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“Do? Nothing. It’s over. You’re safe. I’ll investigate who shot at you. When I know the source of the threat, I’ll eliminate it.”
God, not even a bump of emotion entered his voice as he casually talked about killing someone. A chill rattled across her skin. Who was this man? What had they turned him into? She stared at him in dismay. “But I thought we were done with all of that. The people who came after us before are all dead or in custody. It’s finished. They told me it was all over. And no one’s tried to kill me and Dawn since you left. Why now? If someone wants to kill me, why wait until the person who can best protect me comes home?”
He exhaled hard. “I kicked a hornet’s nest yesterday. This is my fault.”
She stared at him, wide-eyed. He hadn’t been the only one kicking at hornets. Yesterday, she’d asked for information on his mother from the CIA. Had that provoked someone to take a potshot at her? If so, who? And why? What was the big deal about his mother?
“What kind of hornets did you kick?” she asked him.
“Can’t say,” he bit out.
Dammit. She’d forgotten how fiercely he guarded his secrets. She should have known he’d be worse than ever about not sharing when he got home.
“I’m sorry, Katie,” he murmured, gathering her and Dawn close in a protective hug. “I swear, I won’t let anything bad happen to either one of you.”
She ought to tell him about the hornet’s nest of her own that she’d kicked. Let him off the guilt hook. But she’d really been hoping to surprise him with the information on his mother. The moment passed when it wouldn’t have been awkward to say anything. Great. Now she was keeping secrets from him, too. The guy’s bad habit of not sharing was contagious apparently.
“The windows are all bullet resistant and coated so heat-seeking equipment can’t see through them. The walls are treated the same way. Stay in here while I close the blinds throughout the house. And then you should be safe to move around inside the condo.”
As if that solved everything! Who’d just shot at her? And why?
Alex came back to report that the blinds were closed, and then he retreated to his office and closed the door. How could he go in there and poke at his laptop like someone hadn’t just narrowly missed killing her? She was completely freaked out! Were it not for Dawn already being upset, she would march in there and give him a piece of her mind.
Was he napping on the sofa or maybe doing something with Cold Intent and all those numbers on his computer? Curiosity would be the death of her yet.
Speaking of which, she called Uncle Charlie’s cell phone number and left a message in his voice mail asking if there’d been any progress on her request. She added that there had been some interest shown in her query this afternoon.
Trapped in the house by possible snipers outside, she plopped down in front of the television. She was intrigued that Alex hadn’t attempted to give chase to the shooter or in some way report the guy to the police. Were such occurrences so commonplace in his world they didn’t even register as worthy of response?
Although now that she thought about it, if she’d just taken a shot at someone, she would leave the area quickly so she didn’t get caught. Alex must have figured the shooter had too big a head start in fleeing to make a chase worthwhile. Still. What a lousy way to live. Was this what she had to look forward to for the next fifty years or so?
Despair washed over her. She’d thought they’d left all this stuff behind last year. How in the world were they supposed to raise a child in this insanity?
She vaguely heard Alex’s cell phone ring.
Maybe ten seconds passed before his office door burst open. “Turn on the news, Katie. Now.”
He sounded strange. Tense. She turned on the TV and asked him quickly, “Local, national or international?”
“Local.”
He moved to stand behind the sofa, and she swiveled around to stare at him. “What’s happened?”
“Someone has been murdered.”
“Who?”
“Hacker. I don’t know her real name. She was young, late twenties. It would likely be associated with something innocuous, like the theft of computer equipment. Have you seen anything like that today?” he asked urgently.
“No. Nothing,” she replied, alarmed. “They haven’t reported on any women being murdered or dying in some sort of accident. They’re talking mostly about the hurricane heading into the Caribbean.”
He swore under his breath.
“What’s going on? Who was she? You’re scaring me.”
“They’re covering up her death. Which speaks volumes about who killed her.”
They who? What wasn’t he telling her? “Volumes about who?” she demanded.
“They’re powerful. Connected. Probably government.”
“Our government? You’re saying an American citizen was killed right here in Washington by our government and it’s being covered up?” Holy crap.
“You really have to get over the whole Mom and apple pie thing when it comes to the United States, Katie. All governments work for their own best interest by whatever means they have at their disposal. None of them are nice about it.”
Sometimes she forgot what a cynic he was. The uncomfortable thing was that he might be right. Still, her patriotic upbringing ran deep. “Hey. You work for the U.S., too.”
