3. Adrian
THREE
“What’s the plan?” Nataliya asked once we were back on the road. “We meet with your backup?”
My hands gripped the steering wheel. “There’s no backup,” I said. “The plan is for you to figure out what that message says. That will let me know where we need to go next.”
“You don’t have—” I glanced at her. Her eyebrows were knitted together in confusion. Even so, she still looked absolutely stunning, and an odd electric sensation spread outward from my chest. I had to make a conscious effort to focus on what she was saying. “What kind of FBI investigation sends one agent without backup? You didn’t even stop to talk to the police earlier—” Realization spread across her face, followed quickly by anger. “What did I just say about lying to me? Huh? Are you even a real FBI agent, you asshole!?”
“Enough!” I said, cutting her off before she could get even more worked up. “I am an agent. I’m just not here officially. Cuddy and your brother’s deaths aren’t an FBI matter. It was a military operation on foreign soil—the FBI has no jurisdiction.”
“But Hayes—he’s operating in America at least part of the time, isn’t he?” she argued. “You said he smuggled antiquities. Is he selling them here in the US?”
“He is,” I agreed. “At least, as far as I can tell. Once I’ve built a case against him, I’ll take it to my superiors.”
“Why haven’t you taken it to them already? Why are you building this case on your own?”
Here, I hesitated. I hadn’t wanted to get into this, but I wasn’t going to lie to her if I could help it. “I tried, but I was told to leave it alone. Hayes has protection from up high. Maybe he’s bribed people. Maybe he has blackmail on someone—or multiple someones. Maybe the Hayes Group is just too valuable to the Pentagon to risk pissing him off. For whatever reason, I need rock-solid evidence against him before I can call in the cavalry.”
“So wait, this is totally off the books?” she asked.
“One hundred percent,” I confirmed.
“Then…how did they find me?”
I wasn’t following. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I thought someone must have leaked your…case notes, or reports, or whatever they are—and that when you told your superiors you were coming to find me, they—or someone else in the FBI—told Hayes’s men.”
“You assumed the FBI leaked information?”
She scoffed. “You’ve been to the RoW. How much trust do you think I have in government employees not to be corrupt?”
I…really didn’t have any reply I could give to that. And frankly, I couldn’t defend the FBI and say with real certainty we weren’t like that. I’d just told her I had my own suspicions someone in the bureau was taking their orders from Hayes. There was a reason that in all my searching, I hadn’t leaned on any of my FBI colleagues. The only people I trusted were my old SEAL team. Anyone else was suspect.
“So if they didn’t track me through an FBI leak, how did they find me?”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted, “but I heard some rumors underground that they were tailing you and closing in. That’s why I showed up today.”
Her eyes went wide. “That’s how they did it, then.”
“Did what?”
“That’s how they figured out where I was. They weren’t closing in—they had no idea where I was—but they knew you were working on tracking me down.”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “How can you be sure they didn’t know where you were?”
“You saw them,” she said. “They’re as subtle as bricks to the face. They were the same way in Las Vegas. There was no wait, so if they’d been watching me, they would have grabbed me already. No, what they did was put out word that they were closing in…and then wait for you to lead them right to me.”
“No way,” I argued. “I wasn’t followed here—I can guarantee that.”
“You weren’t tailed here,” she countered. “But could you have been tracked? Ever check your car for trackers?”
“Fuck,” I muttered, feeling like an idiot. I had led them right to her. I should have suspected some kind of trap, but I’d spent so long trying to track her down, and at the prospect that Hayes’s men might get to her first, I’d jumped into action without thinking it through. That wasn’t like me—and I couldn’t let it happen again. No matter what, I had to keep my wits about me. That was the only way I was going to be able to keep her safe. “Where are you parked?” I asked. We were coming up to the diner. Luckily, the police had come and gone, and there didn’t seem to be a big crowd gathered.
“The gravel lot,” she said. “Around the back.”
I maneuvered around the building and parked beside a beat-up Honda Civic. “Can that thing travel?” I asked. If her theory proved right, we were going to need to switch vehicles…but hers wasn’t in the best shape.
“She’ll do just fine,” Nataliya said. “She’s gotten us this far.”
“There any record tying it to you?”
She shook her head. “I bought it after we left Las Vegas in cash through a Craigslist ad…and I changed the license plate once we settled here.”
Smart and gorgeous, I mused. It was a dangerous combination I could not think about right now. “I need to check my car,” I said.
We got out, and she stood and watched, head on a swivel, as I lay on the ground, examining the undercarriage of the car. I reached, and my fingers found a piece of something attached to the drive shaft. I detached it and brought it out into the light.
Standing up, I showed it to her. The tracker was the size of my thumb nail, and it was military-grade, not the kind someone could buy at the local electronics store. Nataliya let out an impressed whistle. “That looks expensive.”
I dropped the thing on the ground and crushed it under my heel. “Now, it’s broken.” I looked at her car. “We should check your car too. Just in case.” Again, she watched as I did a sweep, but this time, there was nothing.
I got my go-bag from my car and motioned for her to open her trunk. My eyebrows went up when I saw a hefty duffle stashed in there already. “You keep a go-bag in your car?” I asked.
“Always,” she said. “It has all the essentials for Elias and me,” she said impatiently. “There’s nothing important at the apartment.”
I had to admit I was impressed. She thought like a SEAL: prepare for the worst and hope for the best. I stowed my bag next to hers and closed the trunk, then turned and held my hand out for the key. “I’ll drive us to the school so we can get your son.”
She blinked. “It’s my car.”
“And I’m the one trained in defensive driving.”
