Chapter 9
9
“Not again!” Katie exclaimed in dismay. “You’re a freaking trouble magnet.”
She was just now figuring that out? “Act normal, dammit,” he bit out.
Her mouth smiled but her eyes were panicked. “Exclamations of surprise are normal for me. Now what do we do?”
“We keep walking while I see how bad it is.”
“What do you mean?”
“I need to get a head count and check out these guys’ proficiency.”
“Can I help?”
He glanced down at her, surprised. “I don’t know. Can you?”
“If you stop to kiss me, we can look over each other’s shoulders and check for bad guys or spies or whatever they are.”
That was an excellent idea, actually. He pulled her by the arm into a shadow next to a building and wrapped her in his arms. Dawn was warm and awake between them, but didn’t seem to mind the group hug. Katie tilted her face up to him with what looked like a genuine smile and a spark of real desire in her eyes. It would be so easy to lose himself in her.
Their lips touched and it dawned on him belatedly that this was the first time they’d ever really kissed. She tasted like mint toothpaste and something sweet. Or maybe that was just her. Either way, he deepened the light kiss, slanting his mouth against hers and moving his lips against her mouth hungrily. She reciprocated, and furthermore, touched the tip of his tongue with hers. Well, then.
His hand plunged into her hair and he cupped her head, kissing her hungrily. Only Dawn in the sling between them kept the kiss from becoming entirely carnal. Which was a good thing since he was supposed to be counting spies and not thinking about how he was going to steal the next piece of this angel’s innocence.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw two men lounging on a street corner about two blocks back lighting up cigarettes.
She murmured sexily against his mouth as she swayed into him, “I’ve got two guys across the street about a block-and-a-half down. And I think I see two more in the park across the street. But they’re hiding in the shadows so I can’t be sure.”
He swore. They were never going to shake a six-man team. But at least he had a good I.D. on the tails, now. Only the FSB had the resources in this part of the world to find them so fast and launch so many operatives in a matter of hours.
“The restaurant’s just ahead,” he muttered.
“We’re going to eat with all these guys following us?”
“I doubt they’ll try to snatch us in a public place with a lot of witnesses. Uzbekistan isn’t exactly on friendly terms with the Russians. And that’s who those guys are.”
She fell silent beside him, absorbing the implications of that. He held the restaurant door for her and snuck a quick glance at the park. She was not wrong. Two more men were out there.
She let him order for her, which was a good call. The menu included such local delicacies as yak steak and eel. In deference to her American taste buds, he scanned the menu and ordered her roasted chicken. Absently, he chose the same for himself.
It had been suicide to come inside a building like this. Both the front and back exits would already be covered. But with Katie and Dawn in tow, he didn’t dare confront the Russians directly. Were he alone, he would risk a running shoot-out. But not with the girls depending on him.
Frustrated at the limitations of playing spy with his little family in tow warred with a bizarre sense of protectiveness in his gut. He wasn’t actually enjoying having a woman and child depending on him, was he? Surely not. He was a lone wolf. Always had been. Just like his father?—
The realization broke over him in a rush of horror. He was just like his father .
In a mental non sequitor borne of his mind shying away from that supremely unpleasant thought, it dawned on him that Katie was being uncharacteristically silent across from him.
“How do you feel about separating from me?” he asked her.
“I hate that idea!” she exclaimed under her breath. “I don’t speak Russian or Uzbek, Dawn’s documents are iffy, I have no local currency, and I have no idea how to get home. I need you, Alex.”
She was depending on him? That strange warmth passed through him again.
He turned over a half-dozen plans for getting out of this mess. None of them stood any statistical chance of success. He discarded them one by one in growing desperation until he was left with only one choice. The last choice. The one he hated .
This disaster was forcing him to call in favor after favor he dreaded paying back. Getting out of this would put him in debt to people he’d really rather not owe anything to. Not that his opinion mattered for squat with six armed killers waiting for them outside.
As they finished their meal, of which he’d tasted not a bite, he motioned over the ma?tre d’ and asked the fellow quietly to call them a cab and let him know the instant it arrived. He palmed a U.S. twenty and passed it to the guy who smiled broadly.
“Have some dessert,” Alex urged Katie. “The hotel’s concierge told me the chocolate mousse here is excellent.”
“Mmm. Chocolate. I can never say no to it.” She added under her breath, “Even when I’m about to die.”
“Might as well seize the moment and enjoy it,” he replied grimly.
“Has your life always been like this?”
