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I got back to my room and waited until the door closed behind me before throwing myself on the bed like a melodramatic teenager. Chan appeared from behind the bathroom curtain a second later, and I buried my face in the pillow.

I didn’t need him to see me like this. I didn’t even have a good reason for feeling the way I did, so it wasn’t like I could explain my behavior. Holt hadn’t physically harmed me. He hadn’t even said anything particularly hurtful. Still, emotionally, I felt like I was walking on a tightrope over a pit of vipers.

“Hey.” Chan’s voice was low. “Tell me what happened.”

I felt the bed shift under his weight as he sat down. A second later, his hand was smoothing my hair. After a minute of wallowing, I turned to the side so I could see his face. There wasn’t any judgment there. Just concern.

“Holt kept calling me Karma,” I said. “Apparently it was my name.” I swallowed. “Before my mom escaped.”

Chan’s brows furrowed. “And that upset you because…”

I bit my lip and tried to sort my thoughts. “It was like he was trying to erase me. Gaslight me into thinking…” I paused. “I don’t know. Like I don’t exist or it’s only a matter of time before I’m one of them.”

I flopped back on the pillow so I was staring up at the wet stone ceiling. Chan lay beside me and took my hand in his, interlacing our fingers.

When it was obvious I’d said my piece, Chan spoke matter-of-factly. “Now that you know what he’s trying to do, you can fight against it.”

I was all too aware of the camera picking up our every word. But what Chan had told me earlier still held true now—we had to give them enough truth so they wouldn’t go digging for more. Holt already knew what had happened on our little outing. He’d expect me to talk about it with my boyfriend. If he thought I was crumbling from the pressure, all the better.

The only problem was, everything I’d told Chan was the truth. By this point, I was practically a crumb cake.

“What if I forget who I am?” I asked, my words coming out in a whisper.

Chan turned us both until he was cradling my body with his. “I’ll help you remember.”

His breath was warm on my ear. I finally relaxed into his embrace and let the anxiety and dread of the last hour slip away.

“Holt talked a bit about my mom,” I said, my words floating in the air like ghosts. She almost felt like a ghost. “I’m just glad I’ve always seen the real her. Because it’s obvious he got whatever the crime boss version of a Stepford wife is.”

Chan laughed in the back of his throat, making me curl up against him all the tighter.

“I’ve only met her a handful of times.” His arm squeezed around my middle. “Tell me about her.”

I wondered if Chan actually had met my mom. If he’d been one of the agents assigned to check whether her story matched up with the CIA’s intel.

“We didn’t have a lot of money to travel,” I said. “So, growing up, whenever I’d have vacation time from school, we’d make a blanket fort in the living room. That blanket fort became like a portal to a new world.”

I turned so I was facing him, still encircled in his arms. “She’d spend forever researching a different tourist destination every time. We’d pin up pictures on the inside of the fort, and she’d cook me meals that tasted so authentic I swear it was better than being there. She’d tell me all about their history, buildings, and art. We’d look at pictures under the blanket fort and eat amazing food for days on end. I was mesmerized. By the time I went back to school after each break, I couldn’t wait to tell my friends all about my trip to Morocco, or India, or Switzerland.”

“Did you ever go to France?” Chan motioned to the limestone bricks surrounding us and the dim bulb hanging from the center of the ceiling.

I nodded and then laid my head on his shoulder.

“Is it living up to your expectations?” He chuckled, and I couldn’t help but laugh in return, feeling the rise and fall of his chest.

“I don’t know, somehow I expected there to be a bit more natural light.” I matched my breathing to his. Honestly, it was amazing how I could be spiraling only a few minutes before and he could bring me back from the edge. I grinned against his shirt as I added, “And I thought there’d be more crêpes.”

“We’ll have to tell Mila she’s slacking.” Chan shifted so I could hear his heartbeat. “But your mom did such a spectacular job of bringing foreign cities to you, I doubt anyone would have been able to compare. I mean, cooking their cuisine for an entire week or more? Your mom is incredible.”

I smiled. “She really is. When I was a toddler, there was this one park that I insisted on playing at every weekend. She tried to convince me to go to other ones since there weren’t any trees or shade at the one I loved, but none of the others had a slide half as big. My mom is like a vampire in the sun, but she suffered through it. I always knew how to find her just by looking for the polka-dot umbrella. But she never complained.”

