Agencypapers.”
“You stole aCIA agent’sbriefcase?” Scotty blurted out.
Natalie laughed. “Yes. When I realized what I had, I took the briefcase back to him. I thought I was going to get disappeared or something, but he was impressed with me, especially when he realized I’d understood what I’d read.”
“He was surprised that you knew how to read?” Spencer looked confused.
“He was surprised that I knew how to readArabic,” Natalie clarified. “My jadda—my grandmother—was from Morocco. We lived with her until she died, when I was six. I learned Arabic right alongside English. I’ve always been bilingual. When I gave the papers back, I mentioned that I disagreed with some of the notes he’d made in the margins. He asked me to explain why I thought he was wrong, and he liked my reasoning, thought I had potential. He found me a safe living situation, got me working toward my GED, helped me get into college and find the grants and scholarships to pay for it.” She laughed softly. “I think he made up at least one of those scholarships and funded it out of his own pocket, but he’d never admit it. He also helped me get other training—in weapons, self-defense. By the time I graduated, I was ready to enter CIA training. My mentor became my handler.”
“Dougis the guy who did all that for you?” Kyle asked, visibly surprised.
“Oh no, definitely not. My old handler retired. I’ve only been working with Doug for about a year.”
“Hayley told me that there aren’t any records of you graduating from college,” Scotty said, still sounding a little suspicious.
“That’s because I didn’t do it under my real name. When I met Tony—my mentor—I lied about who I was. I was afraid he’d make me go back home if he knew I was underage, so I told him I was eighteen—and I made up a name so he wouldn’t be able to find my real birthdate by looking me up. He let me keep up the lie for a while, but when I was ready to become an agent, he told me it was time to reclaim my name and stop hiding from my past.”
“What was your fake name?” Gage asked.
“Natasha Smalls.”
Gage’s eyes widened. “That’swhere you got your pen name?”
“Most of it.” She smiled. “The ‘T’ in N.T. Smalls was for Tony. He’s…basically the closest thing I have to a dad. When I go undercover, I usually take part of his name for my identity. I’ve been Tonya a couple of times. His last name is Crawshank—I’ve used that before, too, or some variation of it. It was…kind of an inside joke between us.”
“You were already an agent when you met us,” Kyle stated, “and you were on an assignment—that was why you were working as a waitress, right?” Natalie nodded. Kyle stared straight into her eyes, his expression hard, tense. “Were we part of the assignment? Was getting together withNickpart of the assignment?”
“No!” Natalie exclaimed, eyes wide as she silently pleaded with him to believe her. “My relationship with Nick was my choice, one hundred percent. There were things that I kept from him, but I never lied about my feelings. I loved him—I still do.”
For a long moment, he stared at her in silence, weighing her answer. Finally, he nodded sharply. “Okay. Good. Now we can discuss our next move. Over dinner.”
The smells of frying bacon and melted cheese, along with onions and peppers, filled the air. Scotty had been cooking through her whole narrative, and it smelled amazing. Natalie’s stomach growled. She hadn’t eaten all day.
Five minutes later, they’d all served themselves from the dishes Scotty set out on the breakfast bar, and Natalie settled into the armchair while the guys lined up on the sofa. She concentrated on her food: the creamy wholesomeness of cheese omelets, the spicy snap of the green peppers paired with the fatty, salty goodness of the bacon. After several huge bites, she wiped her mouth on a napkin and smiled at Scotty. “You’re an excellent cook.” He merely nodded his thanks for the compliment—but his attitude seemed a bit warmer than it had been before. Still wary, but not as cold.
