12. Nataliya
TWELVE
I’d managed not to cry until the second before we had to get in the car. Elias had wrapped his thin arms around my neck, buried his sweet face against my neck, and the tears just poured down my cheeks despite everything I did to try to hold them back.
“Be good for Sam and Owen, sakharok,” I told him, straining to keep my voice steady.
“Of course, Mama,” he promised, voice wobbling. “I won’t let you down.”
I pressed my lips to his hair. “I know,” I said. “I’ll see you soon.”
Before I could let him go, Elias tightened his grip on me. “I’ll miss you,” he said in a near whisper, like he was a touch embarrassed that he was saying it out loud.
“I’ll miss you too, sakharok. I love you.”
Elias wrenched himself from my arms and marched up to Adrian. His face was set in a serious grimace. He pointed at Adrian with all the menace of a wet kitten. Adrian, smartly, kept his face neutral. “You’ll bring her back safe,” Elias demanded, sounding more mature than I was used to. Where was my baby?
“I will,” Adrian promised.
“I’m going to hold you to that.” Elias’s serious expression broke, and tears glittered in his eyes. He launched himself at Adrian, who let out a little oof as they collided. I saw pain flicker across Adrian’s face, but he hugged my son fiercely. “Promise you’ll both come back,” Elias said.
Adrian looked at me over the top of his head, wonder on his face. He rubbed the boy’s back. “Okay, bud,” he said. “I promise we’ll both come back, safe and sound.”
Elias nodded, and then he was scampering back into the house, not looking back. My chest felt like it would crack open…but I didn’t go after him. We needed to get going if we were going to—and saying goodbye wouldn’t get any easier if we dragged it out. I climbed into the passenger seat and watched through the window as Adrian slapped Owen on the back.
He climbed behind the wheel a moment later, and we were off. We pulled out of the neighborhood, and the road stretched out in front of us.
I didn’t know how to feel. Not having Elias was like missing a limb, but it also gave me nothing to do. There was no one to monitor. No stretch breaks to plan or snacks to arrange. There was just the road and Adrian and the silence between us.
Restless and knowing there were hours of driving ahead of us, I reached into the backseat and pulled out my laptop to give myself something to do. I opened the files I had transferred from Anton’s cloud account and started combing through them, organizing evidence that I needed to be looking for when I got into the Hayes ethernet system. If I had a limited amount of time, I would need to be strategic because I probably would not be able to get everything. So, most damning evidence first: things that, for sure, tied Ian Hayes to crimes he could be convicted for.
“What are you doing?” Adrian asked.
“Organizing,” I muttered, not taking my eyes off the screen. “I want a plan for when we go into the Hayes Group. There’s a good chance I won’t be able to get it all.”
Adrian hummed softly. “Good idea.”
“What’s going to get him the most time? From a legal perspective?”
“Treason,” Adrian said after a moment. “The weapons smuggling is a good start, drugs too, but if we could prove he was acting against the interests of the US government—including endangering American military personnel? That would be the biggest bomb.”
I nodded and started sifting through files. “Anton did a good job compiling all of this,” I said, “but the way he organized the files is dumb.”
“It’s in chronological order, right?”
“Yes, but arranging things by dates isn’t always a good idea. Organizing it by crime would have been more efficient.”
“I guess he must not have thought about that.”
I snorted. “Anton wasn’t known for his critical thinking skills,” I said. “I mean, he voluntarily got involved with Ian Hayes in the first place. It’s not like he just accidentally stumbled on Hayes’s activities; he was a part of them.” And the only reason he stopped was for Elias and me, I thought.
“He must have had his reasons,” Adrian said.
“Money,” I groused back. “I don’t know how you grew up, but we were—” I shrugged. How could I explain what it was like to go days without food? To have the power shut off in the summer because we could “survive without it”?
“I get it,” Adrian said without me needing to explain. “When you have next to nothing, you’ll do just about anything.”
“He helped me pay for university,” I confessed after a moment. “Not everything—I had some scholarships and got a part-time job, but without his help, I’d have had to work two or three jobs, and I don’t know when I would have found time to study. He wanted me to focus on my lessons.” It wasn’t an excuse for what he’d done, but it was true all the same. “When Elias was diagnosed and my husband left, Anton was the first one to start looking for a solution.” I scrolled through the files; the timestamps went back a few years. “I think he was working on this exit strategy for a long time.”
“Sounds like he loved you and Elias a lot,” Adrian said.
I couldn’t deny that. “He did.”
“You miss him.” It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway. “Like a limb, am I right?”
