Shatter (8 page)

The tie in her hair released and strands fell in a thick, dark slide over her shoulders. The sight of it against her creamy skin, bringing out her light eyes . . .

He sighed. Tightened his fingers on her waist. “I like it long.”

With her head tilted down, she finger-combed the last tangled strands, then lifted those beautiful eyes to his. He had no idea whether or not the longing he saw there was real or fantasy. The majority of his blood was too far away from his brain to trust his intellect at the moment.

She finally shook out her hair and lowered her hands, letting them rest on his chest. She was so close. So . . . real. And it had been
so long
.

“Damn,” he whispered, suddenly breathless. “This is so much harder than I thought it would be.”

Something sparked in her eyes. Maybe surprise, maybe hurt. But definitely something with a wicked little edge. She slid her hands up his chest and over his shoulders. The feel of her hands moving over him turned embers to roaring flames.

“Because you thought you’d feel nothing for me?”

As soon as she asked the question, Mitch knew exactly what kind of trouble he’d gotten himself into. The kind he sucked at getting himself out of—intact.
Sucked
.

She followed the movement of her hands with her gaze as if absorbing the sight and feel of every muscle she traced. And he’d never been so intensely turned on by so little.

“Because I’m just—” she started.

“Halina . . .” he warned.

Something flashed in her eyes. Pain . . . disappointment . . . anger . . . he couldn’t tell.

“Exactly.” She stepped in and rubbed her body the length of his. The sensation blew his circuits, made his eyes close, and filled his throat with a groan. “I’m just Halina.”

“Wha—?”

His confusion shifted as she pulled back. Cool air filled the space where her body had been and brought with it as much discomfort as a cold shower. Mitch opened his eyes as she slipped out from between his body and the building and entered the office without looking back.

“I’m just . . . Halina?” he murmured, but there wasn’t enough blood in his brain to untangle that cryptic message.

Mitch pressed a hand to the wall, let his knees give, and groaned. With a few deep breaths of the cold night air, he was able to follow her into the office with painful steps and had the majority of his blood back in the right places by the time they reached the room.

After settling Dex on the bed with an order to stay, Halina escaped into the bathroom for a shower. Which was when all Mitch’s red blood cells started to scatter again.

He lay on the bed closest to the door propped up against the headboard with the hotel-supplied pad of paper on his lap, a hotel-supplied pencil in one hand, the other stroking Dex’s head while the dog lay next to him.

He had scribbled a flowchart on the tablet, connections between the new information Halina had provided so far. That was his proof that he wasn’t lying there thinking about her naked body beyond that door. Or imagining the way she would look with water sluicing over all those sleek muscles. Or remembering the last time they’d been in a shower together.

His groin grew tight again and Mitch returned his attention to the pad with a heavy sigh. Dex lifted those golden eyes to him, his brows darting.

“I’m real fucked up, guy,” he said softly, running a hand over Dex’s head, stopping to scratch his neck. The dog’s eyes grew heavy. “That’s just no good. I gotta get my shit together.”

The shower shut off and Mitch’s jaw tightened, remembering the way she’d slid up against him in front of the hotel. He focused on the paper beneath his pencil. Circles and arrows that were adding up to a lot of holes he still needed to fill.

The bathroom door opened. Dex lifted his head and twisted to look at Halina the same time Mitch did. She was wearing a white hotel robe, her hair towel dried, tousled, and raven-black. Her skin had picked up some color in the heat of the shower, her cheeks glowing. Mitch’s whole body tightened so hard, he swallowed a moan and looked away.

“Feel better?” he asked.

“Not really. I think my head’s going to explode.”

She came toward him and his tension ratcheted up.

“What are you doing?” she asked, standing by the bed. Naked beneath that robe. One pull of the tie and she would be his. His to touch. To taste. To take.

Refocus
. “Writing down the things I know, adding in what you’ve told me, trying to piece it together.”

She sat on the bed and reached out to pet Dex. The dog put his head back down with a heavy sigh of contentment.

“Try to get some sleep,” he said, hoping she’d take the hint and get out of reach.

Her hand stopped moving over Dex’s fur and lay right next to Mitch’s thigh. “I’m exhausted, but can’t turn my brain off.”

