"Start with a grain of truth."

That's what they'd told him in training, the instructor tapping his marker against the whiteboard, Jack and the other recruits copying down every word in their notebooks, hoping they would get it right on the exam.

"Start with a grain of truth, and build your story layer by layer until you have a big shiny pearl you can sell to anyone."

Only they hadn't said the pearl part. There was nothing poetic about the C.I.A. No, that part had come to him late one night under a Mexican sky, the smell of blood and gunpowder on his clothes, so stoned he couldn't quite remember how or when he'd gotten back to the ranch or what had happened earlier, which was the point, wasn't it? All he knew was that Ramon and Hector were pleased with him. Mission accomplished. Best not to look at it too carefully. Focus on building the pearl.

Ex-military. Dead wife. A man with a talent for violence and a weakness for heroin. Layer by layer, he laid down his cover and burnished it to a dark sheen with ragged pieces of his soul.

It worked; they'd bought it. And he'd come home thinking he could crack it open and return to himself as he'd done many times before, but this time it was harder. This time the grain was too big, sticking in his side, irritating the wound. Then he'd realized he had to go back, and he'd found he had a new truth to build on. A year of his life gone, and for what? A demotion and a bad habit.

So he'd built up that story, layering it with lies and crimes and senseless deaths.

Ironic that Nina had been the one to spot the flaw. Everyone else – Chase, Nicole, Ramon, Claudia – they'd seen him for who he'd become. But not Nina. Even as he had kissed her, lowering himself further than anything he'd done for Ramon, polluting himself more than anything he had pushed into his veins, it had been for nothing, because she alone had believed that there was still be a part of him that was not corrupted.

He should have realized he couldn't fool her; she had known him better than anyone. She was the only person he had never lied to. There were huge parts of his life he had kept from Teri and Kim, telling himself he was protecting them. Kate had seen him at work, but she needed him to be a hero, needed him to be strong for her as she dealt with her sister. After a while, it was too late to let her see his weaknesses, especially his newer, uglier ones.

Only Nina had seen it all. When they'd been together, it had been such a relief to let down the barriers, to show himself to someone and have her love him anyway. But ultimately he had loved Teri more, loved the version of himself that she saw, loved Kim.

Kim. That was what Nina had sensed tonight. She knew he could never walk away from his daughter, that Kim was the only solid ground in the quagmire he'd sunk himself into.

Even so, he'd been lying to Kim like all the rest. When she'd come to him, saying it was impossible to keep things from him, it had been all he could do not to tell her. But he hadn't, and then he had lied to her some more, drawing her into his plans, using her. This is who he was, now.

He despised himself, and it had given him away. Nina knew that men with nothing to lose could not afford shame.

Tonight, her hands on his thighs, her mouth on his, Nina had divined something in him even he wasn't sure was there. And suddenly he knew that he would find his way back.

Her twisted faith in him changed everything, and nothing. He felt no gratitude to her. The man she'd seen inside him was the one who had a right to hate her, who could claim someplace good and true and condemn her, damn her to the hell from which she'd come.

He knew what he had to do, but the mission came first. It always did.