“‘A good kid’?” I echoed.

Hearing someone refer to Nick as a kid seemed silly. He might have been under twenty, but he seemed further from a kid than a house cat from a cougar.

“Yes,” I answered, even though I didn’t know if it was true.

She eased off the bed, wincing when she made it upright. Her hips had been bothering her for a long time. But she didn’t like to complain about them. In fact, I couldn’t recall Aggie ever complaining about anything.

“Just be careful, huh?” she said, and winked at me as she shuffled past. “Oh, and…” She turned around briefly, to wag a finger at me, “he’s not allowed in your bedroom with the door shut.”

Okay, so maybe she drew the line at some freedoms.

A giggle burst from my throat at the thought of what she was implying.

Aggie wagged her finger a second time, a smile on her face. “I’m serious!” she said.

“I know. Of course, Aggie. No closed-door escapades.”

She shook her head as she left, chuckling to herself.

But when I was alone again, I couldn’t help but picture Nick in my room, sitting on my bed, here among my things. The door closed. His ridiculously blue eyes on me and only me. What that might entail.

The fire in my face said it all.

19

NICK

I WATCHED TREV ENTER THE BAR FROM across the street, hidden in the shadow of an alcove. I didn’t want to find myself cornered inside if he arrived with Riley or any other Branch agents. At least here I could keep an eye on the street.

Trev had arrived alone in the same black Jaguar he’d been driving a few months back. He’d done something weird to his hair, though. Half shaved, half long, like someone had started buzzing it from the bottom up and then quit before it was done.

He was wearing jeans and a short-sleeved henley. No combat gear. No stock Branch uniform. I didn’t miss the bulge of a gun at his back, though.

He went inside, the door creaking closed behind him, sealing the noise of the bar with it. I waited. A few other vehicles drove past. A minivan. A Jeep. A motorcycle. Another minivan. I scanned the roofs of the buildings.

Nothing.

I jogged across the street, pressed my back against the bar’s exterior, hands loose at my sides.

The door opened, and Trev came out.

I stepped into him, grabbed him by the arms, whirled him around the corner of the building, and slammed him into the darkness of the next street, into the brick wall of the bar.

Trev countered quickly with a gut punch. My lungs emptied in a gasp of air. He brought his left hand up, slamming my bottom jaw into my top, and my teeth clacked together. He kicked me in the knee. I went down, rolled, pulled my gun out from beneath my shirt, and pointed.

Trev already had his Glock on me.

“What is this?” he asked, cool, calm, as even as ever.

“Why were you so close?” I asked.

“If you’d given me five minutes, I could have told you.”

I spat blood to the sidewalk, felt a split in my lip when I ran my tongue across it.

“Are you alone?” I asked.

“Yes. Are you?”

“Yes.”

We remained that way for several long seconds, me on the sidewalk, aiming a gun, him standing two feet away, gun trained on my head.

“Fine.” He turned the gun away, hands up. “Let’s talk.”

I got to my feet, glad he was the first to give in. “Want a drink?”

“No.”

“Well, I do.”

“Smells like you’ve had enough already.”

I scowled at him as I passed.

Back inside the dimly lit bar, I ordered a beer, because Trev was probably right, but hell if I was going to admit it. We sat at the table farthest from anyone, the jukebox blaring a bluegrass song ten feet behind me. It was enough to give us privacy.

“I don’t work for the Branch anymore,” Trev said. “Let’s just get that out there right now.”

I took a draw from the beer and waited for him to go on.

“They knew I’d turned when I helped you guys escape. And, of course, they suspected I was the one who planted the bombs.”

“How much is left?”

He didn’t need clarification to know I meant the Branch.

“Riley, obviously. He’s the one running whatever is left. He just got a big push from someone in the Department of Defense. I don’t know what it was. Or why. But I’m guessing they’re working on some new program.”

I cursed and tightened my hold on the beer bottle, wanting to smash something so badly my fingers itched. “So if you don’t work for them, then why are you here?”

“Because…” He glanced at the bar’s entrance, then at the back door, before going on. “We got word that there was something here that Riley might want, something to kick-start the new program. I didn’t know it was you.”

“Who’s we?”

“We call ourselves the Coats.”

I cocked a brow. “The Coats?”

“Short for Turncoats. Remember Sura mentioning she was part of a group that opposed the Branch?”

I nodded. Sura had been Arthur’s ex-wife—Arthur was the scientist who ran the program at the farmhouse lab. He had also posed as Anna’s dad for five years, after the Branch wiped her memory and made her forget her real parents.

Despite all the shit Arthur had put us through, and the lies he’d force-fed Anna, he was all right.