y heartbeat had never been so loud, nor so mechanical. I swam toward the sound and woke up in a room with pale green walls and white plastic blinds on the window. Sunlight filtered in through the narrow slats, illuminating a small table overflowing with flowers. A cluster of balloons urging someone to “Get well soon!” was tied to a nearby chair.

Curious about the source of the audible beats, I tried to move, but my limbs refused to cooperate. I lifted my head to find my upper body cocooned in snowy white gauze, and the rest of me tucked so tightly into bed I could count the ridges of my toes.

The door swung open, and a cheerful woman in pink scrubs marched in. She wore a stethoscope around her neck, and a picture I.D. badge clipped to her shirt introduced her as “Ana Garcia, R.N.”.

“You’re awake,” she exclaimed. “There are a lot of people who will be glad to hear the news.” She leaned in for a closer inspection. “How do you feel?”

“Thirsty,” I croaked.

“That would be from all the meds.” She shrugged it off as no big deal and grabbed a pitcher from a bedside table. Over the running water she called, “Do you remember what happened?”

“I think… I was shot?”

“We don’t get as many GSWs as they do down south, and never so many from a fancy boarding school, I can tell you that.” She poured a glass of water and offered it up. We stared at each other a beat before she realized I needed help. “Oops, hold on.” She grabbed a straw, loosened the bedcovers, and freed my right hand.

I sucked down the water as she filled in around the edges of my memory. “They brought you in with four other patients, and let me tell you, the cops were on them like white on rice.” Her eyes widened in excitement, relishing the opportunity to recall the event. “One guy was shot on the left side like you, two of them were busted up pretty bad, but the fourth…” She shuddered in distaste. “One of the nastiest compound fractures I’ve ever seen. That man’s leg is going to be more metal than bone.”

I winced at the memory of the man in the horn-rimmed glasses screaming as his leg collapsed like a Jenga tower.

“Wait,” I said, recalling more of last night’s events. “Two guys got shot.” Major Taylor took down Mr. Mustache before confronting the guy who had Hayden.

Ana shook her head. “Sorry, only one other GSW came in through the front door. Maybe the other guy came in through the back.”

“What’s in the back?” I cleared my throat, still feeling dry as a Cairo summer.

She stalled a moment, as if realizing she’d said too much. “The morgue.”

I guess it didn’t matter which one survived, but Mr. Mustache had tried to kill me more than once. If he was still breathing, I wanted to know about it. “The guy who got shot, is he still here?”

“Now don’t you worry,” she said, misinterpreting my concern. “They are in a whole different wing, and there must be fifty cops keeping watch, which means fifty chances that one of them is hot and single.” She fluffed her short black curls with a throaty laugh.

Someone knocked at the door, and I sent her a look of terror. “Don’t let anyone in! I must look horrible!”

“Honey, I should look as horrible as you on my best day,” she said. “There’ve been people sitting out there since you were brought in last night, and I don’t think we can hold them off any longer.” She strode to the door and threw it open.

A worried-looking Von stood on the threshold, holding a potted plant. “Is she okay?” He glanced past Ana, and visibly relaxed when he saw me. Needing no further encouragement, he rushed through the door, setting his gift on my nightstand.

He hovered over me. “How do you feel?”

“Not too bad, actually.” There was an ache somewhere in the vicinity of my left shoulder and collarbone, but I’d have thought being shot would be far more painful.

“Of course it’s not too bad,” Ana huffed. “Do you think I run a torture chamber here?”

Von grinned at her. “So all these pain meds… will she remember this conversation later?”

Ana winked at me. “She won’t remember a thing, so here’s your chance to pour your heart out, honey.”

Another knock announced the arrival of Sam, who strode through the doorway clutching a bouquet of at least two-dozen beautiful red roses. I’d gotten used to Sam’s pretty boy looks, but Ana stared in appreciation as he came around the other side of my bed.

“Too late, Romeo,” she muttered to Von.

Sam laid the flowers at the foot of the bed and smiled, making me wish desperately for a mirror and hairbrush.

“I guess you don’t owe me any more secrets. That last one was pretty over the top.” He laughed softly. “Are you going to be all right?”

“I’m fine, but what happened with you guys?” Neither of them seemed to have physically suffered from the experience.

“Last night was totally awesome,” Sam said excitedly. “I wish you could have seen it. I have got to get one of those wicked batons.”

