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When I woke up, I didn’t know where I was.

I was also in restraints.

There was something over my nose and mouth, plus there was something sharp digging into my arm. A needle?

There were people around me. I could hear their voices. The lights above me were so bright I couldn’t accurately see my surroundings.

That familiar panic built up in my chest, and I thrashed on the surface where I was lying. I had to get out of here. I had to find Chan. And my mother—what had happened to her?

A face swam into my view. “Hey, it’s all right. Stop moving, you’re going to pull out your IV.”

In my panic, it took me a full minute to process who was speaking. I recognized his face, but my hysteria was making it hard to put a name to it.

Agent Mendez.

Chan was there a second later. “Andee?”

It was only then, when I saw him—breathing, speaking, beautifully alive —that I finally came down from the spike of fear that I’d been riding ever since Holt had called me and told me he’d taken my mother.

“I tried to get him to take the saline too,” Agent Mendez said, “but this idiot wouldn’t leave your side once he woke up.” Agent Mendez shook his head. “He’d be feeling a lot better right now if he was on oxygen too. There was a lot of chloroform in that lab.”

So that was what was over my mouth. Oxygen. I was okay with that.

Chan stroked my arm. At least, I thought it was Chan. With me lying down, I couldn’t raise my neck to see. But it’d sure be weird if it was anyone else.

“I can handle a little nausea.” Chan usually watched whoever was talking. But now he was looking me over from head to toe, cataloging every injury. “What I can’t handle is not knowing whether Andee is okay.”

Agent Mendez chuckled. “You’ve got it bad,” he said. He shook his head, then walked away, leaving Chan and me alone. I could still hear other people milling around, but they might as well have been on the other side of the world for how Chan was looking at me.

“I can take the restraints off your arms now,” he said. “They were just there to make sure you didn’t pull out the IV when you woke up in an unfamiliar hospital. They did the same thing to me.”

I felt something give way at my wrists, and I could suddenly move again. I reached up to remove the oxygen at my mouth. Immediately, I had to work harder to breathe, but at least I could talk with Chan.

“Could you adjust my stretcher or whatever I’m lying on so I can sit up a little?” I asked. “I don’t like staring up at the ceiling with you hovering over me like a concerned parent.”

It turned out to be one of those hospital beds that adjusted at the waist so I could sit up and see the rest of the room.

It was amazing they let Chan roam about when he was clearly in much worse shape than I was. Bandages wrapped around his entire torso and up over his left shoulder. I ached just looking at him. He shouldn’t have gone through all that. Not because of me.

Fabric room dividers hung around my area. Doctors and CIA agents moved past every few minutes in what was otherwise an obviously closed-off portion of the hospital. But there was someone missing.

“Where’s my mom? What happened to Holt?” I asked. Thankfully, I was still wearing my regular clothes and hadn’t been dressed in a hospital gown, but I was still acutely embarrassed to have been out for so long without knowing what was happening.

“First of all, don’t freak out. Your mom is fine.” He put a hand on my knee. “She needed more intensive care, so she’s in a separate part of the hospital. You can go and see her as soon as you’re feeling up to it. She’ll be okay, I promise. As for Holt, they took him and the other people he had with him into custody already. They’re not taking any chances.”

He sat on the edge of my hospital bed.

“How were Mendez and the CIA agents there so fast?” I asked. “I thought you said they’d gone to the docks.”

Chan raised his eyebrows. “Why do you think I’d tell Holt the truth?” He pulled my hand away from the hem of the blanket I’d been twisting and took it in his. Suddenly my heartbeat felt loud in my own ears and I was warm all over. It was a good thing I wasn’t hooked up to one of those machines that broadcast my heartbeat out loud for everyone to hear, or I’d have died from embarrassment.

“I told you my hearing aids were Bluetooth,” he said. “The connection has to be established within the first minute or so of them being set up, which was why we couldn’t use them before when we were kidnapped. We were caught off guard. But going into this situation, we were prepared. I was the one who figured out where you’d gone by following the tracker on the car, and I came up with a plan to get you out. I knew Holt would dismiss my hearing aids since they hadn’t been a problem before, but I could use them like a silent walkie-talkie with our CIA team once I set up a relay in the air vents to boost the signal. They were establishing the perimeter the whole time. Taking care of Holt’s other employees and drawing them out so we wouldn’t be ambushed. I was just the magnet to keep Holt occupied so he wouldn’t know the CIA was closing in. My only job was to keep him busy long enough that he couldn’t feel the noose tightening around his neck.”

Yeah, and almost getting himself killed in the process. Not cool.

