The Reveal Read Free Page B

to get me,” she countered, quoting a covert operations adage that might have shifted from wisdom to cliché but that wasn’t any less true. “What if they tracked us via satellite imaging?”
    The corner of his mouth quirked into a grin. “You’ve been watching too many spy movies.”
    “My father’s life was a spy movie. And I’ve been working on the fringe of your industry for years. I’m not naïve. I know what capabilities are out there.”
    “Then you also know that most of those capabilities are available only if someone pays a shitload of money or works through reams of red tape to get satellite time that can’t be tracked by any other world agency that might be watching skyward. We’re not worth that kind of trouble.”
    “Maybe Jayda is.”
    “Jayda is dead.”
    Every time Sean repeated that claim, an arctic chill sliced up Brynn’s spine. She knew that he believed his former lover was no longer alive, but had he convinced himself because he trusted the veracity of the information, or could he not accept that the woman he’d risked everything for was somehow still alive, responsible for his pain?
    Brynn could think of a million reasons why a high-level assassin might abandon a man who loved her, but the idea of Brynn ever doing that to Sean caused an ache in her stomach that nearly doubled her over. They’d been lovers for less than a week, and already, Brynn had risked her life and her career to help him find the answers he needed.
    Did that make Jayda the fool, or Brynn?
    Pushing her own conflicted feelings aside, Brynn focused on one inalienable fact—Jayda was the reason Sean had been tortured. Jayda was the reason why Sean, a giving, caring lover, would leave Brynn in a heartbeat if he thought it would further his cause.
    Dead or alive, this phantom from Sean’s past was haunting him—haunting them. Could Brynn exorcise Jayda’s memory from Sean’s brain and win them a shot at a real relationship? Did she want to?
    “I think we should leave,” Brynn suggested. “As a precaution.”
    “Not until we get what we came for.”
    “There’s another forger down the coast,” she assured him. “He’s not quite as reliable, but maybe that will work in our favor.”
    “We’re not going anywhere,” Sean said. “Not yet. It’s one thing to be watched at a safe house where we’ve stayed put for six weeks, but it’s something else to be tracked across the Spanish countryside in less than twenty-four hours. You’re spooked. I get it. And maybe your gut is dead-on. Still, I should take a look around before we go flying into the night. Agreed?”
    No, Brynn didn’t agree. But if she’d learned one thing about Sean, it was that no matter how conciliatory he pretended to be, her approval wasn’t needed.
    She wasn’t even sure if he needed her anymore…and that scared her worst of all.

Three
    “Take this,” she said, offering him her weapon.
    Apparently, when calm, cool, collected Brynn Blake got spooked, she lost her head a little. As former covert ops, he should have considered her nerves as a dangerous threat to the mission. But he hadn’t been an agent for years. Distance and time gave him the perspective to see her fear for what it really was.
    She cared.
    About him—more than she cared about herself.
    This was not good.
    “I’ve got my own piece,” he reminded her, though as she’d been the one who’d unlocked the gun safe at the house in Barcelona and had invited him to pick his poison, he wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know.
    She shook her head, snatching the proffered handgun to her chest. “I’m out of my element here, Sean. Why did Dante think I could do this? Protect you on my own.”
    “It wasn’t Dante,” Sean reminded her.
    “Fine! Why did anyone think I could do this?”
    Sean tamped down a grin, knowing she wouldn’t appreciate his seeing humor in her moment of frustration. Brynn was accomplished at covert ops, and up until this moment,