Page 17 of Rafe’s Future

“Oh, I remember.” Rafe couldn’t help but grin.

“She couldn’t take her eyes off of you.” Her smile grew a bit wider, as if she were seeing a recording in her mind from that day. But then that same smile fell with a soft hitch of her breath.

“Why are you here, Lena?” He took the frame from her hand and put it back in its rightful place.

Please tell me you know something about the person who went after my baby girl.

Instead, the intriguing woman tod him, “Caleb and Sabrina are dead.”

“Dead?” The surprise he felt sent both brows arching high. “Both of them? What was it? A job gone wrong?”

“Officially, it was motorcycle versus tree and an undiagnosed birth defect of the heart.”

“And unofficially?”

Lena abandoned the bookshelf and turned his way. The sadness and anger filling her sullen gaze was impossible to miss.

“Alexei Kozlova is back,” she announced, rather than answering his question directly.

Rafe’s spine grew stiff at the unexpected news.

“Kozlova?” He frowned. “I assumed the man was dead.”

“Me, too.” She blew out a breath while sliding her hands into the front pockets of her jeans. “We all did, and who could blame us? It’s been almost thirty years since the guy went dark.”

“What makes you think he’s resurfaced?”

She reached back, retrieving her phone from her back pocket. A few swipes of the screen later, and she was turning the device around for him to see.

“A surveillance team for an unrelated op picked up his image during a routine scan.”

Rafe made a move to take the phone from her hand. When he did, their fingers inadvertently brushed together. He schooled his expression, ignoring the electric jolt that was created from the innocent touch.

It wasn’t the first time he’d felt a heightened sense of attraction toward the other woman. He would’ve had to have been a blind man not to see it the first time they’d met.

But back then, just as he had every other time, Rafe ignored it and moved on.

“Where was this taken?” He studied the slightly blurred image frozen on Lena’s screen.

“Turkey. More specifically, a compound outside Harran.”

“His?”

“No.” Lena gave a quick shake of her head. “It belongs to a current, high-level target named Rami Najjar.”

“Arms dealer?”

“Among other things,” the sexy spy confirmed. “From what we’ve been able to find so far, Kozlova has apparently spent the last decade or so teaching Najjar everything he knows about the business.”

“It’s been twenty-seven years.” Rafe pointed out how long Kozlova had successfully kept himself under the radar. “If he’s been with Najjar for ten, where was he the first seventeen?”

“No idea. The prick could’ve been hiding on some deserted island, for all we know.”

He studied the image a moment longer before handing her back the phone. “Why allow himself to be photographed now?”

“Who knows?” Lena slid the device into her back pocket. “Like you said, it’s been a long time. Maybe he turned fifty and decided we’d finally given up on looking for him. Or maybe he just got sloppy and we got lucky.” Another quick shrug. “Either way, he’s back, and two of my best agents are dead.”

“They were more than just agents, Lena.” Rafe searched her telling gaze. “Caleb and Sabrina were also your friends.”