Chapter 26
Alice
“Must be dinnertime,” Carter said as they walked into the apartment, the low sun painting it in honey tones.
“You know, I feel hungry too.”
He sat at the table and opened the laptop. “You say that like it’s a surprise.”
“Can’t say I’ve had much of an appetite in the last day or two.”
“Jesus, if that’s you without an appetite…”
She laughed. And then, because she could, because he looked irresistible with the sun warming his caramel hair and his tanned skin, because he was grinning up at her, because she could use the release, because why the hell not, she slid in between him and the table, straddled his lap and kissed him like a Bond girl.
He slid his hands under the back of her blouse—a sheer, low-cut one of his mother’s choosing that conspired with the bra to make her state of arousal blatantly obvious—and pressed her close, his fingers spanning her waist. As the blouse came off (there was really no need to remove the bra), she thought, This one’s for you, Kimberly.
And she gave in and enjoyed it like a woman having her last meal. Dance like no one’s watching, have sex like you could be arrested at any moment.
Afterward, as she investigated the contents of the pantry and fridge—because her appetite was well and truly stoked—Carter returned to the task at hand, starting with checking the flash drive.
“There are thousands of documents here, mostly in Russian,” he said, sounding disappointed.
“What kind of documents?”
“Bank statements, letters, emails, photos, videos. Whoa, check this out.”
He turned the laptop screen so she could see it from the kitchen. A very pornographic video of two men, evidently taken from a distance, through a window.
“Recognize them?” she said.
“Not from this angle but it looks like Kompromat 101. If you were going to blackmail someone…”
“Are we allowed to help ourselves to this food? I could throw together a bacon carbonara?”
“Anything we like. I would murder a carbonara—but not actually, before you go pinning that on me too. Though we might want to be careful not to drink the 1964 Musigny, if we want to be invited back.”
“Can you do a search for Tatiana and Yakov? Or Leonard and this Wade guy?”
He spun the laptop back and tapped away for several minutes, frowning.
“Nothing, in either English or Cyrillic script, but a lot of the files aren’t searchable—photos, photos of documents, videos.
” After another twenty minutes of tapping and scrolling, he pushed the laptop away.
“Shit. I don’t know what I’m looking for—it’s obviously a steaming pile of dirt, but most of it means nothing to me, out of context.
Like this: a screenshot of an email conversation about a payment that was being dropped into someone’s account, but no names mentioned, and they’re emailing between two gibberish email addresses.
It’s the kind of stuff analysts would usually take care of.
Ugh, this was the thing I hated most about my job—that you never know how things fit. ”
“Can we get some help from anyone? This book club?”
“It may come to that. I’m wary about sending any of this electronically, especially before I know what it is.
” He stood, drawing an arm across his chest to stretch it.
“And Mom’s discovered she’s being tailed so we gotta be careful there.
She’s currently driving at speed toward Philadelphia, laying a false trail with her other phone, which she’s assuming is tapped, to draw attention away from here.
Oh, and by the way? The lead with the Russian guy Nika was working for before she came to Montrose—Anatoly of Swan Property Developments—came up a dud.
Sounds like he made a move on her, and she left.
He thought he was gonna get in trouble for it, but there wasn’t much else Mom’s friend could get out of him. ”
“Could we go back to Randolph, now that we know more? I know you have reservations about the guy, but he’s got resources, contacts…”
“Alice, no—”
“There was this woman at the hotel—she gave me her card.” Alice patted her jeans pockets, but of course the card was in her capris. “She said she was bankrolling his campaign and was well connected. Lawyers and stuff.”
“She knew who you were?”
“She recognized me. In case you didn’t know, I’m kinda famous now. Well, infamous.”
“Which sounds so much more fun.”
“Is it worth asking her to help?”
“No.”
“She said she had money, contacts, that we wanted the same thing.”
“Alice…”
“You just said that we need help. And he’s kind of on the same side as we are, right? Surely it can’t hurt if—”
“We don’t know who’s on our side and who’s not.
And I’m not trusting anyone Randolph is neck-deep into.
All of this shit,” he said, indicating the screen, “I guess I thought that if there was a smoking gun, it would be obvious. Not the sixteenth line of a list of email contacts of someone I’ve never heard of. ”
“What about if we take these files and the list to the authorities? Surely it’s enough to suggest there’s something else going on.”