Chan saw my eye roll and hurried to continue. “If anyone else had come instead of me, Holt would have bolted immediately. I was the only one he’d write off. He’d assume I was there for you.”

That warm feeling disappeared. Because even though Chan was still holding my hand, that had been what I’d assumed, so did that mean I was wrong?

Chan must have seen something on my face, because he gave my fingers a squeeze. “We used it to our advantage.” He leaned over to brush a piece of hair behind my ear. “That doesn’t mean it wasn’t the truth.”

I sucked in a breath. As long as he was telling me everything about what had happened, he needed to know the truth about the night’s events too. Even if it made all my mistakes obvious. Even if I ended up in jail for putting the CIA at risk.

“Then you should also know why I went back to the catacombs.” I bit my lip. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to leave you. But Holt had one of his men put a phone in my pocket, and he let me know he had my mom—” I choked on the words but forced them out anyway. “He had a sniper trained on you at the safe house, and if I let you know anything that was going on, he wouldn’t have just killed my mom, he’d have killed you too.” I shook my head. “I had to take the vials. I didn’t want to betray you. I never meant to leave you like that. But I’d do it all over again—trade my life for yours if I thought—”

Chan took pity on me and interrupted my horribly thought-out confession speech. “Do you remember when I told you I tried to look at people’s intentions?”

I nodded.

One side of his mouth quirked up. “I guess I lied. It’s nice to hear, but I’d walk through fire for you even if I thought you made a deal with the devil himself.”

He took my face between his hands and cradled it delicately like I was something precious. Then he leaned in and placed his lips on mine.

Apparently, it didn’t matter that we were surrounded by CIA agents. Or that he worked for the United States government and I was the daughter of an international criminal. Because he was kissing me and I was kissing him like our lives depended on it.

He pulled me close, and my fingers threaded into his hair. Just the slightest pressure from his hand at the side of my waist was the only encouragement I needed to sit up all the way and inch closer to him. My knee was in his lap, and I still felt like there was too much space between us. Who cared that we had an audience? Or that I was bruised practically everywhere on my body. I would have given anything for him to touch me everywhere, regardless of my injuries.

We were alive. And in that moment, I felt the truth of that statement more than I had in the last year or so of my life. Chan caught my lower lip in his and deepened the kiss, causing heat to swirl low in my stomach. Everything else around me muted to a buzz, and I momentarily forgot where we were.

Until someone dropped some papers on Chan’s lap and, by extension, my leg.

Chan and I broke apart.

I was left staring up at Agent Mendez, who looked decidedly pleased with himself. Chan turned his head to face him.

“Got some paperwork for ya,” Agent Mendez said, crossing his arms. “Mostly it’s to detail everything that happened over the past month, but there’s a special one I placed right on top.”

Chan glanced down. He let out a short bark of a laugh, then shook his head. “You really think this is the most important thing right now?” He held up the paper that was on top of the stack. I caught a glimpse of the title. External Contact Form. Whatever that meant.

Mendez smirked. “Well, she is Holt’s daughter.” He walked away with a laugh, and I was left wondering what was so funny.

Chan ran a hand through his hair, and his cheeks turned pink. I raised my eyebrows. Whatever made Chan embarrassed ought to be good.

“Nothing like your superior officer pushing you to define the relationship in the most awkward way possible,” Chan muttered under his breath.

My eyes widened, and I hurried to make my expression neutral before he could notice. What had our whole conversation been about before the kiss if not defining the relationship?

I cleared my throat. “I mean, I don’t know about you, but I guess I consider our relationship pretty defined.” I picked at the blanket they’d put across my lap and that had since fallen to the side. “I’m not interested in seeing anyone else.”

Well, he was right about this being awkward. Go, team.

Chan tilted my face up to his. “Not for the CIA, it isn’t.” He was smiling, so his words didn’t hold any kind of edge they might have otherwise. “They literally require it to be signed, sealed, and delivered.” He held up the form. “So while I’m not interested in seeing anyone else either”—my heart picked back up—“we both have to sign this paper attesting to the fact. Almost dying for each other isn’t enough.”

While his comment made me laugh, it also reminded me of what Chan said earlier when he’d called himself a magnet, and that wiped the smile from my face.

“I still don’t like that you practically sacrificed yourself,” I said. “We actually almost died back there. The CIA really took their time. If the stun grenades and chloroform hadn’t knocked Holt out…” I trailed off, not even wanting to consider the alternative.

Chan pulled me close. It had to have hurt—his entire torso was swaddled in bandages—but I was guessing that, like me, he would rather deal with the physical pain than be separated for a second longer than was completely necessary.

He kissed my temple. “Trust me,” he said. “In my line of work, we don’t think about the what-ifs.”