He wanted do things to her that would make her brain stop working altogether. Guaranteed.

His cell rang. He blew out a breath of frustration and rolled toward Halina, sliding his phone from his back pocket. She smelled of flowers and spice and made him think about licking her . . . everywhere.

His phone display read GI JOE and killed his sexual fantasy. He swung his legs off the bed, pushing to his feet and crossing the room so Halina wouldn’t overhear his conversation with Owen.

A former ally to Schaeffer, Colonel Owen Young had switched sides when the team uncovered Schaeffer’s blatant attempt to use Owen as a scapegoat. He’d aided the team’s escape to safety during a recent confrontation gone wrong, ending in the car accident that had put Schaeffer in a coma. Mitch knew Owen wasn’t in this for purely altruistic reasons, but neither was Mitch.

Working for DARPA as a department head gave Owen connections and access to information the team couldn’t get, even with all the high-level, inside contacts the team had. That’s why Mitch had called in a request for deeper information on Halina while he’d been in the storage unit and she’d been sleeping.

But Owen was also still working for Schaeffer in an off-the-record capacity, which made Mitch think hard about everything Owen said and did, even though the man had never yet crossed the team. Owen’s boss had loaned him to Schaeffer for some undisclosed research supposedly related to his work with the Armed Forces Committee, when he’d really planned on using Owen the same way Mitch and the team were using him now.

The real difference—which Owen was well aware of—was that Mitch and the team wouldn’t fuck him upside down and backward the way Schaeffer would in a heartbeat.

“Yeah,” Mitch answered his phone.

“You’ll want to rethink using Beloi as your key witness against Schaeffer.”

Fuck.
Mitch’s stomach tightened in preparation. He dropped his head and rubbed his temples. “Well, good morning to you too.”

“The Beloi family,” Owen continued, “is one of the families on our watch list. They’re former KGB members who were cut when the regime switched over after the Cold War.

“A lot of those guys went bad, started running every type of criminal ring you could imagine—money laundering, protection rackets, drugs, weapons, security for big criminals, even contract killings. Some of the better ones went on to become double agents. The Belois were of the darker persuasion and unique in that they made the spy business—even after it went south—their family business.

“Halina’s not included per se, but her extended family, the people who raised her from the age of nine after her parents were killed, are. Everyone listed on the watch is male. She is mentioned in the dossier, but only as the female orphan of parents taken out as revenge for a prior assassination the father executed.”

Mitch closed his eyes and pressed his fingers to the lids. “Does she know all this?”

“Doesn’t look like it. In fact it looks like the pattern throughout the family was to keep the females out of it. Something about the culture. Must be why she was never a focus. Still, her history would be twisted by a talented defense attorney.”

“I know. I
am
that defense attorney.”

“Good to know you don’t suffer from any self-esteem problems.”

“And you do?” he asked.

Owen ignored his rhetorical question. “But she’s a smart woman. Which means she was a smart kid. And I can tell you from experience, kids know one hell of a lot more about what’s going on in a family than adults give them credit for. My kids knew my ex and I should have gotten a divorce long before we figured it out.”

At least what Halina had told him about her parents dying and how she’d been raised by her extended family had been true. That eased a sliver of his heart. “What else?”

“The husband bit looks like bullshit.”

Owen’s words bounced right off Mitch’s skull. He grabbed them back. “Wait.
What?
”

“From what I can find, the Saveli Sintrovsky who worked as an ambassador seven years ago is a second cousin to the Beloi family and lives in Moscow, five hundred miles from Saratov.”

She married her cousin?
That was Mitch’s first crazy thought. He rubbed his eyes and opened his ears for the real information.

“He’s kept himself very removed from the Beloi clan for good reason,” Owen continued. “He’d never hold on to his job in government if he associated with them. He was taking a big chance posing for Beloi in Washington. Risked his twenty-year career. Whatever the reason, it must have been important.

“He’s also never been married. Neither has Halina Beloi. Or Halina Sintrovsky. Or Halina Dubrovsky. Or Heather Raiden.”

Mitch’s gaze had gone distant. He was having a hard time breathing. “Are you
absolutely
sure about this? It’s a big deal.”

