Page 52 of Code Name: Reaper
When my mom reached out and stroked my hair, I wanted to lie down beside her and beg her to keep doing it until I fell asleep. Also like she’d do when I was a kid.
“I’m worried about you.” Her voice was heavy with emotion.
“I’m worried about me too.”
My father sat on the other side of me. “Do you want to talk about it, or do you want us to mind our own business?”
I looked from him to her, then at him again. “I’m afraid I fucked up royally, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
“Pour us all another drink, Rick. Our son wants to talk.”
After finishing what was in my glass, I let everything spill out, starting with the night in Budva when Agent Beaudoin opened the door to the safe house and invited me inside.
I told them everything—about her disappearing after the attack on the villa, how I’d tracked her across Europe until I finally found her in Berlin, and about how crazy she made me when she’d argue with me about everything, including the color of the sky.
Then I got to the hardest part. Admitting I’d read her in on something I never should have and, because of it, I’d endangered an asset who trusted me with his life.
My dad spoke first. “You said you fucked up royally. Did you mean by revealing your source or something else?”
“Something else,” my mom answered without giving me the chance to. “What did you do?”
“I accused her of betraying my confidence.”
Her face was tight and her brow furrowed, but that she hadn’t stopped stroking my hair made me less worried about whatever she was about to say.
“Do you have proof?” she asked.
While I was ready to blurt out everything I’d told myself, I didn’t. None of it was proof. So I shook my head.
“Where is she—Amaryllis—now?”
“At the town house.”
“Well, she didn’t immediately get on another plane and return to England. That’s a good sign,” said my dad.
“I would have,” my mom added.
My father chuckled. “That’s what made me say it.”
“There’s a second bedroom down the hallway on the left. Go sleep, and we’ll figure the rest of this out tomorrow,” said my mother, perhaps noticing me struggling to stay awake.
“I should probably return?—”
“No, you shouldn’t. What you need more than anything is sleep, and if you return to where Amaryllis is, you won’t get it.”
“She’s right,” my dad muttered.
“I always am,” she said with a smile for me, then him.
“I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep.”
“Go lie down anyway. If you can’t, you know your father and I will still be awake and we can talk some more.”
As I trudged to the hallway she’d pointed at, every inch of my body felt too heavy to take another step. It was as though I was a teenager who’d confessed I did something they’d be angry about, yet, because I’d come and told them, they went easy on me, forgave me, and helped me sort it out.
It was too late for that with Amaryllis. I doubted she’d ever forgive me.
I fell onto the bed more than lay down, not even bothering to take off my clothes.
