…..

I know, I know. "Wow, two updates in two days?! That's awesome!" It's really not, though, because I just waited so long to edit that I really had no option but to put them up so close together. I become the world's worst procrastinator during the month of December. Hopefully (fingers crossed) this doesn't become a habit for me, because I think a lot of you are really enjoying this new "post twice a week" schedule. Also, to remind everybody: I consider a week to be Monday through Sunday, the same as my work schedule.

Thank you all for continuing to read and – as always – thank you to those that have reviewed, favorited, followed, and private messaged. I so adore each and every one of you more than you can know. Seriously.

Happy Reading!

…..

Chapter Nineteen: Impossible

Steve

"Are you sure you want me to go back to my room?" Kol asked me as he finished packing up the small duffel bag that he'd brought to my room while we'd shared. "I can stay."

"I like my space, and I know that you do, too." Allie's brother wasn't a bad roommate, but roommates were for military camp or college. And those days were long gone for me.

He zipped his bag with a dramatic flair and turned to face me. "But we're about to be brothers. Twins, even."

I held back a laugh. "I don't think that's how it works."

He faked a thoughtful expression. "Is it not?"

"No. Not at all."

Before he could come up with some other bit of nonsense, there was a knock at the door.

"Don't tell me you already invited someone else to stay with you," Kol teased me. "I haven't even left yet!"

I rolled my eyes and called out, "Come in!" I expected it to be Max or Roger or even Alex.

But I had not been expecting Allie's mother to be the one to walk through the door.

Nor had Kol, apparently, for his expression fell from joviality to barely suppressed anger in the matter of half a second.

Evelyn saw her son's expression and smiled apologetically. "I'm sorry. I, uh, I wanted to talk to Steve and I thought you had already moved back into your room. That's what they were saying at the breakfast table. Um…"

Most awkward silence I've ever been a part of, I thought and looked to Kol, curious as to how he would respond.

In one fluid motion, he picked up his duffel bag and threw it over his shoulder. His next words were very clearly to me and not to his mother. "I'll see you for lunch. Thanks for bunking with me."

"Yeah, no problem."

He nodded and then walked right past his mother without so much as a glance, slamming the door shut behind him much like an angsty teenager.

Again, there was an awkward silence.

I broke it, not willing to let it fester. "You said that you wanted to talk to me?"

"I did." She wrung her hands nervously. "Um, is here okay, or… would you like to go take a walk?"

"I'm fine in here." I just couldn't imagine what she would have to talk to me about. I gestured to the chair in front of the desk. "Please, sit."

"Okay. Thank you." As she walked towards the seat, I took her in and saw Allie in everything from the shape of her face to the graceful way in which she moved. But there were differences, too… her dark hair had some gray sprinkled in at the roots, there were subtle aging lines on her face, and she dressed very plainly.

Once she was seated and comfortable, she looked at me and sighed. "I wanted to talk to you about Allie."

"What about her?" I gave up trying to figure out why she was here. It would surely come up soon enough.

"I want to make amends. With all of my children, of course, but I'd like to start with Allie."

When there wasn't more, I nodded slowly and tried to think of how to be as diplomatic as I could. Allie wasn't too fond of her, but she was still her mother. That demanded respect on my part. "That's great, but I think that's something that you should talk to Allie about."

"I intend to," she informed me. "But I wanted to start with you."

"I… I don't know why you'd want that."

She sat back in the chair and sighed. "I want to start with Allie because I think that she would be more likely to forgive me than any of her brothers."

I wasn't so sure about that, but I didn't say it out loud. "That might be a safe bet."

"I'm sure that you've heard by now that Michael won't even come back here since he's heard that I arrived. I know that he's saying that he wants to stay out there with his team, looking for Trent, but I know that he just wants to avoid me. Kol can't even be in the same room with me for more than five minutes. He won't even look at me, for God's sake. And Max…" She sighed and seemed lost in her own head. "Max and I weren't ever as close as the others. He's always kept people at a distance. So, in a way, he seems like he doesn't care as much as the others. But at the same time, he's always been the last to apologize and the last to forgive. He doesn't trust easily and, when you break that trust, he's not likely to forgive any easier."

"That's… a pretty accurate description of the situation." At least she didn't have any kind of misconceptions.

"The only one that I haven't seen is Allie, for obvious reasons. What do you think her reaction will be?"

Taken aback by the question, I shrugged. "I… I honestly don't know. In the note that was passed to her, I told her that you would be a part of the plan, so she knows that you're here. She'll have time to process that before she ever sees you. That might help, but…"

When my pause lengthened, she encouraged me to go on. "I want to be as prepared as possible."

"She found you once before," I reminded her and, when she nodded, I went on. "She told me about it. She also told me that she never told anyone else, not even Kol, because she wanted them to remember you as you were back then. A loving mother. She said that she wished she'd never gone to find you. So, if you want to know how I think she'll react… not well."

Tears gathered in Evelyn's eyes, but she blinked them back as she nodded. "I can't say that I'm surprised. I never wanted her to find me, you know. I never wanted any of them to find me. But I wasn't surprised that, out of all of them, it was Allie that did. She's always been so… incredible. Resourceful, intelligent, driven…" She smiled fondly at the memory. "I missed so much, and I hated that, but I knew that they would all be okay."

