Page 3

After I called the bar and told them about the man who’d accosted me, I drove home, feeling slightly better about life in general.

But when I parked and walked around the corner to my apartment, I realized the day wasn’t done with me yet.

A man and a woman stood outside my front door, hands behind their backs, legs shoulder width apart like they were the security detail for the president of the United States. They looked like it too—wearing bulletproof vests over their clothes and matching serious expressions as they surveyed my apartment complex. I half expected the zombie apocalypse to materialize from across the street.

Behind them I saw the front window of my kitchen, where there was obviously someone inside. Someone I did not know.

I stopped short, brain whirring faster than it had when defending my senior thesis in college. So much had happened in the past two hours, I couldn’t comprehend this latest development. Everything else had a logical explanation. But this? This I couldn’t explain.

The woman saw me first and said something I couldn’t hear to the man. She called out to me in a voice that didn’t leave room for argument.

“Andee Paxton?”

I didn’t want to answer that, but a sneaky suspicion told me they knew anyway, so I nodded and forced my feet to continue walking forward.

When I was a few feet away, the woman held out her hand for me to shake. “Ms. Paxton, we’re with the Central Intelligence Agency.” She took a paper from her back pocket and handed it to me, unfolding it so I could read it. The words sort of blurred together, but they looked scarily official.

“We have a search warrant for your home,” she continued to say. “We can explain more if you’d step inside, please?”

The CIA.

I thought I’d been having a bad day before, well, aside from meeting Chan, which had been pretty great. But with this latest little nugget of wisdom, I forgot everything else that had happened.

Because the CIA was in my apartment, and they had a search warrant.

My day had just gone from bad to infinitely worse. Like I-might-not-recover-from-this worse.

I opened the door, and a serious-looking man who was around my age turned to look at me. I’d expected CIA operatives to be older and dressed in business suits or something. The way I’d seen it in the movies. But he wore casual clothes like this was just another stop on his way home from getting groceries.

“Ms. Paxton,” he said, coming around my kitchen table. “I’m sure this is all very disconcerting.”

I raised my eyebrows. “That’s an understatement. Could you please explain what is happening?”

He put down the small pile of my mail he’d been sorting through (my mail!) and held out his hand for me to shake. I didn’t, and he eventually lowered his own.

“My name is Officer Mendez.” He paused as if he was waiting for me to supply my name like polite society would dictate, but, hello, he already knew it.

“Officer?” I asked instead. “Shouldn’t that be Agent?”

He sighed, like this was a conversation he’d had more than once.

“The FBI has agents,” he said. “The CIA has officers. Anyone who says otherwise has watched too many movies. Hollywood gets it wrong all the time.”

Huh. Learned something new every day. And okay, he had me on the movie thing. But I wasn’t about to say so. I blinked at him without responding.

He cleared his throat. “But you can call me Agent Mendez if it makes you feel better about this situation.”

“It does, thanks.”

It didn’t really. But I liked making him feel uncomfortable too.

“Please have a seat.” He continued speaking like I wasn’t being rude. Maybe he did this kind of thing every day and was used to an icy reception. In my head, CIA officers (yeah, I was still going to call him an agent) did things like scale buildings and chase down international fugitives, but maybe all they really did was riffle through an innocent girl’s underwear drawer and call it a day.

With stiff legs, I sat at my kitchen table and waited while this Mendez guy took the chair opposite me.

“What do you know about a man named Holt?” he asked, placing his clasped hands on the table. I stared at his intertwined fingers, like they would somehow provide me with the correct answer.

“Holt?” I repeated.

He nodded, and I chewed my lip.

“I don’t know anyone named Holt. Unless you’re talking about the international arms dealer that’s been all over the news, in which case, I think we could all stand to hear a little bit less about him.” I laughed, even though he didn’t join me. Agent Mendez’s face remained annoyingly neutral, either because my answer didn’t surprise him, or because that was simply part of the CIA’s training. He’d be handsome if he smiled a little more, but I could tell he was a man who took his job very seriously.

He pursed his lips and pulled out his phone before speaking to me again.

“I’m the head officer of this operation and could continue without the other officer on this case, but I should see if he’ll be back soon before we get much further. He’s our lead strategist. One moment.”

