But she rambled on, “And with Kent gunning for Jessie at the pistol range—”
I opened my mouth to ask after Kent. His sudden disappearance had not slipped my mind completely.
But she ignored me. “And the way I’m being told I need to keep you away from Mother right now…”
“What? Why?” Kent, and the very real possibility the woman sitting across the table from me had left his body in a shallow grave, was not nearly as important.
“Things are ugly, Alexi.”
“Is Mother—well?”
“She’s still aging rapidly. I don’t think they really know what to expect. How long she’s got.”
“You need to get us in there.”
“I’m working on it.”
“Actions speak louder than words.”
She nodded. She knew. “So all that and the royally weird beat-down Pietr took when they crated Jessie away…”
“That was the doing of Pecan Place.”
“What if they’re fingers on the same hand? One organization manipulating different things?”
“For a CIA agent—”
“Maybe I’m not.”
“You’re quite a conspiracy theorist.” I shrugged and tipped my chair back. “Why does this matter to me? From my perspective, my family has a few specific goals and they appear to contradict yours. We want Mother out. We want Jessie out. We want our family healthy, whole, and sane. I want to be done with all of this.”
“I want to be done with all this, too.”
It sounded like a confession.
“Until I met Leon, I couldn’t imagine life outside the CIA—or whatever organization it is I really work for.”
“Tired of playing at being a cloak-and-dagger knight?”
“Tired of running the risk that lies are going to screw up something that could be really great.”
“You’re in love,” I accused her, kicking my legs up to rest my feet on the table’s edge. “I could ruin you with Leon.”
“You won’t. You know exactly what I’m dealing with. Lies.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“There’s been some chatter.”
“Terrorist chatter?” I suddenly felt off balance.
“It’s all terrorist chatter if it might screw up my country. Someone’s looking for you. A woman, from what we’ve gathered.”
I slid my feet back off the table and set the coffee mug down to make it less obvious my hand trembled. “Does this woman have a name?”
“Just a handle. The White Crow.”
I blinked, my most frequent tell, and the reason I was no longer allowed to bet at poker. White Crow was certainly a name Nadezhda would choose for herself. Part of a flock, but set apart. Different in more than plumage.
“You know her.”
My throat tightened until words only squeezed out in a whisper. “What intelligence do you have on her?”
“Very little, but the chatter’s intensifying. She’s planning a visit. She seems anxious to be reunited with you.”
I glared at the table.
“So. Love and lies.” She stood. “Maybe we could each do a favor for the other. I’m looking for answers. And the best folks at speculating and researching the supposedly dastardly dealings of the U.S. have traditionally been our old Cold War rivals. You get me info from your contacts and I’ll keep you in the loop about the White Crow.”
“Nyet. The only favor I want from you relates to my mother.”
“From what intel’s passing on to me, your mother—a Mrs. Hazel Feldman—is quite available for visits at the Golden Oaks Adult Day Care and Retirement Home. She’ll gladly read your future with some weird sort of tarot cards, too.” She smirked and, taking a sip of coffee, made a face. “Though it seems her memory about all things oborot is faulty.” She looked at me for confirmation.
I kept my face free of expression. So the old woman was clever even if she’d been heartless, giving me—her only child—away as a baby to grow up living a life full of lies. I doubted she wondered why I’d never yet visited. I raised and lowered one shoulder.
“And her lockbox is empty.”
Because she’d handed over the thirteenth journal to Pietr. “The only favor I want relates to our Mother. Tatiana Rusakova.” The woman who gave us all her last name because Father’s came with a more high-profile and dangerous history. And how many other Americans would know enough to ask about boys and a girl with Russian heritage and the same exact last name? It had been enough to keep our Russian hunters off our trail until I sought them out personally. “I want Mother healthy and out.”
“You know that’s beyond my control.”
“Then get us in. Soon.”
“That, I think I can do.” She dumped the remaining coffee into the sink. Barely touched.
Such a cruel woman.
She strode from the room and I heard the door open and close.
And open again.
“You really should lock your door,” Wanda advised. “‘What may at first appear a ballsy, self-confident move often equates with short-sightedness and stupidity,’” she quoted me.
Da, it definitely felt like Monday.
Alexi
“Why are you still here?” I asked when I spotted him curled on the love seat, alone. Cat had taken the evening to go to the mall with Amy and one of Jessie’s stranger friends, Sophia—maintaining the illusion of normalcy, she claimed. As if it was quite the sacrifice. I, however, had noticed the advertisement for the season’s hottest new sweaters and suspected she was window shopping—or more.
Max was running—hunting—like Pietr should have been.
Pietr shrugged.
“When was the last time you hunted?” I asked, realizing I could not recall. Was it the night before our raid on the CIA bunker, when we first tried to free Mother? That was … I ran the tally through my head—weeks ago.
Again, he shrugged.
“How are you keeping your calorie count up?”
“I’m fine.”
“Nyet. If you don’t hunt and—I’ve seen how little you eat … Your system’s stressed already. When was the last time you turned?”
He looked straight at me, the alpha in his nature sparking for a moment. But his eyes were dull and narrow with disinterest. “Do you realize that if I’d been … normal”—he tore the word away from the rest of the sentence—“there would be no reason for Jess to be locked away?”