Exhausted. Empty.

Tansy wrapped his arm over Carly’s shoulder and inched closer to her body, spooning tightly behind her. She was still breathing heavily, her inhales and exhales bobbing Tansy’s arm up and down like a buoy floating at sea. She was . . . asleep?

“Carly?”

“I already know,” she said, her voice awash with sleep.

“Already know what?”

“What you’re going to say.”

“What was I going to say?” Tansy watched her back heave up with a sigh.

“Something about how this can’t change anything, how we can’t let it affect our professional lives.”

He laughed. “I was thinking the opposite. I was actually hoping it could.”

“What do you mean?”

“I want us to work together. Live together.”

“Live together? Tansy, are you sure I’m the one with the head injury?” She rolled over to face him. Through the darkness he could see her face, its tired expression quickly changing to a flinching disbelief, her eyes opening and closing hard, her mouth hanging open.

“What’s wrong?”

“I can see!” She held her hands in front of her face, staring first and then moving one rapidly back and forth. “Oh, my God, I can see.” She closed her eyes again, her hands out in front of her, trembling. She laughed and her eyes flew open again as she slapped a hand over her mouth. He couldn’t help but grin.

“You can? You can see your hands?”

She pressed her hands against his face, feeling him. “I can see you!” She ran her hands through his hair, talking a mile a minute under her breath and swearing uncontrollably. “How the fuck?” She moved quickly, pushing to a sitting position and then patting the rocks lying about on the ground. She stood quickly—maybe too quickly—and Tansy grabbed her as she staggered. Shit. She’d only had two beers, and that had been hours ago.

Or maybe lightheaded from their lovemaking? Was that possible? Could he have really made her delirious?

Was he really that good?

Tansy chuckled to himself and shook his head. It really had been a hell of a day, but as much as he’d like to believe sex together had some kind of miraculous healing properties—or at least enough inertia in his hips to jar loose whatever it was in Carly’s head that had blocked up her vision—he knew better. He couldn’t fault the timing, though. Her vision had cleared right when they needed it most, when they were ready to start their campaign against the militia. The thought brought Tansy crashing out of his lustful musing and back down to earth just in time to see Carly staggering back toward the house, wonder still in her eyes.

Her body was shaking when Tansy reached her, and he reached her arm around her waist to steady her walk. She kept muttering “thank God” in between strange little laughs. God, she’d probably thought she’d be blind forever.

“So did it just happen?” he asked. “Just now?”

“I don’t know, I . . . I had my eyes shut for the last little while.” She turned to face him again, her beautiful dark eyes sparkling in the moonlight like they’d finally come alive. “And then I opened them and I could see your face.”

He reached up, caressing her cheek and brushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “That’s the best news I’ve heard in a while.”

“It’s a little dark, but. . . .”

“Yeah, it’s dark out.”

“No, I mean, it’s still a little fuzzy. But it’s so much better.”

“I guess we should have done that a long time ago,” Tansy grinned as he drew her in close to his body. She snuggled in and breathed a little sigh. “By long time ago I mean years ago.”

“I never knew.”

“I was worried that if you knew how I felt. . . .”

“Tansy.” She pulled her head back, staring at him. A smile crept along her lips. “Let’s start living in the moment, okay? Let’s just forget everything and start fresh.”

“I’m not sure if I can forget the last hour, but—”

She laughed out loud, her eyes lit from within despite the darkening sky. It was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen. “No, after that,” she said, giggling. “That’s the starting point.”

“Because you can see again.”

“Sure, there’s that, too.” She grinned and waggled her eyebrows at him. “But now I want to get to work. It’s been killing me, having to sit around and listen to you do it all wrong.” She smiled again, the sparkle in her eyes giving her away. Tansy loved this new-found confidence that had come about with the return of her vision. Or maybe with the quenching of her sexual appetite. It had certainly woken up all sorts of things inside him.

“Right.” He tried—and failed—to block out the images rolling through his mind. The look on her face, the way her eyes rolled back and how the whites of them shone hauntingly as she rode him. He had to block all that for now or he’d never be able to concentrate on what came next. “So now we can focus on work. Clean slate.”

It was a lie. Sex had only made him want more.

But conjugal visits were impossible between two prisoners.

“In the future,” she began, “if we do this right and pull it off, we’ll have all the time in the world to focus on other stuff besides work.”

“Okay,” he said, trying to convince himself as much as anything. “Ready to head back?”

“Let’s do this.” She beamed at him, looking him straight in the eyes.

