Again, he was hard-pressed not to drag her across the console and kiss the words right out of her mouth. Realizing nothing about her had truly changed made his heart so full it was a wonder it didn’t burst through his rib cage.
“So, I went all the way to the top of Interpol, to the president himself, and I told him what had happened.” She shook her head at herself. “I must’ve made clanking sounds when I walked.” When his eyebrows puckered in confusion, she added, “You know, because of my big, brass balls? I mean, I was a lowly agent. What was I thinking?”
“You were thinking you needed to listen to your instincts. You were thinking something was wrong, and you were going to the one man who might be able to help set it right.”
She chuckled, and the sound reminded him of fireflies. Short, sweet bursts in the dingy gloom created by the trees. It was a familiar sound. A magical sound. A sound he wanted to listen to for the rest of his life, except…he suddenly realized…that wasn’t an option, was it?
He couldn’t keep her without telling her who he truly was. And if he told her who he truly was, she’d never forgive him for leaving her and letting her think he was dead.
A hard seed of remorse planted itself at the bottom of his stomach and immediately sent up thorn-covered vines to prick his heart.
“Well, my chutzpah paid off. Zhao told me his theories and then asked me if I’d be willing to lay my reputation, my career, and maybe even my life on the line to bring Grafton, a.k.a. Spider, down.”
He had no doubt how she’d answered. “You didn’t hesitate.”
“Nope.” She shook her head, her silky blond hair swishing across her shoulders. “As you probably know from looking into my background, my father was a diplomat. So I grew up a child of the world. Which means I’ve seen firsthand the destruction caused by a manyak like Grafton.” She used the Hebrew slang for bastard. “I jumped at the chance to make him pay.”
He nodded as Sonya’s and Zhao’s plan became clear in his mind’s eye. “So you and Zhao came up with this cover story about your fall from grace in the hopes Grafton would latch on to the information and reel you into his organization.”
She nodded. “He’d done some digging—Zhao, that is—on his own and had discovered Grafton employed a lot of former soldiers and government agents. A lot of disgraced former soldiers and government agents. So we concocted the story about me helping an international jewel thief, planted the tale in all the newspapers along with the bit about there not being enough evidence to bring me to trial, and then made it easy for Benton, Grafton’s keyboard jockey as you call him, to get his hands on a set of phone records supposedly showing half a dozen calls between me and the thief.”
“Then, armed with this information, Grafton called you to St. Ives.”
“Bingo.” There it was again. That firefly laugh that lit up his whole world. “As planned, I gave Grafton a sob story about having fallen in love with the thief, and he promised not to hand over the evidence he had against me as long as I worked for him. I’ve been gathering Intel on him ever since.”
“How?”
“By snapping photos of him with his colleagues and lackeys, getting shots of his computer files and phone records and anything and everything he let me see because he thought I was too broken and cowardly ever to make a move against him.”
“You were able to smuggle in the cell phone and the button camera?” Grafton’s bodyguards had checked Angel for wires and stripped him of his electronics before letting him in the room with Grafton.
“Grafton’s goons didn’t think to check the lining of my purse, especially after they waved an RT signal detector over it and came up with nothing suspicious. I had the battery hidden in the steel heel of one of my shoes.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “And they certainly didn’t think to go investigating my buttons.”
Angel smiled at the tiny cell phone. It was no bigger than a Post-it note and almost as thin. The top of the line in spy technology—Ozzie would be so jealous. Then he glanced at her missing button. “I saw you fiddling with that thing. I thought you had developed a nervous tick.”
“Kinda like your jaw popping?”
He knew his face hardened again when she withdrew, pressing herself closer to the passenger door. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean anything—”
“The jaw popping is a new thing.” It wasn’t a lie. At least not entirely. For ten years he’d managed to overcome his tell, but something about seeing Sonya, being around her, had the long-buried habit rearing its ugly head.
“Maybe it’s me,” she mused.
“You are thinking of your man? The one you loved?”
“Yes.” She nodded, a sweet look of melancholy crossing her face. It was enough to have those vines around Angel’s heart tightening. Then she shook herself. “So, tell me, now that we know where each other stands and that we’re playing for the same team—”
“Which team would that be?”
“Justice League. Home of the Good Guys.”
He smiled. Sonya always had seen the world in black and white. Right and wrong. It was one of the things he loved best about her. And one of the reasons he knew she’d never forgive him for the choice he’d made. A thorn lodged in his heart, making his chest burn and ache.
“Anyway,” she continued, “now that the air is clear, what’s the plan?”
“Before I get into that, I need to ask you for a favor.”
“Will wonders never cease? The Prince of Shadows needs a favor from little ol’ me?”
