By strength of will we cut off our inner intuitive knowledge from admitted consciousness. This causes a state of dread, or apprehension, which makes the blow ten times worse when it does fall. - D.H. Lawrence

A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it. – J. R. R. Tolkien

Foremost problem, Briel still needed money.

If she hadn't, Briel would simply have begun her mission, armed with the knowledge that the Corsican had offered her, rather than having to resort to desperate measures. She had considered every other source – Jase, Liam, Nessa, Sara, even some of her friends at the Bureau. Nothing made sense. Bringing in an outside source would either bring in an enemy or put a friend at risk, and she didn’t even know which choice would effect which event. Bill Henry held relatively unlimited resources, and he no doubt would pay off whomever he needed to get to Briel.

Briel remembered seeing Henry on her last day in Banff, how he stood casually by as his men prepared to slaughter Nessa to secure his men’s release. Too, he had agreed to let his CEO use the company resources to send Felicity into slavery. Briel took away from her time in Banff the sensation that she hoped never to encounter another man like him.

Now, Briel had to deal, not only with encountering him, but with finding herself the target of his calculated cruelty. If she had gone up against Bill on a mission, she would have no problem letting her team risk themselves for the job. To ask them to risk themselves for personal reasons? For Briel’s sake? Briel couldn’t bring herself to do it. Knowing that one of her team might prove turncoat just gave extra impetus to go it alone. Briel did everything alone – it would be fine.

She just needed one small act of service to go forward, and though it opened risk, the risk was remote – like thousands of miles remote. Not that she wanted to open up the can of worms, but Ted had helped her before from hundreds of miles away. One last time, she would take help from Ted again.

Only her conscience gave her pause. Every time he trusted her again, he proved himself the fool. She would just walk out of his life after she was done. But she had seared her conscience long ago. Why worry about it now? she reasoned.

As she lay in her bed, staring at the blank wall in Anne-Laure's guest room, Briel could picture clearly the events that led up to her leaving Nick in Phoenix. For over a week, Nick had known about Briel's occupation, but he had persisted in seeking a relationship with her. So, Briel had silenced her own protests and used him for her own purposes. It had been a month. She had known him thirty days exactly, and she had spent more time with him than with her mark by far.

Why?

Because, for one, he gave her peripheral access to the mark, which made it easier to stay clandestine. Going on dates with him gave her an excuse to be around the Millers much more than her cover as a nanny, and without the added – very real – burden of managing and keeping safe three children. It had only taken once for Briel to realize that the oldest Miller child, Alex, suffered severe anxiety about caring for her younger siblings. She didn’t ask the girl to do that again – though Briel’s conscience wouldn’t bother her too much in shifting some weight to a fellow adult, she wouldn’t do the same to a twelve-year-old for the sake of an operation.

So, that left Nick. And so she used him, for a whirlwind, exhilarating month, she went on dates with Nick, made excuses to Liam, and hated herself every moment. She liked Nick so much that she began to realize that, for her own sake, she was going to have to cut him off fast and hard. It would be painful. It had to be. If she didn’t make him hate her, she would make excuses to keep up the connection.

It was like the reverse of Jase. Jase had spun her in circles, kept her at arm’s length, and then left her bereft and empty. Maybe Jase had struggled with the same thing with her back then – a recruit, maybe even an operation, who he had started to care about? At least he had Terrence to keep him safe. Who did Briel have? Not Nessa. They were barely more than acquaintances at the time, though Nessa had tried. Briel had to be strong enough to do it herself.

“I don't want you to go,” Nick had pleaded that late afternoon in her Phoenix apartment.

“Are you seriously delusional enough to think that I meant any of this, Nick? You know who I am. You know what I am. You know what you are to me.”

When he stood to his feet and crossed to where she stood by her window, staring out at the painted sunset, she forced her breath to stay even, no matter how her heart sped. “Look me in the eye and tell me what I am to you,” he murmured from far too close behind her.

She closed her eyes, not sure if she was strong enough.

“I don’t owe you anything,” she hissed instead, refusing to appease him.

“Bri…” he began, placing his hands gently on her arms. “You don’t think I understand why this doesn’t work? Why you’re in an impossible situation? How this is so unnatural, so completely outside your normal operation? But Bri…” When he turned her to face him, she did not resist, just stared at his slate-blue t-shirt and concentrated on her breathing. “I am not a normal person. I am a civilian, you’re right, but I understand your life a lot more than the average person. I deal with the dangers of the world every day in a way that most people can ignore from the comfort of their average lives. I understand you.”

His words were so alluring. When she finally raised her eyes to his, she couldn’t lie. Peering up at him, lips parted, she could make no sound. Even as he reached for her, she could only close her eyes and welcome him.

