He wanted to know more about her, everything and anything he needed to keep her safe. “I take it things did not go well with your daughter.”

“Not as I would have hoped, but as I predicted,” she said with a deep sadness in her eyes. “She forgives me but she’s upset, hurt, distrusting, and that’s completely her right. I didn’t expect hugs and tears.”

Pain, loss, and regret all radiated off her in waves. He walked past the covered meal to stand beside her, crossing his arms behind his back as he stared out at planes taxiing. “Seems to me since she is also an agent she might have a little understanding for the difficult decision you had to make. You sacrificed a lot to keep her safe.”

“Don’t make excuses for me.” She pressed a hand to her throat. “You don’t have to pretend to be nice anymore.”

“You think I was pretending?”

“It was your job to get close to me, to do whatever it took, to be whomever you needed to be to get under my skin so you could watch me. I get it. Now the need to playact is over.”

Playact? She thought he was pretending to care about her? He couldn’t let her go on believing that, but he wasn’t sure how much she was ready to hear.

So he just touched her arm lightly, but even that brought back memories of their kiss and how much more he wanted from her. “Not everything is an act. You should also know the best covers for agents are the ones that blend the truth in with the fiction. That makes it easier not to trip up.”

Her chin tipped proudly, but he could have sworn her eyes held a tentative hope that fired him to clasp both her hands and continue.

“If I had just wanted to get close to you, the simplest way would have been to pretend I was in love with someone else, perhaps a heartbroken widower who could never love again.” He’d played that role before on a prior mission in Cairo. “I would have created a backstory to keep you at arm’s length romantically while still staying close to you.”

“Instead, you chose to be my friend for a whole year?” She glanced down at his hands holding her. “Friends don’t kiss.”

Why was she making this difficult? Perhaps because she did not want the same thing? Or he had missed his chance by being too cautious? Too honorable? Frustration chewed at his already overtaxed self-control. “That’s because I do not want to be your friend, damn it, and this may not be the best time to tell you, given all you have been through today.” His hands slid up her arms to hold her shoulders. Finally, he allowed himself to vocalize his deepest wish since he’d first seen her. “But I want to be with you, romantically. I always have.”

“Oh.” Her eyebrows shot upward as quickly as the plane outside climbed into the night sky.

“Oh? That is all you have to say?” He had bared his pride to her, and she could only say… “Oh?”

“It’s the always part that I’m stuck on.” More light powered on outside, casting beams across her incredulity. “Always?”

The power of that first meeting with her surged over him again, the sense that he had been waiting for her his whole life. “From the moment I met you. You were sitting in your classroom putting together some kind of project for a bulletin board. You had the saddest look on your face. All I wanted in that moment was to make you smile.”

He still did.

“I remember the day you arrived, that moment you introduced yourself.” She angled her head to the side, her beautiful face so dear to him, every freckle imprinted on his memory. “I was thinking about my daughter and how we used to make art projects together when I came home—things to hang on the wall or even use as a doorstop. I needed to know that I’d left a part of myself with her whenever I left.”

Guilt creased deep grooves into her face, weighting down her words. More of that pain swelled from her and he realized that was the wall between them. She couldn’t allow herself to be happy. “Annie, I know you and I am certain you tried your best.”

Tears welled in her dark green eyes. “All of that doesn’t matter. The reality is, I let her down. I let my boys down… my husband too.” She looked at him with those sad eyes again, just like she had the first day he met her. She blinked and two fat tears rolled down her cheeks. “I don’t think I could live with myself if I failed again.”

“Annie…” His voice came out strangled and hoarse. He gathered her against his chest, breathing in the familiar scent of the hand lotion. So many times he’d walked by that bottle she kept on her desk and resisted the urge to lift it to his nose. “I meant what I said. My feelings for you have never been an act.”

“Still? Even after everything I’ve said?” she asked, all the self-doubt in her voice tearing him up inside. “The kind of person I am—a woman who could leave her husband and her children?”

Decades ago when he’d begun his undercover career, he might well have judged her, back when he’d been stuck in very narrow views of right and wrong. He’d seen too much since then to live that way anymore. Life was far more complicated.

“Annie, you are not perfect. Neither am I. No one is. This is likely the worst possible time to tell you, but I loved you the first time I saw you. Each day, as I got to know you better only made me love you more. It made me want to leave behind my old job and teach by your side in reality. To have the privilege to keep right on loving you.”

More of those tears flowed from the strongest woman he’d ever met. “Sam…”

He touched her mouth. “You are not alone anymore.”

She swayed into him, her mouth opening to speak, but he stopped her again. “Just think about what I said. I do not want an answer now when so much is turned upside down in your life. I only told you so you would know, you are not alone anymore.”

She kissed his fingers lightly, then held his hand to her chest. “It’s that simple for you to commit?”

“Not simple at all. But it is true and I have had much longer than you to think through this.”