Von glanced at Sam with disbelief. “In case you hadn’t noticed, it wasn’t totally awesome for Riley.”

Sam’s face clouded over. “I didn’t mean to make it sound like…”

I waved away his apology. “It was a group effort. Is Hayden okay?”

“She and Stef were both removed from Harrington late last night,” Von said. “I think everyone was finally convinced they needed to be kept in a secure location until the project is delivered, which should be in the next few weeks.”

I breathed a deep, albeit uncomfortable sigh.

“So are you coming back to school, or what?” Sam spared us each a glance. “Are you guys even real high school students?”

“Riley is,” Von said. “I graduated over a year ago, but the government promised full tuition at the college of my choice if I took on this assignment.”

“How did they find you?” I wondered. “Were you in trouble with the Taliban, too?”

“Nothing quite so colorful,” he said. “ROTC, valedictorian, that kind of stuff.” That explained his amazing scores in calculus. “The State Department recruited me the day I graduated. They gave me three months of training, then sent me right back to high school. Like I told you, it was the seventh circle of hell.”

Sam pulled over the chair with the balloons. “So do we call you Devin now?”

He pulled a face. “God, no. I’ve always been Von.”

Sam casually reached over and placed his hand over mine. “Well, we’ll miss you at Harrington, Von.” Ana had been pretending to fuss over a monitor, but now she dropped the pretense that she wasn’t avidly following our conversation.

Von glowered. “Riley does have other options, you know. There’s a place for her in the State Department, that’s for sure. Or she could graduate early and go to college, or maybe she wants to live in Paris.” He turned to me. “I heard Karen talking to your dad this morning. He just got the Paris posting.”

“Paris?” I was stunned. No one got that post without a lot of strings being pulled. “But how?”

“My guess is you’ve got a very grateful Stephen Frasier to thank,” Von said.

“And what about Stef?” I asked, suddenly dying to know his reaction to finding out he’d been living with a secret agent for the last year. “Does he know you were there for his protection?”

Von nodded. “He knows people put their lives on the line for him, but will it make a difference?” He shrugged. “Maybe a close call will finally get his dad to realize that getting to know his son is a limited time offer, but I’m not holding my breath.”

Even if Stephen Frasier never figured out what a wonderful person his son was, I suspected Hayden was coming to understand the value of knowing there was always someone who had her back. She and Stef would be okay.

“Gentlemen, may I speak to Riley please?” We all turned to see Karen standing in the doorway, taking in the scene. She wasn’t happy. Von had probably questioned her loyalty with the ammunition I’d provided.

Sam sent me a sweetly questioning look. I nodded, suddenly realizing Hayden no longer stood between the two of us. If I chose to go back to Harrington, Sam would be waiting there for me. He squeezed my hand and headed out the door.

As Von rose to leave, I caught the scent of something wonderfully familiar. I breathed it in, suddenly realizing what it was. My eyes darted to Von in astonishment.

He grinned, reaching to move the plant closer to my bedside. “Arabian jasmine… so you’ll always feel at home.”

“So all that flirting,” I asked, suddenly unsure, “was it just an act?”

He smiled shyly. “Only in the beginning.”

I followed him with my eyes as he walked out the door.

Ana had taken up permanent residence in front of the monitors and showed no sign of leaving.

Karen cleared her throat. “Nurse, if you wouldn’t mind?”

Reluctantly, Ana gave in. “Okay, I’ll go,” she said, turning to me, “but you’ll let me know which one you choose, right?”

When we were alone, Karen sat stiffly in the chair Sam had just vacated. After a few moments of charged silence, she said, “I’m sorry.”

“What?” I’d heard her fine, but it was completely unexpected.

“I said I’m sorry. I should have told you Rose worked for us. You trusted me, but I didn’t return the favor. Maybe if I had, you would have recognized that guy at the nightclub, and we’d now have Grace Taylor in custody.”

My mouth fell open in surprise. “Major Taylor is gone?”

She nodded. “By the time we realized a couple of the guys in the ER were men from her security team, she’d cleared out.”

“Why did she do it?” Even though Major Taylor had played me, like how she’d tricked me into installing the GPS program on Hayden’s phone to use for her own purposes, she’d honored her promise to Benson. He’d be both grateful and heartbroken when he learned of her betrayal.

