Chapter 30
Cole tried not to let it bother him that his run-away-with-Hadley plan had been replaced with a save-the-Russian-sleeper-agent plan. It shouldn’t bother him. After all, blowing up your life and starting up a new one was daunting, to say the least.
Still…it would’ve been easier. And it would’ve made it impossible for her to walk away from him when all this was over. He felt like a controlling asshole for even thinking of it that way. But here he was, nonetheless.
Time to compartmentalize. Again.
So, he was considering the best way to approach Eric so he didn’t get twitchy about any perceived threats to Stella when he noticed the spy in question dragging his trash can from the house to the curb.
The trash collector wasn’t due for another two days.
And judging by the way the man’s eyes stayed locked on Cole and Hadley’s place, he wasn’t just being proactive about his garbage.
So, Cole took it as the invitation he was pretty sure it was and started dragging his own trash can down the driveway.
When they were face to face with only a couple of garbage cans and some fairly intense eye contact between them, Cole raised a brow at Eric, waiting for him to say whatever was on his mind. He didn’t have to wait long.
“How long have you known?” he asked, jaw tense.
Cole slid his hands into his pockets and cocked his head to one side. “Known what exactly?”
Eric let out an exasperated breath. “I’m too tired for games. You know who and what I am.”
Under normal circumstances, Cole would’ve stuck with his cover and forced the guy to completely spell out what he was hinting at. But these weren’t normal circumstances and if he was being honest, fuck, he was tired, too. “I know you’re like me,” he admitted.
Eric nodded. “And I don’t believe in coincidence any more than you do. So, who sent you?”
Cole took a deep breath. He was about to admit something he’d never said directly to anyone. But his gut was telling him it was time. “I’m retired CIA black ops. I was blackmailed into infiltrating this neighborhood to find a suspected Russian sleeper agent.”
Eric’s jaw flexed. “And your wife?”
“Not a pro. But brought into this the same way I was.”
“And did you find what you were looking for?” Eric asked carefully.
Well, no need to start lying now, he supposed. “We did.”
Eric’s chin hit his chest. “I figured. And since no one has showed up yet to black bag me, can I assume you haven’t given this information to your boss?”
“I have not.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why not?”
“Hadley thinks you and your wife genuinely love each other. She doesn’t want to ruin your happily ever after without having the full story.”
Eric’s expression darkened and he snorted. “I don’t know much about happily ever afters. But I would do—and I can’t stress this enough—anything to keep my wife safe. So, if you plan to turn me in, so be it. Just tell me what I have to do to make sure you keep her out of the crossfire.”
Which was exactly how he felt about Hadley.
And he knew Eric was 100% telling the truth. He’d crawl quietly into a pit at a dark ops site to spare Stella a second of pain. Even though, if what Hadley said was true, losing Eric would cause her more pain than anything the government could inflict on her.
Time to lay all the cards out on the table. “We’re working on a plan to make sure you and Stella are safe and that we don’t end up in a cell. But I need some information from you to do it.”
“What do you want to know?”
“We found evidence that you were a sleeper agent. But I’m guessing that’s not the case anymore, right?”
“I escaped a year before I met Stella.”
Cole nodded. “Why?”
He looked loath to talk about it, but eventually said, “I was raised by my grandfather. He trained me on American culture through my whole life. Lots of pirated movies and music. By the time I was seven I spoke better English than Russian. I never really understood why my school gave me more psychological tests than any of the other students. Didn’t care, if I was being honest. I didn’t know until I was officially recruited for ‘strategic placement abroad’ that my grandfather was KGB. ”
Eric didn’t say it, but Cole knew he’d been recruited on the idea of heroic, long-term operations.
The kind of shit that gave too-intelligent, egotistical, directionless assholes a real sense of purpose.
He knew because he’d been fed the same bullshit when he’d been recruited into dark ops.
It had taken years of experience to know that while he’d done some good over the course of his career, he’d mostly just been the government’s blunt tool.
He’d never had a purpose of his own; he’d just adopted someone else’s.
He went on, “I came here when I was eighteen. My mission was to integrate into society. Wait. Watch. Send back whatever intel I was asked for from week to week. I did it faithfully for two decades. But when the tone of my communications with my handlers turned from service to duty and sacrifice, I knew they were about to ask me to do something dangerous. Maybe even suicidal.”
Cole had been on the receiving end of communications like that, too. Promises that if he died, he’d die a hero in service of his country. Which did not make suicide missions any more appealing. Especially for agents out of their teens who knew what it actually felt like to live.
Eric shoved a hand through his hair. “There was a time when I would’ve carried out a suicide mission for Mother Russia happily.
But by that time, I’d been in the United States longer than I’d been in Russia.
This country is far from perfect, but being able to speak about politics, complain about leadership, change jobs, have access to more food than I could eat in a lifetime, the choices…
it’s intoxicating. And whatever the Russian government wanted me to do, I knew I didn’t have to do it.
Because for all intents and purposes, I was an American. ”
Cole hadn’t felt proud to be an American in a long time.
His government had screwed him over a few too many times for that.
But from Eric’s perspective…he understood it.
And opting out of whatever suicide mission the KGB intended to send him on probably saved countless American lives.
Which made this former sleeper agent more of a hero than Cole had ever been.
Which, again, made him feel like a complete asshole.
He was starting to get way too comfortable feeling like a complete asshole. When this was all over, he should probably work on that. “How’d you get out?”
Eric smirked. “Faked my own death. Car accident. Big explosion.”
Cole admired the dramatic flair. “Nice.”
“After that, building a new identity wasn’t hard. Then I met Stella and, well, you know the rest.”
Cole nodded. “Is running again an option?”
He winced. “Not a great one. Stella loves her job and this neighborhood. I’d hate to uproot her life like that.”
“She knows everything?”
“I told her right away,” he said quietly. “Keeping secrets from her never felt right.”
And Stella had obviously accepted him just as easily as he’d spilled a lifetime full of secrets to her. Shit. Hadley was right. Turning Eric over to Franklin really would be destroying a fairytale happily ever after ending.
“What would happen to you and your wife if we ran?” Eric asked.
He sighed. “If I can’t find anything on the guy who blackmailed us into this mess? Nothing good.”
Eric looked grim. “I figured.”
“I won’t lie. If I was alone in this, I would’ve already turned you in. The idea of ruining your romance wouldn’t have meant dick to me. But I’m not alone—and neither are you and Stella. I have my own team.” Sort of. “We can help figure this out.”
Eric swallowed hard. “I’m…not used to anyone helping me.”
Cole snorted. Now that he could relate to. “I’d get used to it, if I were you. Hadley will insist on it.”
They chatted for a few more minutes, running through lists of Eric’s known enemies and anyone who might’ve been privy to his true identity. Neither list was all that long. And most of his known enemies were either still in Russia, or dead.
Then Cole remembered how he’d been caught up in this whole mission to begin with and asked about anyone in Stella’s past who might like to see him hanged for espionage. He expected the answer to be no one.
It wasn’t…