Jet

secluded seaside bungalow outside of Ashdod, on the Mediterranean.

“You can’t quit. Nobody quits the team. That’s not an option,” he had softly explained.

“I know how it works. But I’m not asking. I understand you’re in this until you…you can’t do it anymore. I remember what I signed up for. But I need to get out.”

“It’s not so simple.” He trailed his fingers along the contour of her stomach, lazily tracing a circle around her navel.

“Yes, it is.”

“It’s forbidden. You know that.”

“So is this.” She rolled onto her side and propped her head up with the palm of her hand, leaning on her elbow as she regarded his profile. He wasn’t handsome in any traditional sense — his features were too imperfect, a touch too rugged and worked. Black wavy hair worn longish, a nose that was a trifle too large, but a sensuality to his lips that she knew was genuine and eyes that she could get lost in for weeks. She had never felt like she had been in love before, and what they had together probably wasn’t that, but it was the closest equivalent she’d ever experienced, and when they were together, she couldn’t get enough of him.

“Fair point,” he acknowledged. The rules were abundantly clear. Their trysts — no, their relationship — violated every rule in the book. Operatives were chosen because they had no intimate associations. They were odd beasts who were most at home when on assignment. That made any personal connection impossible. They couldn’t speak about their work, or even tell anyone what they were involved in, and had to disappear for weeks or sometimes years, depending on the mission. There was no room in such a life for any kind of relationships. The team members had sworn allegiance to a higher cause — one of the many sacrifices they made without question.

“That didn’t stop you. Didn’t stop us,” she corrected.

Any friendship between operatives was off limits, much less an intimate one. But even worse, he was her control — her superior, her mentor, and the one who had to make dispassionate decisions to send her into harm’s way; into situations that could result in death…or worse. If anyone had any idea that they were involved, it would have been the end of him. Of them both. But that hadn’t stopped them. The chemistry was too intoxicating. She’d been as powerless to resist it as he had — even though he was a decade older than her, they were insatiable when together, he like a wild bull to her wanton tigress.

“No. It certainly didn’t stop us,” he conceded, turning his head to take in her incredible features — a slightly Asian cast from her mother, but with piercing green eyes, eyes like nothing he’d ever seen before, which she routinely masked with colored contact lenses when she was undercover. He’d been willing to risk everything to be with her, and she him.

“I have an idea, David.” Jet had forced his real name out of him after their first lovemaking tryst two and a half years earlier. He was the only member of the team who knew her as Maya, and she, the only one who knew his real identity. To everyone else, he was Ariel.

“I don’t want to hear your idea,” he protested, but she saw a flicker in his eyes that betrayed him.

She laid out her plan in a dispassionate tone. She had to die, preferably during an operation, in a manner that would never be questioned. He immediately understood what she was proposing, as well as the logic behind it. The only way she would ever be safe would be if she was dead. Safe from the reach of the Mossad, safe from any enemies she might have made in the course of her missions, safe from a world in which she was a predator, a combatant to be exterminated on sight.

“But, Maya. Why? That’s my question. I mean, with your history…what else will you do? You were made to be on this team.” David knew everything one could about Jet from her dossier, and she had confided in him things in her past that she’d never told anyone else about. Her stepfather. The abuse. The night he had come for her when she was thirteen, as he had been coming for years, when she’d finally ended the nightmare, only to be plunged into a worse one. Juvenile lockup. Psychiatrists. The state taking over her care. Countless fights in institutions that were unforgiving and brutal. An endless battery of depersonalizing traumas nobody should ever have to endure.

“I want to live, David. I want to be free of the past and start over. I want to be about something besides revenge and killing and hate. Is that really so hard to grasp?” She paused and reached to him, brushing a lock of his hair from where it dangled in his eyes. “I need to start over. And you know me well enough. If you won’t help me, I’ll do it by myself.” A trace of steel edged her tone.

He sighed. “But why now? After everything we’ve been through. That you’ve been through. Why, my angel?”

“Because it’s time, David. It’s time.”

He nodded, a subtle, almost imperceptible gesture that spoke louder than any screamed oration could have.

She couldn’t tell him the real reason. She couldn’t tell anyone. Why everything had changed in the blink of an eye, and she’d suddenly had a glimpse of an alternative future — a future without killing or danger. A future filled with love. The love she’d never had…since her parents died.

Two weeks earlier, Jet had discovered she was pregnant.

There could be no mistake. She’d taken the test three times to confirm it.

And everything had suddenly become different.

Her past had been filled with enough horror to last ten lifetimes, and she’d shared a large part of it with David as they’d grown more connected. It had been difficult trusting him with that part of her, but she’d done so, and to his credit, he’d shouldered the burden. But she’d also told him that she would never have children, that she’d be the worst parent in the world — and even though the declaration had been hyperbolic, there was an element of truth to it. She killed for a living. Her emotions had to be glacial for her to be effective, with no second guessing… and no compassion. It had been drilled into her when training for the team, and life had pounded her with the truth of it for a long time before. The only way you could be safe and avoid being hurt was to not feel. Feeling meant pain. Feeling meant suffering.

But feeling also meant being alive.

The sad reality was that she’d been dead inside all her adult life and most of her childhood. The only spark of feeling that had ever been ignited inside of her had been lit by David, and even then she couldn’t fully share it with him or let it grow beyond a certain point. But when she’d peed on that strip and seen it show positive, her entire world had tilted, and suddenly a long-forgotten feeling had surfaced. An emotion so powerful it took her breath away.

The urge to protect.

She couldn’t tell David; she tortured herself with this decision for a dozen sleepless nights, but he couldn’t know. At least, not yet. Maybe once she had the baby and had settled into a new life, where things were stabilized and she was safe…maybe then she could tell him. And maybe then he would also choose a different path.

But for now, she couldn’t risk how he would react. David was a good man, an honorable man, but he was also a control freak — he had to be in his position. He was in command of every aspect of the team, of any operation they were on, of everything that happened, and he had been specially chosen for his personality, just as surely as she had been selected for hers. And while she had strong feelings for him — might even be in love with him if she was honest with herself — she knew him well enough to know she couldn’t predict what he would do, and she couldn’t take the chance that the truth would trigger a disastrous chain of events. This was her choice, and she would do whatever was necessary to keep her baby safe. It ate at her heart to keep it from him, but in the end, she had no other option.

“You know this won’t be easy,” he said, taking her hand and kissing her palm with unexpected tenderness.

She almost started crying — eyes welling up — but David probably thought she was overcome by gratitude. She pulled her hand away and wiped her face with the back of her arm, then fixed him with a calm gaze, the moment over.

“We’ll need a plan,” she said. “I hear you’re pretty good with those.”

“Your idea isn’t bad, but we’ll need to fine-tune it and wait for the appropriate opportunity. When the chance comes, you need to be ready. That means passports, money, weapons, a destination where you’ll be safe…”

“I know.” She rolled off her elbow, onto her back, and stared at the ceiling before closing her eyes. The rest was logistics. Execution. Picking a place far away where nobody would know her, and she could blend into a new life without attracting any attention. Lining up the funding and the paperwork. These were the sorts of details that