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She dropped her eyes to the table and didn’t speak for a moment. When she managed to carry on, the words almost choked her. “We fought him and…it was like we were nothing, like we were just toys for him to play with. He cut my leg open, so I couldn’t run—”—she touched her thigh—“you’ve seen the scar. Then, as I lay there bleeding to death, he killed my partner, Lev, right in front of me. And then he killed the child. Just for fun. He would have killed me, but the police arrived and he had to run.” She looked up into my eyes. “Lev died in my arms. He’d been my partner for four years. My lover for two.”
The rage had built into towering, black clouds shot through with white-hot lightning, filling my chest and making it difficult to breathe. I wanted to destroy this guy for hurting her. But there was something else underneath, a creeping, cold certainty I’d felt before. There’s a reason Military Police exist and it’s more than just the Army wanting to clean up its own messes. The military trains people to be lethal and cunning and when one of those people goes bad, they’re more dangerous than any normal criminal. The police can’t handle them and there has to be someone who can put them away.
This guy had killed people for thirty years, on every continent. Someone had to stop him. We had to stop him. The two of us.
“You’ve been hunting him ever since,” I said.
She nodded stiffly. “I finally tracked him to the US. But my bosses at the GRU wouldn’t let me go after him, too afraid I’d cause some international incident. So I had to go rogue.” She crossed her arms defensively over her chest and suddenly she looked small, vulnerable. “I don’t have anything to go back to, after this,” she told me. “If I ever go back to Russia they’ll probably arrest me. But I don’t care.” She met my eyes. “I just want him dead.”
I suddenly understood a whole hell of a lot. I understood why she’d been ready to throw her life away, jumping over that waterfall to go after Maravic, and why she’d broken down when I stopped her. I understood why she was so coldly determined, why she hid behind flirting and teasing. Maybe I’m not Gabriel, but I’m not a complete fucking idiot. I know a broken heart when I see one. I reached out and put my big hand over her small one, to let her know she wasn’t alone.
She looked down at it and…she didn’t flinch or pull her hand away but I could see the fear in her face. The guilt. She thinks she’s cheating on him. What did that mean for us?
I felt the heat go to my face and hoped she couldn’t see. Us? Jesus, we’d slept together and I was already planning the wedding?
But I did want there to be an us. I looked into those frozen sky eyes and I wanted it so bad it made my chest ache. The realization made me feel dumb but, at the same time, the resolve settled into place inside me, unyielding as stone. I wanted there to be an us. Despite the fact we were meant to be enemies. Despite the fact I was meant to be bringing her in. Despite her broken heart.
And I can be real stubborn, when I want something.
“How does the stockbroker figure into all this?” I asked. “Why’d you kill him?”
“I didn’t. Maravic did. I followed him to the stockbroker’s house. Got inside just in time to see him stab the stockbroker to death.”
“Why not just tell the CIA that?”
Tanya looked me right in the eye. “Because the CIA is behind all this.”
I felt my jaw drop. “What?”
Tanya leaned forward. “After I saw the stockbroker killed, I called an old contact of mine at the CIA, Roberta Geiss, to warn them about Maravic.”
“You know Roberta?”
“She worked in your Russia station for a while. Good woman. I tell her about Maravic and one day later, you and your friends kick down my door. And when I try to contact Roberta, they tell me she’s been in a car accident.”
I sat there staring. My stomach felt like it had fallen right through the floor of the diner.
“Roberta passed on my warning to the CIA,” said Tanya. “And someone there tried to kill her, and sent you to arrest me, to shut me down. They’re the ones paying Maravic, that’s why he’s in the US!”
I shook my head. I felt like a limpet trying to cling to a rock while the tide tried to drag it away. “No…”
“How do you think Maravic found us in the forest?” asked Tanya.
I went quiet. I hadn’t thought of that.
