Badass: Deadly Target (Complete): Military Romantic Suspense (8 page)

He smiles the tiniest bit, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

Tears burn the backs of my eyes as fear ripples its way through me. Until right now, my mom’s integrity has only been in question. In a moment, that question will be answered, good or bad. And I’m afraid. Terribly and awfully afraid I will be destroyed by the answer. And what then?

Will I still love her?

Will I be ashamed of her instead?

Large hands cover mine, their warmth sinking into the cold of my own. I look up into his blue, blue eyes, the kindness I see there nearly shattering me.

“Let’s do it together,” he says, his voice as gentle as his gaze.

Together.

I nod.

Turning, he sits next to me and pulls the heavy metal across both of our laps. I slide the key into the lock and turn it, feeling more than hearing the tumblers click.

And together we lift the lid of what is surely Pandora’s Box.

Chapter 9 – Jax

Russian.

Fuck.

The damn documents are written in Russian.

I speak Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, German and Arabic. But Russian, not so much. A few words jump off the paper that I recognize.

Аэропорт is airport.

Доставка means delivery.

Разум is mind, I think.

Синтетический is synthetic I feel sure, remembering the word from a list of synthetic drugs being shipped around the world not long ago.

Миллиграмм is milligrams. I remember from that same bust.

Is this a recipe? I scan the paper again.

Ед. Изм is unit.

I turn the page, and freeze. There’s a world map of airports, all forty-four thousand of them, it looks like. The next page has the airports broken down by country. The next page lists the airports located in large cities.

Included in the documents is the diagram of a bag. Младенец, it says at the top. Infant? I’m not sure. Мешок means bag, I know.

“Why would there be a diaper bag in all this stuff?” Mia asks and it clicks. Yes, diaper bag. The diagram is a black and white sketch, so no ducks and bunny shit on the side to further indicate its purpose.

I stare at the papers, trying to make everything make sense. In the back of my mind, I was expecting some type of weapons plans, maybe instructions on creating weaponized plutonium. But this … what the fuck does a diaper bag have to do with national security?

“What does this mean?” I ask, and I scan her face, looking for duplicity. There’s none there, just wide eyed curiosity and large doses of fear.

“I don’t know. This is written in Russian, Mia. The place your mother wanted you to go.”

Mia stares up at me, as if looking at my face will bring her the answers she’s seeking. Her gray eyes are huge, and grow glassy as they brim with tears. When her chin quivers, I wrap an arm around her shoulders. She leans into me, her face pressing into my shirt, her rapid breath hot against my skin.

“This is bad, isn’t it?”

I nod and realize she can’t see the gesture. “Yes. It’s bad.”

She begins to cry, her entire body quaking under the intensity of her sobs. Her fingers dig into my skin, as if trying to sink into me, seeking some type of stability that will hold her steady in this whirlwind that has become her life.

Even as I stroke her back, her hair. Even as I hold her tighter and pull her onto my lap so that I can hold her closer, I know my actions are foolish. This woman’s mother has been hiding unknown, yet clearly top-secret level information and God only knows what she’d planned to do with it. Sell it to America? Russia? China? The highest bidder?

I shake my head. That doesn’t make sense either. Why steal Russian documents then ask her daughter to take them back to that same country? She must know that would be a death sentence.

If Mia is telling the truth.

I continue to hold her even as I process the possibilities. Yes, Mia looks, sounds, and acts innocent, which is Spy 101. The best spies are the best actors. Their abilities to pass lie detection ingrained. To have a beautiful, innocent looking spy on the payroll would be very beneficial to any country. I look down at the documents again. To carry a fucking diaper bag? Are they using a baby as a mule? An ordinary looking family to carry out whatever the rest of this is?

How am I supposed to believe anything she says or does now? Everything she does from this point forward will take on new meaning.

“I just don’t understand,” she whispers, staring into the box. She lifts additional papers to find money, both dollars and rubles. I thumb through the stack of one hundred dollar bills. The stack is a little over two inches thick, so probably fifty thousand or so. There are also four stacks of rubles. Beneath that, a stack of ten-thousand dollar bonds. Shit. I look beneath the bonds and find a key as well as another address to a bank in South America. Nothing more.