He frowned slightly. “I’ve never had any illusions that I would die of old age.”
“What an awful way to live.”
“It is what it is.”
She fell silent for a time and then said firmly, “I plan to live to a ripe old age and embarrass my great-grandchildren every chance I get.”
His gut twisted. Then she had better get far away from him as fast as she could. He said quietly, “I promise, as soon as I can get you somewhere safe, I’ll get out of your life and take my danger with me.”
She looked like a puppy he’d just drop-kicked in the gut. Dammit . It took every ounce of his self-discipline not to take the words back, not to promise to stay with her as long as she would have him---
Whoa, there. Rewind. As long as she would have him? Uhh, no. He didn’t do long-term relationships. Hell, he didn’t do relationships !
The chocolate mousse arrived and he said low, “Be ready to go on a moment’s notice. Speed will be vital. We’ll go out front and jump in the cab waiting there. But we need to get out of here without drawing any attention to ourselves, so walk out of here at a normal but brisk pace. Got all that?”
She scooped up a spoonful of the creamy chocolate dessert and held it out to him. “Share it with me?”
Reluctantly, he accepted the offered bite of chocolatey goodness. It was an apt metaphor for their relationship. He dashed her hopes and she offered him sweetness anyway. How in the hell did one woman get to be her age and still be so damned na?ve?
The mousse slid off the cold spoon and melted in his mouth, sinfully sweet with just enough of a coffee bite to offset the sugar. Just like her.
He watched as she took a bite.
“Oh my God, that’s delicious,” she groaned. His desire stirred at the look of sheer hedonistic pleasure that filled her eyes. Screw the hit team outside. He wanted to fall into her and put that look in her eyes, himself.
“You’re falling behind on ooey-gooey goodness,” she declared. “And come to think of it, you’re behind in the pleasure department, too. I owe you a couple of major orgasms.”
He about choked on the mouthful of mousse she’d just given him. He was saved from having to reply by the ma?tre d’ raising a finger at him from by the front door.
“Time to go,” he bit out.
Pasting on a brave, fake smile, Katie gathered Dawn while he shouldered the baby bag. He placed his hand in the small of her back and escorted her politely from the dining room. They hit the front door and, following his instructions, Katie raced down the steps and leaped into the cab with him right on her heels.
“Go. Now!” he yelled at the cabbie.
Startled, the guy peeled away from the curb hard.
“Two hundred dollars U.S. to get us to the American Embassy as fast as you can,” he told the driver. “Don’t stop for anything or anyone.”
The guy’s eyes widened in alarm, but then greed kicked in as Alex peeled the bills out of his wallet where the cabbie could see them in the rear view mirror. The driver took him literally, running red lights and screeching through intersections to the sound of retreating car horns. The wild drive made it impossible for their tails to hide themselves, and a black Russian Chaika tore across Tashkent behind them.
“Another hundred bucks if I can I borrow your cell phone,” Alex said to the driver.
“Without taking his eyes off the road, the guy flipped a cell phone over the back seat. Alex tossed the bills forward.
He contacted a local operator and asked to be connected to the American Embassy. C’mon, c’mon , he silently urged the slow phone system. That Chaika was getting damned close and might have orders that included taking them out.
“American Embassy, Tashkent,” a female voice said in his ear.
“My name is Alex Peters and I’m American. I’m with an American woman named Katie McCloud. We’re in a cab inbound to your embassy, and we’re being chased by Russian FSB agents. Am requesting that you open the front gates so we can drive directly into the compound.”
“I’m sorry sir. But that’s not approved protocol—“ the woman started.
He swore in desperation. “They’re going to kidnap or kill us.”
Katie plucked the phone out of his hands. “Let me handle this.” Into the phone, she said, “My uncle Charlie—Charles McCloud, Deputy Director of Plans, CIA—will verify my identity and authorize an emergency ingress to your location. Here’s his cell phone number. Call him immediately. Tell him Baby Butt says hello. We’ll call you back in five minutes.” She disconnected the call and sat back.
Alex stared, dumbfounded. Her uncle was a high-ranking CIA agent? Blank shock rendered his brain non-functional.
“What?” she asked defensively as he continued to stare at her.
The implications were so staggering he couldn’t even begin to think about them right now. He pushed it all aside to deal with the more immediate and pressing concern of that black car behind them. Regular operatives didn’t get big fancy rides like that to tear around in. But he knew who did rate a Chaika. And it made his blood run cold.
