“So you can’t pin the murder on them?”
“Lindsey had already done the autopsy. If they were hoping to avoid the collection of evidence, they were too late. Petrov’s regime regularly kills off the opposition. Cameron told me that the last opposition leader was poisoned and nearly killed, and then he was left to die in a prison camp. Why would they care if we knew they killed Sergei?”
“Maybe they’re concerned because the murder took place here rather than in Russia?”
“What would be the implications if we’re able to prove that?”
“Foreign diplomats are granted absolute immunity from prosecution by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. We’d declare them persona non grata and expel them with the understanding they’d be tried for the crime at home. It’s a diplomatic issue for us rather than a criminal one.”
“You just happen to know all that, about the Vienna Convention?”
Smiling, he said, “It’s come up a few times during my career, so yes, I happen to know that.”
She fanned her face. “That’s hot.”
“Focus, Samantha.”
“I am focusing on my super smart, sexy husband who knows all the things.”
“He doesn’t know all the things.”
“He knows more than most people do.”
“Are we done talking about me in the third person?”
“See, like you know that we were using the third person. Who knows that kind of stuff?”
His left brow lifted ever so slightly. “Um, everyone?”
“No, not everyone.”
“Can we get back to talking about what we’re going to do about the missing Russian, the missing woman and the bomb?”
“Do we have to talk about the bomb?”
“I believe it’s very much in both our best interests to figure out what the hell is going on here.”
“We chose the wrong careers.”
His laughter infused some much-needed joy into this otherwise shitty day. “You’re just realizing that now?”
“I’ve known it for a while now. This is just further confirmation.” She looked up at him, noting the unusual dark circles under his gorgeous hazel eyes and the tense set of his jaw. “I have to go back to work. I can’t not be there with this going on, and I need to check on Joe.”
He placed his hands on her face. “They bombed my love’s workplace.”
“It’s not just my workplace.”
“Who do you think they were hoping to kill?” he asked softly.
“What good would that do? It wouldn’t make the case go away.”
“Think about what it would do to me. Rather than make a big stink about this entire screwed-up international incident, I’d walk out of this place with our kids and never look back. Perhaps that’s what they were hoping to achieve.”
“If that was their goal, why’d they bomb the lobby and not the area where I work?”
“Maybe they didn’t know how to find you and hoped to get lucky. Who knows? But I’m operating under the assumption that you were a target.”
Sam’s knees went weak under her. “I… I need to sit.”
