The overwhelming majority of the people in the program were criminals. She liked to think her involvement with illegal activity was tenuous, at best. More tangential than actual, but the result was the same. She traded her life for protection, and that’s when she met US Marshal Evan Williams, the fortysomething, serious, lethal dude who taught her to shoot and defend herself. She was grateful, but she needed that portion of her life to be over.

“No.”

“Maddie, Connor is not a professional and I have one assistant who is off island at the moment and two volunteer assistants with families, so they can’t trail you every minute of every day.”

Guilt. Ben had to be exhausted from wielding that weapon. It worked on her every time, but that wasn’t the point. “I gave up the life.”

“The safe one?”

He had to know how the program worked. If he didn’t, he should be able to guess. “The one where I was hunted and on the run.”

“Those notes you keep getting say differently.”

“In WITSEC a handler tells you what you can and can’t do. Where there were rules and practice drills.” She fought back the memories of those days, crawling in the mud and visiting shooting ranges. “Where every move was checked and double-checked, even as they assured me that I could leave at any time . . . and be killed.”

Ben set his coffee mug on his desk blotter calendar. “I could argue you should still be in.”

“But that’s the point. I’m out because the danger is supposed to be over.”

Ben exhaled. “This is the part where I ask you why you were in. Why did you need WITSEC protection?”

She was tempted to sigh right back at him, but she got it. Her failure to provide more information made it hard for him to do his job. “And this is the part where I remind you there are limits on what I can say.”

She’d learned not to share. Secrecy was so ingrained that she didn’t know how to turn the warning switch off in her head. She also wasn’t convinced she should break the rules and drag anyone else into the danger she’d wallowed in for years. The notes proved it still lurked out there, and that held her back from opening up.

“Say something, Maddie.”

Her throat tightened but she kept going. “The people who wanted me dead are no longer around to pay for someone to do the job.”

“They have friends and family.”

“That’s not . . .” She hated the way Ben looked at her, as if he were analyzing her moves and dissecting each one to figure out her past. The flash of doubt almost stopped her, but she needed him to understand why she held back. “You know Maddie Rhine isn’t my name, right?”

“Yes.”