He pressed a button and held the phone to his ear.

A short knock sounded on my door, but before I could get up to answer it, it swung open, and in walked none other than…

“Chan?” I pushed back from my chair and stood up, my arms swinging awkwardly at my sides.

From his pocket, Chan’s phone started ringing. He pulled it out, looked at the caller ID, rejected the call, and returned the phone to his jacket pocket. Agent Mendez put down his phone without saying a word, and that’s when things clicked into place for me.

My chest tightened, and even though I hadn’t had any drinks at the bar, it was like the room was spinning. Chan nodded once in greeting, fully in control of the situation, like he knew what was going on and not like he had walked into unfamiliar territory. Or even an unfamiliar apartment. He closed the door and came to stand by my side at the table.

“Mendez,” Chan said, putting a hand on the back of the chair beside me and leaning on it.

Agent Mendez inclined his head. All business, that one.

“Officer Chan, thank you for retrieving Ms. Paxton.”

The words echoed in my head.

Retrieving . Like I was a dog toy, or a task on his to-do list and he happened to fit in a little flirting along the way. And he was Officer Chan. Which meant he was a spy too.

I sat back down in my chair, my legs no longer wanting to function properly.

The thing that sucked most was that Chan still looked good, despite my knowing this new piece of information. I tried not to stare too long, because I wasn’t supposed to find CIA manipulators attractive.

I couldn’t help it though, not that anyone would blame me. I mean, he was a spy, and from the copious amounts of television and media I’d consumed growing up, I’d been preconditioned to believe that all spies were hot.

And Chan fit every definition of the word. Even if he had lied to me about who he was. Lies by omission were still lies, after all.

His leather jacket fit his broad shoulders like it was custom made and he could often be found on the back of a motorcycle. Not that I was a motorcycle kind of girl. Sure, I blew stuff up for a living, but I did it with professional fireproof gear and layers of polycarbonate glass between me and the exploding stuff in question. But I could fantasize about being that kind of girl.

I had to stop thinking like this. He’d lied to me. He’d acted interested, for what? Why? What kind of game was he playing?

I stared at him, blinking rapidly. “What?” I asked. It was the only word I could get out.

Chan ran a hand through his hair as he sat down. The look he shot me wasn’t one I could easily identify.

“I’ll explain later,” he told me, his voice pitched slightly lower so it wasn’t meant to carry to his superior. The table wasn’t all that big though, so I was pretty sure Agent Mendez heard anyway, judging from the way his eyebrows rose.

“As I was about to explain,” Agent Mendez continued, like my head wasn’t still spinning. “Our interest in you, Andee, primarily lies in your connection with Holt.”

I shook my head. “I don’t understand. If you’re talking about the criminal on the news, I don’t have any connection with him.”

Agent Mendez sucked in a breath, holding it for a good three seconds. When he released it, his words came out a little forced. That’s when I knew I wasn’t going to like what he had to say.

“There’s no easy way to break this to you, Andee, and I’m not one for holding back. So, I’m just going to tell you straight.” Agent Mendez placed his hands flat on top of the table, like he was bracing himself for an earthquake. At my side Chan visibly tensed.

Despite him saying he wasn’t going to hold back, he still paused again before speaking. Like he was weighing his words carefully. Then he swallowed, and his face went expressionless. My heart stuttered.

“Holt is your biological father, Andee. That’s your connection, and why we’ve been searching your apartment. Now, we have no reason to believe you had anything to do with his escape from jail, or even that you knew of his relation to yourself before today, which is why you haven’t been taken into custody. But we’re hoping you will cooperate with the CIA on this matter, both for your safety and for the safety of the American people.”

I brought a hand up to my neck and felt my pulse fluttering just under my skin.

That…was a lot to process.

I knew only two things about this man named Holt. One, he was an international arms dealer who had been arrested almost a year ago. The news painted him as a really bad dude who sold weapons to the highest bidder with zero remorse and basically killed anyone who got in his way. So that was great. And two, he’d escaped from prison months ago and no one knew how he’d done it or where he was hiding. According to the news, he worked with closed circles of acquaintances who didn’t know each other. So the CIA thought they’d arrested all his contacts, but they’d missed a circle, and Holt had gone underground.

