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“He was onto her,” Parker said.
Lori shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. She told me not to do anything until she returned, but I thought I knew best. I decided to confront him. Before I could, I went into labor. A week after our son was born, Lydia called and told me she was back in London and gave me the address where we were going to meet Bryant. I still held out hope that seeing his child would changesomething. I wanted us to be a family, regardless of what had happened. I was going to lay it all out…how we could start over in America. I wanted that dream so bad I could taste it.”
Moe’s legs felt weak. “What year was this?”
“Nineteen ninety-three.”
Her answer clanged in his brain like a giant cowbell. He couldn’t make his mouth work. He had to sit.
“Did he show?” Parker asked.
Lori drank again. “I was at the spot early, waiting for them, when I was abducted. My baby…” Her voice hitched. “I had him with me.”
Parker pushed the cup away. “What happened?”
Lori stared at the wall, seeing into the past. “They drugged me and I woke up in a Siberian prison. They tortured and starved me for seven years, trying to get information from me about MI6 and the CIA. FSB tried to brainwash me into spying for them. During my incarceration, I had no idea if anyone was looking for me. It scrambled my brain, you know? I didn’t know if they’d killed my son, sold him, or left him to die behind that shop.”
Moe couldn’t breathe. This couldn’t possibly be tied to him.No fucking way. Parker was eyeing him, concern etched on her face, and he realized he was gripping the table with both hands. His brain was spinning. Theroomwas spinning. He had to focus. “What shop?”
She shrugged. “A tattoo parlor. We were supposed to meet in the parking lot behind it.”
A wall came down in his mind. She was playing him.Hadto be. He had to keep her and her story at bay. “Why did Lydia steal the watch?” His voice was hoarse, raspy. “What does all of that have to do with RING?”
Lori tipped her chin toward the porch. “Romalov was the man who kidnapped me. He and his followers were just getting started back then. Lydia didn’t steal that watch to give to him for the technology. She hid evidence about Bryant on it, thinking it would be safe.”
“What evidence?” he ground out.
Lori took a deep breath. “During the years she spent searching for me, she discovered that Bryant was lining his pockets through his MI6 contacts, even as he kept moving up the food chain and becoming more powerful. She told me she had to be careful, and that many of the trails she’d followed hadn’t turned up anything substantial. He could talk his way out of anything, she claimed, and she knew she had to catch him in the act or all of her evidence would be thrown out as circumstantial. She baited him, telling him she had the proof.” Her eyes cut to the watch. “But she said he countered, claiming he’d recorded all of my conversations with him when we were together. Our pillow talk. He also had recordings of things I’d said while under duress in prison. He created damning evidence against me and told her if she wouldn’t exchange what she had on him for it, he’d expose me to the world as a traitor. The CIA and MI6 would come after me.”
“Maddox is behind all of this?” Parker asked.
Lori nodded. “Lydia is running one hell of an undercover op, and my freedom is the least of it. I’m supposed to meet her later today to wrap it up once and for all. Now?” She shrugged. “I have no idea what he’ll do if he doesn’t get that watch.”
Moe forced his fingers to loosen their grip. “What about your son? What happened to him?”
Lori studied the sandwich. “Lydia and I searched every database, police report, and adoption record in the years after I got my mind right again. We followed any lead, but then 9/11 happened and it became harder and harder to get information. He was gone. At least, that’s what we believed until a young agent was taken hostage by a terrorist group years later. They strapped C4 on his chest and demanded—”
His heart stopped and he bolted to his feet, bumping the table and upsetting the tea. “The release of their leader.”
Parker glanced between them. “Holy shit.” She smacked a hand on the table, staring hard at Lori. “I knew you looked familiar.”
Lori didn’t take her eyes off Moe. “Hear me out. You had a life, a family, and a career. I couldn’t be sure it was you. I’d lost so much, and the hope that I’d finally found you was tempered with fear. Our story is tangled up with some very bad people. People who could use you against me. Kill you, even. I couldn’t risk it.”
“You pointed a bloody gun at me!”
“It wasn’t loaded.”
His temper blew like a geyser. “You’ve known since that day that I might be yours and you didn’t—”
He couldn’t say it.All this time…
He sprinted for the door, his lungs screaming for air, his heart pounding. Every last wall he’d kept in place for so long crumbled in the wake of the tsunami engulfing him.
The apocalypse he’d lived in fear of wasn’t something out there—it was inside him.
“Moe!” Parker’s voice came from a vacuum.
He blasted outside, jumping the steps. The others were huddled around the lead SUV, and they all looked at him. A mixture of confusion, concern, and something that seemed an awful lot like pity distorted their faces because they’d been listening in. They knew everything.
