“Most people are like this. Predictable. Normal. And maybe I do have an agenda. Maybe I’m planning to turn you in.”
“You’ve had plenty of opportunities, but somehow you keep choosing to take the risk. So maybe you’re not as predictable as you think.”
“Live for the moment, that’s me.”
“People who live for the moment are more likely to die in that moment. I prefer your ‘survive-the-day’ mantra.”
He smiled at her, and it occurred to her Kimberly was right—he was looking at her differently from yesterday. Less of an inconvenience and more of an ally. A literal partner in crime. As if there could be any future between them. They’d be apples and oranges, especially compared with his apples and apples relationship with his wife. Alice would be Jane Eyre to Mrs. Rochester, the second Mrs. de Winter to Rebecca, butforever stuck in the middle of the narrative, with all the murky complications and questions and no happy ending.
But then, that thing he’d said about yin and yang. What if someone like hercouldhave someone like him? Because, damn, she really was starting to feel something for him that she could swear she’d never felt before. Which was surely down to the drama of the situation, but…
It was true that she was sticking with him because she wanted to know what happened next. But not just with the FBI and the Russians.
With him.
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 youwithoutan 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. Averypornographic 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. Likethis: 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.”