“What does all this mean, Jax?” she asks and I look down into those storm gray eyes again. If she’s a spy, she’s the best one I’ve ever encountered. But, dammit, I don’t want her to be. I want her to be the innocent she appears.

I keep my voice calm. I’d been conditioned about suppressing my feelings and presenting a cool front during my training. “I think there was a lot more to your mother than you were aware of, Mia.” I gently remove the box from her grip and place it by my side. No way am I letting her anywhere near it now.

“Tell me everything about her.”

“Everything? You can’t be serious.”

My eyebrows shoot up. “I’ve never been more serious. And considering I saved your life earlier, I think you owe me a little honesty.”

“If I had known you were going to hold it over my head, I would have asked you to keep your saving to yourself,” she says, then sighs dramatically. “I have a lot on my mind right now and you’re only making things more difficult.” She tucks her hair behind her ear.

Is that her “tell?” Does she tuck her hair behind her ear when she’s nervous? She’s clearly nervous now. How can I use that to my advantage?

I suppress my own heavy sigh, deciding to take another direction. I can’t press her too hard. “Fine, that’s just fine. No problem. Why don’t you do a brain dump on me then?”

She wrinkles her nose. “What’s that mean?”

I stand back up, go to the window then back to the door to look out. “Unload everything that’s going on in your brain.” I grin at her, trying to lighten the mood. “Nothing dirty.” She scowls and I go on, “Just … start talking and dump it out. I might be able to help you make sense of it. Maybe we can piece things together.”

She chews on her bottom lip and I look away, walking back to the window to recon the area. I can tell she’s still struggling to decide whether she can trust me, just as I’m stepping lightly with her. The situation reminds me of navigating a minefield. One misstep and the whole thing blows up. I need to handle her with care while also taking one step at a time.

Finally, she nods. “Okay, but there’s not much to tell.”

“Even the smallest thing can be important.”

“Well, Mom was in the Army, but that was long ago,” Mia revealed.

I stop my pacing and turn to her. She didn’t think this important? That her mother was in the military? I stay silent, letting her speak.

“I thought she retired years ago, before I was born,” she continues. “We lived off her pension.”

“Your father?” I ask, trying to be delicate.

She lifts a shoulder and pushes her hair behind her ear again. I watch her closely. “I never knew him. She wouldn’t talk about him and I stopped asking because she would always look so sad.”

She laughs and leans her head back on the wall behind her.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing. Just remembering how I used to make up stories about him in my head. One time he’d be a movie star she’d met and fallen in love with, but was tragically killed in an accident. Another time he would be a secret agent, watching me from afar but not daring to reveal himself. That sort of thing.”

If she’s being honest — and that’s a big if — her instincts as a child might have been stronger than she could have imagined. I mull this over. Playing a hunch, I ask, “Did you move around a lot as a kid?”

She looks up at me, her eyes wide. “We did. All the time. I went to, like, a dozen different elementary schools. We didn’t settle in California until I started high school.”

“That was how long ago?”

“Eleven, twelve years. My freshman year.”

“And you think she retired at that point and you settled here in Sacramento?”

She nods. “Yeah. After that, she was just, you know, Mom.”

“What types of games did you two play when you were little?”

Her face crumples and I immediately regret the question, but don’t take it back. Instead, I pace and wait. My patience is rewarded when she says, “We’d play hide and seek, and she’d teach me how to find the best spots, how to stay quiet. We’d wrestle a lot and I almost got better than her at it. She’d put up targets and we’d take turns shooting at them. With Mom, everything was a contest.”

“Real guns?”

She shakes her head, then nods. “Well, real guns when I was older. She taught me how to use guns and shoot, but when I was little, it would be with toy Nerf guns. She’d have me do crazy things like roll and shoot. I got pretty good.”

“Did she teach you how to speak Russian?”

“No, never Russian. But I learned Spanish and French, German. A little Japanese.”

“Did you ever hear you Mom speaking in Russian?”