And, of course, he lowered his mouth to hers. When the tender heat of their lips met, her mind’s last bastion began to crumble at the edges, and she poured herself into the kiss with more abandon than she could allow. When he backed to the chair and pulled her onto his lap, his fingers threaded into her hair, her own arms reached for him, wrapped behind him and held him to her with all her significant strength.

After several minutes, when she awoke to what she was doing, the pain stabbed directly through her chest. The action required every ounce of both her physical and mental strength, but somehow she managed it. She leaned away, though the effort left her panting.

“No!” she gasped, scurrying backwards off of him. “No, Nick! No! I’m not doing this.” She stood to her feet and made her way to the door, staring at the frame and stabilizing her mind, firming it up against what had just happened. “I’m not using you anymore. You’re not useful to me anymore, and I’m done with you.”

“Briel,” she heard in a vitiate voice behind her.

“Leave.”

“Bri…”

“Leave, Nick!” She spun on him, her voice rising to a near-screech. “Get out of my apartment! I have told you this is not happening. You’re deluding yourself. I’m finishing this op and then I am gone – from Phoenix and from your life. Go now.”

She watched him gather himself, and the hurt and anger she had known she needed flashed through his eyes. It seemed that kiss that had nearly done her in had finished him off entirely. When she recognized it, her success infused her with new self-control.

“Nick,” she offered in an unnaturally composed tone. “I apologize for engaging you in this discussion. It should never have occurred,” she began coldly. “In reality, I should have asked you to leave an hour ago, as soon as you arrived in my apartment, because I knew why you had come.”

Nick began to protest, but Briel cut him off. “Let me finish. Because of the tenuousness of your circumstances, I have indulged you for a time, but the time is over. My job entails retrieving information for my client, not rescuing your sister, not appeasing you. All of this has been a lie. That’s my job…I am a liar first and foremost. But now I’m going to hit you with the truth. You have been part of a mission,” Briel cringed internally as she forced out the next phrase, “Nothing more. One of the perks of my job is that I meet interesting people, but another perk is that when my time is up with them, I leave, unattached in any way.” She almost choked on the lie, but fortunately, she was a professional liar, and she proved her mettle. “Since we are at my apartment, however, I think maybe you should leave so that I can continue prepping for my mission.”

On the last sentence, he rose from her chair and, with much more self-possession than Briel had expected, Nick squared his shoulders and glided slowly to stand before her, taking her hand, which she allowed because he did not try for more. He stared at her fingers.

“Whatever you do Briel, I hope you have success. Regardless of your purpose here, I know that you have a kind heart and will remember you for that.” He sighed, brushing his thumb across her knuckles and sending shivers up her arm. “Now ‘part of a mission’ will leave you alone, and you can rest in knowing that you have finally proven your claim…” He raised his eyes and pierced her with far too much discernment. “You are a liar. Take care of yourself.”

With his final words, he raised his free hand to gently brush across her cheek. Stunned, Briel barely manage to restrain her outward reaction, though the rhythm of her heartbeat doubled instantly. Then Nick turned and strode out into the heat of the Phoenix summer.

To her complete surprise, Briel felt a sensation well up within her as soon as she shut the door on Nicholas Alexander. Never in her existence had Briel Cortes cried. Even Brielle Revelles had not shed a tear for five years before she ceased to exist. Yet, the Briel who sat alone in her Phoenix apartment, whoever she was, trudged to her couch and buried her face in her hands, streams of salty tears burrowing paths through her clutched fingers and pooling unceremoniously on the rug at her feet.

The way he had said the words – “part of a mission”? She had convinced him of nothing. Even though he had agreed to walk out of her life, he had done it knowing her confliction.

At the time, she prayed that he believed her, that she really wanted him gone, because she had known that if he ever showed back up in her life, she wouldn’t be able to push him away again.

Now the time had doubled – just over sixty days since the day Nick Alexander had walked into her life and destroyed her complacent existence – and Briel stared at the wall from the comfortable bed in her childhood home, considering how dangerous it would be to use him again. Dangerous because she knew what she really wanted. For a decade, she had faced down tyrants, she had overcome criminals, but she would soon face her greatest foe.

Herself.

No matter what she claimed, she knew that when she knowingly asked Nick for help, she would reopen a scar that she had sealed with the harshest self-denial she had ever endured. To tear it open and walk away unscathed would prove a daunting task, and one Briel felt no guarantee of completing successfully.

Am I really so opposed to hiding away somewhere? she asked herself. She knew the answer. Yes. A fool, a braggart, a cocky jerk: she could accept any such title. Only one label had never described Briel, and she did not intend to adopt it after almost thirty years of life.

“Coward.” She spoke the word aloud, as an answer and as a condemnation. She would not let herself be a coward even against herself. When she picked up the cell phone and turned it on, she knew that her life would change irrevocably.