Smoke and Mirrors (27 page)

Letting go of his upper arms, I slide my hands under his sweater and find skin. His mouth breaks at the touch of my gloveless fingers, giving my tongue entry at last. That battle won, I refrain from removing his wool top, fearing it will separate our mouths once again, and instead concentrate on undoing the zipper of his jean-clad thighs.

Seconds later my hands find what they’re looking for, and I grip his rod-hard length, wriggling free of my trousers. His breath is coming hard and fast now, alternately cooling and heating my teeth and tongue as his lungs work like bellows.

At last, his hands join the party, pushing my hat from its place as they entwine themselves in my hair. I tilt back, letting his tongue rove my neck, letting his teeth sink into the muscle of my shoulder until I take him into me.

Our joining is as impulsive as it is deliberate: mending lost time, frustration, trepidation and bloodlust in an instant. I feel his hands slide under my thighs, yanking me off my feet as shoves my back against a step-like stack of crates. Leaning into me as I come to rest against the unyielding surface, he repossesses my mouth with less-refined devotion.

My legs, now wrapped around his taut waist, draw him deeper, utilizing what little strength lies in my weakened body as, even the very air I breathe, is drawn away by his intoxicating mouth. A mouth laced with the taste of cigars. I smile despite the fact I still want to hit him.

He feels my lips part, takes it as a challenge, and drives the grin from them as he thrusts with the strength of a bull. His mouth pulls away on the third blow, and I stare in fascination as his countenance transforms from that of his brother, to that of Giovanni, to that of Brad.

Those eyes, so flat and angry only moments before, are now as deep and pensive as they were at Nora.

A rumble starts somewhere deep in his chest just as I feel the jittery vibration of my own suppressed vocal chords beginning to lose their willpower. My head falls back, striking the crate’s edge. Dizzy to start with, I find the room spinning around me with increasing speed.

“Harder,” I beg, feeling his forehead press against mine as his hand comes to rest between my bruised skull and the damned board behind it.

He grunts, gearing up for a final drive, his free hand’s thumb brushing my lips before plunging into their parted depths.

Erotic in its mimic of his lower counterpart, it glides in and out of my mouth faster and faster, until I sink my teeth into its calloused surface, arching my back and moaning as the first wave hits me. The fingers surrounding his thumb suddenly span my cheek, gripping fiercely as he too crashes over the edge of reason.

Our subsequent earthquake of body parts induces the crates to tumble, leaving us lying on the cold utilitarian floor; bodies joined, minds and hearts just as certainly, and infinite moments pass until I feel the shuddering vibrations of our passion slow to the lethargic pace of a frozen river.

His arms, wrapped tightly around me, move slightly as he tries to retain the intensity of our union. “I’m so sorry,” he murmurs into my hair.

I feel him, still stiff within me, and a sigh of contentment escapes my lips. His unexpected laughter startles my numbed limbs and I shiver.

Rolling us to a relatively comfortable position, he drapes the discarded clothing over our bodies. “Better?”

“Mmmm.” I pause, wondering with growing curiosity if now, after our aliases have been shed and shattered, I will finally come to know where he has been and why he couldn’t tell me.

His voice rumbles through the darkness. “I need to tell you something.”

But my miniscule pager is buzzing. I glance down at the glowing LED. “It’s Alasdair.”

Brad groans, resting the back of his hand on his forehead. “What’s the plan?”

I sit and pull on my sweater. “You need to find out where the driver took your brother –” I realize I don’t even know his name.

“Mikhail Grinkov.”

Returning his genuinely goofy smile, I say, “Okay, well obviously he’ll know how to contact you, and when he does, I’ll set up a meeting with Alasdair. You know the kind. The ‘I’m wary about getting killed, so let’s do this the old fashioned way.’”

“Right.” Brad sits up, and I watch his abs ripple.

“God, your body’s amazing.”

His eyes twinkle. “You’re not looking so bad yourself, Ms. Brothers.” Pleased with the compliment, I stand and am rewarded with a sharp slap across my ass.

It’s nice to be missed.

A
ny calm I felt in the computer building is gone. I’m skirting the shadowed side of a sketchy alley, aiming for a rendezvous with Alasdair. Only Alasdair doesn’t sound like himself anymore. He’s detached, and worse. Angry. Not the kind of anger he’s shown when I’ve been hurt. This is, ‘I’m going to kill you if I get my hands on you’ angry. But I am willing to risk his wrath, because I have something he wants.

