Lie to Me (36 page)

They were all so stupid. So gullible. So damned motivated by grief. It had been too easy to manipulate the Americans with the pleas for Sasha’s safe return. Alexei as well.

Isaak frowned as they neared the government building where he was to meet Sasha. Alexei remained the one possible threat capable of ruining all Isaak’s work. No doubt, by now, Sasha had confided in him.

Then again, if they had become as close as Isaak suspected, perhaps she’d kept her secrets quiet. If she cared for Alexei, she wouldn’t want him to know she opposed everything he stood for.

The car rolled to a stop, and Isaak shook off the possibility. No, he couldn’t take the risk. Alexei would have to die. After Sasha, after she’d been buried, while he grieved alone. Before his heartache could connect the dots and he began to dig for truths, as any good operative would do.

Isaak’s smile returned, the first genuine one he had felt in ages, and he let himself out into the bright, late-afternoon sun. Such a beautiful day. The perfect beginning to an even more divine end.

S
asha rode along in the Range Rover, tucked into a corner of the backseat, with Alexei jammed against the door to her right, as far away from her as he could get in the spacious confines. Misha sat equally silent in the passenger’s seat, beside a woman who’d introduced herself as Raven. She’d evidently sensed the tension between the three, because she’d stopped her attempts at amicable conversation within ten minutes of departing the private airstrip.

Alexei hadn’t spoken a single damned word to Sasha since he’d stormed out of the hotel room. He talked, when prompted, to Misha. But it was as if Sasha wasn’t even present.

The way he ignored her cut deeply. She hadn’t expected him to rejoice,
or even maintain the whispered promises they made during the night before. But she hadn’t expected him to shut her out completely. She would have welcomed his anger, embraced his accusations. Instead, he remained stoically, maddeningly silent. Like she didn’t exist.

Tears threatened again as she shifted her gaze away from the harsh set of his jaw to the narrow streets of London outside the window. On the plane, she’d learned they were taking her to the makeshift headquarters in Britain, where she’d face whatever punishment loomed ahead. They’d also agreed to let her make amends in the only way she could, by disarming the bomb that sketchy intelligence predicted would detonate ten minutes into the scheduled start of the meeting tonight.

It was that lack of precision that made her edgy. The heartache she could put aside—when it came to her job, calm hands and minds were a necessity. If their research, their informant, whatever prompted them to make the assumption, was off by even a fraction, everyone in the immediate area would die. Misha. Herself.
Alexei.

Once again, she’d put someone she cared for in harm’s path. Once again, she hadn’t meant to, hadn’t even known the greater threat. Now, just like her brother so many years ago, someone she loved deeply would suffer because of her ignorance.

Misha twisted in the passenger’s seat, and his kind blue eyes rested on hers. Alexei’s gaze followed, flicking to her face, then quickly back to the window. As if he wanted to participate, but couldn’t bring himself to make the association.

“We’re almost here, darlin’. You doing okay?”

Fresh tears rose at Misha’s quiet question. If it hadn’t been for him, for the compassionate understanding he exhibited, she’d have never made it to London without falling completely apart. Since she’d met him, he’d bent over backward, offering friendship at every turn. She didn’t understand why, but his acceptance made Alexei’s outright rejection easier to bear.

She answered Misha with a hurried nod.

“Have you warned her about Sandman at all?” Raven asked with the hint of a smile.

“No.” Surprisingly, Alexei broke his silent reverie with a sharp, clipped bark. “She won’t be with him long enough to make a difference.”

“What about Sandman?” Sasha glanced between them, curious.

Both men looked to Raven, and in the slight quirk of both their brows, Sasha read the question—
How do you intend to answer that?
Raven’s smile disappeared in a flash.

“He’s just a bit…intimidating at times.” She glanced in the rearview mirror, making contact with Sasha’s gaze for a brief second, before looking back to the road once more. “He won’t soften what he wants to say. For anyone.”

