bulk of his strategy involved Tristan prying information from me. It was those notes that made my stomach churn.
A note written by Tristan, on the day we met for the first time: Followed targets 4 and 5 as they left the house and went running in park. Made first contact with target 4. She resisted conversation. —T. Connelly
A note written by Kellan, from the night of Ethan’s party: Instructed agent to tell target 4 he has fallen in love with her to prompt her to confess her own secrets. Partial success. —J. Kellan
“Our whole relationship was set up,” I said, my voice small. “You manipulated every moment of it.”
“Tessa—” He took my hand.
I jerked it away. “I think you mean ‘Target 4.’”
He grabbed my hand back. “No. I mean Tessa. I love you. That is not a lie. I wanted to tell you, but not because Kellan said to. I wanted to wait until you knew the real me.”
I knew the real Tristan now, and he was a liar.
“Tell me, Tristan.” I narrowed my eyes. “Was the tree almost falling on me part of the plan too?”
“God, no. We’d never purposely put you in danger like that.”
“And what would you call this?” I waved my arms around the cell.
“This,” he said as he copied my movements, “is the first time in your entire life you haven’t been in danger.”
I rolled my eyes.
He roared then, a frustrated, furious growl, and jumped up. “It terrified me when you told me some man was hunting you, Tessa! The first thing I did was call Kellan to demand an army of guards to protect your family until we found him. But before Kellan answered, I saw the name you wrote in my notebook. Dennis Connelly. My father.”
He slapped the wall. “So I hung up on Kellan and called my dad. All missions are supposed to be confidential, but I told him everything. That’s when he realized which case I was on, that I was on a criminal case, his old case. Kellan was lying to us all along, and your parents were lying to you.”
His anger scared me a little, and I shrank back. He sank to the cot and raked his hands through his hair. His next words were gentle. “When I was ten, my dad went out of town with his team on a simple recruitment mission. That afternoon, some guards came and brought my mom and sister and me to the APR. They told us my dad had a heart attack and his partners had been killed. We were never told any details except they were interviewing a potential psionic subject, and something went wrong and the subject and his wife attacked them. They stabbed his partners to death, and they suspected they actually gave my dad that heart attack. The healers healed my dad, but he was weaker than before. He spent the rest of his career here trying to find your family and bring you and your siblings to safety, until my mom finally convinced him to retire so he could rest his heart.”
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