Page 14 of The Honeymoon Hack

We’d chosen two of our most tech-qualified team members to go in. Anyone who took on this job would be flying blind and would need serious skills to do it.

Will cleared his throat. “The person best suited to replace Ashley is the woman who coached her on every aspect of this job.”

He does not mean…

But the room went quiet. All eyes fell on me.

Hedidmean me.

“No way.” I dropped my stylus.Don’t panic.Don’t run.“I’m not suited for undercover work.”

“It’s an excellent idea,” Mum said thoughtfully, studying me with her calculating eyes.

Scarlett nodded in agreement. “You and Will won’t have to fake your history. That part of the cover will be easy.”

“I can’t lie.”Calm down, Brie. Your volume is rising.“I can’t fake things. I’m the person behind the computer, not in the field.” My hands were practically flailing now.No way are you doing this. I looked to Scarlett, desperate for a way out. “You hate last-minute plan changes. We should reschedule.”

“Nothing’s really changing,” Will countered, his voice far too steady, “except having an even better hacker going undercover with me.”

My eyes met his across the table. How was he so calm about this?

Mum’s voice was soft when she spoke. “This is our window to clear your father’s name, darling.”

My father was serving a life sentence for espionage and had likely been framed by the same organization that had kidnapped my brother. The same organization whose servers contained blackmail photos of Scarlett and potential evidence that could exonerate my father after twenty years of imprisonment.

Memories of security checkpoints, suspicious guards, and the smells of industrial cleaner flooded my brain. Of my father aging behind bars, year after year.

I couldn’t even remember his face from before.

“I’ll need to…” Analysis mode. That’s what I needed. Focus on plans and numbers and code. Not on emotions. “I need to review all the mission parameters, pack appropriate clothing for a tropical climate and professional setting, verify the credentials?—”

The words tumbled out as I retreated to the safety of logistics and technical details. Binary code didn’t have feelings. Algorithms didn’t get nervous about pretending to be someone else.

“You already know the whole cover.” Scarlett used her command voice on me, like she’d been doing since before we’d moved to Halifax. “I’ll take you shopping after this meeting, and I’ll help you pack. We can delete the fake photos from your phones and replace them with real ones of you and Will. This cover will be easy.”

Real photos of us. We had plenty of photos—years of friendship captured by his mother, the photographer. Not like the fabricated history we’d created for Will and Ashley’s romance. Pictures of us building Legos as kids, in high school and university, celebrating birthdays. All genuine. All safe.

Oh shit!I’d have to pretend those moments were romantic, not platonic.

“I’ll coach you during the flight,” Scarlett continued. “We have four hours before we leave, and we can postpone an extra hour or two if we need to. It’s doable.”

I nodded mechanically, my heart pounding as I caught Will watching me with an unreadable expression. I’d be with him. After missing him for a year, spending two weeks with him would be fantastic.

Except…

Another wave of heat rose up my cheeks.

Except he and I would be sharing a room and pretending we were married.

“If there’s nothing else,” Evelyn said, “let’s get moving. We have three objectives: destroy the blackmail photos of Scarlett, gather intel on Fenix’s operations, and find evidence related to Joseph’s case. Time is of the essence.”

The meeting broke up, and everyone dispersed, as if this were still a normal day. But I remained glued to my seat, staring blankly at my tablet.

In the span of ten minutes, I’d gone from safely doing my job here at home and encouragingWillover his anxiety about going undercover to… to going undercover with him.

“Are you okay with this?” Will’s quiet voice startled me.

I twisted in my seat to face him, where he’d paused at the door. “Do I have a choice?”