Page 147 of Secret Service

ChapterThirty-Two

Brennan

Last Night

Reese walked into my life and everything stopped, frozen on a held breath and a waiting heartbeat.

He’s the light that tickles the sky before dawn and the heady buzz of stars burning at midnight. He’s taken me from my weary world and spilled color and heat and flame. When he looks at me, I feel like I’m the only man on this earth.

He undoes me time and time again and then rebuilds me, recreating me out of love and promises of forever. My life, with all its twists and turns, all the secrets and buried truths, has led me to him. To us. I am incomplete without him.

I can never get enough of his love. Even now, minutes before I need to leave, I have to feel him. I sweep the binders and briefs from my desk, then chase him and his kiss. My home is in his arms.

I’m desperate to stay here with him instead of facing what’s beyond those doors. Right now, I’m not supposed to be Brennan and he’s not supposed to be Reese, and our time doesn’t belong to us.

“Four minutes are up,” Reese whispers against my lips. “Time to go, mon cher.”

I’m not ready. I don’t want to move on from this. I rest my forehead against his. My eyes close.

I wish I could drop to one knee and reach into my pocket. Instead of going to Langley, I want to pull out the ring I’ve been carrying with me for days. I’d rather stumble through the question I’ve rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed, late into the night and even when I’m supposed to be listening to my cabinet.

Holding that question inside is suffocating me. Reese needs to know how I feel, know that I am his forever.

We’ve said it, and we feel it, but there’s a difference between saying the words and sliding a ring onto your man’s finger.

But this isn’t the time. Not yet.

The classified pouch with Director Liu’s request for tonight’s meeting is on the ground. I want to leave it there. Ignore it, banish it. One page, one handwritten paragraph to me from Liu is enough to nearly destroy my world.

There’s a traitor inside your inner circle, Mr. President. Someone has been giving President Kirilov your private conversations.

How could there be a traitor among my closest advisors? It’s unfathomable.

Yet it must be true.

I’ve been turning over the thought for days, trying to rationalize, to reason my way past this suspicion. But I can’t. How can Kirilov know the thoughts I have and the decisions I make minutes after I’ve made them? Someone is funneling him information. Someone close.

This traitor has American blood on their hands. Four dead SEALs and an American pilot.

How could anyone I work with be capable of that? Who do I say hello to every day who is murdering their fellow Americans?

The last line of Liu’s note says, Tell no one. Trust no one.

We’ve set up a one-on-one briefing tonight with the analyst who uncovered echoes of the traitor’s movements. It’s just Liu, the analyst, and me.

Liu was explicit: do not tell the Secret Service. It’s too great a risk, he said.

It’s killing me to not confide in Reese, but I gave Liu my word. And if keeping this from Reese keeps him safe, then that’s the right choice to make.

Still, Reese was the only person I could ask to arrange this.

He balked. Tonight flies in the face of his training and his beliefs, his regulations and his procedures. But tonight, everything is out the window.And he hates it.

I have to do this, though.

His earpiece chirps. It’s Henry, and in the stillness, I hear his voice. “Cupcake ready in the underground.”

“Time to go.”

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