Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Seth chose the room at the front of the house because it was best for seeing who might be coming up the driveway. It was a small room, with a twin bed that wasn’t going to be long enough for his frame, but if that was the worst he had to endure, it was still better than long nights in dark, cold, disgusting places while waiting to capture or kill a nest of tangos.
Callie’s room was across the hall, surprisingly. She hadn’t taken the main bedroom with its own bath but instead had given it to her sister. The main bedroom was an addition at the back of the house. The hall turned to the left after the bathroom next to Callie’s room. Nikki’s was at the end of it. The other spare bedroom was down that hall, before getting to the main. It was also small so maybe that’s why Callie had chosen the one she had instead of being closer to her sister.
He’d gone into all the rooms to check the windows and any doors that provided access to the outside. He knew their layouts and what kind of personal belongings each woman had. Callie had a feminine streak that included a lacy bedspread and roses peppered throughout the decor, whether dried, fake, or part of the many pictures on the walls. Nikki’s room was also feminine, but more horsey than rosy.
Hell, no matter which security system Callie put in, there wasn’t enough time for emergency responders to make it out this far before an intruder had done whatever they came to do. If Mikhail Volkov wanted to silence Callie, he could do it and be gone before the first cop arrived.
Seth sat back on the bed, crossing his ankles, and fired up the laptop. He still wasn’t sure if Volkov really wanted Callie dead or if the whole thing was a con, but that’s what he was here to find out. The rest of the guys seemed to have decided Callie wasn’t on the wrong side—or at least they leaned strongly that way—but Seth couldn’t dismiss her as easily. He had to be sure.
He didn’t choose Callie’s Wi-Fi network when it popped up. Instead he used his phone and the secure network he’d configured. He used a VPN, because he always did, and logged onto the hidden site where he derived information from a network of contacts. There were no messages waiting for him so he left and returned to the site where he could search records that most people didn’t even know existed.
He typed in Abram Fedorov . It took a shit-ton of time and a few more rabbit holes, not to mention a lot of masking his trail, but he found what he was looking for. Fedorov was SVR, or foreign intelligence, for the Russian Federation.
Not a big surprise, really. Of course the Russians were snooping around Huntsville. Along with every other foreign nation on the planet.
He suspected Smirnov was the same. He’d save that search for later, but the record on Fedorov indicated he’d been part of a dead-double operation for the past couple of years. Wilhelm Olkowicz, the real Polish national, was likely dead and had been for some time. In live-double operations, the agent assumed the identity of a living person who had no idea what was going on. But there was nothing on Olkowicz anywhere beyond what already existed, and much of that had been Fedorov assuming the identity in Poland and pretending to be a student. He expected he’d find the same with Cyril Dyka and Dima Smirnov.
Seth shoved a hand through his hair and stared at the green landscape beyond his window. The house sat on a small rise, surrounded by a stand of trees, but he could glimpse the fields beyond whenever a breeze ruffled the lower branches of the trees. Half a mile to the road, at least. Another eight to town.
One Shot Tactical was closer. Six miles away. Might as well be in Siberia for all the good it would do if someone attacked Callie and Nikki out here. If the threat was real.
He wasn’t saying it wasn’t, not with the SVR involved, but he also wasn’t willing to move Callie into the innocent victim column yet either. He still needed to find out if she had any connection to the Russians.
Seth navigated back to the hidden bulletin board and left a query worded in such a way that it would catch the right eyes. If there was more information on Fedorov or Smirnov, he’d find it.
That left Volkov. Seth went hunting for him, making encrypted notes to share with his team later. There wasn’t much that stood out, but he was able to find photos and a driver’s license. Volkov was ordinary on paper. An American citizen, like Callie said, who spoke fluent Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, and Mandarin.
Interesting lineup.
Volkov had spent time in the foreign service but now worked as a translator for a private company called the Dashevsky Group, which is how he was in Poland when he met Callie. The Dashevsky Group specialized in foreign relations and had branches all across Europe and Asia. They were involved in humanitarian work such as building homes for displaced populations and running refugee camps for people fleeing oppression and war. If there was political unrest, the Dashevsky Group was there, preparing for a humanitarian crisis.
As a Hostile Operations Team operator, he’d encountered those kinds of groups before. They were people doing the things nobody else wanted to do, trying to stabilize areas before more people died. Most of them meant well. Not all of them knew what they were doing, which added to the pressure of whatever was going on in the area they occupied.