Her face didn’t change. I had never seen a woman more thoroughly unimpressed with me. It was…disconcerting, to say the least. She just walked around me and climbed into the front seat. “Get in, or I’m going without you,” she called. Groaning, I went to the passenger side and slid into the seat.
Nataliya quickly pulled out of the parking lot and turned onto the main road. I had driven around St. Francisville a little before going to the diner—I knew it was a straight shot to the elementary school—but she kept making turns down residential streets and looping back on herself.
She’s making sure we aren’t being followed. I was glad to see she understood the kind of danger she was in and that she wasn’t risking getting caught. I knew without asking that’s how she’d kept hidden for over a year. She’d been smart.
It was impressive.
Finally, after a twenty-minute roundabout journey, we pulled into the drive of a squat, red brick building. I could see a chain-link fence and playground equipment swarming with kids beyond it. “Stay in the car,” she said as she pulled into one of the empty visitor’s spots. “I’ll be back.”
Nataliya rolled the windows down and took the keys with her. I didn’t like letting her go on her own, but even without kids of my own, I knew schools were kept pretty locked down these days. I doubted they’d let me in without some kind of registration process, and we just didn’t have time for that now.
Five minutes later, Nataliya came out of the school with her arm around a frail-looking boy. As they got closer, I could see they shared the same color and shape of their eyes, but that’s where the resemblance stopped.
He must look like his father.
Nataliya opened the back door and helped the boy put his book bag on the floor. “Who are you?” he asked.
“Sakharok,” Nataliya scolded. “Don’t be rude.”
The boy was cowed instantly. “Sorry, Mama.”
She ruffled his hair. “I’ll explain as we go,” she said, and some of the light dimmed in his eyes. Apparently, he realized right away that she didn’t mean “on the way home.”
She closed the door as he buckled himself in. “I’m Adrian,” I introduced myself.
The boy glanced at me. “Elijah,” he shot back.
Nataliya got behind the wheel. “You can tell him your real name, sakharok,” she said.
He looked unhappier still, like he knew exactly what this all meant. “My name is Elias,” he said, a little mechanically. “It’s nice to meet you.” His tone implied the exact opposite, but I kept my smile on. “Mama, what’s going on?”
She glanced back at him in the rearview mirror. “The bad men found us,” she said softly. “They came to my work during the lunch rush.” I was taken aback that she told him the truth. When I was a kid, no one was ever honest with me about what was going on. I assumed that was how adults always were with kids. I had to admit, I liked her approach better. Her voice was soft and she kept the facts simple and direct, but she wasn’t sugarcoating anything. “Luckily, Adrian was there to help me, so I am okay.”
“I’m an FBI agent,” I said. “I’m here to protect you both.”
Elias’s eyes widened. “Mama?”
Nataliya smiled his way. “It’s fine,” she soothed. “He’s going to keep us safe. Right, Adrian?” Her eyes cut to me, and I looked back at Elias over the seat and nodded.
“Absolutely. That’s my job.”
Elias sighed. “So, where are we going this time? The bad men coming mean we have to leave, right?”
Nataliya made a sympathetic sound in her throat. “Unfortunately, sakharok. I’m so sorry.”
The boy’s eyes grew wet, and he rubbed at his face with his thin hand. “I know, Mama,” he said. “You just want us to be safe.”
Nataliya reached into her cupholder. She had a small package of tissues and handed one back to him. “It’s all right to be sad,” she soothed. “I know you have friends here.”
Tears trickled down his cheeks. “Will we ever get to come back?”
I expected her to tell a white lie to soothe him. Instead, she said, “No, we most likely will not.”
The tears fell harder, and I saw her pretty face crack, just a little. That shouldn’t have fazed me, but it did. Once more, I wanted to promise her that everything would be okay. That I’d make it okay.
“Did you get?—?”
“I have everything in the trunk, sakharok,” she promised. “I would never leave anything behind.”
The reality—that Nataliya had everything she and Elias loved packed in a big duffle in the car and kept it with her at all times—was depressing. As a SEAL, that kind of life wasn’t foreign to me by any means, but I couldn’t imagine being eight years old and living that way.
“Okay, Mama.” He reached down and grabbed his bookbag. Reaching into the depths, he pulled out a book. “I’m going to read a little,” he said and let himself be absorbed by the pages.
Nataliya watched him for a moment longer before she turned her attention to me. “Where are we going?”
“I could take over driving—” I suggested again, but her look stopped my words in their tracks. Yeah, she wasn’t going to budge on this. I didn’t love the idea of her at the wheel, but I could understand it. There wasn’t much in this situation that was under her control. If this was what she needed to be able to hold it together, I could live with that…more or less.
After all, she wasn’t the only one with control issues. Once a team leader, always a team leader. Needing to take charge was baked in at this point. It wasn’t an instinct I could turn off.
“We’ll go to Dallas first,” I told her. “I have a friend who’s good with encryptions and things like that. Before I found you, I had him trying to decode the message I showed you.”
Her mouth quirked up in the corner. “Did he have any luck?”
“Obviously not, or I wouldn’t have tracked you down.”
She chuckled, but her fingers gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white. Her eyes flicked to the rearview. “Promise me you were serious about protecting us, Adrian,” she said in a low voice meant to keep Elias from overhearing. “Because if my son suffers?—”
“I promise,” I cut her off. “I won’t let anything happen to either of you.”
“I really hope that’s true,” she said softly, but there was an edge in her voice. An implied threat.
Silence filled the car like water, making that implied danger all the more palpable…until Elias let out a sigh behind me. “Mama, don’t be dramatic,” he said without looking up from his book.
I chuckled; I couldn’t help it. “Better listen to him—sounds like he’s a smart kid,” I said.