He scowled and muttered, “Don’t remind me.”
True alarm speared through her. He was having second thoughts about hitching his fate to the CIA and not to his father’s FSB? She shuddered to think what hell would be unleashed at them if he changed his mind about working for Uncle Sam at this late date. No way was she raising Dawn in Moscow.
Alex was speaking again. “...need to leave town before whoever shot at you tries again. Stay inside for now.” He continued. “I have a few things to take care of before I can go. They’ll take me about an hour. Can you and Dawn be ready to leave in that amount of time?”
“Of course.”
The threat to Dawn’s safety rubbed at her psyche until she felt raw and exposed. If they were back in the crosshairs, the baby needed to get away from her and Alex. Again.
Failure burned in her gut like acid as she packed. What kind of mother was she if she couldn’t even keep their baby out of mortal danger? Where were they taking Dawn, anyway? She needed to know so she could pack the right kinds of clothes for them both. She headed for Alex’s office and knocked on the door.
“Come in.”
He swiveled in his desk to face her. A glance over his shoulder revealed his right hand closing his laptop screen. He was hiding whatever he was working on from her. Why? The question exploded across her brain, rife with suspicion.
“If you don’t have any better idea, I was thinking we could take Dawn to stay with my folks until we figure out who’s shooting at us.”
Alex’s eyes clouded with what looked like genuine regret. It was genuine, right? God, it sucked not knowing if she could trust him or not. If only she could shake the feeling he was up to no good.
Although, truth be told, she was working behind his back, too.
He nodded once, grimly. “Sure. We can drive up to Pittsburgh tonight.” He looked impatient, and she took the hint, merely nodding and backing out of his office.
Anxiety prodded her. In the past, when he got all secretive like this, his father had had something to do with it. What was Peter Koronov up to now? The man just couldn’t leave his only son alone. It was an obsession between the two of them. They were locked in some sort of mortal struggle that neither one would let go of. So unlike her big, happy-go-lucky family.
She made a call to her mother, who was delighted to take Dawn for a few days while she and Alex took care of a few things. Not that she thought her mother was fooled for a second that there wasn’t some sort of problem. The woman had raised five soldiers and cops. She could smell trouble from a mile away. She just knew not to ask about it. Her kids would tell her what was going on in their own time. Strong woman, her mother.
Katie busied herself packing the copious gear a well-spoiled baby required for any self-respecting road trip. It took the full hour Alex had given her to make trips to the underground parking garage and cram the BMW’s trunk to the gills.
Just as she finished, he emerged from his office, grabbed a prepacked bag, for which she hated him a little, and was ready to go.
Traffic was heavy until they cleared the Washington suburbs, and then they made good time to Pittsburgh. It was about a two-hundred-fifty-mile trip and took a little over four hours. But by halftime of the Monday Night Football game, they’d arrived at her folks’ house. In time-honored ritual, her brothers and dad were gathered in front of the large-screen TV in the family room yelling at one another and armchair-coaching.
Alex joined the men, but sat off to one side sipping at the beer her father poured for him. He looked misplaced among her burly brothers, although he had more in common with them than most people would guess at a glance. They were all lethal men who took care of their own. Dawn would be perfectly safe ensconced among the McCloud men.
Katie was just retreating to the kitchen for some girl talk with her mother when her cell phone rang. She was lifting it to her ear when Alex’s went off, as well. Their gazes met grimly as they took the calls.
“Hi, this Ashley Osborne at D.U.”
André Fortinay’s admin assistant? What did she want?
“Are you up for an emergency deployment, Katie?”
“Where to?”
“Miami, for now.”
“I thought D.U. didn’t work in the United States. What happened to all the doctors in Florida?”
“We’re prepositioning a team to insert into Cuba after Hurricane Giselle strikes it.”
She frowned. “It’s going to get that bad?” Her knee-jerk reaction was to say no and hang up the phone. She and Alex were done with dangerous missions to deadly places, right?
“We’re being told this will be a major storm with heavy damage. A lot of casualties,” André’s assistant explained persuasively.
“Huh. Who all’s going?”
“Just you two. Obviously, we’re hoping to send you and Alex together.”
What was so obvious about her and Alex going together? Was it her job to keep an eye on him? Make sure he didn’t stray off the CIA reservation? After all, she wasn’t even a nurse, let alone a physician. Sure, she’d taken a first-aid class in the past year while she waited out Alex’s training, but what she knew how to treat didn’t amount to anything when stacked up against a natural disaster.
