Your Impossible Love

MERCY OR MISTAKE

Maya's POV

I'd killed twelve people tonight, and I was seriously questioning my life choices.

Not the killing part—that was Tuesday for me. No, what had me second-guessing everything was the broken soldier currently bleeding all over my passenger seat.

"You gonna make it?" I asked, taking a sharp left that made him grunt in pain. Oops.

"Peachy," Carter Stone—or Reyes, or whatever the hell his name actually was—managed through gritted teeth. His one good eye tracked our surroundings with military precision despite looking like he'd gone ten rounds with a meat grinder. "Just peachy."

Yeah, he was definitely not peachy.

Two hours ago, I'd been in my apartment in Brooklyn, minding my own business, when an encrypted message hit my burner phone. Anonymous sender, Bitcoin payment already transferred. Simple job: eliminate Carter Stone, CIA black ops agent gone rogue, currently held at a site in Jersey. Clean, easy, profitable.

I should've known better.

Nothing in my life had ever been clean or easy, and "profitable" usually meant "absolutely going to bite you in the ass later."

But I'd taken the job anyway, because rent in Brooklyn was a b***h and my savings account was laughing at me. Plus, killing a rogue CIA agent? That was practically public service.

Then I'd seen him.

Chained. Broken. Barely conscious. And when they'd asked him about the Zodiac files—when he'd said he didn't know what the hell they were talking about—I'd known. I'd heard enough lies in my life to recognize truth when it punched me in the face.

Carter Stone wasn't rogue. He was a patsy.

And me? I was the i***t who'd just thrown away a six-figure payday to save him.

"Take the next exit," he said, pulling me from my thoughts.

"Why?"

"Because there's a safehouse in Newark. Off the grid, stocked, secure."

I raised an eyebrow. "You think you can trust CIA safehouses right now?"

"It's not CIA." He coughed, and I watched him try to hide the blood. "It's mine. Personal insurance policy."

Smart. Paranoid, but smart. I liked that in a man who'd just been tortured for three days straight.

Newark came up fast. I followed Carter's directions through increasingly sketchy neighborhoods until we hit an industrial area that looked like it had given up on life sometime in the nineties. Perfect place to disappear.

"There," he pointed. "The warehouse with the blue door."

I pulled around back, killing the lights. The SUV was hot now—probably had every agency in the tristate area looking for it. We'd need to ditch it, but first, I needed to make sure Carter didn't die on me. Saving him would be pointless if he croaked in the next hour.

Getting him out of the car was a production. He tried to play tough, but I felt him trembling. Shock, blood loss, or both. I got my shoulder under his arm again, and we made it to the door.

"Code's 3-7-7-2-6," he muttered.

I punched it in. The door clicked open, and we stumbled into darkness. I found a light switch, and fluorescents buzzed to life, revealing exactly what you'd expect from a black ops safehouse: sparse, functional, and packed with enough weapons to start a small war.

I guided Carter to a couch that had seen better days and let him collapse onto it. He groaned, eyes closing.

"Don't you dare pass out on me," I warned. "I need to check those injuries."

"Always wanted a pretty nurse," he murmured.

"I'm not pretty, I'm terrifying. There's a difference."

That got a weak laugh out of him. "Noted."

I found a first aid kit—industrial sized, thank God—and started assessing the damage. Three broken ribs, definitely. The burns would scar. His eye was swollen but probably not permanently damaged. Lots of cuts and bruises, but nothing immediately life-threatening.

"You'll live," I announced, breaking open antiseptic wipes.

"Shame. Was looking forward to the eternal rest."

"Tough luck, soldier." I started cleaning the burns on his chest. He hissed but didn't pull away. "You're stuck in hell with me for a while longer."

His working eye opened, focusing on me. "Why'd you do it?"

There it was. The question I'd been avoiding.

"Do what?"

"Save me. You were sent to kill me, weren't you?"

Perceptive bastard. "What makes you think that?"

"Because that's how this works. Black site, random operative showing up, the whole setup. Someone hired you to tie up a loose end. But you didn't." He watched me with unsettling intensity. "Why?"

I focused on his wounds, not his eyes. "Maybe I'm just having an off day."

"Maya."

The way he said my name made me pause. Not demanding, not angry. Just... curious. Like I was a puzzle he needed to solve.

"You reminded me of someone," I said finally, which wasn't entirely a lie. When I'd seen him in that chair, something had twisted in my chest. Recognition, maybe. Or memory. "Someone who got dealt a s**t hand and didn't deserve it."

"Who?"

"Me." I finished with his chest, moving to the cut above his eye. "I was sixteen when NSA recruited me. 'Recruited' being a generous term for 'blackmailed and brainwashed.' Spent ten years as their personal ghost. Did things I'm not proud of." I met his gaze. "But I never killed an innocent person. And you? You're innocent of whatever they're accusing you of."

He was quiet for a moment. Then: "You're NSA trained. I'm CIA. We should be enemies."

"Yeah, well, the enemy of my enemy and all that bullshit." I finished bandaging his eye. "Besides, we've got bigger problems than our previous employers."

As if on cue, my burner phone buzzed. I grabbed it, checking the screen. Another news alert.

