Lying and Kissing (3 page)

I frowned. “I didn’t realize arms was our thing. Isn’t that more FBI or ATF?” Then I flushed. Who was I to question the head of Special Activities?

“We have our reasons,” he said stiffly. “Luka will be at his place in New York on Saturday, the first time he’s been over here for months.”

“Can’t you just arrest him? I mean, once he’s on US soil?”

Adam shook his head. “We don’t have nearly enough evidence. That’s why we need to bug his laptop.”

I swallowed. “So how do I fit in?”

Adam smiled, relaxing a little. “He’s throwing a party. He’s hired a string quartet and we can get you in as one of them. You play some music, slip into his office and plant the bug and then walk out. Simple.”

I’d see him. Actually be in a room with the man I’d been fantasizing about. I was still reeling from the idea of Luka suddenly being...
evil.

You moron. You knew he was a bad guy. Why did you
think
the CIA were tapping his phone?

“What’s he...like?” I wondered. And then realized I’d said it out loud.

“Brutal,” said Adam. “Unyielding. He did some jail time, a few years back, and that hardened him even more. Luka’s the new prince. He’s inherited the kingdom from his dad and he’s not going to let anything get in his way. He’s killed several times—that we know about—rivals, mostly, who’ve tried to encroach on his family’s territory. He’s not afraid to use his fists, when someone needs to be taught a lesson. People are terrified of him, right across Moscow.”

And he twisted his computer screen around to show me some photos. Suddenly, I was face-to-face with Luka.

I’d thought he’d be old, but the face looking back at me couldn’t have been thirty, yet. His hair was cut short—longer than I’d imagined, but still short—and it was so dark I could only just see the soft texture of it.

He had high, prominent cheekbones and a wide, sensuous mouth, one corner curling up in a smile that was all dark malevolence and sex.

He wasn’t handsome. Handsome is too bland. Hollywood celebrities are
handsome.

This guy was beautiful. Savagely, brutally beautiful, like mountain peaks that have been shaped by wind and rain.

I’d realized I was staring. It had only been a few seconds but, for someone who can memorize a face in an instant, that was a lifetime. I couldn’t remember ever staring at a photo like that. I dragged my eyes away.

There were more photos below, some of them half off the screen. I got a few glimpses of his naked back, twisting black tattoos over heavy slabs of muscle. Very different from the slender, gym-toned bodies that my boyfriends had had. He looked hard...
solid
in a way they never were.

I quickly looked away.

“The party’s on Saturday,” said Adam. He must have read the worry on my face because he gave me a reassuring smile. “You can do this, Arianna. A few hours of violin and a few seconds of action. In and out. Easy.”

Easy.

Until it all went wrong.

Saturday.

With four hours to go, I sat in my apartment and stewed.

My roommate, Nancy, was off in South America doing whatever proper field agents do—probably breaking some guy’s neck with her thighs—so I couldn’t watch movies with her. I’d practiced the violin until my arms ached. That left me pacing the apartment, a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Maybe I’m just not cut out for this.

But I couldn’t back out now. Everyone was relying on me. The whole mission was based around me planting the bug.

It started snowing at noon, which only made me more nervous. Snow made it harder to hold back the memories and the very last thing I needed was a flashback.
What the hell was I thinking?! I can’t do this!
No wonder Roberta had been pissed at Adam. She was right—I belonged safe and snug in the Language department.

I knew I’d lose it if I kept thinking, so I did the only thing I could think of: I cooked.

Nancy doesn’t have time to cook. She rolls in from an assignment jet-lagged and exhausted and sometimes wincing, her arm or leg in bandages. I figure that she needs to eat properly if she’s going to be able to jump out of a plane and seduce a guard and still remember to cut the blue wire not the red wire.

So I cook for her. I keep the refrigerator full so that she can just pull something out and reheat it. And sometimes, like when it’s snowing outside and I really need to take my mind off things, cooking is a good distraction. I cooked a big pot of slow-cooked shredded pork with lime and garlic and some slaw to go on top, then chilled it all and stuck a note to the refrigerator door to tell Nancy it was in there.

I put on a black dress and heels and put my hair up. Choosing what to wear was easy because I only
have
one black dress, an off-the-shoulder jersey thing that only normally came out once a year for our department’s Christmas party. I put on my one pair of hold-up stockings, too, because I figured string quartets were meant to look glamorous.