Now I knew a third thing. Apparently, Mr. Bad News was my father.

Awesome. Super. I was so glad I got out of bed this morning.

I guess Agent Mendez expected me to say something, because when I didn’t, he looked at Chan like he might jump in. Chan shrugged.

I probably should have called him Agent—Officer? Nope, still weird—Chan, even in my head, but since he’d introduced himself first without the title, it was hard to tack it on now. Plus, that would have lumped him together with Agent Mendez and the CIA, and part of me still didn’t want to believe it. Any of it. That the CIA was here in my apartment. That the cute guy I’d flirted with outside the bar was one of them. That Holt was my father.

Especially that part.

It all seemed so far-fetched. So unrealistic. There simply wasn’t any way it could be real.

That’s when it finally hit me, and I knew.

“All right, where’s the cameras?” I asked, a hint of anger seeping into my tone. “And who put you up to this? Was it Karina?”

It would be just like her. She practically lived on TikTok and never understood why I wasn’t on social media. But if she thought she could film some kind of gotcha video and then embarrass me in front of the whole world by making me believe my father was a notorious criminal, then that was a whole new low.

Agent Mendez and Chan were obviously actors she’d hired to play the part of CIA agents. Guys like Chan didn’t hit on girls like me unless they were getting paid to do so. I’d just been too naive to see it. And he was too attractive to really be on the government’s payroll. Okay, Agent Mendez too, if you went for that serious, brooding type. Looking at them both now, it was so obvious, it was a wonder I hadn’t realized it earlier.

I could probably press charges for something like this. They’d used a fake warrant to break into my home, which had to be a felony of some kind. My anger was already ratcheting up to another level, when Chan shook his head, pulled his wallet out of his pocket, and opened it. He passed it to me.

“I hate to break it to you,” he said, “but we’re the real deal. And you’re not being punk’d.”

If I needed another reason why I called Agent Mendez Agent in my head but not Chan, it was because Chan used words like punk’d and real deal . But judging from the shiny metal CIA badge in Chan’s wallet, he was just as official as Agent Mendez.

Agent Mendez reached into a bag at his side and pulled out a folder, which he placed on the table in front of me. He flipped it open, and my picture was there, front and center, with the official CIA seal and a bunch of scary words like confidential stamped in red on top.

This was real.

All of it.

Pain in my hand made me realize I held Chan’s wallet in a death grip. The sight of the badge brought everything crashing to the surface, and I didn’t know how to keep it all bottled up anymore. My father really was an international crime boss, and this was the worst day of my life. Bile rose up the back of my throat, and my knuckles went white on the edges of Chan’s wallet.

I don’t know what came over me, but I had to get the badge as far away from me as possible. I threw it with all the pent-up panic and fear I couldn’t express, because I was a grown-up, and grown-ups weren’t supposed to freak out. It bounced off my coffee table and hit the edge of my entertainment center, rebounding to finally fall underneath my couch.

The room was silent while we stared at where it landed. Chan moved to stand up, but Agent Mendez shot him a look laced with warning.

Chan bobbed his head a little and pursed his lips.

“Guess I should have expected that. I’ll just get it later then.”

My chest heaved and my eyes burned, whether from embarrassment or bitterness, I didn’t know.

My whole life I’d thought my father was a beloved Hollywood actor, only to find out he was a wanted criminal. There were some things you just couldn’t prepare for.

Agent Mendez cleared his throat. “We know this is a lot to take in.” He leaned forward in his chair, pushing the paperwork toward me. I stared at it dully, the words swimming in front of my eyes. “We at the CIA have only known about you for a little over a day. Well, we’ve known Holt had a daughter for much longer, but not that you were the daughter in question. It wasn’t until you took the DNA test that we were able to pair Holt’s blood in our file with the DNA in your saliva and make the connection.”

The DNA test. What a great decision that had been. I went twenty-six years without confirmation of my parentage, and then I’d gone and blown everything up (ha!) with my unreasonable need to prove people wrong. Instead, I’d exposed the fact that my entire life had been a lie.