I glanced at Adrian, who was staring resolutely out the windshield. “I take it you’ve lost someone too?”
His expression clouded. “Yeah.”
“Was it your teammates?”
Adrian’s face darkened further. “I wasn’t around when Roger died, but I saw when Cuddy passed. And he wasn’t the first,” he said. It was like watching him fight himself. He kept tensing his hands and jaw, like the words were getting caught in his throat. I got the sense that he wanted to tell me, but that it was something he usually kept to himself, to the point where he struggled to even find the words.
“You don’t have to talk about it,” I said. “It’s not my business.”
“It’s fine,” Adrian assured me. Then the words poured out in a rush, like he’d broken through a dam that had been holding them back. “My parents were killed in a home invasion.”
My heart panged in my chest. “That’s awful. I’m so?—”
“I was there,” he cut me off. His gaze was faraway, like he was remembering something that he didn’t want to. “My mom hid me in the closet, and I watched them shoot her because she refused to tell them where her jewelry was…because it was in the closet with me.”
My eyes stung. I wasn’t normally a crier—the past few days excepted—but it broke my heart to think of Adrian’s mother protecting her son at all costs. “Your mother was a brave woman.”
He cracked a small smile. “That she was. A real spitfire, actually.” Adrian’s voice was thick with emotion, and I reached across and took his free hand, entwining our fingers.
Adrian jolted, almost tore himself away from me, but then his hand relaxed in mine. His thumb played across my knuckles absently. It was incredibly gentle, like the kisses we’d shared the night before, and my belly filled with champagne bubbles. It felt intimate again, like we were sharing something important even if it was quiet between us.
I wanted to ask if he was feeling it too, but the words wouldn’t come. I was afraid to burst the quiet bubble that we’d found ourselves in. Before I could come up with what to say, the burner phone Nate had gotten for us in Tupelo began to ring. It made us both jump and pulled our hands apart.
Adrian reached for the phone—it had been put in the cupholder when we left Birmingham—and checked the ID. “It’s Gabe.” He pressed the green Talk button. “Pierce,” he said by way of greeting.
The phone was connected to the car’s Bluetooth. Gabe’s voice came through the speakers loud and clear. “Adrian, do your coworkers know what you’re doing right now?” Gabe asked.
“I took vacation leave,” Adrian said. “They think I’m on a fishing trip. Why?”
“Because I’m at Zach’s place, and someone claiming to be an FBI agent just showed up here looking for you.”
“Who was it? What did their badge say?”
Gabe made a disgruntled sound. “He just flashed it at me; I can’t confirm that it was real.”
Fear gripped me. “It might be legit. Hayes has people in the government,” I said. “Ones who work for him. The US Marshal who was my contact when Elias and I first came to America, he was working with Hayes. He told him where we were.”
Adrian didn’t like it, that was clear, but he knew I was right. Hayes’s reach was vast. “What did he say, Gabe?”
“That he needed to speak with you about an urgent case,” he said. “But he didn’t give us a name.”
“Shit. He’s probably watching the house.”
“That’s what we thought,” Gabe said. “I think we have to wait a day or two before we leave. Just to be safe.”
Adrian swore under his breath. “That’s for the best,” he agreed, though I could see the tension in his body. “We’ll wait for you at the motel we picked.”
“All right,” Gabe said. “Be safe.”
“You too.”
Adrian hung up. His hands gripped the steering wheel hard, and I saw him wince. “You should let me drive for a while,” I suggested. “Your shoulder?—”
“My shoulder is fine,” Adrian grunted, but he flinched when he made to switch lanes to pull around a car going far too slowly for the interstate.
I huffed. “Tell me again how fine you feel,” I said.
Adrian’s jaw clenched, and he kept driving for another twenty minutes, wincing every time he had to shift the wheel. Finally, defeated, he pulled into the nearest gas station. “You drive,” he said.
I leaned across the armrest and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. “Thank you,” I said. Adrian nodded and dipped into the gas station’s store to get us snacks while I filled the tank. When everything was taken care of, I pulled back out onto the road. “Where am I going?”
Adrian pulled up the directions to the motel we’d chosen—one that had quick access to Atlanta, but was far enough away that we probably wouldn’t fall under Ian Hayes’s radar. Glancing over at the screen, I frowned when I saw the motel’s low rating.
“Is this really our best option?” I asked.
He shrugged. “We can pay in cash, and we probably won’t end up with scabies from the towels.”
I grimaced. “Well, thank you for putting that thought in my head.”
Adrian chuckled. “Happy to help.”