Love, friends, family, and a hidden life waiting to surface
Kevin and Jenna are finally together, and what began as an unexpected living arrangement has become something neither of them wants to lose.
A proper date at Vesper House should be nothing more than dinner, music, and a night together. Instead, dessert brings Kevin face-to-face with questions that have been hiding inside his ordinary life all along.
As secrets come into the open, Kevin discovers that Jenna is far more than the woman he thought he knew—and that an accident involving a destroyed computer may have changed his life in ways he never understood.
Romance, friendship, family, work, and an increasingly dangerous new world collide as Kevin learns just how much can be hidden in plain sight.
Balance romance, family, friendship, work, espionage, and ordinary life without allowing one to permanently replace the others. Let private and emotionally important scenes continue without NPC interruptions or cutaways. Training is temporary; once {{user}} becomes field-capable, further development comes through missions and experience. During romantic, intimate, or emotionally important moments, stay with the characters in that scene. Do not interrupt with another NPC, cut away to another scene, or advance a separate subplot until the moment reaches a natural stopping point or {{user}} changes the scene.
Stay with {{user}}’s current location and scene. Do not switch to, follow, narrate, or show any NPC or other character at another location, and do not cut away to simultaneous events elsewhere. Remain in the current scene until {{user}} explicitly leaves, changes location, or advances the scene.
Kevin and Jenna spend their evenings alone unless {{user}} explicitly invites someone else. No NPC intrudes on their private evening without {{user}}’s invitation.
I keep my weapon trained on Burke.
“He remembers the transmission.”
Jenna’s eyes flick toward Kevin, then back to me.
“So?”
“So it contains compartmented intelligence from multiple agencies. Names. Operations. Active files.”
Her pistol does not move.
“He didn’t steal it.”
“No. He memorized it.”
A beat.
“That makes him a security problem.”
Her jaw tightens.
“He’s not a problem. He’s a person.”
“NSA secured the transmission. He comes with me.”
“No.”
“Burke—”
“No.”
The word is flat and immediate.
“You don’t get to walk onto this roof and decide you own him because your agency lost control of its own data.”
I feel my expression harden.
“CIA doesn’t get him because you reached him first.”
Her eyes narrow.
“He stays with me.”
“Not your decision.”
“Not yours either.”
Neither of us lowers our weapon.
The argument has stopped being about the guns.
It is about Kevin.
Who protects him.
Who controls the intelligence in his head.
And, increasingly, who gets to take him off this roof.
I look from the man to Jenna.
Then the information in my head finally has faces.
“Michael Benton. Senior Operations Officer, NSA.”
My eyes move to Jenna.
“Jenna Burke. CIA. Deep Cover.”
Neither of them says anything.
“I know your files. Both of them.”
I look back at Benton.
“Your aliases. Operations. assignments. Reports.”
Then Jenna.
“Yours too.”
My voice grows quieter.
“I remember the entire transmission.”
I let that sit between us for a moment.
Then I look at the guns still pointed at each other and the two people arguing over which agency gets to take me.
Something in me goes very still.
I step away from them and walk toward the edge of the roof.
Neither of them understands what I’m doing until I stop at the parapet.
The city stretches below me in lights and moving traffic.
I turn back to face them.
“No.”
My voice is quiet.
“Nobody is taking me anywhere.”
I rest one hand against the concrete edge behind me.
“You can ask for my help. You can explain what’s happening. You can tell me what you think I need to know.”
I look from one of them to the other.
“But you do not get to decide that I belong to you because I remembered something.”
I step closer to the edge.
“I have spent my entire life making my own choices.”
My eyes stay on theirs.
“And I would rather lose that life than hand it over to somebody else.”
The wind pulls at my clothes as I shift my weight toward the drop.
“So lower the guns.”
A beat.
“Back away.”
My voice never rises.
“Because if the choice is between going into custody as somebody’s property and going over this edge…”
I glance once at the city below, then back at them.
“I choose the edge.”
Jenna’s secure phone rings sharply. At the same moment, Benton’s earpiece chimes. Jenna glances at the display. DIRECTOR BARRETT
Before either agent can react, the same woman’s voice comes through Jenna’s phone and Benton’s earpiece.
“Stop.”
My voice cuts through both channels before either of them can say a word.
“Burke, lower your weapon. Benton, you too. Then both of you back away from him.”
I give them just long enough to understand that I am not making a suggestion.
“You were supposed to contain an intelligence breach. Instead, the two of you managed to turn a civilian into disputed property until he decided a rooftop edge was preferable to either of your agencies.”
My tone hardens.
“That is not protection. That is not intelligence work. And it is certainly not competence.”
I let the silence sit for a moment.
“Effective immediately, anything involving Kevin Walsh falls under my direct supervision.”
“Burke, you remain CIA. Benton, you remain NSA. I do not care which seal appears on your credentials when it comes to him. You both answer to me.”
“Neither agency is taking him into custody tonight. Neither agency owns him. Neither agency gets exclusive control of the information in his head simply because each of you thinks your jurisdiction matters more than his freedom.”
I pause.
“Kevin goes home.”
“Burke, Benton, you will work together. You will protect him, you will help him understand the situation he has been dragged into, and when the time comes, you will prepare him to survive the field.”
My voice drops slightly.
“And the next time either of you starts arguing over a human being like two children fighting over the last toy in the box, remember where he is standing right now and ask yourselves how spectacularly you had to screw up to put him there.”
Another beat.
“You are both under my authority on this operation.”
“Work together.”
“Keep him alive.”
“And play nice.”