“It’s early days in tracking her movements, but money doesn’t appear to be her motive. We’re following up on a lead that it may have been extortion, that the safety of her son might have been threatened.”

“What?” I gasped. “She didn’t have any children.”

Karen regarded me curiously, as if she thought it odd I would presume to know such a thing. “She’s got a sixteen-year-old at a school in Switzerland. His name is Ben, I believe.”

My body went cold. Was it possible Benson was the boy’s father? The timeline sure fit. “What about his dad?”

She shrugged. “I’m sure he’ll be contacted, or I imagine the boy will become a ward of the state. It’s such a shame,” she mused. “I can’t understand why she wouldn’t have gone to the authorities if her family had been threatened.”

Whatever the reason, I bet it was a good one. Major Taylor had sacrificed everything for her son, for me, for Benson. Even if they never found her or discovered the true reason for her actions, I would always believe she had acted out of love.

Visiting hours were over, and Ana’s shift ended. She’d made sure my phone was charged before she left, but it sat mutely on the bedside table. I’d called both my dad and Benson, but neither had answered their phones. Listlessly scrolling through the hospital’s basic cable channels, I felt neglected and unloved. How often did a girl get shot? You’d think at least one family member would be on Skype fussing over me.

Snatches of giggling conversation from the nearby nurses’ station confirmed Ana’s hope that a few of the police officers standing guard were eligible bachelors. Down the hall, an orderly worked his way around the floor, knocking on doors and grandly announcing dinner was served like he was doling out dishes from a four-star restaurant. Everyone was busy while I was stuck in here all alone. I grumpily curled onto my good side and closed my eyes.

A knock came on my door.

“I’m not hungry,” I groused.

“Not even for Nadira’s walnut baklava?” My dad stood in the doorway holding up a rumpled paper bag that looked as if it’d been run over by a truck, but truth be told, he didn’t look much better. His clothes were wrinkled, his hair was a mess, and he desperately needed a shave.

My tears began to fall. “You couldn’t have called?”

He rushed to my bedside with a relieved smile. He always said I waited to cry until the worst was over, so if he saw tears I was in one piece.

“As soon as I heard, I jumped on a transport.” He waved the bag in his hand. “Nadira chased me out of the embassy with this.”

I sniffed, reaching for the pastry. “I got shot, you know.” I still felt maltreated, but it would be a damn shame to let good walnut baklava go to waste. “I could have died, you know.”

“I know,” he said, his voice full of emotion, which made me feel a little better. “I never would have let you go if I’d known it would be this dangerous.”

“I know, right?” I said through of mouthful of flaky filo. “But, Dad, you haven’t heard the rest of it.” I glanced toward the open doorway, searching for the hulking form that should be there. “Where’s Benson?”

It wouldn’t be right if he got a cold call from some government drone informing him the woman he’d loved had kept a heartbreaking secret from him all these years. The news should come from me.

He collapsed in the chair. “He’s on his way to Switzerland.”

My hand hovered over the next square of pastry. “So it’s true then? Benson has a son?” With those two parents, the kid was probably a terror.

He nodded. “The school had his information on file in case of emergency. It was difficult, as you can imagine, that Grace never told him, but if anyone can find forgiveness, it’s him.”

“So do I have a sort-of cousin now?”

He laughed. “We are an odd assortment, aren’t we?”

My phone chimed, and Dad passed it over. “Well-wishers from school?”

It was a photograph of a beautiful sandy beach, deserted except for two lounge chairs with a bamboo table set between them. Two cans of Coke on the table sweated in the heat. A pair of Prada sunglasses, identical to the ones Hayden picked out on our trip to Soho, had been placed alongside. A caption on the photo read, “This does make us friends.”

“Yes,” I said, with a smile. Hayden and Stef were someplace far, far away, and I hoped the sodas were Stef’s way of letting me know that maybe he was ready to try life sober for a change.

“So you heard about Paris? There’s an American School there.” There was no mistaking the excitement in his voice.

“Congratulations, Dad. You really deserve it.” I licked my fingers, gooey with honey, and thought it was all turning out pretty sweet.

He leaned in. “Well? What do you think? What do you want to do?”

Before I could answer, his phone rang. “It’s Benson.” He punched the key to put the call on speaker. “Need some fatherly advice already?” Dad winked at me.

“Joe, I need your help.” Benson’s voice was so ragged I barely recognized it. “My son is missing.”