A dull throb was beginning to form behind my temples, but I forced myself to look at the paperwork, needing to see the scientific proof for myself. There it was in black and white. Pages and pages documenting my DNA connection to one of the worst crime bosses in history. My mother’s complete family tree and medical records. Things about Holt no civilian would ever have access to, proving these men in front of me were who they said they were.

I rested my head in my hands and stared at the table. Because it was glass, my own reflection blinked back at me, eyes wide and unsure. My nose was my mother’s. A little wider than was fashionable, but nothing a little contouring couldn’t fix. My eyes though? Maybe those were my father’s. They were green and speckled with darker flecks of brown around the edges. My hair was lighter than my mother’s too. Hers was a dark chestnut, while mine was difficult to describe. Was it blond? Was it brunette? No one could really agree, so I’d put brown on my driver’s license as a show of solidarity with the one parent who’d stuck around.

I’d always figured the lightness had come from Keith Huxley-Beck’s golden curls, but apparently there were some things even I didn’t know.

I sat up straight.

“If you figured I wasn’t aware of the connection,” I asked, resentment seeping into my voice, “how come you searched my home?”

All along they’d been treating me like I was a victim in all this, and true, I was grateful. Because, hello, I was a victim in all this. But they didn’t need to search my underwear drawer to figure that out.

Agent Mendez shifted on his seat.

“We had to be sure.” He sat back and rubbed his hands along his thighs. “Before he was arrested, when Holt was in Prague, we had an agent on the inside who informed us Holt had been searching for you. While Chan has only been working on Holt’s case for about a year, I’ve been assigned to it for almost two. Our undercover agent had been working for Holt for nearly three years. So, we didn’t think it was likely Holt had fooled us all for so long. But it was still a possibility, which was why we had to search your home. We apologize.”

It was at this point Chan interrupted. I still had questions about the undercover agent, the yearslong case against Holt, and most of all, the fact that my criminal father was searching for me, but Chan had more important matters to discuss, apparently.

“Why do you have a photo album of Keith Huxley-Beck in your bedroom closet?” He put both his elbows on the table and leaned forward, like this question had been eating him up inside and he couldn’t wait one second longer.

Agent Mendez shot him a look with furrowed brows, clearly meant to shut him up. But for some reason, this was the question that broke me from my stupor. I actually laughed out loud, then clasped both hands over my mouth to keep the noise inside. When I’d regained control, I shook my head. It all seemed so juvenile now. So absurd and naive. How could I, a grown woman, believe a famous actor had been my father when the reality was so much uglier than the fantasy?

Still. Chan worked for the CIA. He’d figure out the truth sooner or later.

“Well,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “Before today, my mother had me believe that Keith Huxley-Beck was my father.”

I expected to see pity on his face. Mocking resentment. Even contempt.

Not relief.

“That’s so much better than me thinking you had an intense stalker thing going on,” Chan said.

I wasn’t sure how to interpret that. By the expression on his face, Agent Mendez wasn’t either. He raised an arched eyebrow and glanced sideways at Chan, the corner of his mouth lifting in a smile. After a second, he shook his head and focused on me again.

“Before coming to your apartment, we spoke with your mother to make sure her story matched up with what our undercover agent said before their identity was compromised in Holt’s organization and they were no longer able to work for him.”

Indignation flared in my chest. I still hadn’t gotten to speak with my mother, yet the government had? These strangers officially knew more about my background than I did, which was all kinds of unfair. But I held my tongue. Because in twenty-six years I’d apparently never been able to get the real story out of my mother. And there was a chance they had.

Thankfully, Agent Mendez kept talking.

“According to our undercover agent, your mother escaped with you just after you were born. She found a weak link in Holt’s forger, what we at the CIA call a cobbler, and had him create new identities for you both so Holt couldn’t track you. Then she disappeared and managed to keep you off the map until now. Your mother’s story matched up with our intel.”

The real reason behind my mother’s paranoia with social media reared its ugly head. I still didn’t appreciate being lied to, but if the alternative was living my life in fear, well, I couldn’t exactly say I blamed her either.

“Why tell me all this now?” I asked. The CIA could have quietly monitored me from afar. They could have searched my apartment while I was at work, and I never would have known they’d stepped foot in the courtyard, let alone done an invasive background check or talked with my mom.

