As much as she hated to admit it, Hunter had a point. If none of the other stuff had happened and this investigation was in isolation, that would be one thing. But she couldn’t close her eyes and pretend like everything was going to be okay. “All right. What do you suggest?”
“Bring your lawyer.”
“But I don’t have a lawyer.”
He stood up. “You do now.”
She couldn’t hold back her laughter. “You’re not a lawyer, Hunter.”
“Hey, I am an active member of the Virginia and DC bar. Just because I don’t have a law practice doesn’t mean I’m not legit. And if they deny you legal counsel, then we just say thanks, but no thanks and hightail it out of there.”
She considered his offer. As much as she hated to admit it, he was right. She’d been at Langley long enough to know that if she had been set up, there could be disastrous consequences. Scarlett’s words of advice echoed through her brain. This was far from a routine legal inquiry. “Scarlett told me I absolutely couldn’t go in there without an attorney and that it would be foolish to represent myself.”
“Sounds like great advice to me. I hope you’ll take it.”
“You realize that if you’re right and there’s danger involved, then you could be put right in the middle of it.”
He nodded. “I’m not going to let you down this time.”
And there it was. The opening for the conversation that the girls had encouraged her to have. Was it now or never? Would there ever be the exact right time? “About that.”
“Yeah.” He sat back down.
“Can we talk?” she asked.
Hunter looked away for a moment before making eye contact. “I wondered how long it would be before we had this conversation.”
“You look like you’re dreading it.” Probably not as much as she was, but this seemed like a necessary evil if she was ever going to move on with her life. And that was something she desperately needed to do. Living in the past with his memory always floating around was not healthy.
“I knew this day might eventually come, but honestly, I never thought it would be under circumstances remotely like this.” He paused. “I’ve been having internal debates about whether I should reach out to you for a long time, but I didn’t want to invade your life. I felt like the last thing you deserved was any more heartache from me, so I decided it was best to try to keep the past in the past.”
“Why did you think reaching out would cause me more heartache? What could possibly be worse than what you did?” She couldn’t stop talking now, as her emotions simmered dangerously close to the surface. “We had plans to build a life together. To get married, have a family, the whole nine yards, and you just threw it all away on a one-night drunken hookup? That wasn’t the man I fell in love with, and I’ve questioned over and over in my mind how we could’ve ended up there. What did I do to push you away? I thought we had promised each other that we would build our relationship on trust, love, and our common faith.” Finally, she took a second to regroup and see how he would respond to her allegations.
“I deserve all of that and more. And I think you finally deserve the truth.” He took her hand and squeezed it.
Her pulse quickened. “What do you mean? I know the truth. I may not know every sordid detail, but you can spare me that.”
He hung his head.
“Hunter, is there something else you’re not telling me?”
His blue eyes met hers. “I lied to you, Layla.”
She pulled her hand back. “Was it more than just a onetime thing? Is that it?” She tried to move farther away from him, but he grabbed both her hands and held on tightly. “What?” It came out as a whisper, because the look in his eyes told her that something was really wrong.
“Layla, there was no blond undergrad. No drunken night at the bar.”
Her voice shook. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
He looked away again, and she feared that what he was going to tell her would be even worse than the lie she had believed all these years.
“Hunter?” This time she tightened her grip on him.
“That entire story was fabricated.”
“But why?” Her thoughts were jumbled, because none of what Hunter was saying made any sense at all.
“Do you remember what was going on in your life during all of that?”
How could she forget? It was one of the most defining moments of her life. “Of course. I was in the final stages of my interviews with the Agency.” She looked him in the eyes, and then a sick feeling formed deep within the pit of her stomach.
“I was interviewed about you for the background check, and that was all standard operating procedure.”
“I remember you telling me everything went fine.” That conversation about the background check visit was vivid in her mind.
Hunter took a breath. “And it was, but then I got a visit from a completely different man.”
She felt her heart cracking into tiny pieces all over again, because deep in her gut, she knew where this might end. “What did this man say to you?”
“A lot of things, but the bottom line was that if I really loved you, I would break it off. That the country needed you more than I did, and that ultimately our relationship would be a liability not only to your career but to the Agency.”
She felt her mouth drop open. Had the CIA really tanked her relationship? “But why? Most recruits have relationships of some sort. I admit the success rates of CIA marriages aren’t the best, but still, it’s completely normal for CIA employees to get married.”
“You were what he described to me as an HVR.”
“HVR?”
“A high-value recruit. Only one percent of recruits fall into that category. You speak Arabic fluently, you know the
