Alistair watches me for a moment. “Alright. Why did you break your promise then? Why did you run?”
My hand curls into a fist. “I told you, I didn’t have a choice. Zach had Layla.”
The lines on Alistair’s forehead deepen. “What’s the FBI’s rules on negotiating with kidnappers?”
“They don’t,” I say automatically, my training kicking in. “There’s always another way.”
“So why didn’t you find the other way?”
I go still, then shake myself out of it. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t risk him hurting the guys.”
Alistair taps his fingers together.
My hackles rise. “What, you think I should have stayed?”
He shakes his head and sits forward. “I think… you’ve had to spend your whole life running away from the scary things and you don’t know how to stop. Even when they’re the good type of scary.”
My huff of laughter is laced with disbelief. “My brother is not the good type of scary.”
“No.” Alistair pauses. “But you weren’t running from your brother, were you?”
My fidgeting fingers still. The meaning in his words sinks deep into my brittle bones. I wasn’t running from my brother.
I was running from the guys.
3
RIVER
Iam losing my control.
Each day that goes by without Freya in my grasp snaps another of the tenuous threads holding me together. A darkness has gathered around me like a storm cloud to electricity and all of my focus, all of my attention, is narrowed in on her. On finding her. On keeping her. Onowningher.
The doors of the elevator I’ve been waiting for hiss open, and I step inside. It’s been seven weeks since Freya ran. I never thought it would take us this long to find her, but I finally have a lead.
My fingers vibrate with anger as I swipe my ID and press for the sub-basement, the one most agents don’t even know exists. Once the biometrics have scanned my face I step back and force myself to take a moment, to wrap chains around all the emotions that are overriding my system. I won’t get anywhere if I’m not thinking straight.
The elevator slows to a stop and I walk out into the cold, concrete space. Jude calls our offices the Lair, but the sublevel takes it to a whole new level. White strip lighting hangs from the ceiling. Everything is metal from the tables to the chairs, tothe raised scaffolding platform at the end of the room. The place looks more like an underground warehouse than an FBI office but then again, the people who work down here aren’t quite FBI. More like FBI adjacent.
The sublevel is home to Black Ops. The missions and cases the higher ups don’t officially sign-off on but want to happen anyway. In other words, all things unsanctioned. Not everyone has the stomach for the work they do, which means there’s a high turnover rate and the unit currently only has two agents. Jack and Reaper.
Jack, the unofficial team leader, looks over from his desk when I enter. His dark brown hair is cut short on the sides, with the waves on top pushed back, and despite spending his days in the basement his white skin is tanned. In some ways Jack and I are a lot alike. We both crave control, except where mine is sharp and neat, his is sharp and dangerous.
Normally, I’d say his moral code is darker than mine but with Freya gone I find myself slipping far deeper into morally gray than I ever wanted to go.
Maybe that’s necessary though, because right now, Jack has information I want, and I have a feeling he’s not going to be happy to part with it.
“Jack,” I greet.
“River.” Jack watches me carefully as I approach.
Reaper, on the other hand, grins like the maniac he is. “Well, well. The Chief of the SCU, to what do we mere mortals owe the pleasure?”
“Acting Chief,” I correct. It feels wrong to be doing Farrah’s job. She should still be here, and I view it as a personal failure that she’s not. Every time I step into her office, or someone calls me Chief, it cuts a little deeper. Zach will pay for what he’s done but first, I need to find Freya. The whole reason I accepted the position of acting chief was so I could have access to the entireFBI database and after weeks of scouring through information it’s finally paid off.
“Potato, po-tah-to.” Reaper shakes his head, his long black hair dancing across his teak-colored skin. “Do you like the vibe we’ve got going on? It’s very Mulder and Scully, shoved in the basement—shotgun Scully by the way. I keep telling Jack we need some flowers but he’s too insecure in his fragile masculinity to co-exist with beauty.”
“You find your girl yet?” Jack asks, effectively ignoring Reaper like that’s what he does ninety-nine percent of the time.
