“There.” Silver reached past me pointing to the third computer screen. In the top right-hand corner, the camera attached to the outside of the white cottage showed movement. Clicking on it, I dragged the timeline back a few minutes and saw the small boat pull up at my dock there. The infrared revealed three figures climbing off the dock and onto the island.
“One of the sensors is on the dock,” I explained tightly, watching as the three drew up to the cottage.
Three men. In camouflaged fatigues. Armed to the teeth.
Silver’s breathing was sharp and shallow at my back. “Who are they?”
“I don’t—” I cut off as one of them spotted the camera and looked directly into it. “Fuck.”
After all this time.
“What? Who is that?”
“Ian Kingston.” I looked over my shoulder at Silver, panic thrumming beneath my calm facade. “Natalya’s husband.”
Her nostrils flared. “Has he been looking for you? Why?”
I straightened from the monitors, focused on them and Ian’s movements. “He blamed me for Natalya’s death. He thought I was the reason the Russians discovered where she was. That I blew her cover and our meeting that day was the confirmation they needed to assassinate her.”
“How did you blow her cover?”
“Because my previous operation had been in Russia. I was working undercover in Moscow as an English language and literature professor at the university.” Uncertainty that too much information about my past might drive her away caused me to hesitate. With Ian on my fucking island, maybe I should deliberately drive her away.
“Don’t.” Silver reached up, taking my face between her palms. “I see that look. Don’t you dare push me away because of this.”
Fuck. No one instinctively understood me like her. It scared the shit out of me. “If you hadn’t noticed, you are currently in danger because of me.”
“What happened in Moscow?” she insisted.
I took her hands in mine, lowering them between us but not letting go. “I was there to get close to a research professor. I can’t share the details of the research but suffice it to say, the British government was interested in acquiring the professor’s data. She … she was interested in me romantically, so …”
Silver squeezed my hands. I saw the flicker of discomfort on her expression. But she pushed it aside. “You had a relationship with her.”
“It wasn’t demanded of me, but I would do what I needed to do to succeed at an op. Unfortunately, she wasn’t only a research professor. She was working for the FSB—Russia’s counterintelligence agency.”
Silver frowned. “They knew her work was appealing to foreign governments.”
I nodded, unsurprised at how quickly she grasped the situation. “She was already on high alert and when I realized the professor suspected me, Natalya arranged my extraction. However, the Russians looked into me and through me?—”
“They found Natalya.” Silver’s gaze turned back to the monitors. “Ian blames you.”
“Aye.”
“Why now? Why after all these years? Surely, he could have found you before this?”
Aye, he could have.
I suspected I knew why he’d come now, but I didn’t want to scare Silver. “I’m going to lock you in this room.”
Her eyes flared. “No, you are not. There are three of them out there and they’re armed.”
“And I won’t be able to focus unless I know you’re safe.”
She jerked her chin in defiance. “Behind you on the wall is a .22 small bore rifle and I know this because my dad’s idea of bonding was to take me to an outdoor rifle range every other weekend.”
Shit. I remembered she’d told me that when we first met.
“Now I’m not saying this to be arrogant, it’s just the truth—my dad harped at me for years to shoot competitively because I am a crack fucking shot.” She gestured to the gun. “Does it extend to two hundred yards?”
