Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
John’s heart yelled at him to chase Vivian. But she’d explicitly asked him for space. To ignore what she’d asked would mean putting his needs first.
He wasn’t that kind of asshole.
But he’d lose his mind if he didn’t talk to someone. Someone who’d be honest. Thomas would happily tell John if and how he’d fucked up.
Not while his shadow could hear him.
“Okay if we go for a walk?” John asked Officer Hall, who’d respectfully buried herself in her phone while Vivian broke up with him.
Officer Hall nodded. “Yeah, sure. That was brutal.”
Cool. Someone on the brink of retirement pitied him.
He marched, scanning for ambient, pattern-less noise to prevent eavesdropping. Aha—there. A massive public fountain rose behind a farmer’s market. Water cascaded from a sword-wielding angel into a swimming pool–sized bowl flanked by gryphons.
Were gryphons in the Bible?
He shook his head. Not the point.
Fountain droplets moistened his clothes. After a sigh, he dialed the number he memorized while Vivian had been passed out on the train to Tangier.
On the third ring, Thomas answered. “This better be my brother.”
He cracked a smile. “It’s me.”
“Well hello, me. Are you hitched? If so and you’ve sent zero photos, I’m annoyed.”
He let loose a shuddering breath. “She broke up with me.”
“I’m getting off the treadmill.” Beeps sounded in the background. “What’d you do?”
“Why do you assume I did something?”
“Because you self-sabotage like a motherfucker.”
He knew Thomas wouldn’t pull punches.
“It wasn’t me. Well, not just me. She’s been working since we left, and I said if she uses all her energy at her job, she won’t have much left for me or any future family we have.”
Thomas sighed. “Respectfully, what the fuck? You adore her career. What’s changed?”
Everything. But he couldn’t blow her cover.
“While we’ve been here, I’ve met her associates.” John leaned against a huge planter. “Her work can be really tense and dangerous.”
“Dangerous? Unless you’re writing a clickbaity think piece for The Atlantic, I wouldn’t call art dangerous.”
“Her line of work is.” He could say this without spilling her secrets. “She goes to places and neighborhoods where I wouldn’t walk Ruckus. I hate that she puts herself at risk.”
A pause.
Finally Thomas spoke. “Big brother, how are you this dumb? Life is risk. You can’t ask your partner to give something up, to make herself smaller, to dim her light so you can breathe easier. If you need that from her, maybe you shouldn’t get married.”
“Ouch.” The planter scraped his spine. “I’m allowed to have concerns.”
“Absolutely you do. But if your conclusion is, ‘I can’t live with this,’ then you’re effectively breaking up with her, aren’t you?”
“No, I—” Shit. Maybe Thomas was right.
“Marriage is like a foxhole, John. When the world’s exploding around you, your partner should make you feel like you’re not alone, help you figure out how to climb from the trenches to safety, and make you laugh while you’re doing it.”
“Like you’re so wise? I have shoes that are older than your marriage.”
“So dismissive. And throw those work boots out immediately. They’re disgusting. But I’m not talking about my marriage. I mean Mom and Dad’s.”
John snorted.
“Mom and Dad? If anything, they prove my point. They were so into work they barely paid attention to us.” He paced the fountain’s circle. “For what? To process visas faster? Ironic that diplomats aren’t better at managing relationships with their own sons.”
Thomas was silent.
Ah, shit, maybe he’d crossed a line. He’d always tried to keep his annoyance with their parents under wraps. To protect Thomas from it while he served as a junior dad to his brother.
“Where…” Thomas sighed. “Where do you think our parents work?”
“Uh, the State Department? For thirty-five years.”
Thomas sighed again. “Are you sitting down?”
“No.” John paused near a gryphon.
“You should.”
This kid. “Spit it out.”
“They don’t work for State, John. They work for the DoD.”
Jesus fucking Christ, what? Around the DMV, working for the Department of Defense—without any specificity—meant working for an intelligence agency.
If their cover was working for State, CIA was their most likely employer.
“That can’t be true,” John said.
Thomas laughed. “When you went to college, I had a lot of spare time to snoop through everyone’s stuff. I asked several probing questions, and they gave me the broad strokes.”
“I’m not surprised they didn’t tell me,” John huffed. “They barely give me advice. Why would they trust me with this?”
“Boo-hoo. Ever think they don’t give you advice because you make good choices?”
Thomas might be right, but letting go of the high ground was surprisingly hard.
“I didn’t always make good choices,” he grumbled.
“Because you’re flawed like the rest of us. But you learned from your mistakes. Mom and Dad interceded on the rare occasions we need them to—like the lock-picking incident, or when they spoke to Gen’s parents.”