Seth didn’t know anything about the Dashevsky Group. He’d never had dealings with them or crossed paths with any of their operations when he’d been an operator. He grabbed the information, along with the photos of Volkov and a copy of his driver’s license, and saved it to an encrypted file. Then he logged out of all the places on his laptop, wiped his trail, and closed the lid.
He didn’t fucking know why they were here anymore. President Willis and her team had access to more information than Seth did, but they rarely shared it. Like the mission to Griffin Research Labs to test their security and gain access to their systems. It’d gone as planned, but all the work they’d had to do took time they could have used elsewhere if the chief of staff would have sent the fucking files on all the scientists attached to the Athena Project.
Instead, Seth’s team had spent long hours maintaining a cover and carefully rigging their own access to not only the personnel files, but also to the top-secret Athena command and control system. Access that was now in the toilet, thanks to Callie and her shadowy would-be assassin.
At least until the Wi-Fi went back online at the lab and Seth could determine if his hack was still active.
His stomach growled, and he glanced at his watch. It was nearly one. No wonder he was hungry. He still needed to grab some things from the house where he stayed with Ghost. He’d told her his guys would bring food if he wanted it, but that was before he’d realized how far out in Bumfuck, Alabama, her place was. Probably did need to stop at the Pig and pick up some food for the next few days so he wasn’t relying on Callie to feed him or asking his team to bring him things.
He followed the strains of gentle piano music to the kitchen where Callie sat at the table with a bunch of scraps of paper, some photos, and a boatload of different colored pens. Looked like she had tape, too. And glue sticks. What the fuck?
She looked up, seemingly startled to find him standing there, then reached for the portable speaker to turn the music down. “Sorry,” she said. “Was it too loud?”
The woman was daft. And adorably geeky in that moment. Her dark hair was in a messy knot on top of her head and a pair of owlish glasses were perched on her face. She was holding a pair of tweezers with a piece of paper in it and blinking at him as if embarrassed he’d found her playing with scraps.
“No. What are you doing?”
There was a stack of books at her elbow and little paper cut-outs of the book covers arrayed on the table, ready to paste into her book.
“I, um, I keep a reading journal when I have time. It’s relaxing.”
“A reading journal?”
She nodded, fanning her hand over the table. “Yes. I’ve done so since I was a teenager. I have them all. I keep track of the books I’m reading, what I thought about them, favorite quotes. Things like that.”
He was astounded. “Why?”
She frowned. “You’re just full of questions, aren’t you? Because I like doing it. It’s relaxing.”
“Doesn’t look relaxing. You’ve got paper and glue everywhere.”
“I’m catching up on this year’s journal. I haven’t had a lot of time to work on it lately.” She pasted the piece of paper perched in the tweezers into the journal and put the tweezers down. “It keeps my mind off other things.”
“Why not just write down your thoughts and move on?”
She arched a brow. “I could, but then it wouldn’t be pretty. I like things to be pretty.”
He thought of all the roses and lace in her bedroom. It was overwhelmingly feminine. Not what he’d expected when he’d opened the door, that’s for sure.
“How did you get into programming?”
She took off her glasses and set them on the table. He noticed she only wore them when doing intense detail work, like on the computer—or, apparently, messing around with scraps of paper.
“That was not what I expected you to say.” She huffed a breath. “I got into it for a few reasons. One, I’m good at math and I’m detail-oriented. Two, I wanted a job that was in demand when I graduated from college. Three, as much as I wanted to be a professional book reader and journal creator, there’s not a market for that. I needed to actually be able to make a living and pay bills. You know, like an adult. Why do you ask?”
He waved a hand at the table. “Seems like you’d rather be an artist.”
“Programming is artistry if you do it right. It’s just not pretty on the backend. But what you make with it? Now that can be very pretty.”
He supposed he couldn’t argue with that.
“How about you?” she pressed. “Did you want to be a book cover model but security pays better?”
“A what?”
“Romance novels usually feature a hot guy with his shirt off. It was a joke.”
Now he was confused. Was she calling him hot? Or was she saying he wasn’t hot and that was the joke?
“I wanted to get the hell out of my grandparents’ house. The best way was to join the military, so that’s what I did.”
There was more to the story about why he’d joined, but he didn’t tell anyone that part of it. The part that made him wake up in a cold sweat sometimes.