A few hair-raising seconds after I enter the abandoned apartment building, I find him alone in the center of a snow-blasted, grimy kitchen.

“Alasdair?” My voice is just a notch above squeaky. He grunts a reply. It’s dim in the room, and I’m freezing, but not deaf. “C?”

His chuckle makes the hair on my head tingle. And when he turns, I find myself edging for the doorway. I feel naked. He knows very well what happened once when I was alone with an older boss. A shiver of fear chills me.

“Either my Intel is bloody important or I’m in such deep shit that they’ve sent in the biggest gun of all.”

But C’s face, when he finally bothers to turn, is uncharacteristically compassionate. Open. Friendly in a soft, sad kind of way. I start relaxing and then think the better of it. Fuck, he’s better at charades than all of us. In fact, he’s practically lured me into believing he’s here to help me, and he hasn’t even spoken. I step back.

“Parker.” He extends his right hand. “It’s just the two of us. Relax.”

There’s definitely something weird going on. “I…I need to talk to you about…what happened. About why I didn’t follow Alasdair’s orders.”

He drops his hand and looks away, the wind from the open window flicking his hair up like a bird’s feather. “You don’t need to; I know what happened. That’s why I sent you here.”

“What do you mean, you know what happened?”

Sighing, he rubs the back of his hand across the bridge of his nose. “You’re protecting Brad. I can understand.” He drops his hand and I study his face. Oddly enough, I know he’s telling me the truth. I feel it. “Where is he? I need to know what he’s told the Obschina. We helped prevent an assassination today, but it looks like we’re the ones partially responsible for it. Christ, I know you love him. I love him too, but it’s bigger than us now. We have other interests to protect.”

“What will you do with him?”

C’s answer doesn’t need words.

“If you’re going to have him killed as a traitor after his debriefing, why on earth would I give him up?”

“Because you’ll do the right thing, always. You were trained to be a doctor – to help people. You’ll give him up because you know you should, because you were raised to do the morally correct thing.”

“And if I don’t?” I ask, realizing he doesn’t know me as well as he thinks.

“I know you’ve missed him, that your life will never be the same without him. But that Brad’s gone.” He runs a hand through his thick hair. “For God’s sake, how much time have you even spent with him? Thirty minutes? An hour? He’s not the man you knew. The man we all knew. He’s someone else. He’s one of them. Trust me, Parker, he’s not the man you fell in love with. He’s dangerous and he needs to be stopped.”

He knows it’s not Brad. He thinks Brad’s dead, of that I’m sure. But he knows Mikhail’s alive. So what’s his plan when I ‘give’ him Brad? Kill him and say Brad Milton has been found, tried, and executed for treason? Let him go after pretending to kill him because Mikhail’s actually a plant in Chechnya working for SIS? Or let the Russian government know that the plan to fake an assassination attempt has led SIS to flush out the actual members of another group that intended on doing that very thing?

“Parker?”

My teeth are chattering, but my heart is warm with hope. “Okay.” I pretend to hesitate. “But I don’t want him…I –” Stammering, I feign holding back tears. C puts his wool-coated arms around me.

His voice is low. “I’ll do my best to keep it quiet. We’ll make it another ‘Jack Kingston’ funeral. Nobody but a few of us will ever know he was anything but a hero.”

I sniff, this time for real. My nose is running because his coat is tickling it. Oddly enough though, he isn’t giving me the creeps. In fact, he doesn’t seem like he’s lying at all.

Pulling away, I wipe my nose with the back of my sleeve. His blue eyes watch me. “Now let’s get someplace warm. I know a great little hotel not too far from here.”

We walk out of the building and head up the street. I look over at him, slipping a little on the icy ground before catching myself with a windmilling arm. “I can’t believe you came – alone.” It does seem foolhardy.

C’s stride is brisk. “You’d be surprised how often I get out. I don’t like being babysat.”

Just then, a car darts out of a side street and blocks our path. C pauses next to me, relaxed to an observer, but I feel him tense. He doesn’t expect this.