“Let’s see . . .” Owen’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “I am nearing a pretty nice-looking pension from the United States Army. I’ve got just a little bit of pretty metal on my uniform, a title they pronounce
colonel,
and holy shit, look at that, they even gave me a fucking office at the Pentagon. You’re a tedious man, Foster. I don’t know how you keep employees.”

“My charming wit,” he rasped, his mind helpless for the moment as if it had been hit by a curveball traveling a hundred miles per hour.

“There’s something else I need to talk to you about,” Owen said. “When are you going to be in town?”

“You say that like I’m around the damn corner. It’s a six-hour flight, Young.”

“You’re not a morning person, are you?”

Mitch dropped his head back. Emotion washed over him in a tidal wave. “I’ll call you when I’m coming in. Thanks for the information.”

 

M
itch disconnected and stood staring at the ceiling for what felt like a long freaking time. The longer he stared at nothing, the harder it was to move. Fury had him sweating, shaking, rage building in his body until he thought he’d burst. And underneath, hurt. Hurt so deep it sealed his bones.

When his mind short-circuited and stopped connecting facts, he turned on Halina. She was sitting on the edge of the other bed, the bathrobe clutched in one hand at her neck.

“That . . . didn’t sound good,” she rasped as if her throat were too tight to get the words out. Her pupils were dilated, her eyes an odd shade of dark blue.

“You . . .” He didn’t even know how to get the words out. He wiped a hand over his mouth.
Get it together. It’s over. In the past. Way past.
But the pep talk only eased the anger so the hurt bubbled up in its place. He couldn’t even look at her when he said, “You weren’t even
married
?”

Hearing the words aloud split him down the middle. God, he’d thought he was over this. So over her. But he obviously wasn’t. He’d obviously been stuffing the pain away instead of dealing with it. And, wow, did that bite hard.

“He was your
cousin,
working at the Russian embassy. Exactly what you’d told me when we met.”

He laughed at the sheer absurdity of it and looked at her. She was staring down at her hands twisting in her lap. Dex’s head popped up, his gaze darting between him and Halina. He whined.

Halina drew in a breath, as if she was going to speak, but only curved her lips in and closed her eyes.

Mitch stepped toward her. “You only used him to create the illusion of a husband . . . to
get rid of me
.”

She looked up and opened her eyes, filled with regret, but also resignation. “Mitch . . . it’s . . . complicated.”

“I guess creating a husband out of thin air would be a little
complicated
.” He crossed his arms and turned away. “Jesus, that’s a first. I’m not every woman’s favorite, that’s for sure, but I can’t think of anyone who’s gone to those lengths just to get away from me. Seriously, Halina, breaking up with me would have worked
just fucking fine
.”

When she remained silent he railed, “Christ, what a thing
to do.
Why wouldn’t you just tell me you didn’t want me anymore?”

“Because you would never have believed me.” Her voice was soft, but sure. “I know you. You would never have let me go.”

“
Let you go?
You never gave me the slightest indication you
wanted
to go.” He threw his arms into the air. Halina leaned back and gave him a wary look from beneath her lashes. “We were making love three times a damn day, every day, for weeks before you left. You couldn’t get enough of me. Then—bam—you walk in with your
husband
and leave me.”

She pulled her lip through her teeth. “I . . . I handled it badly. I’m sorry.”

“
Badly?
You handled it
badly
?” he said, incredulous. Infuriated she would diminish how hellish their breakup had been on him. He approached her, hands clenching and flexing. Her body tensed.

Dex shifted forward on the bed, his weight on his front paws. The growl that sounded in his throat told Mitch to watch himself.

“Tikhiy,”
he bit out and Dex’s growl transitioned into a whine of disappointment.

“Don’t yell at him,” Halina said. “None of this is his fault.”

“You’re right, it’s yours. And that lousy excuse is not going to cut it, Halina. No one—
no one
—creates a fake husband to get out of a good relationship. There was no reason for you to think I would try to hold on to you if you didn’t want me. It wasn’t like I forced you to be with me. I wasn’t abusive or controlling or . . .” He threw one arm out wide, gesturing angrily to nothing. Halina flinched. He didn’t give a damn. He’d treated her like a goddamned angel and she’d stabbed him in the back. “That’s a lousy lie, Halina. I want to know
exactly
why you pulled that cruel stunt. And I want to know
now
.”