True. He’d been both mortified and grateful when they stepped in.
Young enough to know he needed them, and old enough to resent them for it.
They’d assured him seventeen-year-olds still need their parents’ help and were happy to be there for him.
Of course, he’d turned it around on them.
If they’d been paying attention, he wouldn’t have gotten into trouble.
Teenagers could be self-involved assholes sometimes.
“I guess that’s true.”
“You guess?” Thomas asked. “They flew in from Europe to check Jane out the minute you said she might be the one.”
He scrunched his forehead. “They were in town for work.”
“You are such a dope.”
John exhaled, long and slow.
If his parents could do this, he could. Vivian wouldn’t be able to tell him everything about her job. He’d have to trust her when she disappeared, and remind himself that she might be in danger, but she could handle it.
So her husband should be able to handle it, too.
“I am a dope.”
“Glad you see things my way. Now go get your woman. I already put a deposit down on the American Visionary Art Museum for next June.”
“What?” John laughed. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I might have secretly asked Jane what her dream wedding venue would be. While you’ve been gallivanting through Europe, I called them like a top-notch best man does. They had a cancellation I scooped up. So go grovel.”
Thomas hung up.
Time to grovel, indeed.
The walk back to H?tel Chevalier was fast. He tried to engage Officer Hall in conversation, but she dodged all questions. Just as well. He needed to plot his groveling. At the suite’s doors, Officer Hall knocked in a coded rhythm, and Rodriguez let them in.
There she was.
A beam of sunshine arced through the window and lit up Vivian at the kitchenette table like an angel. He couldn’t wait to tell her about her parents. But wait…could he? That would be blowing their cover. Vivian, of all people, could keep that secret.
Vivian, who had just crooked her finger at him.
Something was wrong. She looked like she’d gotten the final bar trivia question incorrect and lost all their points.
He edged behind her. “Hey, Gorgeous.”
She jerked her head toward the screen. Based on the angle, the photo was from the camera necklace. Mystery Vampire. She’d run it through facial recognition software, which indicated it was a seventy-two percent match with a grainy photo of someone named Dragomir Mihailovic.
Vivian held her thumb sideways and wiggled it—their game night signal asking if he was keeping up.
He double-tapped the table. Yes.
She alt-tabbed to a report naming Dragomir what’s-his-name as a person of interest in a raid on the Marseille-Fos Port ten years ago. She pointed to two names on the report’s header.
Analyst: James J. MacColl
Redacted by: Janna Vandenberg
Black lines obscured half the text. From what he skimmed, Dragomir was born in Croatia on December 25, 1986, was adopted at two years old, and had worked his way up to underboss in an organized crime syndicate.
She wiggled her thumb, and he tapped the table twice.
Hall swiveled her gaze in his direction.
“Sorry,” he said. “Nervous habit.”
Vivian loaded a map on her phone—the same one she’d scanned with the QR code from his tux in Monte Carlo. The map showed two pulsing dots, six hundred miles apart. One in Monaco—the one he’d left behind. The other…
She pinched and zoomed, and a pulsing dot appeared in H?tel Chevalier.
He faced Vivian. Dragomir was here. The same Dragomir about whom Vandenberg was hiding information. In one glance, they had a full conversation.
Vivian widened her eyes. Act natural.
John furrowed his brow. Natural? Your boss’s boss is involved in this.
Vivian nodded, then folded her hands. True, but we have an advantage. She doesn’t know we know any of this.
The door across the suite swung open. Vandenberg, dressed in a red suit, clapped three times. “Okay, people. Game plan for tonight.”
Vivian wiped her search history and closed all applications.
“Coming?” she asked John.
The quiver in her voice was like the time she’d asked him to accompany her to urgent care, where she’d been diagnosed with walking pneumonia.
She was exhausted and afraid.
And he’d be there for her. He sat next to her on the couch. Hall and Rodriguez perched in the wingback chairs, and Vandenberg paced the room.
“Tonight at Maison Moreau, American actor Bradley Westwood is celebrating his recent divorce,” Vandenberg said. “We were able to get Jane Davis and John on the list because of her pre-existing relationship with the museum.”
“Does John need to be my plus-one?” Vivian asked. “That puts him in harm’s way.”
“Because of Monte Carlo, he’s known to be your romantic interest,” Vandenberg said. “Hall, Rodriguez—you’ll be on the museum’s perimeter. Specifically, the café across the street. Flint, you’re in the museum with John. We’re relying on you.”
She swallowed. “I won’t let you down, ma’am.”
“Good. Now get some sleep. Ten hours ’til the doors open.”