“It sounds like she gave you the best childhood she could.” Chan pushed a bit of hair behind my ear, and I tried hard not to let him see how much I liked it. Judging from the way his mouth tilted up at the corner, I failed at that mission.

“She’s always been like that,” I said. “Putting me first even if it’s inconvenient or bad for her. And not just when I was a kid, but as an adult too. My car broke down the first week of my new job out of college. It wasn’t worth fixing, and I didn’t know how I was going to get to work. She drove cross-country to give me her car, then flew back home. When I tried to protest, she kept telling me that her city had a robust public transport system and she’d be just fine until I had enough in my bank account to afford a new car. It’s part of why I tried so hard to work my way into a job close to her. Really, I don’t deserve her.”

After spelling it all out like this, I realized I couldn’t stay mad at her for keeping my real father’s identity a secret. Like everything else in my life, my mom was only trying to do what was best for me. Knowing who my father was, well, now I understood why she went the Keith Huxley-Beck route.

Chan continued to play with a strand of my hair. “So you’re saying the time she made me her famous lemon meringue pie wasn’t because she liked me, but because that’s just who she is?”

I chuckled. Chan really had met my mother. And it was just like her to offer the CIA lemon meringue pie when they were interrogating her. She’d probably ended up with Holt because she believed the best of everyone and let people take advantage of her kindness.

All things considered, I was glad I was here and not her. At least I had Chan. Chan, who helped me forget the horrible things happening around me and focus on happier times instead.

I knew that’s what he’d been doing—by telling stories of my past he’d been giving me pieces of myself to hold on to. So tomorrow, when Holt came for me and called me Karma, I’d be shored up with pleasant memories to combat the dark.

Of course, this only reminded me that Holt would come again. That he would keep coming, until he accomplished his goal of turning me into his protégé who aerosolized the liquid form of the kill pill.

I had to let Chan know what the pill did. What Holt was trying to do.

But for what I was about to tell him next, we should probably be in the bathroom.

Well, that was a thought I never could have anticipated having.

“I need a shower,” I said, begrudgingly untangling myself from Chan’s arms and standing. I pulled him up with me. He didn’t protest, and I tried not to be disappointed. Because that meant he knew it was all for our cover—otherwise I was sure he’d have questions about the direction things were heading. In this case, literally, as I dragged him into the bathroom behind me. Had everything before this been for the camera too? The way he’d held me? How he’d played with my hair? I tried not to dwell on it. There were matters of national security to discuss.

I turned on the shower when we reached the bathroom, but stood just outside the spray. I made sure I was still outside the view of the mirror before I started to sign, first telling him everything I’d learned about the kill pill and how it worked. I saved the worst news for last.

Holt also wanted to see if I could aerosolize the liquid form of the solution that goes inside the pill itself .

Chan’s face went slack. Terrifying thought , he signed. Having that aerosolized .

Yes, I signed back. But I went along with it. I thought it best to play nice. Make him think I’m coming around, slowly, even if by force.

Chan nodded. So I assume you were successful? He ran a hand through his hair, likely already imagining what he’d tell his superiors back at Langley.

I shook my head. I said I needed a nebulizer or inhaler for it to work. But, Chan. I sucked in a breath and held it before continuing. It wouldn’t need it.

Sign language had plenty of profanity, which Chan now used to great effect. Eventually he took a step back and motioned to the shower.

We should at least get our hair wet or they’ll get suspicious when we appear back on camera. He matched his actions to his words, wetting his hair before he continued signing. I need to go think of what our next steps are .

Right. Next steps. Like we had any choice in the matter.

Still, I let him walk away, and I washed my hair in the rickety shower. When I came back to the bedroom, Chan had his back to me and was looking for something in the makeshift dresser.

“Chan?” I asked.

No response.

“Chan?” I asked again, a little louder.

Still no response.

I walked closer and placed a hand on his shoulder. He jumped. It was only then that I saw he wasn’t wearing his hearing aids. He held up his hand in the universal wait gesture and continued to root through the drawers. When he came back up, he was holding his spare set.

My heart dropped clear down to my toes. There was only one reason Chan would be getting out his spare set of hearing aids, and that was if the batteries in his current pair were dead.

I knew he had an expensive CIA prototype kind. But even then, battery life was determined by a host of various factors. By my calculations, this set might last him a few more weeks, at most.

Chan didn’t need to explain anything as he put his new hearing aids in. I already understood the situation perfectly.

We were running out of time.