* * *

After returning to the compound, showering, and putting on fresh clothes—Carly wearing her own again—they walked together to the small conference room where the rest of the team was waiting. They were met with stuffy air, harsh lighting, and walls the color of jaundice, the perfect atmosphere to get Tansy’s mind out of the gutter.

Although Carly, who was now strolling confidently around the front of the room, was looking as sexy as ever. With her newly acquired sight, she had been able to finally see whom she was talking to—and who was listening. Not only that, but the team looked back at her in a new light, as if they could finally see her, too. The real Carly. She even moved differently, more upright and strong. She addressed the team with an air of confidence, and with the directness of a seasoned expert. Tansy was happy to stand back in the shadows.

Notes were made. Plans were set. And then the hack team dispersed back to their workstations. Their work would be the muscle behind the solution, the concerted effort to not only satisfy the militia’s request, but to tack on something extra that would limit the damage, castrate them, as it were. Limit their window of opportunity in doing whatever it was they had planned for a downed security system.

Tansy kept thinking of how fast things would change once the hard drive was in Carly’s hands. . . . Would it be fast enough?

He looked over to Carly working furiously at her own computer.

He trusted her. That was all there was to it.

Tansy turned back to his own screen and pressed “Play” on a short video Jackson’s team had just sent over. He watched the various angles of a bank robbery, the black-and-white scenes of horrified civilians, their stories told in eerily silent footage. For a security camera, the quality was quite good—though it was still not good enough to properly identify the main subjects, who were purported to be Sagebrush Militia members. Tansy isolated a few important frames and dragged them into a photo-editing program. He zoomed in to one man in particular, the image capturing the very second he’d rolled up his ski mask to unveil the sculpted goatee like a 90’s wrestling villain. The man clearly had no idea he’d identified himself that way, but Tansy felt a small thrill at the stroke of luck. Finally, something.

He returned to the video, watching it in small, laborious increments. Two frames later, the mask was back on the man’s face and he returned to the clichéd anonymity of a bank robber. Dark mask. Dark clothes. AK-47.

Later in the video, the man was seen in a physical altercation with a bank employee. It was a quick scuffle, but the employee had gripped his arm and pushed the robber’s sleeve back. A flash of white skin. And then a tattoo.

Tansy returned to the photo editor, importing the clip of the tattoo, isolating, reducing its noise, zooming in on the once-blurry tattoo that was now incredibly clear. And familiar. An eagle, with horns, perched on barbed wire.

The hair rose on the back of Tansy’s neck when Carly approached from her workstation. He looked up and she smiled.

“Got it.”

* * *

“This won’t blow up in our faces, right?” Jackson said over the phone. “And by our faces I mean my face, since I’m the one who’s. . . .”

Tansy’s concentration began to wander, fiery images of an exploding FBI building playing through his mind. He was sitting behind a closed door in the now-empty conference room, his fingertips tapping on the table with nervous energy, an energy he should be directing toward a keyboard, or Carly. He’d almost forgotten about keeping his boss in the loop. Well, somewhat in the loop. “What do you mean, blow up?” he finally asked after Jackson circled back to his original fear of the whole thing “blowing up,” not unlike some federal building.

“Tansy, you know how. This woman. . . .”

“Carly.”

“This Carly. Is everything about her past going to die down quietly, or are we going to get stuck with it? With the grenade.”

“She’s not a grenade.”

She was a bomb. A sex bomb.

“Why aren’t we still looking into our first plan?” asked Jackson. “Why aren’t we making a deal?”

“We are making a deal.”

“With the militia!”

Jackson’s moods could sour on a heartbeat. Maybe he’d just had one of those extra-long days in D.C. Tansy knew, too, how the town could be suffocating. Maddening. The politics, the proximity to the country’s swollen underbelly. Nevada—even in the underground missile silo—was quiet and peaceful in comparison. Maybe he’d get himself an old ranch house. Some place with a hot spring. And a communications tower. He’d ask Carly to live there.

“Tansy?”

“Yes.” He’d totally been listening. Hadn’t been daydreaming of when he’d get Carly naked again. Not at all.

“So, go ahead. Tell me why I should trust you on this. Convince me.”

“Because I’ll be right with her in Vegas. Boots on the ground.”

“That’s a given.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah? Should I fly in some mercs to tag along?”

“More the merrier.”

“When do you need them?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“She’s more than just another hacker, another target, Jack. She’s. . . .” Tansy stopped. It was all so new. He’d marry her tomorrow, given the choice, but did Carly feel the same way?

Jackson sighed loudly on the other end of the connection. “Yeah, yeah. Saw it in your eyes the minute you said her name. You sure she’s up for this?”

“Positive.”

“Can she fire a gun?”