He had to say something. Do something. Freezing up was not an option.
“Baby Butt is your authenticator phrase?” he managed to mumble.
She rolled her eyes. “Uncle Charlie gave me the nickname when I was about two. My brothers picked it up, and it took me until high school to break them from calling me by it. Uncle Charlie will know without a doubt it’s me when he hears it. It was the only thing I could think of on the fly that would let him know for sure that I made the request.”
“How much longer to the embassy?” he asked the driver.
“Five, six minutes at this speed,” the guy answered.
“It’s gonna be tight,” Alex murmured.
It was more like four minutes when he rang up the American Embassy. The receptionist picked up the line just as the driver said from the front seat, “It’s up ahead. One minute. No more.”
Alex looked back. The Chaika was maybe a hundred yards behind them, its big engine roaring like a lion. Its headlights blocked any glimpse of the passengers inside. It would have blacked out glass windows anyway.
“American Embassy, Tashkent,” the female voice said in his ear.
He passed the phone to Katie with a single terse instruction. “Hurry.”
“It’s me again, Katie McCloud. Are the gates open? We’ll be there in about thirty seconds, and we’re coming in hot.”
He smiled reluctantly at the military terminology coming out of her entirely civilian mouth.
“Thanks so much,” she chirped into the phone. “I look forward to meeting you. I’ll be the blonde with the baby when we get out of the cab.”
She’d done it. Abject relief—and gut-melting gratitude at having dodged a bullet—poured through him. She had no idea how badly he didn’t want the person in that black car behind them to catch him.
“Drive directly into the compound,” he told the cabbie. “Don’t slow down any more than you must to make the turn.”
The cab didn’t exactly stand his car on two wheels as it careened around the corner into the embassy’s driveway, but it wasn’t far from doing so. The tires squealed in protest as the cab flew through the checkpoint out front. Two very armed Marines leaped out to block the drive after they tore past.
The driver slammed on the brakes and all but launched Alex and Katie into the front seat as the vehicle squealed into a half-slide and screeched to a halt only feet from the back wall of a courtyard.
The driver turned off the ignition. The cab’s interior was silent but for everyone’s heavy breathing.
“Keep your hands on the steering wheel in plain sight,” Alex told the guy. To Katie he murmured, “Lace your hands behind your head and wait for the Marines to come get us.”
They sat quietly for a full minute before a half-dozen of the Marines crowding the courtyard approached the car from every direction, assault rifles leveled at them.
To the driver, Alex said wryly, “Ever consider defecting to the United States? Now’s your chance.”
The guy smiled a little. “Can I take my wife but leave behind my four teenaged kids?”
The Marines gestured for them to roll down the windows and then proceeded to poke the muzzles of their weapons into the car.
After that, it was pretty straightforward. They were ordered out of the car, thoroughly searched, and their passports examined. The Americans were not particularly amused to find Alex’s Russian passport—in his original name—along with his U.S. passport, even after he explained he was a dual citizen.
An assistant attaché eventually declared them non-hostile, although the woman threw a suspicious look in his direction when she when she said it. She acted as if she recognized the Koronov name on his Russian passport.
Katie was shown inside separate from him, the attaché already making baby noises and cooing at Dawn before they hit the door. As for him, he was poked in the back none too gently by an assault rifle and escorted to an interrogation room in the bowels of the embassy.
A Marine officer joined him eventually, a fat dossier under his arm. “You’re a famous guy, Dr. Peters.”
He shrugged. “My father is famous. Or infamous, as it were. I merely stand in the edge of his dubious spotlight from time to time.”
“What are you doing in Tashkent?”
He told the story of working for Doctors Unlimited and their tent being overrun by rebels. He left out the bit about stabbing the American dressed as a civilian, and the bit about the secret Russian supply bunker, or that the cargo plane that airlifted them out had been a Russian military aircraft. He picked up the tale in Osh and finished it with their rather spectacular arrival at this embassy.
The Marine was not a professional interrogator, but Alex was a professionally trained prisoner of war. His father had drilled him for hours on end as a kid in techniques of resisting interrogation. It was one of a spy’s most powerful and necessary weapons—the ability to deceive, evade, and lie with complete conviction.
The Marine didn’t ask about the American he’d stabbed in Zaghastan, which told Alex the American had not been CIA. Embassies were hotbeds of CIA activity, and news of an American operative stabbed in Zaghastan and badly wounded would have made the rounds of the embassies in this part of the world.