“Not yet. I’m not handing any of it over until I know how it clears my name—until I know what Nika was doing with it.
What if it disappears into the same black hole that swallowed her interrogation video?
What if they don’t even investigate it? Not to mention that it’s going to be compromised by the fact it’s come through me.
I don’t want to end up stuck in some FBI interview room at the mercy of whatever drips of bullshit they decide to share with me, while the people behind all this scurry to cover their tracks.
” He linked his hands behind his head and shut his eyes tightly, like he had a headache. “Shit.”
Alice felt like rocks had landed in her stomach. Carter had never before let the stress show… “You couldn’t have gotten much sleep last night.”
“I’m used to operating on low sleep.”
“But no one’s at their best in those circumstances. Anyway, I’m guessing you’re happy to take a minute to eat?”
He emphatically pushed away the laptop. “Excellent guess. Sorry, I’m … It’s the…” He gestured at the computer again.
“I know.”
As she served, he strolled past her and opened the wine fridge. “Something white?” he said, evidently back to his level-headed norm. As much as any of this could be a ‘norm,’ even to him.
“Not sure carbonara is the kind of meal that comes with wine pairings.” She paused partway through grating parmesan onto his plate. “This is not what I would have thought being on the run with a super-spy would entail. It’s a lot more domestic than the movies would have you believe.”
“None of this is as I would have imagined, if I was gonna imagine it. I’m not in the habit of sleeping with women I go on the run with.” He opened the wine at the kitchen counter and poured it into two glasses. “Or sharing my deepest, darkest secrets,” he said jokingly.
“This happens to you a lot? Going on the run with various women?”
“I’ve had to evade the odd pursuer here or there, sometimes with company, who have happened to be female, though not like this.
But as you say, life is just a series of days.
Survive this one, and you unlock the next.
You won’t be offended if I work while I eat tonight, honey? Late night at the office.”
“Go right ahead, sugar.”
She felt his body right behind her, a momentary rise in the air temperature before his arms drifted around her, and his chin rested on her shoulder.
Not about sex, this time. It was almost …
real. She leaned into him, exhaling. An illusion, of course, but for the first time in a very long time, she felt the delicious ache of longing in her chest, and she let herself enjoy it.
How nice would it be if, instead of bringing her pain, loving someone could bring peace and comfort?
Not with this guy, obviously. But hypothetically…
“We’d better eat before the sauce goes cold and gloopy,” she said.
He released her, pressing a kiss to her crown, his several-day-old beard velcroing her hair for a second. So cozy.
“This looks fantastic,” he said, as they sat down to eat. “Priyatnogo appetita.”
Fantastic. The whole scene looked fantastic. As in fantastical. The apartment, the view, him. They ate in silence while he concentrated on the laptop screen. As Alice was winding up her last thread of pasta, he swore under his breath.
“I just found a deposit receipt for a wire transfer. Recipient: Tyler Gregory Wade. $120,000. Not a bad day’s work for a security guard.”
“Who’s it from?”
“Corepoint Services, Geneva. They’re a registered company, but—” He tapped some more. “No website, no other internet presence. Probably a funnel. There’s no Tyler Wade on Nika’s list, unless it’s one of the names we can’t read.”
Alice pulled the list toward her and smoothed out the plastic bag. “But there is this ‘Leo,’ right here where the paper disintegrates. Maybe it’s not the guy in Vladivostok you were thinking of. Maybe it’s ‘Leonard’—does that look like the beginning of an ‘n’ to you?”
“Could be.” His phone beeped, and he checked it. “Well, shit. Text from Mom. That blue car—it’s registered to Randolph’s campaign.”
“What? Randolph tried to kill us? Then why did he escort us out of the hotel?”
“Straight into the sights of Leonard Poole.” He rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Nah, that makes no sense. Randolph would have higher standards in hired assassins. Uh, this is all swimming together in my head.”
“Welcome to my world. Why don’t you take a nap? I can keep looking, for what that’s worth. See if I can find anything else that connects the list to the files. Obviously, I won’t be as much help as you would be, but I can flag anything obvious that jumps out.”
“No, I’m good.”
“You don’t have to do everything yourself, you know. I’ll come and wake you in an hour.”
“I’m fine!”
“In my experience, people who say ‘I’m fine’ like that usually aren’t.”