to a question.
“Damon?”
“Hmmm?”
“How do you do it?”
He continues peering at the boards, though he is far from distracted. The crackle of his attention fills the ten steps between us. “Do what?”
“Make sneaking around sound heroic.”
More crackles, though they are indulged within a long silence. Just as quietly, he murmurs, “How do you think I’ve kept sane for the last fourteen years?”
“A dozen of which were after you answered your debt to the government,” I point out. “So why did you stay on? Make the CIA your life?”
He tilts his head. For a moment, almost appears like I have asked if he has a pulse. “Because it is my life.” The jut of his lower lip is synched to his simple shrug. “Yeah, it was shitty to have to ‘die’—but in a lot of ways, it was a gift. I received a chance most people only dream of.”
The answer in that blank space is clear. “A completely clean slate.”
“Damn straight,” he confirms. “But more than that. A clean slate—with the custom-built opportunity to make it count for good. To turn Damon Court into Bourne Jackson—the person I always wanted to be.”
“A hero.”
His lips spread. His stare glitters brightly. With just two words, I have given his spirit bars of solid gold. “Yeah. A hero.”
Praying he does not throttle me for ruining the moment, my mouth twitches. “All right, but…”
“But what?”
“Bourne…Jackson?” I challenge.
Fortunately, he chuckles. “Hey, it’s a kick-ass name!”
Snort. “For super spies who can accomplish miracles with the help of a great computer animation department.” Says the woman who has taken the art of “super girlfriend” into a new cosmos this week, including viewing way too many super spy movies.
“And your point would be?”
“That we do not have the luxury of special effects.”
It is a little harsher than I first intended—perhaps because I realize the words are for me as much as him. I act on them too, turning from the windows, leaving behind the world of fantasy for the reality of the task still before us—
And, dear Creator please, the finish line he has promised is in sight.
Damon, seeming to see the symbolism of my move, nods as I rejoin him—though his next drag on the energy drink appears more like a fortifying gulp from a cocktail. The impression is heightened when he sets the thing down on a nearby table with a decisive thwong.
“Mishella.” He approaches. Plants his stance in front of me with equal verdict. “You need to know…when we’re done with this and taken care of Kavill for good, I promise to disappear as fast as I came. It’s not my intent to fuck with Cas’s life, or the good thing he’s found with you. I’ll be gone—for good.”
For many seconds, I just shift from foot to foot. Fall back on the safety of some Vylet-style snark, in hopes of masking my discomfort. “Are you looking for a medal, James Bond? Because I do not have one.”
He backs away. Huffs awkwardly. “Of course not. And I know that asking you to carry my secret is suckage to the nth.”
“It is…all right, Damon.” I wave a dismissive hand, flashing flecks from my bracelet across the room, and raining similar sparks across my heart. Yes, the thing is flashy—and yes, completely inappropriate for any time of the day before cocktail hour—but I refuse to remove it outside the shower or bedroom. Especially now, when I need the reminder of Cassian’s love too damn much. The reminder of everything he means to me…of why I am deliberately deceiving him, and will continue to do so, until his life is safe. “What other choice do we have?” I need to say it aloud too. “To tell Cassian about all this? Then…what…we would have to kill him, right?”
My deepest hope is that Damon laughs that off. My darkest dread is that he confirms it.
Nowhere in those visceral fears have I accounted for his actual reaction.
“We won’t kill him, Mishella.” He grates it out from a jaw turned to stone—shadowed by a gaze turned dark and ruthless as a dragon’s. “The bad guys will. Without mercy. And without hesitation.”
*
Cassian
“I’m not the goddamn bad guy here.”
Doyle lifts a brow at me. Keeps it hiked while glancing back down at my phone—and the text screen it’s open to. “Did I say that?”
I rock back in my big home office chair, drumming both thumbs against the screen—battling to be casual about it. “You’re very good about not saying anything.”
D angles back in his own chair. Hikes