Her forehead furrows. “I don’t know if it was Russian, but I remember her talking on the phone sometimes when I was little. I didn’t understand anything.”

“Did your mom have many visitors?”

She laughs. “Never. She didn’t date. Didn’t have lunch with friends. Nothing like that.”

“How did she spend her time?”

She chews her bottom lip again, then touches the place it is split with her finger. “She was on her computer a lot, but she didn’t work, not after she retired. Like I said, we lived off her pension. She didn’t have me until she was older. Forty-two. She talked about being tired and just enjoying free time after so many years of service.”

“And you believed her?”

“Why wouldn’t I believe her? She’s my mom.” Mia covers her face with her hands. “Was my mom. Of course I believed her. I love her.”

I study her, trying to judge her level of sincerity. I find it difficult to believe that a woman could raise a child all of her life and that child never pick up on the fact that she was a spy. Because that’s what she must have been. Maybe her retirement from the “Army” happened to coincide with her connection to another government agency. Perhaps more than one.

“Did she travel often?”

She immediately shakes her head, then pauses, biting her lower lip, her tongue playing at the split. “Never when I was younger, not even in high school. But about a year ago, she made a friend. Sylvia was her name. They’d travel together for weeks at a time.”

“Mia.” I wait until her eyes lift to mine. “Did you ever meet Sylvia?”

She shakes her head.

“See a picture of her?”

Mia frowns. “No, actually I don’t think I did. Mom would show me pictures she’d taken, but I don’t remembering seeing one of her friend.”

“Was your mom in any of the pictures?”

She stares at me, her eyes growing glassy as she realizes the purpose of my question. “You think she was lying to me, don’t you?”

“Was your mother in any of the vacation pictures, Mia?”

She swallows and the tip of her nose grows pink again. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I don’t know for sure.”

I knew for sure. I’d bet every dollar I had that Mia’s mother was lying to her. That she was letting her daughter pore over stock photos, making up lie after lie of her adventures. I wonder if she’d ever felt guilty.

Deciding to come back to this line of questioning later, I ask something more important. “What about the instructions? Didn’t you say she gave you a set of instructions on what to do with the contents of the box?”

Her face grows dark. “Yes, but I’d rather read it privately, if you don’t mind.”

“Are you fricking kidding me? Of course I mind!” I blow up. “I’m risking my neck for you, sweetheart. Do you know how easy it would be for me to sink a bullet in your head and walk away with that box and letter? I’d be hailed a hero for recovering documents of this importance. The President would probably pin a great big medal on my chest.”

She jumps to her feet, wincing and holding her ribs as she does. “If I’m as bad as you think, then do it,” she shouts. “Sink your bullet in my head, just get it over with. At least I won’t have to… to… smell you anymore.”

Smell me?

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

She plops back down on the floor, her now red face planted back into her hands. I take the opportunity to do a pit sniff. Nothing but deodorant. I lift the neck of my shirt up to my nose. Fabric softener.

I shake my head, pissed at myself for getting distracted.

She growls and pulls her hands down from her face, and looks up at me with those big gray eyes. “I know you want those… whatever they are… just as much as I do,” she mutters. “I know you think my mom was a bad woman. I’m not stupid.” I look away as her chin quivers. “But she wasn’t bad to me. She was wonderful. I just…” She sniffs and I turn to walk back to the window.

Damn it. I can see the headlines now: CIA Agent Suckered By A Pretty Face.

“Fine,” I snap. “Read them quietly to yourself first, then pass them to me. I
will
read them next, you hear me?”

She gives me a watery smile and my gaze falls to her lips. I curse and walk to the door. I need to resign this job tomorrow and rescue strays for a living.

I hear her take out the envelope and turn, on guard to make sure she doesn’t attempt to destroy it. She shoots me a warning look as she pulls out the folded piece of paper. I simply stand there, watching, my arms folded over my chest.

With one last scowl, she drops her eyes to the letter and I watch her face morph through a number of emotions. Love. Confusion. Fear. Finally, she sits back and leans her head against the wall, thumping it a couple times, then wincing.