Oh. Once, Sasha might have been worried. But after spending the last several days with a total of three Opals, she’d come to expect nothing less. For that matter, even Raven had an intimidating presence. Her dark eyes saw too much. Her reflexes were a little too quick. The utter calmness that surrounded her had a way of making a person jittery if they acknowledged it for too long.

Raven navigated the SUV to a stop in front of an unobtrusive stone building and shut the engine off. As the three operatives surrounding Sasha reached for the door handles, she reached for Alexei’s wrist. He went stiff as steel at the contact of her fingertips. Slowly, reluctantly, his gaze swung to her.

“Please don’t make me confront my father before I deal with the bomb.”

“Not to worry, princess.” The hard edge he’d used with her in Dubai returned to sandpaper his voice. “As of this moment, you’re in custody.”

He shook off her hand and climbed out of the car as Misha opened her door. She swallowed down the marble of heartache stuck in the
back of her throat and steeled herself against the truth. This was where it ended, what a handful of blissful days became. She had lost Alexei, and her heart was breaking into irreparable bits.

Quietly, accepting her fate, she walked beside Misha, behind Alexei and Raven, through the front entrance, down a twisting sterile hallway, and to a reinforced steel door at one end. Alexei thumped a fist on the wire-embedded glass window. The door swung open before he could completely lower his hand.

Two men stepped out, one in wire-rimmed glasses, the other with short red hair. Both wore dark suits like Alexei and Grigoriy had the night they’d taken her from Saeed. Both inspected her, suspicion in their calculating stares.

Neither smiled.

Alexei set his hand in the small of Sasha’s back and urged her a step ahead of him. “Clarke, Hughes—Sasha Zablosky, 10-X-6.”

The redhead entered the room without a word. The man in glasses extended his hand. “Kevin Clarke. I hear you’re going to help us out of this clusterfuck.”

That cordial note of greeting, the lack of instant hatred like the redhead displayed, was enough to win Sasha over eternally. She shook his hand with an affirmative nod.

“Come in.” Clarke gestured her inside the room with a sweep of a thick arm. “I’d like to hear what you told Alexei and Misha this morning.”

She entered. But as Alexei made to follow, Clarke set a firm hand in the center of his chest. He gave him a pointed look. “Alone, Nikanova. I want to hear her, not you.” He inclined his head to the left, toward a closed door about fifteen feet away. “You can observe.”

As the door swung shut with a heavy, ominous thud, Sasha stood beside a scarred, wooden table, feeling very much like she’d just approached the edge of a high canyon, and these two men stood ready, waiting for an opportunity to push her off.

T
hree times, Alexei listened to Sasha’s story. Each time he hated it more. Hated
himself
more for bringing her here and forcing her to endure both Hughes and Clarke at the same time. Though Clarke was fair, he was ruthless. Each time he dug deeper, pulled out a little more, and reduced her to tears that tore Alexei apart inside. Hughes made no effort to hide his contempt. He attacked Sasha’s character at every opportunity.

All of which had Misha’s hands in fists that mirrored the ones Alexei clenched against his thighs.

Alexei turned to his best friend. “This is fucking ridiculous. How many times do they need to ask her the same questions?”

Misha cocked one dark eyebrow. “Finally decided to give a damn? Or did you just now escape the fog in your head?” He slammed one balled fist down on the wooden table, making it jump. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Too many things to put into words. Alexei shook his head, then heaved a sigh. “I’m dealing with this the only way I know how.”

“Bullshit. You’re running. Like you do every goddamn time things start to hurt.”

Was he? Alexei didn’t know. He could be. Right now, he felt like a fish out of water and he couldn’t quite find his way back to the pond. He knew two things—he loved Sasha, and what she had done was wrong, no matter how it came to happen. Every attempt he’d made at reconciling the two refused to work.

He glanced down at his watch. “An hour. We have an hour before Trubachev’s team declared that bomb’s going off, and those two are still grilling Sasha.”

