Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 101840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 509(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 339(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 509(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 339(@300wpm)
I covered his hand in mine, disappointment sharp and anger ready to rear its ugly head in his defense. How fucking dare they? “I’m sorry, baby. Maybe… maybe I could talk to someone for you. Try and get your job back. Or find something similar with another agency.”
His lips curved up again. “That might be kind of awkward since I’m the one who quit.”
A breath of relief whooshed out of me. “Thank fuck. But why?”
Jett moved to lie on top of me, propping his chin on his hands over my chest. “I don’t want to keep secrets from you. Ever. Never again.”
I leaned up and kissed him gently. “Same,” I promised.
“Does this mean you’re going to tell me about Paxis?”
“Yes.” Even though it would put him in danger. He was too savvy to allow me to keep secrets from him, and I was too selfish to risk losing him. “But in a way that makes sure you’re protected.”
Jett reached out and caressed my cheeks. “I’ll always be protected. My boyfriend is pretty good at taking care of me. And I’ve got skills of my own, too.”
Annoyance grumbled out of me. “Not boyfriend. That’s too… I don’t know. Too small for how I feel about you. Find something else.”
“My love is a pretty good protector,” he suggested, eyes dancing.
“Yes. That.” I pulled him close again for another kiss, but when Jett tried to deepen it into something else, a prelude for sex, I stopped him. “Tell me what you want to tell me. You’re still not here with me. Not all the way.”
Worry continued to crease his forehead and shadow his eyes. I could tell he wouldn’t be completely free of it until we’d shared more of our truths.
“I never targeted you. You were never part of an op. ESP doesn’t know that Paxis exists, as far as I know. Definitely not as anything other than a variant of chess.”
It was a relief to hear it, even though I suspected as much. If an intelligence agency had suspicions about the council, they wouldn’t have cleared me so quickly in al-Qadiri’s death. Or they at least would have asked very different questions of me in Italy.
“Go on.”
“They didn’t know I was going to Italy. They only knew I was on vacation.” He stopped and took in a breath. “Until I called them.”
This part, I definitely didn’t know. “You called them? When?”
“After you asked me to look at the Kiel Canal. We had a team responding to a situation regarding smuggled drones. It was too much of a coincidence, and I was worried we didn’t have the full picture.” He hesitated. “I told them there was a strangely high-powered group of people gathered and that I’d overheard mention of Kiel. But…”
“But?”
“I didn’t tell them about you. I didn’t even mention your name.”
The admission that he’d risked his job for me was significant. “Why not?”
Jett’s cheeks flushed. “I didn’t want you to get in trouble.”
He told me more about the op, about how he’d wanted to go—expected to go—because of his experience on other German missions and his fluency. Then he told me about being undercover there before we met in Amsterdam and why he’d been so broken when I’d found him.
I pulled him into my arms until he could barely breathe. He finally pulled away enough to lie side by side with me and continue sharing. “I wanted you so badly that night in Amsterdam. But you rejected me.”
“You needed coddling, not fucking,” I reminded him. “And I held you in my arms all night. I held you during your nightmares. I kissed you that night.”
“I kissed you,” he corrected.
“I went home with blue balls,” I grumbled, remembering the long flight. My anger. My fear for Jett’s safety.
He hesitated. “What’s the real purpose of your nerd herd, Locke?”
I reached out to smooth his worry away, my thumb pressing gently into the crease between his eyebrows. “World peace. De-escalation of tensions. Providing aid. Gentle disruption of terrorist plans. Prevention of mass suffering.”
My grandfather’s words moved easily out of my mouth as I passed along part of the secret to him—something I’d thought I would never do. “It started with whispered words during regular Paxis tournaments. A dozen very powerful men began to recognize the power they held outside of any government. It was power due to immense wealth but also connections. Why depend on fickle or corrupt government leadership to act when the council could act much sooner and without the obstacles of international diplomacy and red tape?”
Jett tangled his legs in mine. “Ah, a cadre of superheroes.”
“More like a cadre of people with enough resources to make a difference. And the one thing these men had in common was a desire to do good with those resources instead of hoarding them.”
“How can you trust everyone in the group?”