“Yet you’re being threatened.” He leaned forward, balancing his elbows on the table and closing the distance between them as he kept his voice low, just above a whisper. “You left that part out.”

“Someone found me and is trying to scare me. Someone wants to make sure I never forget what happened, as if I could.”

“I missed the note that explained all that. Do you have it?” His voice dripped with sarcasm.

“I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to live in the shadows and peek out now and then. Panic about everything and everyone.” She’d said the same words in different ways so many times. Thought them. Wrote them. Signed paperwork forfeiting WITSEC protection. Still, no one listened. Certainly not Evan.

He didn’t know what it was like. None of them did. Safety stayed foremost in her mind. She lived and breathed it. Panic and danger followed her, suffocated her. All those years of pretending to be this new person, being cut off from everything she’d ever known and the people she loved—her mother, friends—took a toll. She morphed from human to shell, never getting close to anyone. Never trusting a person or a thing she heard.

They told her she would adjust. She’d make new friends and create a new life. Maybe that worked for other people, but not her. She entered the program alone and she knew if she didn’t get out, she would die alone. That simple fact combined with Ned’s death in prison made her leave.

“Please tell me this is not because you found a boyfriend. Like, he wants you to go to business dinners and join the country club or some dumb shit, so you have to take the risk for him.”

It struck her that Evan didn’t think very much of her. He saw her as weak and easy to lead around. That she could ignore. Targeting Connor she wouldn’t. “Don’t take shots at him.”

“I’ve read his file. He can handle it. Or he could until recently.” Evan shook his head. “The family is very worried about him.”

He’d tried that tactic before and it hadn’t worked. She didn’t know why he thought it would now. “Connor has nothing to do with this.”

“He makes you reckless.”

She tightened her grip on her coffee mug. “He makes me strong.”

“You’re a survivor without him.”

But he didn’t believe that. Connor was the one who did. “That’s exactly what he says about me.”

Evan made a low harsh sound before sitting back in his chair again. “This is ridiculous. If you weren’t so busy thinking about getting under him, you’d be more concerned with your own safety.”