Page 103

“Nope. Passed through those sessions with flying colors.” I pace the room.
“Even then you understood how to become someone else.”
I lean against a wall. “I’m good at slipping into someone else’s skin. It’s easy. Lately… ever since my mom had to go into a home.” I thrust my hands into the pockets of my coat and can’t quite meet her gaze. “Layers are peeling away, one after another.”
“We should get you out, get you into counseling again.”
“No.” I straighten. “The one thing I’m sure I can do is my job. I know who Kim is.”
“But you’re not too sure about Kimi.” She slides the folder off the table into her hand. “As handlers, we’re taught the importance of a real-world connection for people who are undercover. If you don’t have a life to go to when the job is done, the job becomes your life, and boundaries get crossed, things get fuzzy.”
“Nothing is fuzzy.” My mind drifts to Lorcan, the way his hand skates across the small of my back, the quirk of his lips when he finds something amusing, the soft lilt of his voice in my ear just before…
Dai Qing scans my face, probably seeing far more than I’d like. “I’m going to take you to see Malik, but first we have another stop to make.”
I check my watch. “I need to get home soon. Finn cannot be suspicious, or he’ll kill me. That’s not hyperbole. I’ll be dead.”
“I understand. It won’t take long, but there’s one more thing you need to know before you go.”
We exit the room and head down the hall in tense silence. She doesn’t believe I’m okay. Maybe I’m not, but I don’t care.
“I’m not sure where Lorcan’s gone,” I admit as we enter a two-way mirror room which looks onto an interrogation area. It’s been a while since I’ve been in these. I forgot how dim the lighting is kept.
“Oh,” she says. “You don’t need to worry about him beating you home.” She indicates the window in front of us.
Ice freezes my veins. Lorcan is deep in conversation with Zahir, a senior agent at the bureau. My hand touches the glass, and I can’t stop staring at Lorcan, taking him in.
“What is he doing here?” I whisper.
“He knows it was us who landed on his property.”
“Oh, my God.” I look at her, stunned. “I can’t go home.”
“He doesn’t know about you.”
“Then how is he here?”
She sighs. “After we planted you in his organization, we arranged a bump to see if he had any interest in informing on his brother or other Mafia organizations he’s connected to.”
Lorcan’s comments about his secret project, that Finn didn’t realize the big deal he was working on, and his comment about setting something in motion he wasn’t sure he could stop, flare in my consciousness. “No one fucking told me?”
She snaps the folder onto the table behind her. “And risk you blowing your cover? You already seem too invested in him. If you knew, you’d have blown your own story.”
I shake my head even as a tiny voice wonders if she’s right. “I should have been told.”
“We couldn’t risk it. He turned us down. He said the only way he’d give up Finn was if his brother murdered his father. Any other scenario and it wasn’t a deal.” She gestures to Lorcan in the other room, who is now leaning across the table at Zahir, who sits with an impassive expression on his face, hands loosely clasped. There are other agents in the room observing, hands not far from their guns. “You can imagine he’s just a little bit pissed we were at his house.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“That when he turned us down, we put an agent in Zhang’s organization. When they went to war with Zhang, they rounded up an agent.”
I rock back on my heels and dig my hands into the pockets of my coat. “It’s true. Also, plausible. So why is Lorcan still here?”
“We’re chatting with him.”
“He should have a lawyer.”
She purses her lips and glances at me. “From what I understand, he’s only incriminating himself against future crimes so far.”