Natalie’s defenses were up again. A friendly conversation on the street was one thing, but she sensed it would be hard to keep her barriers up against someone as easy to talk to as Becky Randall. Ballet teacher, town manager, and plumber’s daughter.
“I’m pretty busy at the farm right now, but I will keep it in mind. Thanks for thinking of me.” Natalie glanced at the window, glad to see the girls were standing there staring at them. “I think they’re waiting for you, and I better get back to the farm. I still have some work to do before dark.”
The afternoon had gotten away from her.
“You okay out there by yourself? It’s pretty remote. I can call the county sheriff—Samantha’s dad—and have him check in on you if you’d like. I have to talk to him anyway.” She didn’t seem to relish the conversation.
Those flared instincts turned into full-on alarm bells. Natalie should have cut and run earlier. “No, please,” she said with what she hoped was not as much panic in her voice as she felt. “Don’t trouble him. I like the quiet, and I’m used to being alone.”
“In New Jersey?” Becky said with a healthy dose of skepticism.
This was turning out to be a disaster. Natalie had never been very good at lying, which was ironic given what she’d had to do the past few years. “I grew up on a farm.” Before she could ask where, Natalie added, “I better go. See you around.”
She got into her car as fast as she dared, waving when she saw that Becky was still standing there looking at her.
So much for not acting suspicious. Natalie’s hands were shaking as she started the five-mile drive down long county roads to her farm. No, not her farm. She couldn’t think of it like that. Her temporary place to live.
Her eyes kept darting to the rearview mirror, half expecting someone to be following her.
She had to calm down and stop imagining Russian hit men behind every corner.
The early-evening skies had darkened with clouds by the time she turned onto the long driveway, and even the shadows were making her jumpy.
Anxious to get inside, she pulled around back into the barn that served as a garage and pulled the groceries out of the trunk. She’d get the rest of the stuff in the morning.
She was about to turn around when a shadow fell across her from behind. The tall, powerfully built shadow of a man.
Her heart jumped to her throat as panic and fear turned every drop of blood inside her to ice. Oh God, they’d found her!
Three
Where the hell was he?
Scott put down his phone after leaving another message for Travis Hart. It was his fourth or fifth in the past week, and he didn’t like it. The survivors had scattered to all corners of the globe after they’d reached Moscow, but the guys were always supposed to let Scott know where they were, give him a way to reach them, as well as a heads-up if they were going to be out of touch for any length of time. In the past few months that they’d been in hiding, there were times when it had taken one of the guys a day or two to get back to him, but it had never been this long.
For operational security reasons Scott was the only one who knew where they were all located. Travis was in Alaska working as a deckhand on a fishing boat. The boat was only a day-tripper, meaning he would put out one morning and return the next evening—usually working thirty-six hours straight—but they didn’t go out to sea for weeks or even months like some of the bigger commercial ships.
Travis should have gotten back to him by now.
“He’s still not answering?” Kate asked, knowing how worried he was getting.
Scott shook his head. “He better have a damned good excuse for going incommunicado.”
They were at Kate’s town house, using her well-equipped office and computers—having a sister who worked for the CIA had its benefits—to go over every inch of Natalya Petrova’s life, just as they’d been doing for every day of the past week. And what did they have to show for it? Plenty, if the goal was to show Scott how little he’d known her. But if he’d hoped to find anything helpful to lead them to learning more about the cell or how she’d operated... nada.
He hadn’t even known she’d had a sister, which he’d discovered courtesy of a deactivated Facebook account that they’d uncovered. There were only a couple of pictures. The most recent was from Christmas three years ago with Natalie and a slightly younger-looking version of her with glasses standing in the snow in front of a big outdoor Christmas tree. Though she deflected questions about her family, which took on a new significance now, Scott knew she was originally from Minnesota so he assumed the picture was taken on a trip home for the holidays.
Both women were bundled up from head to toe, with heavy wool coats, scarves, and matching pink mittens and knit stocking hats with pompoms. All you could see were strands of long blond hair, identical big, wide-set baby-doll eyes, pink cheeks, and big, happy smiles.
Scott must have stared at the picture for hours, as if looking for a clue. Looking for something he had missed.
But it didn’t even look like the same person. He couldn’t put this sweet-looking Midwestern girl with her arm protectively around her sister in fuzzy pink mittens—mittens, for Christ’s sake—together with the coolly confident and sophisticated Washington staffer, orthe covert Russian spy who’d been responsible for the deaths of eight of his men.
It was as if she were a chameleon, changing appearances based on her surroundings.
But he’d never been able to figure her out. It had been part of the attraction. Now he realized it should have alerted him that something wasn’t right. Instead of asking questions, he’d been too busy counting the moments until he could get her naked again.
From the first time he’d seen her, he’d wanted to take her to bed, and that had never changed. He’d expected the relationship and the fiery passion to burn out quickly. Natalie hadn’t been his type. Sleek, polished, and sophisticated, she was nothing like the wholesome, girl-next-door type that he usually gravitated toward.
