This would be so much easier if he didn't like her. Was this how it started with Henry? Were the first erosions of character small, the addition of an ulterior motive gently turning all your true feelings into a lie?
Because he did like her- liked her smile, her strength, her honor... hell, even liked her family. He would have been genuinely devastated to be fishing her corpse out of the harbor, was honestly elated by the look on her face when he came to her rescue (a look he flattered himself would not have been granted to just any suit with a gun and good timing). And it all felt like a lie, every last bit of it, because Arthur wanted him to run her. Someday she would find out about that, and every moment of their acquaintance would become retroactively tainted; she would despise him. And so he smiled and tried to get close without getting close, to respect her disgust for him while she flirted, to follow orders where he might have had a personal life... this must be how it started. It was almost enough to make him feel sympathy for his father.
Which, of course, meant he was headed in the wrong direction. He intended to be the man his father should have been, not the man he became. Doing that meant toeing the line in the agency, but it also meant not getting sucked in. There were no distinguishing lines anymore for his father, no separation between Henry Wilcox, husband and father, and Henry Wilcox, CIA. As far as Jai remembered there never had been. The redemption of the family honor, of Jai's personal inheritance, demanded integrity in the inner circle. Compromises and betrayals were Henry's modus operandi, not Jai's. Not for the people closest to him.
So where did Annie sit? If she was only an asset, bait for the dangerous rogue Ben Mercer (who truly needed to be caught and controlled, there was no doubt about that), then he wasn't doing anything wrong. But the guilt in his gut said otherwise. She was a coworker who trusted him, a woman who'd invited him home to meet her family. A friend of sorts, one of the few who didn't seem to hold his father against him. It was a mistake to dismiss her as merely bait. As 'merely' anything.
Besides, the real question lay deeper than that. If he was not to be his father, he had to decide now where he drew the line, and how deep in the sand he drew it.
He wasn't committed yet; he didn't have to betray her. She was in danger as long as she trusted Mercer. He might be able to tell her the truth and do his job at the same time. Arthur wouldn't like it, but Arthur wasn't the man Jai wanted to be either. Annie was proving to be a powerful force in her own right. She would be of much more use if she were brought out of the dark, made an active part of the Mercer operation. If he could make her believe him. Telling her was dangerous, but the thought of it satisfied the uneasiness that had been building for so many weeks. And he had a feeling it would raise his status with Auggie, another underrated power at the agency. Loyalty to the old regime, or to those among the rising generation who were actually earning his respect? Put that way, it wasn't even a question.
If only he could tell her without committing treason.
The oath of service he'd taken, among about a thousand other commands and injunctions, forbade disclosure of the kind he was considering. He'd given his word, planning on keeping it. Arthur wouldn't be as lenient with him as Joan was with Annie, of that he could be sure. And perjure himself to save his integrity? What kind of a choice was that?
It was something to think about.