“What do you want to do?” There was a measure of caution in Misha’s question. An unspoken acknowledgement that he understood Alexei was seriously considering disobeying orders, along with an infinite amount of support for that plan.

“I want to drag her out of that room.”

“You know Clarke will make good on his threat to stick your ass on analysis if you do.”

“Yup.”

A slow, mischievous grin crept across Misha’s face. “How many months you think we’ll get?”

“Six at least.”

“I’m in for a year.” He was out of his seat and at the door at the same time Alexei reached for the knob.

Alexei paused, the heavy door half open. His gaze held Misha’s amused smirk. “We’re taking her to the bomb.”

That lazy grin morphed into a frown, but Misha nodded. He didn’t like the idea any more than Alexei did, but Alexei refused to throw away his entire career and sacrifice the life of thousands just to keep his heart intact. He’d lived without that vital organ for too long.

With a swift jerk, he sent the door crashing into the wall and stalked to the neighboring room, Misha on his heels. He shoved that door open with equal force. Both directors looked up in surprise.

“Pardon us. We’ve got a bomb to take care of.” Misha latched onto Sasha’s elbow and pulled her from the chair.

Before either director could wrap their heads around the complete loss of their control, Alexei took her by the opposite elbow and they quickly ushered her from the room. Halfway down the hall, they broke into a run.

Footsteps pounded down the hallway behind them, barks and shouts echoing off the cement walls. Alexei hit the entrance first and held it open for Sasha. His gaze met hers briefly, and in the subtle flash of her smile, he saw the brilliance of her love. His heart thumped hard, his stomach knotted.

The weight of that heavy blow made him trip. He grabbed for the wrought-iron railing to keep from pitching headfirst down the three stairs leading to the parking lot. Annoyed with himself, he muttered a curse.

But as he righted himself, a flash of movement near the bushes that divided the asphalt lot in half drew his attention. He looked up to find Kadir standing beside a neatly clipped hedge no less than ten feet away.

Sasha noticed him at the same time. Her voice cracked over the hum of engines on the street beyond. “Look out!”

Alexei tensed instinctively. His gaze dropped to Kadir’s right hand, and the gun he held.

A
shot rang out, dropping Sasha nearly to her knees. Alexei hit the ground as well, crouched on toes and fingers. To the left of where he’d been standing, a bullet zinged past and dug into the stone wall next to the exit. The two directors halfway out the door ducked back inside, both hands going automatically for their weapons.

They needn’t have worried. Ahead of Sasha and Alexei, well beyond the confusion, Misha pulled his Sig and returned fire. Kadir let out a howl.

“Go!” Alexei urged, giving Sasha a shove in the direction of a glossy black Jaguar parked at the curb. Its driver hunkered down beside the door, the top of his hat poking above the roof.

Stumbling away from the ruckus, Sasha ran blindly for the car. Behind her, Alexei’s boots pounded on the asphalt, urging her on, forbidding her to break her pace. She hit the passenger’s side and grabbed for the handle.

Alexei rounded the hood and shoved the driver aside. He jumped inside the car, leaned across the console, and pushed open her door. “Get in!”

“What about Misha?” As she crawled inside, she cast a worried glance at Misha, who had yet to start this way.

“He’ll make sure Kadir’s neutralized,” Alexei explained as he slammed the car into reverse and jammed his foot on the gas.

Translation: He’d kill Kadir.

They gunned away from the curb, down the lot, where he whipped the car into a tight ninety-degree turn. Kicking it into drive, he stomped on the accelerator again. Tires squealed as they peeled out of the lot.

“We’ll meet up with Misha later.”

As the building diminished behind them, Sasha let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. She dropped her head against the headrest and sank into the seat. “You never flinch, do you?”

A heavy moment of silence passed between them before Alexei answered in a low, quiet voice, “Not if I want to stay alive.”