Page 21
Story: Mr. Nice Spy
I finally figured out what that little prison cell in the lab was for. Lucky me.
It was barely large enough for both Chan and me to sit, and the spaces between each metal bar were so small I could only fit my fingers up to my knuckles.
Holt had deposited us here without saying anything besides nine ominous words: I’ll take care of you two in the morning .
On the plus side, we were still alive. But for how long? Until Holt nursed his bruises and came back after a few hours of beauty rest? The only reason he hadn’t killed us then and there was probably so he could see what information the CIA had on him, which wasn’t exactly a comforting thought.
We had to get out of here. It was no longer about getting a message to the CIA. We had to escape, on our own, or we might not make it. But we’d already checked all the contact points in this cell, and there wasn’t a way to escape. The lock was solid, the bars weren’t budging. Even Holt was so confident he hadn’t left people to guard us.
That said a lot.
“Did you get through to Agent Mendez?” I asked, not bothering to hide the quiver in my voice.
I looked at Chan, hoping against all odds he might be able to give me some good news. He closed his eyes and shook his head, looking pained. Despite the fact that I knew what the answer was going to be, my chest deflated.
The lab was excessive fluorescents and sanitized surfaces devoid of any emotion. I was all storm clouds and savage whirlwinds. A bomb on the brink of detonation, three seconds away from exploding.
I tucked my head against my knees and wrapped my arms around myself, holding the pieces inside.
“I’m sorry,” I said. It was all I could muster.
“What could you possibly be sorry for?” Chan turned his head toward me, sounding incredulous.
I gave one short bark of laughter, then gestured to our surroundings. “You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me, Chan.”
I didn’t think it was possible to hate myself any more than I did in that moment. I’d wanted so much to get Chan out, but I’d done everything wrong. From the very beginning, I’d made mistake after mistake, trusting the wrong people and falling for every trick in the book. Now a good man was going to pay the price.
Chan placed a hand on my knee. “Am I upset we got caught? Of course.” He gave my knee a squeeze, then dropped his hand. “But that’s not your fault. If anything, it’s mine.” I scoffed, but Chan spoke right over me. “Listen, Andee.” He cleared his throat. “You’ve been amazing through all this. But you’re not a trained operative. I am. If I were more capable, better at my job, more skilled at hand-to-hand combat, then maybe things would have gone differently back there.” He shook his head. “I’m a great strategist, don’t get me wrong. But it kills me that I couldn’t do more to protect you. If you were here with someone else instead of me—”
“Then I already would have lost myself a thousand times over,” I interrupted. “ You’re the reason I’ve stayed grounded. And you were incredible back there.” I shook my head. “We both know it’s my fault,” I whispered. “I was the one who told Mila everything.” My words came out in a rush, feeling oddly freeing, like oxygen had been added to the room from some of those air canisters that were stacked in the corner. “Chances are high that Holt knows we’re not really dating and that you’re a CIA agent.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. That was when I felt Chan put his fingers under my chin and tilt my face toward his. His grip was featherlight yet somehow sent shocks of electricity down my entire body. By the time I opened my eyes, he’d moved his hand so he was cupping my face, causing my pulse to skyrocket into dangerous territory.
There weren’t any cameras here. No one was watching or listening. There wasn’t any point in keeping up the pretense of us dating. He had nothing to prove. So if he was looking at me this way, with the type of tenderness that made all the air escape my lungs, it could only be because he meant it.
“You didn’t ruin anything,” he said, voice soft as a caress. “If you hadn’t told Mila everything then, you might not have made it out of that room, or we might not have even gotten down the hall. There’s no way of knowing all the what-ifs.”
“But—”
“We’d be in the same predicament that we’re in now, only sooner,” he cut in. “It’s not like you intended for this to happen.” He shook his head. “What do you want me to do? Be mad that I was right and you were wrong? We don’t even know that. People care way too much about proving their case, instead of looking at the reasons behind why the other person did what they did in the first place. I’m looking at your intentions, and your intentions were good.”
I didn’t even know it was possible to feel like something was blooming inside me. But here I was in a place where the possibility of death was around every corner, and I was the most alive I’d felt in months. Thousands of people were buried in the catacombs of Paris. Holt kept adding to that body count. But every touch from Chan was like a defibrillator that brought me back from flatlining. My heart was expanding too much for my chest to hold it in.
“For a fake boyfriend, you know you’re way too good to me, right?” I jokingly asked, needing to see his reaction. He had to know I thought of him as so much more. My heartbeat pounded relentlessly in my rib cage, but Chan brushed my cheek gently with his thumb.
“You know it’s never been fake for me,” he said, voice low.
He glanced down to my mouth, and I stopped breathing.
Then his lips brushed mine, and I was soaring.
We were already in a tight space, but that wasn’t enough. I needed to be closer, for there to be zero space between us. Chan seemed to feel the same way, because without a word, he wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me onto his lap in one smooth motion. My face was now a few inches above his, and I buried my hands in his hair, breathing the same air as him.
He brought his lips back to my neck, trailing kisses down to my collarbone in a move I’d come to associate with him, causing my pulse to skip erratically. I made a sound in the back of my throat that only seemed to encourage him, and he brought both hands around my waist, keeping me from moving away. But it would have taken a natural disaster to pull me away from him now.
I placed my hands on his shoulders, then slid them down his chest so I could feel his muscles under my fingertips. Every inch of Chan was perfect. Not because he was the ideal physical specimen of a man—though he was pretty close—but because he was Chan . Because he was mine, and he looked past my mistakes to the intentions behind them. He saw the best in me when it’d be so easy to see the worst. And the way he kissed me left no doubt he thought all those things about me, but he also thought I was irresistible, and sexy, and important . It honestly made me a bit dizzy if I stopped to think about it.
So I didn’t think.
I simply brought his mouth back to mine and poured everything I was feeling into that kiss so he’d know how I felt without me having to say a word. Chan took in a shaky breath as his hands explored my back. For a moment, we were lost in our own world of touch and sensation, with nothing but our breathing as a soundtrack.
If we were going to die in the morning, at least we had this.
It almost seemed like it’d be enough.
Until someone cleared their throat. “I thought you said you two weren’t a real couple.”
It took me a moment to shake myself from the haze. I’d been so far gone I hadn’t even noticed anyone enter the room.
Still sitting on Chan’s lap, I pushed my hair back and turned, needing to see her for myself. I needed to look her in the eyes so she’d know she hadn’t broken me.
I opened my mouth and said what I wished I’d been able to say earlier when Mila had fetched Holt like an obedient lapdog.
“Hello, traitor.”