He really did hope the American hadn’t died. But the guy had been stubborn and held out till the very last moment to trade information for that pressure balloon in his wound.
“What is your intent to do next, Dr. Peters?”
“Travel back to the United States by the most expeditious means with Miss McCloud and her baby.”
And find out if she’d been sent on the D.U. mission by Uncle Charlie...to do what? Seduce him? Recruit him for the agency?
Or more likely, to entrap him into working for the American government. What were the odds that her being assigned as his nurse was pure chance? His mind shied away from that math. The numbers did not look good for Katie.
“About that baby,” the Marine interrupted his grim train of thought. “How is it your names are on the child’s birth certificate?”
“I’m the physician of record at the birth. I’m legally required to sign the birth certificate. As for naming us as the parents, Zaghastan has no system of adoption. Parentless children are informally passed around until they land with someone willing to raise them—or until they’re drowned, suffocated, or simply starve to death. Rather than throw a helpless newborn on the uncertain mercy of strangers, we chose to declare ourselves her legal parents. Plus, it helped get Dawn through Customs in Osh.”
“Being a parent is a big responsibility.”
“Yes, it is,” Alex replied evenly.
“Kids need a home. Parents who are around. A steady environment.”
“I’m aware of that, Major. Do you have a point to make?”
Instead of answering, the Marine changed subjects abruptly. “What are you planning to do when you reach the States?”
Jesus. Were they all going to try to recruit him? Did this guy want him to work for military intelligence or something?
He snapped, “I’ll continue practicing medicine. I am a doctor, after all.” No sense mentioning that he was wealthy enough not to have to work for several lifetimes. That would bring up all sorts of awkward questions about where his money came from.
So. Sweet, innocent Katie wasn’t so sweet and innocent, after all, was she? And here he’d been, all worried about protecting her purity and naiveté. Damn. He should have taken her up on that pleading request of hers to debauch and corrupt her. At least he could have had a little fun before she blackmailed him, or whatever she had in mind to force him into the CIA fold. Bitch .
“What do you want from us, Dr. Peters?”
“I would like the embassy to help me purchase three plane tickets to Washington, D.C. Both Miss Mc Cloud and I will need to check in with Doctors Unlimited, which is headquartered there. Then we’ll need a ride, and I imagine armed escort, to the Tashkent International Airport at your earliest convenience. I expect you’d like to get me out of here nearly as much as I’d like to be gone.”
The Marine smiled a little unwillingly. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you to your room.”
Interesting. The guy never asked why the FSB had been chasing them so aggressively. Did the Marine know something he didn’t? Or was it just so blindingly obvious who’d been in that Chaika, and why, that the guy didn’t have to ask?
He followed the Marine to a hotel-like room. A wired and fully surveilled hotel room, no doubt. Would Katie be allowed to join him? Would she try to seduce him before they got back to the States and her opportunity to entrap him slipped away?
Was this room specifically set up to film the two of them having raunchy sex? Did any of these people seriously think that a honey trap would embarrass him into caving in to them?
He snorted mentally. A person had to have a conscience—or a soul—to be blackmailed. Last time he checked, he had neither.
Katie was perplexed as to why she and Alex had been separated, and furthermore, why the nice lady attaché seemed prepared to keep them apart while they were in the embassy.
As the woman showed her into a bedroom and murmured something about seeing if there was a crib that could be sent up for Dawn, Katie finally blurted, “Are we in some kind of trouble?”
The woman, middle-aged, bland, and smoothly diplomatic answered, “Of course not, Miss McCloud. Your uncle was clear in his instructions. We’re to give you all the help you need and show you every courtesy.”
“Where’s Alex?”
“He’s filling in a few details for us on how you came to be here.”
Katie had lived around men with secrets and who avoided giving direct answers for too long to be fooled by the woman’s soothing tone of voice. They were interrogating Alex. She was confident he could handle himself perfectly well if they were, however.
“Alex and I need to get back to the States. We need to report in to our employer, and I’m ready to sleep in my own bed.”
The woman attaché laughed. “I hear you. If there’s anything you need that’s not in your room, just pick up the phone and let the receptionist know. Tashkent isn’t exactly the hub of civilization, but we’ll do our best to accommodate you.”
She was being sweet-talked. Coddled. Her brothers did it all the time, and it pissed her off. In this situation, it made her suspicious, too.
But it wasn’t like she could rock the boat too hard. They had Alex, and she dared not say or do anything to jeopardize his fragile status with the American authorities.