"They are," I assured her. "I speak mostly for Allie and Kol, but they've all turned out to be incredible. But I don't think that any of them are going to be able to look past the way that you did things. To expect that… even if it's just a tiny part of you that expects that… it's unrealistic and, honestly, kind of stupid. I lost my own mom when I was young, and it tore me apart. So, I know what they're going through to an extent. But… you left. You had a choice. And you chose to walk away."

"Because-"

I cut her off. "To everyone but your family, your reasons may matter. But not to them. They don't care why you left or how many lives you potentially saved. You left them."

Tears came again and this time, she had to wipe them away. "You don't pull punches."

"No."

"I can respect that." She sniffed. "What do you think of me?"

"I've already told you what I think. It hasn't changed. What you did was great, but the way that you went about it… I just can't condone that. Not when I'm about to be a parent myself." I had, of course, tried to imagine being in her situation – being one of the only choices to get a dangerous weapon away from a criminal that could use it to damage the world. Would I leave my own child to do it? I doubted it. I would reach out for help and figure it out.

This time, she didn't even bother trying to stop the tears that made a slow trail down her cheeks. "That, perhaps, is the worst part. My baby girl is about to get married and have a baby of her own and I won't get to see it. At least, not up close, like it should be." She paused for a moment to grab a tissue off of the desk and dab at her eyes. "I suppose a silly part of me was hoping that you would intercede on my behalf."

"That's not my style." I sighed. "If Allie is going to have a relationship with you, then it needs to be on her terms. Not yours, not mine, nor anyone else's. Maybe she'll come around. Maybe she never will. But it's not something that you can control. And, if I may offer you a small piece of advice, your best bet is to leave it alone. With Allie and your other children. The more you push, the angrier they'll get."

"I think I'm starting to see that with Kol," she agreed and nodded. "I'll back off and stay as far back as I can."

I nodded. "I think that's a good strategy. For what it's worth, though, I really appreciate that you're willing to help with Allie. And I know that Kol and Max and Michael are appreciative, too, but they're never going to tell you that to your face. So, I'm telling you for them."

She forced a smile. "Thank you. I would do anything for my daughter. For any of my children."

With nothing to say to that, I asked her, "Was that it?"

"It was." She stood. "Thank you for taking the time to talk to me. You've been very kind, all things considered."

"I like to think that's how I was raised."

"Or the military training." She headed for the door. "I'll keep your words in mind."

"Good."

With a small wave, she let herself out and closed the door behind her.

"Well, that was… odd," I muttered to myself.

I didn't have any other plans for the day, so I was considering going for a run on the treadmill in the garage, but my phone rang before I had the opportunity to actually do it.

"Danny," I muttered as I moved for the nightstand, where my phone was on the charger. Danny had been calling me nearly every single day to check for updates or see if there was anything that he could do.

But it wasn't Danny's name that popped up on the display.

"Seth," I answered, heart pounding. Seth and I weren't close enough for him to just call to catch up. Besides, he'd only left a day ago. That meant that he had to have news. "What's up?"

"Steve," he greeted, and I could pick up chatter in the background. "You have some time to talk?"

I wasn't sure if he was teasing or not. "All the time in the world."

"Good, because I don't have long. I took a smoke break to get away."

Confused, I said, "I didn't realize that you smoked." I'd never seen him with a cigarette, nor had I ever smelled it on him.

"I don't." He coughed. "These things are disgusting. Listen, our tech guy thinks that he found something on a location for Trent."

My heart started pounding as adrenaline rushed through my bloodstream. Lunging for my notebook and a pen, I said, "Great. Give me everything you've got."

"It's not much," he warned me, "but it sounded like more than you guys had managed to get so far." He paused. "Is this a secure line?"

I opened the notebook up to a fresh page and clicked the pen. "Yes. Our tech guy secured all of our phones right after we got here, and he continues to do so at least once a week." Roger was very thorough.

"Excellent, because Amos didn't exactly get this information… legally."

Of course not. "Understood."

"Good. He did something with some satellite… He tried to explain it to me, but I got lost every time. Somehow, he backtracked the footage of some camera somewhere and has it narrowed down to a five-mile radius. I know that's still a lot of area to cover…"

I cut him off. "But it's better than nothing, which is exactly what we had." My pen was at the ready. "Do you have the coordinates for the center of the radius?"

"Yes." He rattled them off. "I asked him how sure he was, and he said over ninety-nine percent. I trust this guy with my life, and Allie's too. They're friends, and I know that she would tell you the same thing. I'm about to head out on an op, but I can send Lance your way if you want someone to start checking it out."

"No," I said, "one of Allie's brothers is out right now with a small team doing exactly that. I'll give him a call and let him get started."

"Great." He cursed. "Break's over. Keep me updated."

"Will do."

He hung up and I excitedly ripped the page out of the notebook and dialed Michael's number. He answered on the last ring. "Yes?"