The car’s windows are blackened, but when the rear door opens, I can see two figures. “Get in,” a voice commands in thick Russian.

“Now,” I add, pushing a hidden gun into my boss’s side.

C, leaning down like he’s entering a hired car after a night at the theater, slides into the space. I crawl in beside him, and off we roar.

•   •   •

Having Tasered C upon entering the car, Mikhail is chattering in ‘way too fast’ Russian with his brother. My kitchen variety doesn’t do me much good, so I wait as Brad zips in and out of streets until we come to the back lot of a daycare center.

Grabbing C, the brothers haul him out and drag him into the rear of the building. We enter the school after Mikhail jimmies the lock. Risking a low light, they prop him in a chair and crack a bottle of vodka procured from somewhere in Brad’s jacket. Brad fills three kiddie cups and hands them out.

Leaving my cup on the play table, I sit on Brad’s lap and rest my head against his strong shoulder. My eyes close as I feel sleep stealing over me. Realizing I haven’t slept well since the last night we spent in Sardinia, I let the lassitude take me.

“Wake up.”

I open my eyes as C comes round, and I can see both men tensing for what’s to come. C seems calm. That is until he realizes he isn’t seeing double.

Then he turns as white as clotted cream.

“You thought I was dead, didn’t you?”

C’s head is shaking back and forth in disbelief. His mouth is closed, but his eyes are like flying saucers.

Brad stands, setting me down in the process. “Didn’t you!” His foot is on C’s chest, tipping the chair back.

“I –” C’s face gradually regains color. “Who…I mean why did you fake…?” Then a light seems to go on in his head and a lazy smile starts in his eyes. “I wondered how the footage of the Chechen bombing came to light. You found him,” he nods at Brad’s twin, “accidentally, didn’t you? Was it in Croatia? I always thought that could happen when you two started infringing on each other’s territory. The odds were against it, but it was possible nonetheless. You didn’t really look that much alike, not growing up anyway. Now though, with your hair like that –”

C pauses, closing his eyes suddenly. I think for an instant he’s swallowed some sort of tablet. Brad, thinking along the same lines, lets his foot down and leans in, ready to fish out whatever it is.

But then tears seep out along C’s crow-lined eyes. And when he opens them again, he is obviously working to quell whatever emotions have temporarily possessed him. “I’m very glad you’re not dead. Very glad indeed.”

Brad steps back and runs a hand through his short blond hair distractedly. “What the bloody hell is going on? If you didn’t know I was still alive, if you fell for our ruse like Mikhail thought you might, then at the very least, you knew Mikhail existed. I mean the bombing footage was real. We just had to get it into the hands of someone at SIS. And if you knew that Mikhail existed, then why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

C’s eyes are clearing, but because his hands are tied behind him, he can’t catch the single tear which inches slowly down his cheek. “I have my reasons.” His back is straightening, and I see a steely glint flash once in the blue depths. “Untie me, and I’ll tell you more. You owe it to me.”

Brad cuts the plastic zips and C stands to restore circulation. “Now, I might be glad you’re alive, but I’m a busy man, and I don’t want to be questioned after tonight. Whatever I tell you stays in this room; no one else is to know, ever. Agreed?”

Looking mutinous, Brad nods only after Mikhail and I do.

“Very well, may I?”

I nod, handing him the cup. C takes off his scarf and drains my portion of the vodka. After a second, he begins, “It started with World War II. Allied forces discussed the difficulty of finding spies within their own ranks. That, and the knowledge Germany had come back into power so soon after World War I made everyone jumpy. Then the Cold War came and another kind of war began. Britain felt the enemy could be the boy next door just as easily as the one in Moscow.” C pauses to point to Mikhail.

I think about this, about the current world situation, and decide not much has changed.

“So, a select group of men whose fathers had died honorably during WWII was formed. I am one of them, as were others like the real Bradley Milton Sr., the man after whom I named Brad.”

If my eyes pop, Brad’s are out on stalks.

“There were a few others involved. It was a program designed to develop the perfect spy. The perfect protector of the British Empire. We were, with the help of specialists in a variety of fields, to manipulate the experiences of ‘subjects’ in the hopes that, once matured, they would be voluntary, invaluable, invisible and invincible assets to our country. That they, in short, would give us an omnipresence which would ensure we were never caught unaware again.”