"MANHUNT INTENSIFIES: Stone and Cross Considered Armed and Extremely Dangerous. Shoot on Sight Order Issued."

"Shit."

Carter struggled to sit up, reading over my shoulder. His jaw tightened. "They're not taking chances."

"No kidding." I pulled up more articles, piecing together the narrative they were spinning. We were terrorists. Partners. Had planned the bombing for months. The whole thing was wrapped up with a bow, ready for public consumption.

"Someone powerful wants us dead," Carter said.

"Yeah, I got that part." I kept scrolling. "Question is, who and why?"

"The Zodiac files." He leaned back, wincing. "That's what they kept asking about. Over and over. 'Where are the files, Stone?' Like I was supposed to know."

"And you really don't?"

"I really don't." He looked at me. "Do you know what Zodiac Protocol is?"

The name sent a chill down my spine. "No. But I don't like how it sounds."

"Me neither."

I stood, pacing. My mind was racing, connecting dots. "Okay, let's think. They torture you for information you don't have. They hire me to kill you—probably to make sure you can't talk. Then they frame both of us for domestic terrorism, which means..."

"They want us to disappear," Carter finished. "Either dead or arrested. Either way, we're silenced."

"But why both of us? Why connect us at all?"

He shook his head. "I don't know."

I pulled up my phone again, accessing databases I technically shouldn't have access to anymore. Old NSA back doors that my former employers didn't know I'd kept. Within minutes, I had Carter's file on screen.

"Carter Stone, age twenty-nine, CIA black ops for eight years. Before that, recruited at nineteen from..." I trailed off, reading. "Jesus. They recruited you from juvie?"

"I was good at breaking and entering. They offered me a job or jail time. Wasn't a hard choice."

"Says here your mother died when you were three. Father unknown." I kept reading. "No siblings, no living relatives."

"That's what they told me."

Something in his voice made me look up. "You don't believe them?"

"I have memories. Vague ones. A woman singing in Spanish. And..." He hesitated. "A baby crying. I always thought it was me, but I don't know. Could've been someone else."

My blood went cold.

"What?" Carter asked, catching my expression.

"I..." How did I explain this? "I have a memory too. A lullaby. Spanish. I don't know where it came from. I was raised in an NSA facility from infancy. They told me my parents abandoned me."

We stared at each other.

"That's a hell of a coincidence," Carter said slowly.

"I don't believe in coincidences."

Neither did I. Not anymore.

Before I could dig deeper, glass shattered. The window exploded inward, and I was moving on instinct, tackling Carter off the couch as bullets tore through the space where his head had been.

"They found us!" I shouted, rolling for my gun.

"Impossible," Carter growled, but he was already moving too, grabbing a pistol from the coffee table. "This place is off-grid—"

"Off-grid doesn't mean s**t when someone wants you dead badly enough!"

The door exploded open. Three operatives in tactical gear poured in. I dropped the first with two shots center mass. Carter, injured as he was, took down the second with a headshot that would've made a sniper jealous.

The third got smart, using the doorframe for cover and laying down suppressing fire. We were pinned.

"Back door?" I yelled.

"Kitchen!"

We moved together, staying low. More operatives were coming—I could hear them outside, coordinating. This was a full tactical team. Someone had pulled out all the stops.

We hit the kitchen. Carter yanked open a door I'd thought was a pantry, revealing stairs leading down.

"Tunnel," he explained. "Comes out three blocks over."

"I'm starting to really like your paranoia!"

We plunged into darkness, Carter leading despite his injuries. Behind us, the warehouse erupted with gunfire and shouting. They'd breach the tunnel in seconds.

We ran.

My lungs burned. Carter was flagging, his breathing labored, but he pushed through. The tunnel seemed endless, concrete walls pressing in, the sound of pursuit echoing behind us.

Finally, stairs. We took them two at a time, bursting into a garage. An old Honda sat waiting—another escape vehicle. Carter tossed me keys.

"You drive. I'm seeing double."

"Fantastic."

We were moving before the engine fully caught. Behind us, operatives poured into the garage. Bullets sparked off concrete as we fishtailed into the street.

"They had thermal imaging," I said, navigating through alleys. "That's how they found us so fast. Your body heat signature."

"Then we need to get somewhere crowded. Fast."

I headed for downtown, merging into late-night traffic. We needed to disappear, and the best place to hide was in plain sight.

Carter was fading, his head lolling against the window.

"Stay with me," I ordered. "You don't get to die after I broke a dozen laws saving your ass."

"Wouldn't dream of it," he mumbled. Then: "Maya?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm glad it was you. Coming for me, I mean."

I glanced at him. Even beaten to hell, there was something in his face—trust, maybe. Or faith. I hadn't seen either directed at me in a long time.

"Yeah, well," I said, voice rough. "Don't make me regret it."

His laugh was barely a whisper. "Too late."

We drove into the night, two people who shouldn't have met, bound by circumstances we didn't understand. My phone buzzed with another news alert. More lies, more accusations.

But as I looked at Carter—this stranger I'd risked everything for—I knew one thing for certain:

Someone had made a huge mistake tonight.

And they were about to learn that Maya Cross didn't forgive mistakes.

Ever.