Audrey glanced at the Fitbit on her wrist and sighed. She was down five hundred steps from the previous day and she didn’t know what to make of that.

She lay in bed and stared up at the ceiling for a long moment, debating whether to go make them up or continue to fight herself to sleep.

God, you’re such a hypocrite, Audrey. I wonder what people would do if they knew the real you.

She shoved the inane and irrelevant thought out of her head. Her methods worked on millions of people, even if she couldn’t take her own advice. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in her treatments. It was simply that they didn’t work for her.

Yep. Time to go climb some stairs.

She pushed the comforter off her body and swung her legs over the side of the bed to make her way across the pristine wood floor of her suite. Pulling a silk robe off a ball chair which was conspicuously out of place in the bedroom of the luxury suite.

But Audrey was not an interior decorator.

The cool material swirled around her long legs as she made her way into the living room and toward the bar for a glass of water.

There was a spiral staircase in the library of the hotel room but suddenly, as she looked at it, the desire to beat her daily goal didn’t seem important.

Ah, you gotta love the human condition, she thought, shaking her blonde hair. It sounds like a good idea until you have to do it.

Before the guilt could set in, her cell phone chimed from where it was charging in the kitchen and Audrey slid toward it, her mouth tightening into a line of annoyance. It wasn’t her personal phone—it was the burner at the iPhone’s side.

“It’s one o’clock in the morning,” she snapped. “And I’m the keynote speaker in the morning.”

“I know, Audrey and I’m sorry,” Peterman sighed. “Obviously I wouldn’t be calling you if it wasn’t important.”

Audrey didn’t tell him that her perception of important and his were likely two very different things.

“What is it, Peterman?”

“Are you alone?”

“Are you flirting with me?”

He inhaled sharply and Audrey grinned, knowing she was getting on his nerves.

“I’m alone,” she relented. “So?”

“Geneva, Berlin, Munich.”

Audrey’s eyes widened slightly and she sighed.

“Am I paying my personal assistant too much because you seem to have an excellent handle on my itinerary, Peterman.”

“Berlin,” he continued, accustomed both to her dry banter and speaking over her when necessary. “That’s where we need you the most.”

“You needed to call me at one a.m. to tell me that you most need me in two days? Come on, Peterman, what’s really happening?”

There was deep silence which sent a flash of worry through Audrey but she couldn’t say why exactly.

“It’s nothing concrete, Audrey,” he finally said. “I’d rather not say until I’m sure.”

“I didn’t take you for someone who played hard to get,” Audrey retorted. “You must have known I was going to question your motives for calling me…oh…”

Suddenly, she realized why he had.

“You wanted to make sure I answered,” she breathed. It wasn’t so much fear but confusion which overcame her in that moment.

“It’s a moot point now, isn’t it?” Peterman insisted. “I—”

“Who’s on my trail?”

“No one!” he insisted but the forced note in his words led her to believe he was withholding information.

Not that I’ll be able to force it out of him anyway.

“Peterman…”

“I’m telling you, Audrey, you’re not in danger, not really.”

“Oh. Well, when you put it like that…”

“There’s no one on your trail specifically,” the director muttered darkly, but Audrey didn’t believe him.

“Why don’t you stop beating around the bush and tell me what’s going on,” she suggested, using the placating tone which had soothed hundreds of clients in her career. “You know I can handle it.”

I could probably hypnotize him over the phone and make him tell me what I need to know, she reasoned. But she stopped herself from venturing further into that thought.

“Honestly, I don’t know anything.” Peterman continued to maintain his innocence.

“All right,” Audrey said pleasantly. “But we both know if something happens to me, it’s on you, right?”

“Nothing will happen,” Peterman muttered. “God, are you sure you’re not a mother? You’ve got the parenting guilt down to a science.”

Audrey smirked.

“Not a mother but I do have a PhD in neuropsychiatry,” she reminded him. “And have sold over twelve million copies of my books.”

There was no arrogance in her tone, only a factually accurate account of a few of Audrey’s many accomplishments.

“There have been rumors, nothing more,” Peterman sighed. “Nothing more.”

“What rumors?” she demanded, glad that she’d managed to get at least a tidbit of information out of him.

I’m learning to break him down, Audrey thought with some pleasure. And here I was worried he was a fortress.

“I think that rumors are the wrong word,” Peterman backpedalled. “Call it…chatter, whispers—”

“Call it whatever you want, Peterman. I’d like to hear the words involved with said ‘chatter’.”

“They may be onto you.”

Unexpected terror sprang through Audrey and she immediately inhaled, measuring her breaths before a full-fledged panic could overwhelm her.

“Onto me?” she asked evenly, her voice not depicting a note of the fear seizing her heart.

“No, not you, exactly. Again, I feel weird talking about it because I’m not sure if there’s anything to worry about.”

You were concerned enough to call and ensure I answered my phone…

Suddenly, she stalked toward the door of her hotel room and threw it open, groaning in disbelief.

“You sent backup?” she hissed into the cell, slamming the door on the faces of the shocked guards flanking the penthouse’s door.

“Better safe than sorry,” Peterman said defensively. “You know, just in case.”

