Page 103 of Rescuing You

He brushed a hand down her cheek, the touch tender, then leaned in and resumed his work. “You spent the last half hour of our date on the phone.”

“Because of a broken pipe. It was my job⁠—”

“I know.” He set the brush down and grabbed a different one, which he dabbed in blush. “The point is, I was going to tell you on the mountain, but we were having such a good day, and I didn’t want to ruin it.” He added the color to her cheeks, her forehead, the tip of her nose. “I was afraid you’d be angry—and you’d have a right to be. But I did plan to tell you before I dropped you off. Maybe not everything, but…some of it.”

It seemed he expected her to accept without question that he would continue to keep secrets. "Do you mind if I ask why you decided to become a spy?”

“Agent,” he corrected. After a long moment, he sighed. “It wasn’t my plan. I wanted to serve my country and planned to join the Navy after college, but the CIA recruited me.”

“It is good to serve. But to be a spy seems like a strange profession. Why were you drawn to it?”

He perched on the opposite bed. “When I was a teenager, I started hanging out with a bunch of boys. They were older, but they accepted me. They planned a prank one day.”

“What is a prank?”

“A practical joke. Like, to trick somebody for fun.”

That wasn’t always fun for the person being tricked, but she didn’t say so, just nodded for him to continue.

“They were going to break into the house of a girl one of the guys liked. At least, I thought Gary liked her. They told me they were going to break in, and he was going to leave a note in her room when her family was out for the evening. Looking back, I realize how creepy that is. But I was fourteen and the guys were older and I wanted them to like me. My job was to keep an eye on the road and let them know if anybody came. Like an idiot, I agreed to do it. I had no idea what they were really going to do.

“I was watching the road when the guys came running. Gary was laughing, but it was almost maniacal.”

Leila hated to interrupt the story, but she said, “I do not know this word, maniacal.”

“Out of control…and there was a hint of danger in it. That laugh gave me a very bad feeling about what they’d done—what I’d helped them do. We were about to get in Gary’s car when I smelled smoke.”

“Oh, no.”

“I don’t think Gary planned to tell me, but the other two guys were mad. They were shouting at me to get in the car, and then they were shouting at him. Asking him why he did it. And I figured out that he set the girl’s bed on fire.”

“She wasn’t home?”

“The house was empty, thank God. Gary threatened me, telling me to get in the car and keep my mouth shut. The other guys were yelling at him. All I could think about was that house, that poor family about to lose everything. We were way out in the woods, miles from town, and I was afraid the house would burn all the way to the ground before anybody even knew there was a fire. So I ran into the woods. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I wasn’t getting back in that car with them.

“Gary followed me, but I was fast. After a few minutes, he gave up. I think he was scared of getting caught near the house, and they didn’t think I’d tell on them.”

Leila could picture the scene, a teenage Michael in the woods all alone while a house burned. “What did you do?”

“I thought about going back and trying to put the fire out, but I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it. There was another house about a half mile away. I ran there and told the people what happened. They reported it. When the police came, I told them everything.”

“Your friends must’ve hated you.”

“They weren’t friends. Friends don’t make each other accessories to felonies.”

“It was brave of you to go against them. Is that why you went to the CIA? To protect people? But you could have done that in the military, no?”

“Because I alerted the neighbor, the house was saved. I was lauded as a hero. People acted like I’d done this huge act of bravery when, the truth was, I should never have been there in the first place. I shouldn’t have helped them break into a house. I shouldn’t have been friends with those guys at all. They were popular, sure, but Gary had a mean streak. In retrospect, it was more than that. He landed in juvenile detention—jail for kids—because of what happened that day. The other two guys straightened up, but Gary never did. Last I heard, he was in prison.”

Leila knew too many men fueled by power and cruelty.

“It was worse than that, though,” Michael said. “When I became friends with Gary and the others, I quit hanging out with Sam, who’d been my best friend all my life. But I made one good decision that night and was treated like a hero. I didn’t deserve it.”

Leila considered everything he’d said—and hadn’t said. “You joined the CIA so you could be a hero, and nobody would ever know?”

He dipped his head from side to side. “I think that was part of the motivation. It wasn’t completely altruistic, though.” Before she could ask, he added, “Without selfish motives. The CIA sounded like an adventure, and I always craved adventure.”

“Which is how you ended up with those boys in the first place, no?”