Chapter 29
Hadley glanced over to find Tenley, still in her one-piece, black, breaking and entering outfit, hair piled on top of her head in a bun, looking like Catwoman.
“I thought you’d left already,” Hadley said.
She shrugged. “I didn’t have anything better to do. Thought I’d hang out a bit and see how the neighbors behaved when they got back to their place.”
Cole looked over at her but didn’t take his hands off Hadley. “What’d they do?”
Tenley grinned. “Pretty much what you’re doing. Much more naked, though.”
Hadley figured they weren’t naked in the middle of the kitchen right now only because of her interruption.
But she tried not to let the bitterness seep into her thoughts.
Not when Cole had agreed to run away with her.
She was so happy it almost didn’t even matter that they hadn’t actually talked about their feelings.
Almost.
“So, we were right, then,” Cole said grimly. “It’s a real marriage. And if that’s the case, he won’t want to do anything that would blow up Stella’s life. He must’ve retired from the KGB or escaped it.”
“I don’t read Russian, so I couldn’t translate any of the docs I found, but my guess is that he escaped,” Tenley said. “In my experience, the KGB doesn’t like to let go of what’s theirs.”
Hadley’s brow furrowed. “What experience do you have with the KGB?”
She blinked innocently. “We had a little…misunderstanding. No biggie.”
Hadley didn’t consider anything that ran afoul of the KGB no biggie. But she didn’t see the point in questioning it. Something told her Tenley had way better stories to tell when they had more time, anyway.
“You had a better idea than running?” Cole prompted.
Tenley nodded. “Running is always a last resort as far as I’m concerned.”
“Have you ever been blackmailed by the government?” he snarked.
“Just the once,” she answered, completely straight faced. “But that’s not the point. The point is that running doesn’t solve blackmail. The only way to go on with your life and not be constantly on the run is to blackmail your blackmailer.”
“Cole already did that,” Hadley pointed out. “Franklin didn’t seem too worried about it. Mutually assured destruction, he said.”
“So, we have to find something on him that he doesn’t have on Cole. Something to cancel out that mutually assured destruction.”
Cole was silent and frowning, which Hadley knew meant he was deep in thought, the wheels in his brain spinning. She asked, “What if we can’t find anything?”
Tenley snorted. “He’s a CIA agent who has never moved up in the company. There’s plenty of dirt on him out there. We just have to find the right pain point and press on it. Hard.”
“His ego,” Cole murmured. “He can’t stand to feel like he’s been made a fool of.”
Tenley’s smile could only be described as the Grinch about to steal Christmas from Whoville. “I can work with that. I’ll call Ren. Have him do some digging.”
Cole’s jaw tensed up as he shifted his gaze back down to hers. “Is this what you want? To make running plan B?”
Hadley straightened. Part of her wanted to say fuck it, no, she wanted to run away with him. But the petty part of her—and sadly, that petty part of her was freakin’ huge—didn’t want to leave town without screwing Franklin over the way he’d screwed her and Cole over.
Cole nodded stiffly. “I’ll have a talk with Eric, spy to spy. See if he’ll confirm our theories.”
“Yay, blackmail!” Tenley said, giving a happy little fist pump. “My favorite.”
Cole and Hadley wore matching brow furrows as they processed that little bit of crazy.