Judd rolled his head and Jessica came into view. His wife was still sound asleep, breathing softly, a slight, satisfied smile on her lips, an expression of gentle relief on her face. He watched the contours of her mouth and listened to her lungs, a comforting rhythm of inhale and exhale. Yes, Jessica was asleep. And they were both still here.
The night before, Judd had returned from Zimbabwe, a grueling twenty-two-hour journey that had provided him far too much time alone with nothing but his thoughts. Too much time to think about his latest assignment on behalf of the Secretary of State and how it all had unfolded. It had all come together just a bit too smoothly, a touch too succinctly. Judd’s mind ran through the events—the downfall of Zimbabwe’s dictator; the election of a new, hopeful democratic leader for that shell-shocked country; a murderous Ethiopian general dead, the victim of a premeditated campaign of revenge—all good results, but . . .
It had required a thick dollop of good luck. A suspicious amount of good luck. And so, too, had his previous mission three months earlier to rescue an American ally in the West African nation of Mali.
Judd knew that luck was random. Luck was always random. Before he’d arrived at the State Department, he had been a professor at Amherst College, a number cruncher, a leading expert at teasing out patterns in data to uncover what was really going on. And, like any decent scholar of statistics, Judd knew that randomness always—always—washed out in the end.
So, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, wedged into a middle seat in row 64 of a South African Airways Airbus A330, Judd Ryker had finally admitted to himself the only possible way it could make any sense at all. The source of his luck could only be . . . Jessica.
His wife never conceded what she did, exactly. She never spoke the letters CIA, never said the word “spy,” never mentioned anything about operations or cover. But she didn’t have to.
Zimbabwe, Mali. How far back did it go? Was their whole relationship, going back to their very first meeting in the Sahara Desert eleven years ago, built on a lie?
Judd should have been furious, he knew. His wife—his most trusted confidante, the mother of his two children—had been deceiving him for years. She had always been private and a bit of a loner. He accepted that. It was one of her attractions. But now he knew that she had been playing him like a puppet master. Worse, if Jessica had manipulated him into an unwitting role in a political assassination in Zimbabwe, then his own wife had tricked him into murder.
As jarring as these realizations were, Judd marveled to find that he wasn’t upset. Once he pushed through the confusion, he was, deep down . . . grateful.
Who had ever heard of a college professor running his own special one-man team inside the U.S. government? It was ridiculous, he now knew. Judd’s experiment at the State Department, his Crisis Reaction Unit, the baby he had created from scratch, had been set up to fail. How could he have expected to succeed without help, without some hidden hand? How could Landon Parker, the Secretary of State’s powerful chief of staff, who had created S/CRU and hired Judd, not have known this, too?
Lying in the warm comfort of his bed, Judd realized his world was suddenly turned upside down. But he wasn’t angry, because, on the most essential issue, Jessica had been utterly convincing. While he was only now learning her true identity, he still believed that their marriage, their family, their life together, was all real. Her love was real.
Jessica’s big brown eyes opened.
“Hey,” he whispered.
“Hi.”
“You sleep?”
She nodded. “You?”
“Yeah. I think so,” Judd said.
“Are we still . . . good?” she asked.
Judd paused. “Uh-huh.”
“I’m glad we got it all out in the open last night.”
“Me too.”
“It’s better this way,” she said.
Judd scooted over in the bed and kissed her softly on the lips.
“Better,” she repeated. “I feel . . . free.”
“Me too,” Judd said.
“But, Judd”—she shook her head—“what are the new rules?”
“Rules? Can’t we just be honest with each other?” Judd started to feel sick. “Isn’t that what last night was about? Finally coming clean?”
“Not possible, sweetheart,” she said. “I think you know that.”
“Then let’s just promise to stay out of each other’s business.”
“Also not possible,” she said. “We’re too good a team. If there’s anything to learn from the past few days, it’s that.”
“Okay,” he sat up. “So what are the Ryker family rules of engagement?”
“I think we need three.”
“Three? You’ve already thought a lot about this, Jess.”
“Of course I have. Rule one is easy: Assist. We help each other. That’s been working so far. I think we can achieve a lot by working together. I’ll help you with S/CRU and you can help me rebuild my career once I’m active again.”
“Rule one is assist,” Judd nodded. “Fine. Agreed. What’s next?”