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“She’s safe here. Although I’d prefer some backup while I’m gone.”
“Done. I’ll make arrangements for Striker to head over with Mantis. He’ll fly you into BWA, and from there, Onyx will get you to the West Coast.”
“Roger that.”
“With no leads on Petrov, I’m making arrangements to head back tonight. I’m sorry to pull you over on this but…she and little Laird are my life.”
For the first time in his life, Gunner understood how Doc felt. He and Raketa weren’t very far along in their relationship, but he still knew it would devastate him if anything happened to her.
“I’ll see you in the morning. In the meantime, Merrigan will be safe with me.”
“Appreciate it, Gunner. No one other than you, me, and Eighty-eight know why you’re headed to Montecito. I’d like to keep it that way.”
“Understood.”
“That includes Ivashov.”
“Roger that.” Gunner scrubbed his face with his hand, wondering how Raketa would take the news that he had to leave the island. Would she trust that he couldn’t tell her, or would she immediately think he was betraying her again?
“What’s happened?”
“There’s a situation unrelated to Petrov that I need to take care of. I’ll be gone less than forty-eight hours. Striker is on his way here.”
“Weren’t you talking to Doc just now?”
He nodded. “Again, the conversation had nothing to do with Petrov.”
She nodded, but he didn’t like the look in her eyes. He couldn’t ask her again to trust him. She was going to have to process through this on her own. Either she believed him or she didn’t, and until he got back from Montecito, there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it except rest assured she’d be safe here on the island.
—:—
Raketa waited until she was certain Gunner had left the house and wasn’t coming back.
She’d played the dutiful lover and kissed him goodbye, even going as far as telling him to be careful.
She raced through the house gathering the bare minimum of what she needed, knowing she had very little time to get to the opposite side of the island, where the boat delivering Striker would land.
If Gunner thought she was stupid enough to believe that his phone call had nothing to do with Petrov or her mother, he was also stupid enough to think she wouldn’t have figured out how to get the hell off this island.
After her initial realization that she’d have no one to turn to for help if she had been able to convince Gunner to release her, it dawned on her that there was one place she could go after all—the Armenian embassy in Washington, DC. Once she walked through their doors, they’d not only give her asylum, they’d offer up whatever she wanted in exchange for her help getting Petrov. If Gunner thought he was going to get away with going after that evil piece of shit without her, he was about to learn otherwise. She had no intention of letting anyone else take him down. She’d do it herself after she made sure her mother was safe. She was the reason Raketa couldn’t trust Gunner or anyone else to handle this op without her.
They may think her mother was insignificant enough that if she died while they were after Petrov, it would only be collateral damage.
No one could understand that her mother was the only link Raketa had to her past, to who she really was under the armor she wore as an assassin for United Russia. If she lost her mother again, Raketa wasn’t sure her life would be worth living, especially since she now knew she’d never be able to trust Gunner Godet.
—:—
“What the fuck do you mean she’s not there? That’s impossible. Jesus, Striker, have you looked for her?”
“Screw you, Gunner. Listen to what I’m telling you—I’ve looked everywhere and there is no other human being on this island.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Gunner wanted to rip his hair out. How had she managed to get off?
There was only one possibility and given how damn smart she was, he could only assume she figured out where the boat bringing Striker to the island would come in, and she’d gotten herself stowed away on it before it headed back to the mainland.
He counted back the time between the boat’s arrival and their plane’s departure. Add on another thirty minutes, at least, for Striker to determine she was gone, and they were close to ninety minutes.
Raketa had to be at least an hour away from where the boat docked in Deale.
