Page 7 of Code Name: Reaper (K19 Allied Intelligence Team Two #5)

AMARYLLIS

M y heart hammered against my ribs, and sweat slicked my skin when I jerked awake in the darkness.

The dream I’d woken from stayed with me—Reaper’s hands threading through my hair, his mouth hot against my throat, his body covering mine while I arched beneath him and called out his name in breathless gasps.

In it, we hadn’t been running for our lives.

We’d been somewhere safe, somewhere warm, somewhere I could let myself want him without reservations or consequences.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I pressed the heels of my palms against my eyes until stars exploded behind my lids.

My subconscious had taken one adrenaline-fueled kiss and twisted it into pure sexual fantasy.

The memory of his lips on mine, the way I’d responded without thinking, the electricity that had crackled between us while Russian voices echoed through the maintenance corridors—all of it had morphed into raw desire and impossible longing.

The worst part? Waking up had felt like losing a future I’d never have.

Even after a couple of minutes, I missed the alternate reality where I wasn’t broken by loss and he wasn’t another person who would eventually leave or lie or disappoint me.

One where Mercury hadn’t vanished and my world hadn’t been turned upside down by betrayal and conspiracy.

I rolled onto my side and buried my face in the pillow, trying to smother the lingering heat that pulsed through me.

Adrenaline made people do desperate things—grab onto the nearest source of comfort and mistake survival instinct for desire.

Basic psychology. Nothing more. Except what my subconscious had conjured wasn’t about survival. It was about want, pure and simple.

Which was exactly why I couldn’t afford to indulge these fantasies.

Not when Mercury was still out there, somewhere.

My mentor—the closest thing to family I had left—might be alive or dead, and regret was eating away at me because I should have been there when she disappeared.

Should have seen the signs, should have protected her.

She’d saved me more times than I could count, not only professionally but personally. I owed her the same.

By the time I pulled on jeans and a sweater, I’d managed to get my thoughts where they belonged—on the mission that actually mattered. Not on impossible dreams about a man who represented everything I couldn’t afford to want.

But even as I told myself that, even as I tried to rebuild the walls that the dream had temporarily demolished, I couldn’t shake the memory of how it had felt to allow myself to have more than duty and isolation.

I couldn’t forget the warmth that had spread through my chest in that moment between sleep and waking, when I’d thought maybe I didn’t have to carry everything alone.

The cottage was quiet except for the soft sounds of Reaper moving around downstairs. Making coffee, probably. Being disgustingly competent at domestic tasks, the same way he was at everything else.

Don’t think about those hands. Don’t think about how steady they were when he picked locks or how surprisingly gentle they’d been when he cupped my face in the tunnel and?—

Stop thinking about it, I told myself as I made my way downstairs, the hardwood floor cold against my bare feet. I needed control. Walls. Distance between my traitorous body and the temptation Reaper represented.

I found him in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with a mug cupped between his hands.

He’d already showered since his dark hair still held traces of dampness and curled slightly at the ends.

The closer I got to him, the more I could sense the tension that radiated from him like heat from a furnace, though his face showed nothing but calm.

“Hello,” he said without looking at me.

“Hey.”

My voice was clipped. Good. Sharp meant safe territory. Sharp meant familiar ground, where we could snipe at each other.

He glanced up then, searching my face in a way that made my stomach flutter. I turned away and busied myself pouring coffee from the pot he’d made.

It was too hot, but I took a sip anyway, welcoming the burn as a distraction from the way he was watching me. I added a spoonful of sugar, stirred counterclockwise, exactly the way I always did it. Right now, routine served as armor against the pull I felt toward him.

“Sleep well?” His voice was measured, but I sensed worry underneath.

“Fine.” The lie came easily. I seemed to be collecting them lately. “You?”

“Like the dead.”

I almost snorted. Right. Like he hadn’t been lying awake, thinking about the same things that had invaded my dreams. I didn’t believe that for a second. Not with the heat evident in his gaze.

When he moved to rinse his mug in the sink, I stepped to the side. While our shoulders brushed for an instant, I jerked away as if the brief contact had burned me.