Dex half whined, half yowled, one of those sounds Mitch translated into, “Stop fighting.”

Halina leaned forward and lowered her head into her hands. “Nothing’s clear anymore. It’s been so long.”

“It happens to be something I can’t fucking forget, so you’d better try a little harder.”

“Stop”—she lifted her head and winced then lowered her face into her hands again—“yelling.”

A piercing buzz sounded in the room and Halina jumped. Dex followed, seeming to go from a lying position to all four feet with no transition. Halina’s gaze darted to the red flashing light above the door.
Buzz—buzz—buzz
echoed in the hallway. Then the sounds of guest doors opening and closing, voices, the words “fire alarm” and footsteps.

“Mitch—” she started.

He gripped her upper arms, too rough. She gasped and met his eyes again. “
Why did you do it?
”

A hard knock sounded on the door, followed by, “Security. Open up folks, everybody outside.”

Dex’s growl turned on the stranger outside the door this time and Halina shushed him.

Mitch yanked her off the bed. “This discussion is not over. And don’t even think about making some shit up before we get back to it, because I’ll know you’re lying.”

She jerked out of his hold. “Dex.”

“Don’t sic him on me either. I’ll just call him off.”

“I’ll just override you. He’ll always listens to me over anyone else.” Halina turned toward the suitcase he’d brought in for her.

He grabbed her arm. “No time for that,
printcessa
. Didn’t you hear the man?”

“Mitch—”

“We’ll be out there ten minutes and they’ll call it clear.” He stuffed car keys and wallet into his jeans pockets, his gun into the back of his waistband, pulled his shirt down, and tossed his jacket over his arm as he opened the door.

“What about Dex?” she asked just as they faced a six-foot-five man in a security guard’s uniform.

“Sorry to wake—” His gaze dropped to Dex. “What’s that dog doing in here?”

“Disabled companion in training.” Mitch said the first thing that came to mind and gave the guy a look that dared him to challenge.

The security guard returned a skeptical frown. “Go on. Follow the emergency exit signs and stay outside until the fire department clears the building.”

He led Halina out by the arm, following the flow of people as she fastened both the inside and outside ties of her robe.

This was good. A distraction to give him a chance to calm down. He was on the border of losing it. If he focused on the pain he’d suffered, the changes he’d made in his life because of that pain, all he’d lost, missed out on, all because of a goddamned lie, all because she’d been too
chickenshit
to face him with the truth . . . which he still didn’t know . . .

Outside, the cold, wet fog hit them like a wall. Halina tightened her arms around herself and took tentative steps on the concrete in her bare feet, pausing near the building.

People in robes, slippers, and pajamas clustered in the parking lot. A ladder truck, lights flashing, parked in front of the hotel. Firefighters in yellow turnouts roamed in different directions.

“Fucking firefighters,” Mitch muttered. “I swear I could go the rest of my life without ever seeing one again.”

Beneath his hand, Halina started to shiver. He tossed his jacket around her shoulders.

“Away from the building, people,” one of the firefighters called, gesturing toward the parking lot. “Come this way.”

“Stay at the back of the crowd,” Mitch said. “Dex is dark and low. No one will notice him.”

Once there, Halina pulled from Mitch’s hold and dropped into a crouch, drawing Dex into a hug. With everyone watching the fire truck—which was doing nothing, along with the milling firefighters . . . fucking waste of taxpayer dollars—no one noticed they had a dog. Last thing Mitch needed was someone complaining about an animal in a non-animal-friendly hotel. Or bitching they hadn’t gotten to bring
their
dog. Or, worse, wanting to pet the mutt. Any attention was unwanted attention.

Mitch crossed his arms and faced her. “Tell me, Halina. Why?”

She released Dex and pushed to her feet. Her eyes blazed with emotion, but the night had taken its toll, leaving only a ghostly trace of her beauty. Mitch forced himself to ignore the shadows beneath her eyes, the injury across her forehead, her nearly translucent skin. She’d brought this on herself.