Ashley was speaking again, a little more urgently. “Can you be ready to leave first thing in the morning?”
Come to think of it, why was a low-level admin type calling to send her on this mission that everyone knew she wouldn’t want to go on? Katie’s antennae went up and started to wiggle. In her years of working with children, she’d learned to sense a lie or evasion, and she was getting one now.
“I’m not in D.C., actually. I can’t really give you an answer tonight.”
The girl’s reply was perky. A smidge too pushy. “No problem. You can fly out of the airport nearest to wherever you are now.”
Alarm exploded in her chest. No! She couldn’t just drop everything and race off to parts unknown on a dangerous adventure! She had a baby to take care of. A fragile relationship with Alex to nurture into something more stable and permanent. For all she knew, she needed to talk him down off whatever emotional bridge the CIA had forced him to climb this year. The last thing she needed was to dive headlong into life-threatening danger.
She asked cautiously, “Is someone talking to Alex now?”
“André’s on the phone with him.”
Katie glanced across the family room. Alex had turned his back on everyone and was in the corner having a quiet, intense-looking conversation with his boss. And it was taking longer than, “Hey, Alex. You wanna go to Cuba?”
Dammit, what were they whispering about? Alex turned slightly, and she caught sight of his face. It was more alive than it had been in weeks. His eyes were bright, his entire body vibrating with tension. Excitement.
Dismay crushed her. She’d known as soon as he got home that Alex had been changed by the past year, but there had been more to it than just that. Something had been missing from him, but she hadn’t been able to put her finger on it. Not until now. Not until this dangerous, electric side of him awoke and showed itself. This was what had been absent.
Was the prospect of domestic bliss with her and Dawn so stifling, then? Apparently so. Who was she trying to kid? She would never tame the tiger within him. Not without killing that part of him. He would never be happy without living on the edge. Heck, he’d spent his entire life walking a high wire without a net. What made her think that clumping around in the mud of average life with her would be enough for him?
Racing off to a dangerous place like Cuba was more than what Alex did. It defined who he was. If she gave half a damn about him, she wouldn’t stand in his way. Except she wasn’t ready to let go of him yet. Even if her dream of a life with him was doomed.
All that was left for them was a swan song. One last adventure. How, when it was over, would she ever find a way to let him go?
“Lemme talk with Alex,” she mumbled into her phone. “We’ll let you know.”
Ashley replied too brightly, “Send me your location, and I’ll set up your itinerary and flight reservations.”
Were they not being given any choice in the matter, then? Was that what was taking so long between Alex and André? She ended her call, frowning.
Cuba, huh? She flopped down beside the brother everyone in the family thought was an intelligence officer for the SEALs. “Hey, Mikey. Whaddya know about Cuba?”
“That I can talk about with you?” he retorted.
“Duh.”
She listened intently as he and several of her brothers pitched in to bring her up to speed on the political and military situation with the island nation. The only big, unpleasant surprise to her was how active the Russians still were in Cuba.
No wonder André was all hot and bothered to get Alex down there on any pretense he could. Alex possibly knew more about Russian intelligence practices than just about any other person at the CIA. After all, he’d been raised by a master KGB spy and carefully trained to follow in Daddy’s footsteps.
At long last, Alex disconnected his phone. “You up for a trip?” he asked her tersely.
“Not particularly. I’m not crazy about leaving Dawn, and frankly, I could do without being shot at again.”
“I won’t let you get shot at.”
“You can’t promise me that,” she retorted.
Alex frowned. “I need to go.”
“Why?”
He glanced at her brothers, who were unabashedly taking in the exchange. “We’ll need to discuss that in private.”
“Aw, c’mon,” Mike complained. “We’re family.”
Katie sympathized with the pained look on Alex’s face. He wasn’t used to dealing with a big, nosy family like this. She took pity and nodded toward the back porch. “Let’s go outside.”
Her brothers protested, but they could get over it. This was between her and Alex.
He pointedly turned his back on the picture windows. Good call. A couple of the McCloud men could read lips. “There’s more to this trip than just treating hurricane victims.”
“There always is, isn’t there?” she replied rhetorically.
He merely rolled his eyes at her.
When he didn’t speak, she demanded, “You’re not seriously going to put your neck on the line again, are you? I thought we agreed this stuff was over. For both of us.”