She settled Dawn in the playpen someone brought up and crawled into bed, not at all sleepy. They’d slept last night and most of today.
Cuddling with Alex had been nice once he got over being awkward and uncomfortable with it. She missed him. Missed his steady strength beside her. Missed his lightning-fast intelligence. His dry humor. His alert awareness of everything and everyone around him. She felt safe when she was with him.
Hopefully, he was okay. She considered asking where he was and when she could see him but wasn’t sure if Alex was portraying them as a couple or not. Heck, did he even think of her in that way? He was so hard to read that she couldn’t be sure. Her impression was that he was currently in a state of relationship-curious regarding her.
Actual romantic relationships were very obviously not his thing. But inheriting an instant, if temporary family, obviously had him thinking about things he’d never considered before. She just hoped she and Dawn also had him feeling a few things he’d never felt before. Like affection and stability…
…Go ahead. Admit it to yourself. You love him a little.
Which she gave better than even odds of being a huge mistake.
Oh, Lord. He was rubbing off on her. Now she was thinking in terms of odds. She really was infatuated with him, wasn’t she?
In desperate need of distraction, she turned on the TV and was startled to receive an array of American networks. She channel surfed absently, unable to get her mind off Alex and if he was okay.
Who was in that black car that had chased them across Tashkent? Why had Alex seemed so much more concerned after a bunch of foot soldiers had morphed into that upscale car?
She knew Alex would be a controversial figure in American intelligence circles. His father was a convicted spy for the enemy, for Heaven’s sake. But why was he be questioned so closely, now? What was going on with him that he hadn’t told her?
He’d been secretive from the start, but he’d been opening up with her more in the past few days, sharing glimpses into his past and into how he felt about all of it. The person she saw was lonely and in desperate need of love.
She was a sucker for abandoned creatures in need, and Alex had been completely on his own for most of his life.
Oh, he’d technically had a mother. Who’d abandoned him and his brothers. And although he didn’t talk much about his older brothers, she gathered they were much like hers—condescendingly affectionate but involved in their own lives and not particularly interested in him. As for Alex’s father…but she got the distinct impression that Roman Koronov had been more of a drill sergeant and taskmaster than a parent.
She highly doubted Alex even knew what it was to be loved.
Such a contrast to her big, rowdy, obnoxious family, where love and laughter were part of everything they said or did. Her heart broke for the cold, isolated childhood Alex must have experienced.
And then to be humiliated by his father’s crimes…judged for the sins of the father…to bear Koronov’s name and shame…no wonder Alex had changed his name.
Did she dare try to show Alex what love was? Or was she just opening herself up for disappointment and heartache? It would kill her if he up and walked away from her down the road, after she’d given him her heart.
And he’d been clear in his intent to walk away. Just an hour ago, he’d promised to get out of her life as soon as she was safe. Apparently, he perceived himself as an obstacle to her dream of growing old and embarrassing her great-grandkids.
Was he right? Would being with him cost her that future she dreamed of?
Her reckless desire to love him warred with her need for caution and self-preservation. And there was Dawn to think about, too…
Her thoughts spun round and round until she was dizzy from them.
Dawn woke up, and she fed the baby and played with her to distract herself.
Who was Dawn’s father? When they got back to the States, should she go looking for the birth father or just take over raising the infant and not look back?
Had Dawn been conceived in forbidden love, or was she the product of rape? There’d been no time in their frantic race for their lives to ask the girl anything about how she’d gotten pregnant or who Dawn’s father was.
Katie’d heart told her to keep Dawn and raise her, but logic reluctantly told her the law favored Dawn’s birth father. He had a right to know he had a child and had a right to choose whether or not to raise Dawn.
She smoothed the infant’s hair, which was starting to grow and was coming in pale and blonde— so not Zaghastani.
Dawn opened her bright blue eyes, looked up at her, and burped. Loudly.
Katie laughed and scooped up the baby for a cuddle. She whispered into Dawn’s hair, “Us girls, we’ll show Alex what it’s like to be loved and have a real family, won’t we?”
But as soon as the words left her mouth, doubt slammed into her. Easy to say. Hard to do. Was it worth the risk? Was he worth it?
Thing was, Alex was a pretty extraordinary man from what she’d seen of him so far.
Dawn gurgled in what sounded like agreement…or maybe she just had gas.
Katie sighed. To try or not to try? That was the question.
Did she dare try to break through the walls Alex Peters hid behind and teach him how to love?