“I told you when I got on board with this that I didn’t want your goons hanging around. I can take care of myself.”

“You weren’t supposed to see them,” Peterman muttered and Audrey snorted.

“Call them off, Peterman. I’m not being escorted around by two conspicuous apes in expensive suits.”

“I don’t understand you, Audrey. You have a high-profile job, touting subjects that make me uncomfortable sometimes. Aren’t you worried that some nutjob with an assault rifle is going to come after you?”

“I wasn’t until you said that!” Audrey gasped in feigned shock.

“Audrey, you’re a valuable asset to the CIA—”

“If you want me to continue to be one, call off your dogs. Now.” She snapped.

“This is for your own protection!” The exasperation in Peterman’s voice was almost palpable. “Stop acting like I’m spying on you.”

Audrey steeled herself from shouting at him that he didn’t understand, that having people close to her would inevitably lead to someone learning about what she could do.

And if they learn what I can do, they will eventually learn about everyone else too.

For a brief second, her mind flittered back to a time when she had naively believed that her family would be free to be who they were.

“Call them off or our deal is off.”

Peterman grunted in frustration but Audrey knew he would do as she asked – demanded. As he’d said—she was much too valuable an operative to let go.

Especially when I know much more than I should.

“Peterman?”

“Yeah, I’ll call them back,” he snapped. “But Audrey…”

“I’ll be careful. I’m always careful, aren’t I?”

He didn’t answer and again, she was plagued by the idea that he knew more than he was saying but she didn’t push the issue.

“Seriously, I’m speaking in the morning. Is there anything else I need to know about Berlin?”

“I’m hoping you can tell me,” Peterman replied. “All I know is that there seems to be another lab, somewhere in Tempelhof but that’s all I can give you. If I knew more, I’d have sent a strike team in already.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Audrey told him confidently. “I have contacts there already. I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Keep me updated when you can,” Peterman reminded her. “And good luck with your conference.”

“Luck is something I am never without,” Audrey chirped. “Good night, Peterman.”

They disconnected the call and Audrey opened the door to her suite again, peering down the hall. As quickly as they had arrived, the guards had disappeared.

The knowledge that they were gone didn’t give Audrey any sense of peace, however.

Instead, she found herself wondering if they had been hanging around all along.

From the first day of her arrangement with the Central Intelligence Agency, Audrey had been abundantly clear that she would have nothing to do with being followed.

“If I get a whiff of a tail, a glimpse out of my peripheral vision of an earpiece, this arrangement is off,” she had told them. “There will be no second chances, no pleading for forgiveness. I’ll just be done and you’ll be in precisely the same place you were before I came along. Are we clear?”

Henry Peterman had not been impressed with the too-attractive blonde and he’d made his thoughts known without reserve.

“You came to us, Dr. McMahon,” he reminded her. “Claiming to have information on a group who probably doesn’t even exist.”

“They exist,” Audrey told him flatly. “And you know it. You’re wondering how I know it too and if I’m part of Oculus. I’m not. But I am being hunted by them.”

She’d laid her cards on the table as much as possible without bringing her family into it, but she wasn’t stupid; Peterman wanted to know what she knew. All of it.

It was why she’d been adamant about working alone.

He’s not wrong. A woman in my position should have a private security team with me.

She entertained the thought for about ten seconds before dismissing it.

My days are full enough without having to mind my Ps and Qs around a bunch of strangers. Anyway, I read enough romance novels when I spent my time on the compound to know that the independent, self-made woman always falls in love with her bodyguard.

A sardonic smile touched her lips and she bit on her lower lip to keep from laughing aloud. Although who she was hiding her amusement from, she couldn’t say.

The PhD and the Powerhouse. The Doctor and the Doorman. The titles would be heart-wrenchingly corny.

Audrey realized then that it was past her bedtime.

Before she returned to her bedroom, however, she poked her head back into the hallway, consciously aware of the fact that Peterman’s men were likely close by.

I really hope he’s not this stupid. After two years of working together, we’re closer to finding Oculus than the rest of the family ever was.

A shiver of guilt passed through her.

Of course Drake can never know I’m working with the CIA, or he and Dad would snatch me back to the compound so fast, my head would spin.

Her mouth tightened as she slipped back into bed and she drew the covers over her neck.

I’m twenty-eight years old with more degrees than everyone in my family put together. I have good health, wealth, fame. Then why is it that I constantly feel like I’m still looking over my shoulder?

The question was ridiculous. She knew exactly what the problem was; as long as Oculus existed, she would still be the little girl who had been whisked away to live in secrecy for her own protection. She knew her freedom was fleetingly granted by all the Conways and if she blinked hard enough, it might all disappear.

That was why she kept her two lives very separate.

The Conways could never know she was working for the government and the CIA could never know that she had abilities that Oculus wanted to control as their own.

As far as Peterman knew, Audrey had simply stumbled upon the secret group in college when she had been researching her thesis on telepathic and telekinetic communications.

It was a risky balance and Audrey was sure that one day, it was all going to blow up in her face. But for the time being, she was Dr. Audrey McMahon, neuropsychiatrist and author.

Even if deep down, I’m still Audrey Van Hoyt, terrified child.