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Joel Elwyn may have no longer been in the field, but hundreds of other spokes of the same wheel—not to mention the hundreds

of other wheels all around the world—were still out there spinning. Gathering. Protecting. Reporting. Trying to survive. Saving

countless other lives in the process.

Wes couldn’t imagine that anyone could marry into the upper echelons of the agency without an inherent understanding of that,

and an inherent understanding of what their loved one put their life on the line for every single day.

Of course Addie hadn’t been only a CIA spouse .

She’d kept the secrets, and she’d kept them well.

Secrets that seemed inhumane to ask anyone to keep but that the select few would lay down their lives for.

She’d known the risks involved in marrying Senior CMO Joel Elwyn—she’d had to have known them—but how could anyone ever really understand them until all of the worst possible logistical scenarios and a blown clandestine identity and a scared punk who found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time—with a newly acquired FN Five-seveN semiautomatic pistol in his pocket—all came together on a cloudless February night on the streets of Caracas?

Joel had spent his years in the field, valiantly serving his time as a case officer. By the time he was promoted to CMO and

given an office at Langley, he had completed hundreds of missions in dozens of countries. Operation VE Ladder got handed off

to him as an ever-growing disaster taking its final, hopeless breaths. Failure seemed eminent. But Joel Elwyn refused to accept

that.

As CMO, Joel was responsible for making sure the mission succeeded. He knew the risks, but he still chose to send in the best

person for the job.

And now Wes’s childhood sweetheart—the only woman he had ever been in love with, the one person he’d wanted to protect but

whom he’d betrayed with the most cowardly decision he ever made—was having to ask him if what he was saying was true. Because

of course she didn’t trust him. She’d acclimated to a life in which she didn’t trust anyone, he was guessing. But he was the

one in whom her distrust was most deserved.

“Yes, Addie, it’s true.”

The trembling went far beyond her hands now, and she was biting down on her bottom lip, trying to still it. Tears had pooled

in her eyes and were making a valiant effort to hold tight, but they’d defied gravity long enough. She sniffed, and the vibration

caused the moisture to fall from her eyes in solid streaks down her cheeks.

“I’m so sorry, Add. For all of it.” Wes slipped off his seat and kneeled in front of her, grabbing his unused napkin from the table as he did. “I can’t

even wrap my head around how strong you’ve had to be. How strong you are. To have lost him, but then not to be able to tell

anyone?” He dabbed the green cloth napkin against her cheekbones, and new tears spilled onto it before the existing had been

absorbed.

And still, he saw her clamping down harder on her lip.

Squeezing the table so aggressively that he was beginning to worry she would injure herself.

(Or at least worried that Jo would injure her if she damaged her table.) Breathing as shallowly as a highly trained diver, maintaining all her oxygen for the possibility of a terrifying, life-threatening eventuality.

“You really know?” Her voice was resolute but so quiet through her barely separated lips.

He scooted closer to her on his knees, having no idea if he had any right to do so, but quickly discovering his intuitive

need to help her know he was there for her was leaving him no choice.

“I do. I sat through the hearings. I saw the photographs. I read the testimonies.”

“If that’s true, why are you just now—”

“Like I said, Elwyn sounded familiar, but...” He shrugged. “For whatever reason, it didn’t click until you said his full name. And then I

had to find out what you knew so I knew what I could say.”

“How did you—”

“I read through all the files again last night.”

Stop talking over her , he lectured himself. He wasn’t meaning to. Adrenaline was one rude party guest sometimes. “I never knew it was you. And

if I’m being honest, I don’t know if I’m sorry I didn’t know or grateful. I don’t know how I...” He closed his eyes briefly

and tried to block out that pointless attack on his conscience, courtesy of a hypothetical. How would he have managed things

if he had known that Addie Atwater was “the Elwyn widow,” as she was referred to in the briefings?

It doesn’t matter now. It’s not about you.

He looked at her again. “I know that Joel wasn’t even supposed to be there, and he only stepped in to keep the mission from

failing when the other agent missed his mark.

And Joel did keep it from failing, Addie.

I know that for a fact. There are fourteen other operatives who still haven’t been exposed and who are still alive because he saw Ladder through to the end.

And I know that as cruel as it was to make you wait eight months before acknowledging his death—”

“Two hundred and fifty-eight days.”

He nodded and brushed his thumb against her chin, catching a teardrop before it fell from her face. “That gave operatives

enough time to maintain contacts and gather enough intel to stop the transport into the US of about twenty tons of cocaine

and close to as many weapons.” Wes took a deep breath and gently absorbed her tears with the napkin again while her eyes scrunched

closed and the trembling overtook her entire body. “But I’m so sorry, Add. I’m so sorry about Joel, and I’m so sorry you haven’t

had anyone to—”

He was so unprepared for the way she lowered herself out of her chair onto her knees and threw herself into him that he not

only let out a very onomatopoeic harrumph as the air was knocked out of him, but also had to splay his hand behind him on the floor to maintain his balance and prevent

them both from toppling over. But her arms around his neck and her sobs against his shoulder demanded better of him. Wes pushed

off from the floor with his palm and wrapped her against his chest.

“It’s okay,” he whispered against her hair as she clenched the front of his starched and pressed dress shirt in both of her

fists and wept with all the freedom she’d been so long denied. He sighed and wiped away a tear of his own and pulled her in

even closer before kissing the top of her head, stroking her hair, and finally accepting that there would never be anyone

in the entire world he cared about as much as he cared about her.