“Maybe, if you were a good guy,” she said, her anger showing only in the flare of heat in her gaze, “if you were genuine, if you cared, if you were
nice,
I’d tell you. But you know what, Mitch? You’ve been nothing but angry and mean. You came here with an agenda, one that was all about you. You don’t give a shit what that agenda will cost me.”

She took a breath so deep it raised her shoulders. Mitch’s chest tightened with anger and regret and more of the self-disgust that was becoming far too familiar.

“So you can go to hell not knowing
why
. I know I hurt you. And you may not believe it, but it hurt me too. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done and I’ve done a shitload of hard things in my life. I told you that night that I was sorry. There’s nothing more I can say than I’m sorry. But that will never be enough for you. And it’s clear nothing about me will ever be enough for you now. You don’t believe anything I say anyway.”

Tears spilled over her lashes and slid down her cheeks. She was shaking. And dammit, Mitch wanted to reach for her, hold her. At the same time he wanted to shake her until the words he needed to hear fell from her mouth.

“Fuck you, Mitch,” she said, voice strong even pushing through a throat clogged with tears. “You don’t deserve answers from me.”

She didn’t turn and walk away as he expected. She stood her ground and glared at him. Daring him to deny he’d been the worst kind of bastard. To deny he was risking her safety. Her sanity. Her life.

And he couldn’t. She knew he couldn’t. And she knew he’d hate himself because he couldn’t.

Nor could he stand the sight of her tears, and reached out to wipe them. She knocked his hand away in one smooth, practiced move, then turned her back on him—nothing new there—and wandered farther into the darkness, Dex beside her.

Mitch heaved a breath and checked on the unfolding events at the front of the hotel, hands stuffed into his pockets. But there were no unfolding events. Nothing was happening. “What the hell are they doing?”

With Dex standing guard over Halina, Mitch approached one of the firefighters. “Sir,” he said, “my wife’s sick. Do you have an ETA of when we’ll be able to go back in?”

“We’re just doing a final check,” he said. “Ten minutes.”

Mitch slogged back through the crowd. Statements like “false alarm” and “someone pulled the box in the lobby” and “getting a lot of different stories” penetrated his troubled mind, escalating into a vague sense of alarm.

A small yelp sounded at the back of the crowd. The sheer wrongness of it sent dread skittering across his chest. He sidestepped a couple and peered through the darkness in the direction Halina had taken Dex.

She was crouched next to a dark shadow on the concrete and her worried voice cut through the night.

“Dex.
Dex
. God,
Dex
.”

Dread turned to fear.

“Halina.” He called to her as he jostled through milling people, trying to get her attention off the dog and onto her surroundings. Her head came up and her light, frantic eyes met his, flooded with a plea for help just as another shadow moved.

“Behind you!” Fear burst at the center of his body and Mitch pushed into a sprint, drawing his gun. But she was too far away. The man behind her, dressed in a black jacket and black pants, slammed a fist to her arm.

Halina turned, grabbed his wrist, and pushed to her feet. She struggled for mere seconds before losing strength. Then she went limp and fell right into the man’s arms. It was Abernathy, torn, scabbed lips and all.

Abernathy whipped Halina over his shoulder and threw her in the backseat of an SUV. A gray Chevy SUV. Mitch’s mind snapped back to the freeway accident. To the car that had made that insane cut across traffic. “Sonofabitch.”

Mitch passed the spot where Halina had been standing and chased the SUV as it fishtailed out of the parking lot. When the vehicle was well out of range, he came to a shaky stop and dragged in air.

He set his stance. “No way, you fucker.” Aimed. “She’s mine.” Fired.

The sound cracked the night. His third shot had hit a tire. The car squealed, weaved, but kept driving. Luckily, it moved slower.

Keeping his eyes on the car, Mitch pushed aside the crowd hovered around Dex and scooped . . . or rather hauled . . . the dog into his arms. Christ, he was heavier than Halina.

With his gaze on the SUV’s taillights and the sparks jetting from the rim of the blown tire where it connected with asphalt, he shoved Dex into the backseat of the BMW. The SUV was nothing but a shadow and a few sparks by the time Mitch started after him.

He couldn’t think about who had her. What Abernathy was or where he’d been. Mitch just had to get her back.