Trouble was, now she couldn’t help feeling more than just a physical pull. She’d entered that dangerous phase of attraction when you couldn’t catch a full breath. It was more than sex. It was also the hidden things they’d revealed, like they’d duginto each other’s layers—emotional, physical, mental—and each connection had compounded the others. They’d spooned all night—out of necessity, given the size of him versus the bed, and she’d soaked up every blissful second. What would it be like to have a guy like that in her life every day? Not this guy, obviously—but a guylikehim? She didn’t usually open up to anyone like that, and it was clear he didn’t either—grief scared most people off.
And where the hell was she supposed to find a guy like him?
Carter glanced her way, and she stretched, pretending she’d just that second woken, and hadn’t been devouring him with her eyes for several minutes.
“How was it?” he said, with a grin, sitting up.
“My sleep? Good, actually.”
“No, your night with your hero.”
“Antihero. It was an unexpected plot twist, but then, I always have escaped into fiction at stressful times.”
“Was it all that unexpected?”
“Uh, yeah. Was it not to you?”
He prowled onto the bed. Eek, was he going to kiss her, with her mouth all fuzzy in that morning-after way? Even so, she felt a deep pang of need.
“You’re not who I assumed you’d be,” he said, lowering himself onto his side on the coverlet. “So no, I wouldn’t have expected it the moment we met. But I believe it became inevitable at some point. Probably when you admitted you had a crush on me.” He nudged her neck and then licked it, which made her arch involuntarily.
“Don’t forget, you didn’t even exist until yesterday, so I couldn’t have had a crush on you.”
“I mean, sure, it all happened sooner than it might have in normal circumstances.”
“In normal circumstances, you and I would never have met.”
“That would have been a shame,” he said, his fingers tracing a map along her hairline. “I keep finding more things about you that I like.”
“I need some water,” she mumbled as she clumsily backed up out of the bedcovers and stumbled over him. She grabbed the first item of clothing she could find—his spare T-shirt—and yanked it on.
“Okay,” he said, rolling onto his back, sounding disappointed.
She filled a glass with water and guzzled it, standing by the kitchen sink. As much as she’d adore a repeat of last night, the fear went deeper than morning breath. That tightening in her belly: longing, need. Things that got a girl in trouble, especially an emotionally stunted girl paired with an emotionally stunted guy. How ironic that their unavailabilitywas what they’d bonded over. Best to leave it as a one-night thing that she could look back on with nostalgic gratitude—assuming their night together wasn’t forever colored by whatever disaster awaited them today.
“Have you been going all night?” she said, nodding at the dictaphone.
“No,” he said, stretching, “but I’m completely capable of it.”
“I was talking about the tape, obviously.”
“So was I, obviously. What did you think I was talking about?”
She tsked.
“I did get some sleep, but I got right through the recording, with a bit of skipping. I’m just going over some parts that were harder to decipher.”
“And?”
“She doesn’t say who killed the station chief. A few times it seems like she’s getting close, then she loses her train of thought. She describes his death in detail—but you know this, because that part was in English, and it was in the book—but she neversays who pulled the trigger. One thing I know? We need to identify this Tatiana. She’s the key figure behind it all, along with some guy called Yakov—Nika mentions the two names together in some places.”
“Russians, obviously. Any other clues to their identities?”
He sat up, cross-legged. His hair looked adorably mussed, which Alice absolutely shouldn’t be focusing on when they were discussing matters of international espionage. “Not many. Someone with a lot of influence in both Russia and the U.S., but I’m drawing a blank. I looked the names up on the internet—using an incognito search—but no luck. Nika says she had a tense meeting with Tatiana in Moscow just before she left, in which they came to a mutually beneficial agreement, and that she showed this woman enough of herkompromatto demonstrate she was serious. The Feds told me when we reached the U.S. that a pile of money had landed in Nika’s account, so maybe that’s where it came from. And she would’ve needed support at a high level from both the U.S. and Russian sides to arrange the paperwork for the marriage and exfil so quickly.”
“So these two could be her contacts on the Russian side. Will this recording be enough to clear your name?”
“The rantings of a woman who was clearly losing her mind? Not by itself. And she doesn’t explicitly exonerate me, even if she doesn’t implicate me either. But if we can find herkompromat, and identify this Tatiana… The advantage we have is that we’re the only ones with this much information, as far as we know. The authorities will only have the transcript that Kimberly typed up—the few parts in English that made sense. The good stuff’s in Russian. There must be other people who know about the existence of the kompromat, people involved in getting Nika to the U.S., and setting her up here. Looks like the search is on—and we need to get to it first.”
