Page 80 of Protecting You

He was about to try again when she sighed.

“Dad honors achievement. What have I achieved? All I ever wanted was to follow him into the CIA. I failed there.” Her eyes narrowed in a glare. “Thanks to you.”

“Me?” He sat back, surprised. “What did I do?”

“We both applied for the same job. Despite the fact that I’d been working for the NSA in intelligence for years, they gave it to you.”

“I didn’t know you were up for that job.” He shouldn’t be pleased he’d bested her, especially considering it’d been more important than class rank—she’d beat him by about a tenth of a percentage point—or the software development contest they’d both entered.

He’d won that one.

“I was qualified for it,” she said. “More qualified than you were.”

He laughed without amusement. “That’s quite an assumption.”

“Come on, Callan. I was already working in intelligence. You were off in the Army.”

“I worked for INSCOM. Army intelligence.”

“Oh.” She blinked, then tilted her head to the side. “Really?”

“For the last three years of my service. What did you think, that they just…liked me more?”

“I thought…I thought you got the job because of your military experience. And because you’re a man.”

“It never crossed your mind that I might actually be more qualified.”

She closed her laptop and tossed it onto the bed beside her. “I didn’t think about it that way. I didn’t realize you were… I should’ve gone into the service. I was going to, but Dad told me not to. He said I wouldn’t need military experience. And then when I failed to get the job, he just acted like…like he wasn’t surprised. Like he’d never believed for a minute I could do it.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t that.”

“Trust me. It was.”

“Does he act like that toward your sisters?”

Alyssa shrugged, gazing out the window. It was a rainy afternoon, typical for springtime in Maine.

Callan had turned on all the lights in the room to chase away the dreariness.

But darkness crossed Alyssa’s face, her lips tightening as if she’d pressed them closed to keep whatever bothered her inside.

He should let it go. It was none of his business. But his whole life was about keeping—and exposing—secrets.

“Tell me the story.”

“Who says there’s a story?”

He raised his eyebrows, not letting her off the hook.

She snatched her cardigan from the top of the bureau and slipped it on. Enough time passed that he was sure she wasn’t going to answer.

She settled on the bed across from him. “It was a long time ago. I shouldn’t even…” Her voice trailed, and again, he kept silent.

“When I was twelve, my parents had to go to some event on the opposite side of Portland, about an hour away from our house. I’d taken a babysitting class, and they’d left me home with my sisters a couple of times. But this night, they hired a sitter. I was mad. I knew I could handle it.”

Callan couldn’t imagine leaving Peri home alone, ever. There was a big difference between eight and twelve, but even so, the thought of all the things that could go wrong had his pulse racing.

“Mom was the overprotective one,” Alyssa said. “It was the only time Dad ever took my side. He told Mom I could handle it. ‘You’ve got to trust your kids if you ever want them to be trustworthy.’” Alyssa had affected a man’s voice. “I thought for sure Mom would relent, but she said they were going to be gone too long and were going too far to risk it.

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