His mouth tightened. “You need to let that coffee cool.”

“What?”

“You winced when you tasted it. It’s too hot.”

I hadn’t even realized I’d reacted. “The coffee’s fine.”

“If you say so. He shook his head, crossed his arms over his chest, then leaned against the counter. “I’m curious about your relationship with Mercury. The real one.”

I stiffened. “We need to focus on?—”

“I need to understand what we’re dealing with. Jekyll told Delfino there was a connection between them. A personal one.” He studied me. “I’m guessing there’s more to your connection with her too.”

The comment made my chest tight. “She was my mentor.”

“And?”

I took another sip of coffee, buying time.

But the way he was looking at me—patient but determined—told me he wasn’t going to let this go.

“My parents died in a car accident when I was three. My grandparents—my father’s mom and dad—raised me.

When my grandfather died during my first few weeks at the academy, campus security brought me to Mercury’s office.

Before she said a word, I sensed why I was there.

She delivered the news with kindness, held me while I sobbed, then helped me arrange emergency leave for the funeral.

” I paused, remembering. “She even traveled with me to Newport News, saying she had a meeting scheduled at Langley. Not that she left my side to attend one.”

“She went to the funeral with you?”

I nodded. “We’d barely met, but she stayed with me through everything. When we returned to the academy a week later, I was ready to quit. She convinced me to stay.”

“How?”

“She told me my grandparents would have wanted me to finish what I’d started.

That I had potential she’d rarely encountered in her years of teaching, and throwing it away would dishonor their memory.

” I shook my head and brushed away an unexpected tear.

“I don’t know what I would’ve done if I’d dropped out. ”

“You were fortunate to have her in your life.”

“In the months that followed, I struggled—not academically, but emotionally. She was there for me whenever I needed her. I can’t count the number of times I broke down in her office, but she never made me feel as though I was bothering her.

Instead, she handed me tissues and waited until I was ready to talk.

” The memory was crystal clear—Mercury’s patient presence, the way she’d made space for my grief without trying to fix it.

“That was the beginning of a relationship that became very important to me.”

“She cared about you.”

“She saw someone who needed guidance, who was hungry for the kind of purposeful work that could channel grief into usefulness.” I paused, considering how much to reveal.

“That level of personal investment is unusual.”

“I mentioned it to her years later. She said something about how my situation reminded her of her own losses. Then, I thought she meant fieldwork—ops gone wrong, people she couldn’t save. I’m no longer sure that’s what she meant.”

I reached for my phone, opened the photo app, and scrolled until I found the image I’d been puzzling over. I turned the screen toward him. “This is Jekyll and Mercury.”

He moved his chair closer to my side of the table and leaned over to examine the photo, his shoulder pressing against mine. “They look close.”

“Look at their body language—the way he’s got his hand on her lower back, how comfortable they are together.” I paused, studying the image. “This was taken thirty years ago.”

My mind raced through the mathematics in a way I hadn’t considered until now. I was twenty-nine.

I watched Reaper’s face as he studied the photo, noting how his expression grew increasingly thoughtful. There was something in his eyes—a recognition that made me think he was connecting the same unlikely dots I was. But whatever conclusions he was drawing, he kept them to himself.

“What happened in Montenegro?” His abrupt change of subject took me aback. “You said you witnessed Prism’s betrayal during the villa assault.”

“The timing of that attack felt wrong from the beginning. Too coordinated for a standard FSB op. The way they found us, exactly when and where we were most vulnerable—” I paused. “I suspected a leak.”

“So what did you do?”

“I made a split-second decision. Instead of following the extraction protocol, I slipped out the kitchen entrance into the forest. From my position behind the trees, I watched the villa burn. I saw your team escape, and Typhon’s team fight their way to the vehicles. But that wasn’t all.”

His jaw tightened. “What else?”

“As I was about to leave, I saw a figure on the ridge. Someone with high-powered optics who’d been watching the attack unfold. Someone who’d known exactly when and where to position themselves.” I met his gaze. “It was Aldrich. And she wasn’t alone—Nikolai Vasiliev was with her.”

“That’s when you decided to track them.”