It couldn’t be her. Please, God, no. But I had to find out for sure.
I tugged her back even as she whipped around with another kick. She missed her mark though. She’d been aiming for the groin, I could tell, but instead, she got my gut. It wasn’t a picnic, but it wasn’t debilitating either.
I dragged her under my body. “Hold bloody still, or I will hurt you.”
She still struggled.
“I’m going to take this mask off of you.” She shook her head back and forth, fighting, clawing, and I knew. I knew what I was going to find, but I still had to know for sure. I reached for her mask, pulled it up, and lifted it partway off her face. It revealed lips that I was very well acquainted with.
Chapter 17
Lyra
Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.
He’d started to pull off my mask as I fought his hold. The mask only made it up to my nose before I reached my arm up straight over my head and smashed it down on his hand, right at the wrist, forcing him to loosen his grip. I raised my hips, rolled him over, and landed a punch that was hard enough to stun him as I reached for the weapon he’d dropped.
With my finger on the trigger, I pressed my comm unit hard. “I have an assailant. Third floor hallway. Status check.”
Addie’s voice was sharp. “What happened to your goddamn comms? We have the girl. I repeat, we have the girl. All teams, exit now.”
My team had her.
And Marcus is Exodus.
I had my gun pointed at his chest, and deep down I knew I just hadn’t wanted to see it. And Christ, I didn’t know what to do or what to say. We just froze in position there in the hallway, staring at each other.
On channel B, I called out, “Addie?”
“Yeah, are you getting out of there? Your exit is south exit. Proceed there ASAP. We still have Exodus agents in there.”
“Addie,” my voice wheezed out.
“What? What is it, Lyra? Are you injured?”
“No. I have an Exodus agent in front of me.”
“Is he dead?”
“No. He’s alive.”
I’d thought it was just us on B channel, but Roz’s voice came in loud and clear.
“What’s the problem, Lyra?”
I forced myself to repeat the words that slashed at my heart. “I—I have an Exodus agent.”
He peered at me from where he knelt, hands by his side. I’d dragged my mask back down, but he knew. He absolutely knew. So what was the point? Finally, I reached up and pulled it over my head so I could fucking breathe.
My heart pumped so hard, flooding my blood with adrenaline. I didn’t know what to do.
On the ground, Marcus scowled at me as he reached for his own mask.
I shook my head at him. “No, you don’t. No suicide pills.”
“Easy does it, love. I’m just taking off my mask.”
I cocked my gun, but he was telling the truth. All he did was remove his mask. His handsome jawline came into view first. And even in this situation, my pussy clenched.
Oh fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
All the pieces fell together, finally making sense. All of them. As I watched the man whom I’d started to care about take his mask off, I could see so clearly all those moments. The way he’d stood between me and Prochenko, his insistent demand on self-defense training, and him teaching me skills I already had. Skills all Firm and Exodus agents had.
Two sides of the same coin.
“Lyra, you know what to do here. We’ll both walk away and we both stay alive.”
“Are you kidding me? You’re a dead man.”
“I’m not if you don’t tell anyone.”
It suddenly occurred to me what was going to happen to my life. I couldn’t go home because he would tell everyone who I was. Once again, I was that girl with no home, no family, nowhere to go. No safety.
I wanted to cry. “Why did it have to be you?”
“Me? Why did it have to be you? At any point, you could have told me, and I would have helped you.”
“Helped me what? Stop doing my job? I’m not an assassin. Is that what you think? That I’m an assassin? I’m a government agent, just like you.”
He gave me a dismissive laugh. “Oh, right. Firm agents are assassins for hire. Everyone knows that.”
“Is that what they told you? We’re two sides of the same coin, Marcus. I’m not an assassin. We’re field operators, that’s all.”
“So you say. How many hits have you performed?”
“What? Is that something to brag about?”
“How many, Agent Wilkinson?”
I frowned at that. “How many have you done? You are Exodus, after all. Let me guess, from the looks of you, you’re ex-military, plucked out at your peak for the most top-secret missions.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t I? We work for two sides of what was once the same organization, but they’re in competition now. Whatever you’ve been told about me, don’t believe it. Just like I don’t believe you’re an assassin. But I do believe you’re a good little soldier, and that given the opportunity, you would kill me.”
He winced. “You think I could do that? Kill you? After everything?”
“I think you’re capable of it.” My gun didn’t waver. I switched back to B channel and said, “Control, advise.”
Roz’s voice was stern. “We don’t need him. Eliminate him.”
The bottom fell out of my stomach. “Repeat? Bad copy. Repeat.”
My mentor, my friend, the only mother figure I’d had in the last six years through my training and then my time as a field agent had just told me to kill the man that I—
What? You love?
“I—”
“Agent Wilkinson? Lyra, am I clear?”
“Clear.”
I switched channels and turned off the comms. “Marcus, I’m sorry.”
He frowned at me as he pushed to his feet, and I backed up one step. “You can’t shoot me anymore than I could shoot you. We can both walk away. Put the
