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He asked for the tartare, with carrots and mushrooms and a side of fries.
No one did french fries like the French.
Her father finally introduced himself—Garrett Marshall—and Hudson returned with, “Hudson Bly, wide receiver for the Vienna Vikings, formerly from Montana.”
Good grip, and he met Hudson with a thorough once-over. Then he sat next to Iris, and Hud didn’t know if he’d passed inspection. Garrett put his arm across the back of her chair.
Maybe not.
“Okay, so please clarify what you meant about ‘on the run,’” Ned said after they’d handed over their menus.
Again, he wanted to reach out and take her hand, but she dove right in. “Nearly two weeks ago, I stood on a bridge and watched someone stab our cousin Tate.”
Okay, he might not have startedthere.
“I was there because a couple weeks before that, I was asked by what I thought was our government, aka the CIA, to deliver a package to a Berlin train station. Since I travel a lot, they told me that I could be useful. And stupidly, I said yes.”
The waiter brought them their coffees and teas and tiny cups of espresso. Iris doctored her tea with milk and sugar.
“I came to my senses pretty fast—I’m not a spy, and I don’t want to be one, ever—so I met with my…I don’t know, handler?, and told him I was out. He told me that I needed to do one last favor”—she took a sip of the tea—“and help them find a mole. Which involved going to the Charles Bridge in Prague to take a picture of a handoff between a courier and said mole.”
Hudson raised his hand. “Courier.”
Garrett raised an eyebrow.
“For the record, I too was recruited by the CIA, but as it turns out, we were working for opposite teams.”
Thankfully no one asked him why he’d said yes to the CIA. Looking at Iris, maybe the answer didn’t matter anymore.
“The man who sent me to the bridge was actually a rogue spy named Alan Martin. We’re not sure why he wanted me to take pictures of Hudson and the so-called mole. But I never did, because the mole turned out to be our cousin, Tate Marshall.”
“Tate is involved with the CIA?”
“Not exactly,” said Ned. He had leaned back, his arm around Shae, his back to the wall, his focus on the street. His gaze flickered now and again to Hudson. He leaned forward. “Tate, according to Fraser, works for a private security group attached to the government. And that’s who Hudson here had hooked up with.” He looked at his dad, then Iris. “As it turns out, the information Hudson was passing off had to do with the whereabouts of Shae.”
He squeezed Shae’s hand. She smiled at him, then looked at Iris. “If you hadn’t completed Tate’s mission and passed on the information, then I still might be stuck in a gulag ship in Siberia.”
And that shut down the table. A beat, then another.
“What did you say?” Jonas said, leaning back in his chair. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“No time. Fraser called me in Montana and told me that Iris was missing. Asked me to come home,” Ned said.
“And I wasn’t letting him out of my sight,” Shae said.
“He told me the same thing,” Jonas said. “And I’m not sure why, but after the scare we had in Slovenia, I thought—what if they found out that I had been instrumental in taking out their biological weapon?”
“Who isthey?” Iris said.
“A Russian group called the Petrov Bratva,” Ned said, then turned to Jonas. “And they did. Or at least figured out that my SEAL Team helped with the mission. We’re not sure why they took Shae, but it got complicated. Still is.”
More silence around the table.
Then, finally, Garrett leaned forward, his hands folded. “That doesn’t explain why Iris was on the run for five days.”
Hudson looked at Iris, and then he did take her hand, under the table. “After we met Ned and Fraser in Paris—just a little ways from here, at Napoleon’s grave—and handed off the information, they asked me to make sure Iris was safe.” He met Ned’s gaze. “I flew her back to Milan and left her there.”
“I didn’t need him babysitting me,” Iris said now, and let go of his hand.
