“Congratulations on the addition to your family, Mr. Cochran. We heard you and your lovely wife welcome twins.”

Spencer James and the man I’ve come to know as Rufus are sitting across from my desk in our Auckland office. I look at the picture sitting across from me: Chloe on the beach with our twins, Layla and Beckett, and my heart swells. Chloe may look like me, but the twins are the spitting image of Arie, and together, we make a perfect family. I peek over the men across from me, and see Arie sitting at the reception desk. She was going crazy at home, so we got a nanny for the kids and now she works in the office with me. As if she knows I’m watching her, she turns her head and gives me a wink, then goes back to answering one of the dozens of emails we get every day, asking for our services.

While we take on the occasional side case, then contract out to another local security firm, my main business is what Spencer and Rufus brought me over a year ago. And it was a doozy. The men were the head of the Worldwide Securities Agency, or WSA, a privatized offshoot of the CIA. They were a group of elite former Marines and SEALs and “secret agents” who were hired to take on missions too intense for any federal government to handle. Sometimes, the cases were so covert, a government might not even know about them. But they were always too dangerous to risk the lives of anyone who was considered a “volunteer.” So that is where we come in.

For the last year, Cochran Securities LTD has been putting together a private, select collection of men and women who travel across the globe, helping solve issues that the average person never even hears about. From our base in Auckland, we assist the WSA in finding agents to help complete their missions. My job isn’t just to find the agents; I help them plan, organize, and do damage control, accounting for any eventuality and strategize future missions. It’s an amazing, rewarding, and challenging job, and I can never allow myself to devalue its importance.

Arie has also proven to be an invaluable part of our CSL branch in Auckland. I always knew she was brilliant, but over the last few months, she has shown me that she is a wiz at mapping and charting. Every time I think I have figured out the best course for a planned mission, she shows up and within five seconds, she’s found a safer, more efficient course. I couldn’t even begin to guess how many lives she’s saved, or how much money. She calls herself my receptionist, but she’s much more… and she knows it.

I realize I’ve been staring at Arie when Spencer clears his throat. “Mr. Cochran?”

“Yes! Sorry. You were saying?”

“Well, first, we wanted to thank you for saving our asses in with that thing in Tasmania. Not sure our guys would have made it out without your help.”

I nod. “That’s our job.”

“Now, we need to ask you for something else,” Rufus says with a stern look. I try and keep my poker face. There is no telling what these men want from me. It could be anything. Literally.

“Go ahead.”

Rufus sets a chubby hand on my desk. “Mr. Cochran, we’d like you and your wife to start doing some field work. Getting out there in the muck, so to speak.”

I don’t remotely intend to laugh out loud, but that is exactly what happens. I actually laugh loudly enough to draw Arie’s attention from the front of the office. Laughter isn’t generally something she hears coming from meetings with the men from WSA.

“What the hell are you talking about? We can’t go out in the field. My leg never properly healed from the injury I sustained in service and Arie isn’t trained in… anything. What could you possibly want us to do in the field?”

Spencer gives me a very serious raised eyebrow. “Mr. Cochran, we know full well that your wife is the brains behind your mission charting. And she’s exceptional. Training or no training, she has an instinct that can’t be taught. And you may be injured, but the fact you think that means you are sidelined from the game permanently? That’s just disappointing.”

I sit back, processing what he’s just said. “So, explain to me what it is you want us to do. What you think we can do.”

“Track and report only. You will travel to wherever we tell you and collect whatever information we need. Maybe follow a target. Maybe gather some intel. Maybe just map out a mission that we’re planning before we go boots on the ground. Nothing that would put either of you in any immediate danger. But we feel that your unique talents are being wasted in an office. Both of your unique talents.”

I can’t even begin to guess how Arie is going to respond to this. “Can we have some time to consider it?”

They stand up at the same time, and nod at the same time. “You have twenty-four hours. Same as last time.”

Before I even have a chance to follow them out to the waiting area, they have completely disappeared from the office.

“How do they DO that? How do they just… vanish like that?” I ask Arie, who is eyeballing me. But Arie is looking at me with a very defined scowl.

“Forget that. What exactly do you have twenty-fours to decide? What is going on now?”

I look at her and chuckle. “Oh, right. Well. How would you like to be a spy?” I ask with a wink. Arie chokes on the mouthful of coffee she just swallowed.

“What? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Spencer and Rufus have asked us to become, well, field agents of sort. Nothing high-risk. No espionage. Well, light espionage. Travel to some exotic countries, gather intel, maybe steal the occasional priceless antiquity and sell it on the black market.” I think I’m hilarious, but Arie isn’t laughing.

“Pierce, don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t even finish college. I am your receptionist. I am not remotely qualified to be any kind of field agent. And what about you? Your leg is just starting to heal! You want to risk your progress for what?”

“Adventure? Intrigue? A chance to travel on someone else’s dime?” I know I shouldn’t be joking because Arie is worked up, but I can’t help it. I’ve been in this situation before, and I know in the end, she is going to side with me. The allure of the unknown is just too great. But she is still frowning at me.

“That’s fine for you, but what about the kids? Layla and Beckett are babies, and Chloe… I can’t leave her again. What if she thinks this is the time I leave her for good? I don’t want our kids to end up orphans, Pierce.”

I cross over and sit on the desk next to her. “We’re not talking about parachuting behind enemy lines in a war zone, Arie. It’s basically analysis work in the field. Some traveling. Occasionally following a few bad people and seeing where they are headed. And I promise you, we will never be away from the kids for more than a long weekend.”

Arie scrunches up her face and crosses her arms over her chest. Then she starts thinking, and she thinks for so long, I’m pretty sure the twenty-four-hour deadline might pass. When she finally speaks, she actually startles me.

“And you promise me we’ll never be away from the kids for more than four days at a time?”

I nod. “I promise. And we’ll bring them back lovingly-curated knick-knacks from every trip.”

Arie shrugs. “Okay then, let’s do it.”

My jaw drops. “Really? Just like that?”

“Well, not just like that. We’ll have to work out a lot of details and prepare for every eventuality, but we should at least try it. I think we’ll regret it if we don’t give it a shot, you know?”

I grab her, sweep her up in my arms, and give her a huge, long, kiss. I really am the luckiest man in the world, to have a wife who is so brave, so utterly fearless. When I put her back on the ground, I kiss her again.

“You deserve this, you know. You are brilliant, and capable, and this is your chance to shine.”

Arie stretches up and gives me another kiss. “I do all the shining I need to with you.”

Just as I’m considering taking her into my office and really making her glow, the phone in my jacket pocket rings. The phone that only Spencer and Rufus have access to. I look at Arie with a smile.

“Ready for our next adventure, Mrs. Cochran?”

She winks. “I was born ready, Mr. Cochran.”

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