Chapter 39
Jack kept his hand in mine as we drove north through the city. I couldn’t have driven right then. My whole body was vibrating both with the implications of what we had learned and the energy between us from that kiss that I had somehow initiated. Me! What had I done?
“We have to figure out if she just wants information or if there’s something more sinister afoot,” Jack said, pulling me from my thoughts.
Of course that was what mattered. Not the way I wanted to slide next to him on the bench seat and wrap his arm around me.
I shivered, and he noticed. “You’re sure you’re okay? ”
I nodded, not quite trusting myself to speak yet.
“I meant what I said up there. I will absolutely dig up dirt on him if he—”
“Nothing happened. Your timing was perfect.” He glanced over at me and seemed reassured by whatever he saw.
I thought I must look wild, but maybe that was all on the inside.
“Information can be plenty sinister though—especially if Cuba is working with Russia.” I thought of huddling under a school desk because of the threat of nuclear war.
If Cuba gave Russia a close foothold, and the president himself told them what he knew . . .
“It’s bad either way. But that’s a very different story from her being here to try to kill him.”
I turned to look at him. It hadn’t actually occurred to me that he thought that. “You don’t think she’d—”
“I’ve heard rumors. The Bay of Pigs wasn’t the only attempt we’ve made to get rid of Castro. It was just the only public one. If we’re trying, it stands to reason he could be doing the same.”
He swerved suddenly to avoid a collision, pulling his hand from mine to hold his arm out in front of me, protecting me as he hit the brakes.
When the car had steadied, he wrapped that arm around my shoulder, pulling me to his side, precisely where I wanted to be, enjoying the feel of his leg against mine.
Amazing how it was the exact same body parts, but when the vice president did it .
. . I held in a shudder so Jack wouldn’t think it was about him.
No. I never wanted to be in that position again.
Jack swore softly. “We’re going to have to try to get something out of Alejandra.”
I looked up at him. “How?”
“I could pretend to be CIA,” he said.
“Wouldn’t she run?”
“Probably.”
We were silent for three blocks, trying to work this out.
“I pretend to be another Cuban agent,” I said, an idea forming.
“You what?”
“We’d need help—I’d need a little Spanish. Not much. Just enough to say something to spook her. But what if I tell her the Russian sent me to make sure she’s actually going to finish the job? Make her reveal a timeline.”
“I should do it.”
“They sent a woman to cozy up to the vice president and the president for a reason—I’ll tell her the Russian wants me to take over if she fails. She’s not going to like that, so she’ll make it clear she’s not going to fail.”
He shook his head. “It’s too risky. If she is an assassin, what stops her from killing you?”
“The fact that the Russian sent me. With what Carmen told us, we know just enough to make it believable.”
“Maybe. But who do you know who speaks Spanish? Carmen left town.”
My shoulders slumped. I knew no one except Carmen. We had hit a dead end. And then, as Jack navigated the car around the traffic circle, I saw the sign for Colesville Road—the way we would take if we were stopping to pick up a box of Montgomery Donuts . . . “Frank,” I said suddenly.
“Who?”
“You know, Frank. The security guard at The Digest.”
“Frank speaks Spanish? I thought he was Italian.”
“He grew up in Puerto Rico.”
“How do you know that?”
I grinned up at Jack. “I take the time to talk to people—all reporters should. You never know what you’re going to learn.”
Jack rolled his eyes at the dig. “Won’t he be suspicious that you want to learn how to threaten a spy in Spanish?”
He had a point. Anything that would get Alejandra de Bernal to think I was her compatriot was going to raise a red flag.
I watched as a raindrop hit the windshield, tracing a crooked path toward the bottom of the glass, another soon joining it, then more until Jack switched on the windshield wipers.
Jack shook his head. “No one comes to DC for the weather,” he muttered.
The weather. What had Carmen said about the weather? Whoever she is, she’s not here for the weather. Trust me. That’s better in Cuba.
“You’re a genius.”
He looked down at me in surprise. “I am?”
“The weather. That’s one of the first things you learn in another language. I’ll get Frank to tell me how to say ‘Our friend wants to know how the weather is in Havana’ and ‘It’s awfully cold in Russia.’”
He bit his bottom lip, pondering this, then shook his head.
“Greenberg, that just might be crazy enough to work.” I grinned at the use of my last name.
I was Judy Greenberg, ace reporter in his head right then, not Judy Greenberg, girl he sometimes kissed at the Hay-Adams Hotel.
“Change the locations though. Havana and Russia are too specifically hostile.”
“San Juan, then?” Jack nodded. “And . . . ?”
“Chicago. Although when we talk to Alejandra, let’s change it to Siberia.” I looked up at him, questioningly. “More threatening than just Russia.”
He pulled into my driveway, but I didn’t make a move to get out of the car, not quite ready to leave him. Jack whispered my name, and I turned my head, not even caring if my mother or grandmother—or even my father for that matter—saw us kissing in the car.
I leaned forward, my head tilted up as his came closer to mine and then—
A rap at the window made us jump apart.
My grandmother stood under a giant umbrella, her hair covered in a plastic rain bonnet, indicating that Jack should roll down his window.
He complied, and she pointed at my dress.
“Best change back into what you left in,” she warned, pointing toward the living room window, where a light shone behind the curtains. “Your mother’s still awake.”
“What are you doing outside in the middle of the night in the rain?”
“Canasta ran late,” she said. “My friend Hannah Kellerman just dropped me off. Terrible driver, that one. But don’t you worry, young man.
I’ll make sure Edna knows it was Hannah who ran over her daylilies, not you.
Now go let her get changed and then you can kiss her good night properly.
” Which likely meant it had been my grandmother who ran over the daylilies earlier in the day.
I doubted there was a worse driver than her roaming the streets.
I shook my head. “You are the worst.”
“If I were, I’d be telling your mother the state I just caught you in instead of saving your tuchus.”
She had a point there.
Jack stammered out a thank you and put the car in reverse as she shooed him away, then took us to the side street where I typically disrobed.
“I think I like her,” he said as I slipped out of the black dress.
“She’s something all right.”
“I see where you get it from.”
“You should be seeing a lot less,” I said, meeting his eyes in the mirror. He looked away. “But yeah. She always understood me better than my mother and my sister.”
“What about your father?”
That was an interesting question, actually. He seemed proud I was working at The Digest after all. “I think he ignores what he doesn’t want to see.” I turned around. “Zip me up?”
He complied, and I climbed over the seat. “You really should just use the doors.”
“And deny you that quick look at my legs? What kind of fun would that be?”
He started to laugh. “I’ll tell you this: I’m never bored with you around.”
I leaned into him, and he wrapped his arm around my shoulder to drive the three blocks back to my house.