Chan looked away. Agent Mendez breathed deeply through his nose, drumming his fingers lightly on the table. Eventually he spoke, his voice low as he finally looked me in the eyes.

“Because we need your help.”

I let out a bark of laughter before I could help it. When they didn’t respond, my smile went stiff, and my heart started beating in double time.

“But…but you’re the CIA,” I stuttered. “Aren’t international arms dealers kind of your territory?” Also, while the news said Holt’s whereabouts were unknown, I was really hoping the CIA at least could place him on a map. Then place me on the opposite side of that map.

Agent Mendez cleared his throat. “The CIA has exhausted its resources trying to locate Holt. We believe he may be in Europe, but what we do know for sure is he has spent tens of thousands of dollars in his search for you over the years. You’re his only offspring. He would do almost anything to locate his daughter.” He paused and looked me directly in the eyes. He didn’t need to say my name out loud. It seemed to fill the space anyway. After a breath, he continued. “We could send a CIA agent pretending to be you, since Holt doesn’t know what you look like. But he’s paranoid enough that he would test her DNA first, and we don’t have a way to fake that.”

Too bad their double agent was compromised. Then they’d know where Holt was. And maybe it was because I’d had too much new information to process, but I wasn’t following his logic.

“Send me…where? If you don’t know where he is, how would Holt get to me to test my DNA?”

The idea of coming face-to-face with Holt was terrifying. And strangely exhilarating, which didn’t even make sense. I’d seen the news reports. He was dangerous. But he was also the father I’d never known anything about. What a sick double-edged sword.

I’d always thought of myself as smarter than your average bear. I had a degree in chemical engineering. I could solve a Rubik’s Cube in under a minute. But the fact that I was seriously considering the CIA’s mysterious plan to meet a convicted criminal so I could get some answers about my past meant I must not have been as smart as I thought.

“Let me back up.” Agent Mendez scratched at the scruff on his face, looking to Chan for a second, who only spread his arms as if to say, You’re on your own here . Agent Mendez returned his gaze to me and continued.

“The CIA would do everything possible to ensure your safety. The plan is to create an alternate backstory for you. Fake name, fake address. Anything that would tie you to your real life or your mother’s location would be scrubbed. If you’re okay with it, we’d create a criminal background that would give you a reason for wanting to reestablish a connection with Holt. He’d be less suspicious about you turning up if he thought you had…common interests. Then we’d have you swallow a tracker. If they managed to remove it, we’d still have eyes on you at all times.”

I saw a movie once where someone had ingested a tracker only to have the bad guys force it back up their throat with a magnet thing. Maybe that was only in the movies, but it didn’t exactly look like a pleasant experience. I swallowed hard. When Agent Mendez saw my wide eyes, he hurried to fill the silence.

“Then the CIA would fly you to Europe, where we’d start seeding rumors of your existence. We’d put you in locations with known contacts of Holt, where we’d expect you to talk of your connection to him. They’d be petty criminals mostly. People who weren’t high enough on the chain to go to jail or who have already done their time.

“We don’t think it would take long before Holt would have someone verify your identity and take you to him. Once your tracker gives us Holt’s location or we follow you there, the CIA would extricate you from any danger, and we’d take Holt into custody once again. You’d only be in his presence for a limited time. If they drug you before taking you to wherever he is, there’s a chance you’d be asleep for everything and miss the excitement altogether.”

I could tell he was trying to minimize the sense of danger. But I could also tell from the way Chan stared out my kitchen window and refused to meet my eyes that he didn’t agree with this plan. I already knew he was the junior agent on this case, but I found myself wanting to hear his opinion anyway.

Then again, what did I care? He’d lied to me.

Everything mixed together in my head until the noise of it all became too much, and I pressed my palms against my eyes.

Finally, I raised my head. “What’s in it for me?” I asked.

This made Agent Mendez smile. “You decide. Think about what it’d take to get you to agree, and then you get back to me.”

Chan finally chimed in. “You’ll have time to think this through. No one is forcing you to do anything.”

I’ll admit, that did make me feel a little better.

But the fact of the matter was, my father was an international arms dealer. There wasn’t all that much to feel good about. And even though they said they weren’t pressuring me, this was the CIA we were talking about.

At the end of the day, I didn’t really know whether I had a choice.