His brusque manner didn't even bother me anymore. Besides, I was excited about the news. "Allie's friends at the CIA have a radius. Five miles, but better than nothing."

"Definitely." His voice warmed only slightly. "Do you have the coordinates?"

I gave them to him and he repeated them back to me to make sure that he had them down correctly.

"We'll get started on this right away," he said. "Tell the others."

And I rushed down the stairs to do exactly that.

Allie

"This is a terrible idea," Ari informed me.

"You've said that," I sighed. "Five times."

"Make it six, because this is a terrible idea." He darted in front of me as I was about to open the door. "You can't just get in a car with them and let them take you away. They'll drive you to a forest, shoot you, and bury you where no one will ever find you."

"You're being ridiculous. I've been working this op for a while now. They trust me. They want to bring me up to the next level."

"You haven't been working this op for nearly long enough to actually be that high on their list. I smell a trap."

I rolled my eyes at him. "You're coming with me. I don't know why you're so worried when you'll be there the whole time."

"Because I want to protect you." There was fire in his eyes. "I always want to be there to protect you. But someday, I won't be able to."

A chill raced along my spine at his words. "That's morbid."

He cupped my face in his hands, expression serious. "It's true. I can't always be there for you, Allie. And it kills me." Stepping back, he raked a hand through his dark hair, mussing it. "Let's run away."

Feeling like I hadn't heard him correctly, I asked, "What?"

He walked past me, wired. "Let's run," he repeated. "I'll get out of Mossad, you'll get out of the agency, and we'll just… go."

My heart was racing, but I couldn't put a finger on why. There was something desperate in his plan that both scared and excited me. But running away… "Go where?"

Turning back to me, he smiled. "Anywhere. Name a place and we'll go."

"This isn't like you. You're a planner, Ari. You'd never just run away without a plan in place. What's going on?"

"I just want out." He sighed and stepped closer once more, lowering his voice. "Don't you want out? You haven't been the same since your last op."

I shuddered at the memory.

"Allie?" he prompted when I didn't answer him.

Exasperated, I sighed. "Yes, okay? Yes, sometimes I want out. But I'm not just going to pack a bag and run away."

"Not even with me?"

The question was heavy, stealing all of the air from the room. It was like time stood still as he waited for me to answer. Hell, I was waiting for my answer.

"You're scared," I finally said, which wasn't an answer at all. "For some reason, you think that this op is going to go wrong, and you want to get me out by any means necessary. But I'm telling you that everything is going to be fine. And, after all of this is over, we can go on a vacation somewhere. Malaysia, maybe? Or Switzerland?"

He grabbed my hands. "Okay. But on one condition."

I raised an eyebrow, waiting.

"You marry me once we get there."

Once again, his words stole all of the breath from my chest. Ari and I had never discussed marriage before because we both knew that it was unlikely. At least… not while we were with our respective agencies. But if Ari was serious about wanting out, then maybe I could get on board. There were plenty of other agencies that could use my skills.

"You want to get married?" I clarified.

"Of course I do." He smiled. "Don't you?"

"I…" But there was no need for a pause. Of course I did. I loved Ari more than anything. He was the other half of me that I'd never known that I was missing, and I would have done anything in the world for him. Including walking away from the CIA and the best job I'd ever had. "Yes. I do."

"Great. Then it's settled." He walked past me and to the front door, which he opened with a dramatic flair that was so unlike him that I had to laugh. "As soon as today is over, we'll go."

I exited the apartment and smiled. "Malaysia or Switzerland?"

"Switzerland, I think." He smiled back. "Better language, better food."

"And we can go get some of those pastries that you love."

An hour later, I thought that I was going to die. Ari had been right all along, and the leader of the terrorist cell was intent on killing me. They'd taken Ari off to a different area of the warehouses, and I knew that he wouldn't get there in time.

But then he was there, fighting with a fury that belonged in hell. His movements were fluid, his aim sure as he took out man after man, shouting at me to get myself out.

And I tried, but I got lost. Ari found me, and we ran together, but the maze seemed endless, as if there was no way out.

There was one man left – the leader of the cell – and Ari raised his gun to shoot.

But he paused when the man pulled the pin on a grenade and sent it flying towards us.

I saw it and froze, certain that it was all over. All of the plans that we'd made only an hour earlier were never going to come to fruition. We would never get married, never have kids, never grow old together.

I wasn't ready to die. There was so much that I loved about life, and I wasn't ready to lose it.

Distracted as I was by these morbid thoughts, I didn't see Ari dive until it was too late. He'd pulled the trigger on the way down, killing the last of the men. But he landed right on top of the grenade. It wasn't until much later that I realized that he'd done it on purpose.

The grenade blast was muted by his body…

I awoke with a start, a scream dying in my throat. I hadn't dreamt about Ari's death in a very long time, but the familiar sensation of loss hadn't changed.

The nightmare had woken me… or so I thought… right up until I saw the figure standing at the end of my bed.

I thought that it was Medici or one of his men, and I was ready to tell them off for startling me.

Until I saw the familiar face. The strong jaw covered with just the right amount of stubble, prominent nose, and dark eyes that had seen it all.

His name left my lips in a breath. "Ari."