A horn beeped outside. Adam, in a cherry-red SUV.

Shit. I hadn’t known it’d be an SUV. And in the snow, too. At least I’d be in the front, not in the back.

I’d been in cars since the accident, of course, when I absolutely had to, but only for a few minutes at a time. This was three and a half hours.
God, I’m going to be a wreck by the time I get there.

But, if I wanted to prove myself to Adam, I didn’t have a choice.

I forced my legs to walk outside.

I survived by looking out of the windows. If I concentrated really hard on the snowflakes whipping past the window, I could almost imagine I was safe at home and not in a car at all. Adam tried to make small talk but he could see I was distracted. He probably thought it was nerves. I wasn’t clear on why he was coming along on the mission—didn’t he have a whole division to run?

Maybe he just wants to make sure you don’t screw it up,
I thought morosely.

I focused very intently on the scenery, trying to drink it in, trying to plaster the buildings and trees and sky all over my mind to cover up the slow-motion replay of another road trip, three years before.

There are two ways to reach the highway, from my apartment. One is through town and inevitably snarled with traffic. The other is to skirt around the back roads. When Adam turned that way, I tensed up completely. The road was still covered in snow, just like—

“Can we go through town, instead?” I asked.

Adam blinked and twisted around to look at me.

“I like to see it all lit up,” I said weakly.

He shrugged and then smiled indulgently. “Sure.”

I wanted to hug him.

***

About four hours later, in New York, Adam pulled up outside a red-brick building—some classy performing arts college. Two men in their twenties were standing there with instrument cases over their shoulders. A cello case stood upright in the snow between them.

“Where’s the third one?” I asked Adam. “Aren’t there meant to be three people, plus me?”

At that moment, a head poked out from behind the cello case. The woman behind it was so small, she’d been hidden behind it completely. She couldn’t have been much over 5’4”.

I jumped out and smiled goodbye to Adam, as if he was a dutiful dad dropping off his daughter. I was faking the smile but, the instant I was out of the car, I felt better. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been holding back the memories with sheer force of will, the entire journey.

The short woman reached out a hand. “I’m Karen,” she said. “Thanks for stepping in. Our normal violinist suddenly canceled. He’s
never
done that before. Stomach bug.”

He didn’t have a stomach bug, of course. He’d met some gorgeous woman that morning and she’d practically unfastened his pants on the spot. He’d agreed to a date that evening in a heartbeat. She’d stand him up, but by then it would be too late. He’d slink back home, despondent, and never tell his friends the truth.

This is how the CIA works. We give your lives tiny little nudges and you’re not even aware we’re doing it. We may have even done it to you.

I grinned at Karen. “Happy to help.”

***

We got a cab to Malakov’s place. Weirdly, cabs don’t bother me. They don’t
feel
like a car.

There was a cable TV repair truck parked a little way down the street. Even as I glanced at it, I heard Adam’s voice come from the earpiece I’d burrowed deep into my ear canal. “We’re right here,” he said. “I can see you. And we’ve hacked the house’s cameras, so we’ll be able to see you inside. He only has cameras in the hallway and living room, but that’s all we need.”

Most of the time, what I do is so abstract that I forget it’s wrong
.
It’s just recordings—somehow it doesn’t feel like people’s private conversations. But this—watching a guy in his own house, through cameras he’d installed to keep himself safe from intruders—this made some deep, moral part of me itch.

I started to walk across the street with Karen and the others. It was overwhelming to think that all this—Adam driving me all the way here, the elaborate ruse with the quartet, the truck full of monitoring equipment—was for
me.
What if I messed up?

And then a familiar voice came through the earpiece. “You okay?”

Roberta. She must have persuaded Adam to let her tag along in the monitoring truck. It was like receiving a warm, reassuring hug. I gave a tiny nod.

“You’ll be fine,” she told me. “Just stick to the plan. If anything goes wrong, get out. And whatever you do, stay away from Malakov.”

I gave another tiny nod and then we were at the door. It was opened by a bodyguard in a suit—a guy in his forties, massively muscled, with a ragged scar across one cheek. He checked our driving licenses. I had a brand new one, carefully aged to look ragged, with my name as
Arianna Ross—
Adam figured I’d be less likely to slip up if I only had a new surname to remember.

“In,” the bodyguard said at last in heavily-accented English. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Living room.”

I took a deep breath and stepped inside.