Her expression softened. “Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. They were assholes.”
“I see. And, um, the military prepared you for this career?”
“You could say that.” His stomach growled again, and her gaze dropped to his belly. “Yeah, I was thinking about lunch. Can’t leave you here alone, so you want to go with me, get a bite at the Dawg? Then I’ll swing by the house and pick up some clothes, stop at the Pig for some groceries.”
She glanced at her scrapbook shit.
“I should add that it’s not really a request. Either you go with me, or I stay here and raid your pantry.”
“Guess I can’t say no then. Not that I’m bothered by you raiding the pantry. I tend to shop for the apocalypse just so you know. Not that I was always like that, but since coming home and getting custody of Nikki, I’ve turned into someone who fears not having enough to feed us.” She closed her eyes for a second. “And you don’t want to hear this. I apologize for the word vomit, but I’m nervous. I talk a lot when I’m nervous.”
“Why are you nervous? Did something happen? Did you get a message from Volkov?”
She shook her head. “No, nothing like that. You make me nervous. Sorry, but there it is.”
He was shocked. “I’m the good guy, Callie. You don’t have to be nervous around me. I want to keep you safe. It’s my job.”
“I…” She sighed, her hands moving in front of her face, and he knew she was about to say something she found uncomfortable. “I don’t think you like me much. And you don’t have to,” she blurted, her hands waving around. “Honestly, why should you have to? We just met. But you don’t say a lot, and I feel like you don’t really want to be here and maybe you blame me for showing up today and telling you my fears about Mikhail. And I don’t know if I’m right, not really, and maybe this whole thing is a waste of your time.”
“You done?”
Her mouth flattened into a line. But her eyes were still soft. Still wounded. “Yes. Done. Once more, I’m sorry for the word vomit.”
Seth dragged in a breath and dug deep. He didn’t do emotions well, but he knew he had to say something to soothe her fear. “You’re right, I don’t know you. Which means I have no opinion on whether or not I like you. You seem nice enough. You love your sister, probably gave up a lot to take care of her. You’re twenty-six, but you don’t have a regular social life because you have a kid at home to look out for. Lots of people your age are partying and making bad decisions, but here you are, pasting shit in a journal like you’re sitting around a table at the senior center, talking scrapbooking with a bunch of retired ladies.”
A corner of her mouth quirked.
“I don’t talk a lot,” he continued. “Because I learned that listening yields more information in the long run. I’ve spent the past sixteen years hanging out with a bunch of guys in deserts and jungles. I can talk a woman out of her panties when I want to, and I can talk about the weather, but I don’t see the point in it. Not the panties—definitely a point to that.”
The pupils of her eyes enlarged. He wondered if she was turned on by the idea of him talking women out of their panties. Or maybe she was imagining him talking her out of hers.
And, shit, that thought made his balls tighten. She was pretty and she had nice tits. He thought she might have a nice ass under those loose-fitting jeans, too. He’d glimpsed one earlier if he wasn’t mistaken. Plus her legs were long, though she wasn’t very tall. Five foot six, max.
But they’d wrap around his waist and hold him in the cradle of her hips while he rocked into her.
Would she moan in his ear? Or was she more of a screamer? He’d bet she was a moaner. Soft, deep moans that got higher-pitched as she approached her climax.
Seth ruthlessly cut the thread of those thoughts. No. Fucking no . He wasn’t getting naked with her when he didn’t know if she was trying to sell out her country. He believed that less and less, but it was still possible. Which made her off-limits.
“Point being, don’t take it personally if I don’t say much to you. I don’t say much to anyone unless I have to. My guys, their women—I’m comfortable with them. I don’t have to think about it. But I have to think about what I say to you. Now, you ready for lunch or what? I’ve just word vomited a whole lot of shit because you made me, so the least you can do is let me go eat.”
She ducked her head. He thought she was smiling as she started to push her paper scraps, glue, and glittery shit into neat piles. “Yes, I’m ready for lunch. Just let me clean this up first.”
“Is it gonna take long? I’m expiring of hunger here.”
She picked up her piles and dropped them in a plastic case with dividers. Then she snapped the case closed and stood. “Nope, not long. Who’s driving?”
“I am.”
Five minutes later, they were on the road. She didn’t say anything and neither did he. But fuck-all if he wasn’t trying to think of the right way to start a conversation all the way to town.