but criminals? Spies?” Ana shook her head in disbelief exactly as she’d done while sitting at the metal table inside an FBI interview room later that night. “They threw too much at me at once. Volkov spies. The ledger. Counterfeit artwork. Stolen artifacts. They wanted to know why we were in Hungary at the Buda Castle the week before. Did I see anything there? Know anything. They said my parents were sleeper agents and had only been activated the year before. I was so overwhelmed. Spies. Activation. I was clueless. For God’s sake, I was only sixteen.” She took a moment to catch her breath and steady her nerves.
“You don’t have to keep going if this is too much.” A.J. removed his hand from her leg and stood, then offered his palm and helped her out of the rocking chair.
“No, it’s okay. I need to get through this.” She went over to the railing and peered out at the pool that had yet to be filled.
She placed a hand to her neck, knowing it was bare, but her thoughts drifted to the ruby pendant her father had given her the night of her birthday in that castle in Budapest. Her dad’s palms had been empty, but in the blink of an eye, he was holding the necklace, offering it to her. Just like magic. She had to remind herself he wasn’t a magician. He was a con artist. A Thief. A Spy. Maybe he even stole the pendant?
“When they died, and I learned my entire life had been a lie, I was so angry. So mad at myself for being manipulated. And upset that I missed them. Frustrated I couldn’t stop loving them in the face of the truth.” She side-eyed him, finding his elbows resting on the railing, his gaze set on the backyard that stretched for acres.
“That’s why you studied criminal and forensic psychology, to ensure you could read people and know their motivations from then on?” He was a quick study.
“Yes,” she whispered, her voice hoarse.
“And it’s why you have such high walls?” He turned to the side, standing tall again.
She nodded.
“What happened next?”
“Once the FBI decided I’d had no knowledge or involvement in my parents’ activities, and I wasn’t useful in taking down any other spies, they put me in protective custody. They were worried about the Volkovs looking for me, or the Russians killing me.”
“That was when you changed your name?”
“Quinn is the second name change the Feds ordered.” So many names over the years she could barely keep them all straight. “I became Quinn when I was eighteen, when I decided to leave protective custody. By then, the Volkovs were yesterday’s news, and the FBI agreed I could start a new life. They wiped my history clean to protect me. My records were sealed.”
“But then your work profiling for the NYPD gained the FBI’s attention?”
“Yes, and after turning the Bureau down twice, it was Porter who changed my mind.”
“What?” he asked in surprise. “Why him?”
“He was one of the agents on scene the day my parents died. He’d taken me under his wing. Helped me start over with my life,” she admitted, and the news had him pushing back upright. “But when he came to me at twenty-five, requesting I join the Bureau, he helped me understand that becoming an FBI agent would be my chance to make up for all the bad my parents had done.”
“He guilt tripped you,” A.J. hissed low and under his breath, but Porter saved her, and he was the last person she wanted A.J. angry at. Porter had been the only person she’d been able to count on since her parents died. Having no one else with whom to talk about the truth, he’d been who she had turned to. A father figure. He’d been the one to encourage her to get married and set some roots like she’d never had growing up. The one to give her away at her wedding with Kyle.
“It wasn’t like that,” she defended. “But I didn’t think I had a shot at being hired because of my past.”
“And I’m guessing Porter took care of that?” He arched a brow, concern still clinging to his expression.
“He said it wouldn’t be a problem, and that my past would be need-to-know outside of those hiring me. He guaranteed no agents I worked with on a day-to-day basis would know the truth.”
“How does the ‘you’re a Russian spy’ thing come into play?” he asked after taking