Her pulse raced against his hand pressed to her heart, a tentative smile pushing through her tears. “Sam, I want to believe I can have that kind of happiness again. The picture you paint of us teaching together is incredible. I want to be with you, if that’s possible once I find out if I even have a future…”

The beautiful smile on her face faded into a frown, her eyes drifting from him to the window, then widening with confusion, then outright fear.

She pointed toward the tarmac outside, toward the halo of halogen lights. “That’s Ajaya, from the school. And one of those agents wearing a dark suit has a gun pointed at him.” The light gleamed off the agent’s cowboy hat. “He’s forcing Ajaya onto an airplane.”

***

Ajaya didn’t know who to trust anymore.

The American agent, Mr. Jones, acted like his friend, but he had a gun out, his hat in place like he was some African American cowboy. He said leaving was for his protection, but he wouldn’t explain why they were getting on an airplane. How much longer would his life be out of his control? When could he become a man and take charge of his own life, his own destiny?

Except he could never have the one thing he wanted most.

To go back. To live with his family and be a child again. The one thing he could never have.

The night wind full of dirt grated against his skin, carrying the sounds from the festival close by. The familiar music and scent of grilling meat reminded him of home. So much so he could swear he heard his mother calling his name.

“Ajaya…”

Mr. Jones pivoted on his heels, weapon leveled.

“Ajaya…”

It wasn’t his imagination. Someone was shouting for him. He looked and couldn’t believe… “Mrs. Johnson?”

Somehow, impossibly real, his English teacher ran toward him. His chemistry teacher Mr. Al-Shennawi trailed protectively behind her. Ajaya didn’t understand how it could be true. But Mr. Jones was already lowering his weapon. They were all on the same side. He was safe.

For the first time in longer than he could remember, Ajaya wasn’t alone anymore.

***

Stella winced as another firework exploded in the sky.

The courtyard celebration was already a security nightmare, full of people in thick layers of clothes that could hide an assortment of weapons—as her kanga hid her gun and the knife strapped to her leg.

Too bad there was nothing to protect her from letting Jose break her heart all over again. She was the smart, logical type. Except when it came to him. She tried to keep her eyes off Jose and his team as they stood in a protective row in front of the dais, red berets a perfect blend for the festive colors.

Her eyes betrayed her and skated front anyway, right to her pararescueman, the tallest one standing lean and strong in the middle. The loss burned over her, almost sending her to her knees. She’d pushed him away, but what choice did she have? Why did she keep setting herself up for this pain again and again?

She couldn’t afford to figure that one out now, not when she needed to focus every ounce of energy on the celebration around her. If they could get through this evening without incident, they might not have answers, but they would have time and space to follow up leads without fear of a national incident involving a major political figure.

Her earpiece chattered with voices from the command post, agents and military guys discussing surveillance. She was on the ground to gather human intel rather than sitting behind a computer. Mr. Smith had gotten past parking her behind a monitor. Not that any of them knew what they were looking for. They were shadowboxing with a ghostly enemy.

Hundreds of guests dressed in ceremonial clothes filled the tents with color—a mix of flowing robes to tuxedos. Women covered their hair with everything from simple headcloths to colorful hijabs. Jewelry, beads, and gold glinted in the lights, creating one distraction after another as she searched for guns, knives, and any other possible weapons. Even the display on the dais containing a case of African artifacts reminded her of how easily she’d turned similar remnants into tools to survive in the warlord’s compound. Except she hadn’t needed them because Jose had come for her. At the compound, he’d pushed through the doorway wearing his full battle-rattle, face streaked with camo paint.

But she’d recognized him without hesitation.

She forced her thoughts away from how she’d known him so instinctively.

More fireworks popped overhead, but otherwise the skies were empty. All flights had been canceled until after the guest of honor made her speech. The airspace would stay clear, no risk of threats from above.

Meanwhile, the invited guests and dignitaries partied on, picking at falafels, fried plantains, the spongy sour cake-like injera, meats, fruits, all local but surprisingly not overdone. In a country full of starving people, excesses would have been wrong—not to mention bad press.

Her mother had fought and sacrificed her entire adult life to help others here. Just as Jose sacrificed his life for others? Was it somehow her fate to love people who gave up a family for some higher calling? What was the answer for her?

A part of her wanted to shout at the Melanies and Joses of the world that this fight was futile. They couldn’t win and they were forfeiting a personal life for nothing. She pressed a finger to her earpiece, sifting through all the chatter. So much going on at once.

Mr. Smith monitoring the placement of security forces as the vice president’s wife took the podium.

Mr. Brown calling in from the entrance checkpoint.

Mr. Jones escorting Ajaya to a secure location.

Voices in her headset competed with the music swelling through the air, played on instruments that were works of art themselves—bamboo flutes, xylophones, kettle and clay pot drums, a kora harp. And those were only the ones she recognized.

Her earpiece filled with the cool logical tones of Mr. Brown. “Heads-up. Suspicious activity in the west corner of the park. Two persons of interest from a student rebel group. Wearing green hats. I repeat, west corner of the park.”