BLURRED LINE

by Justice, A. D.

  “They’re open to an exchange, huh? Who do they claim to have to exchange?”

  This conversation just took a very unexpected change in direction, and I’m not sure how to answer that question. If the name I give him is a high-value asset, he’ll trade Mira and me in a heartbeat. If not, I’ve just inadvertently given up a valuable leverage opportunity. After a quick glance around the room, I confirm all eyes are on me, and if possible, they would burn holes through me with the intensity of their stares. They all want to hear the answer to that question—which tells me I need to sit on that information for as long as possible.

  “Is my sister really okay?” My voice cracks at the end, but I push the emotions clogging my throat back down.

  Remember your training.

  I hear Olga Vladimirovna, my instructor at the Academy, in my head, relentlessly pushing me to train longer, fight harder, and show no weaknesses.

  Silas doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even seem to breathe for far too long. Then he nods again. His shoulders lift as he inhales deeply then releases his breath in a resigned sigh. “Mira is fine. I wasn’t lying when I said she’s living with a family who loves her very much. She’s working as the nanny for their children now. The three of us are the only ones who know about her past, and her former employer has no clue how to find her.” He motions toward Nick and Roman as he speaks, but I can’t look away from him. “And I plan to keep it that way.”

  “I want to see her. Please, just take me to her.”

  Silas shakes his head. “You can forget about that.”

  Chapter 5

  Silas

  “What do you think? Do you believe her?” Nick eyes me, carefully watching my every reaction. He has more skin in this game than anyone, so I understand his concern. Kira’s sister lives in his house, helps care for his babies, and has become a best friend to his wife. An international incident would take both ladies down with one fail swoop.

  “I don’t know, man. On the one hand, I’d say she’s telling the truth. On the other, I know she’s a trained GRU operative—and they’re not far removed from the KGB days. Same trainers. Same expectations. Same results.” I shake my head, more irritated with myself than anything else. I’m too close to this case to make rational decisions. There’s way too much at stake in this game. The blurred lines are not part and parcel of my usual method, and I don’t like it.

  Nick nods, understanding my confused state, and heads back into the living room to babysit our guest.

  “The great Silas Steele can’t decide if a Russian spy is lying to him or not? What the hell is going on here?” Roman glares at me as if I’ve lost my mind. Maybe I have. “What the fuck, man? You got the hots for her?”

  “What? No, of course not. Fuck off.”

  “You fuck off. You’re lying to me right now. You’ve been compromised—either fuck her out of your system or step aside and let us do our job. We don’t have time to wait. We need to know what time and where her dead drop is so we can get eyes on it right now.”

  I know Roman is right about part of what he’s saying, but my gut is conflicted for a reason. That doesn’t mean his words don’t thoroughly piss me off, though. I’ve listened to my instincts and stayed alive in much more dire circumstances than this. Not trusting my senses now would be a huge mistake—but that’s about all I’m sure of at this point.

  “Back off, Roman. You have no idea what you’re talking about.” I cut my glare to meet his and watch him instantly relax his rigid stance. “I know how to do my job—and that’s exactly what I’m doing. If this senator is selling our secrets or in any way working with a foreign government under the table, we need to find out every detail so we can shut him down.”

  “You’re right about that, of course. But it’s not like you not to know if someone is lying to you or not. What gives?” He isn’t letting this one go after all.

  “I think it’s because I know her sister so well. When I confronted Mira about her previous employer, she didn’t even try to deny it. She admitted everything, answered every question, and gave me more information that any informant ever has in my career.

  “Kira, on the other hand, started out being deceitful to me, running from me, trying to ditch me. Lying about one of our senators and claiming she only wants to save her sister would be a good stall tactic. But if she happens to be telling the truth, sending her back to Russia would be a huge mistake. I don’t want to make any rash decisions about her fate I’ll regret later.”

  “Well, they do look exactly alike. I can see where that could be confusing.”

  “They may look alike to you, but not to me. They’re complete opposites. Kira is hard, cunning, and adventurous. Mira is soft, sweet, and prefers the sidelines. I could see the differences in them in a picture their father has of them when they’re maybe eight years old. Their personality traits make them as different as night and day, even in their appearance.”

  “That may be—to you—but not to me. From where I stand, they’re the spitting image of each other, which is probably why the GRU wanted them so badly. I hear your objection, buddy, but your vision isn’t clear on this one. That girl in there has your head spinning, whether you want to acknowledge it or not. She’s exactly your type. I’m betting none of your other liaisons with other CIA officers over the years hold a candle to her.” Roman flashes a shit-eating grin, confident in his ability to profile me, and walks off before I can object.

  I slide my cell out of my pocket and dial my deputy director to fill him in on what we’re facing and advise him of my plans.

  “Graves.”

  “Chuck, this is Silas. I need to apprise you of a situation.”

  Over the next few minutes, I give him the rundown of the night and the accusations Kira leveled against a sitting senator. As usual, he’s quiet while listening to all the facts, then gets straight to the point with his directive.

  “Get to the bottom of it, Steele. Find out if she’s lying or telling the truth. Don’t let her out of your sight for even one fucking second. If she needs to take a piss, you’d better be right beside her, handing her the fucking toilet paper. You have two weeks to prove or disprove her allegations before she’s on a plane bound for Russia.”

  “Two weeks? Sir, this will amount to a full-scale investigation. Two weeks isn’t much time to collect intel and make a definitive decision.”

  “It’s all the time you’re getting, Steele. She’s a known, admitted Russian spy. On American soil. I’m doing you a favor by giving you two weeks at all. She should be on the tarmac, headed back to her Mother Russia right now. I suggest you keep her on a very short, tight leash, because if she fucks us, it’s your ass that’ll feel it.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  When I start to rejoin them in the living room, I hear Kira questioning Nick about her sister. I watch her for a few moments before she realizes I’ve stepped back into the room, studying her movements, the words she chooses, and the information she’s trying to get out of him.

  “Can’t you just tell me where she is?” Kira’s pleading has no effect on Nick.

  “No.” Nick’s stoic expression nearly makes me laugh out loud. I haven’t seen any signs that she’s an assassin, but then again, I wouldn’t put it past her.

  “They told me she’d been caught and was being tortured at a black site because of me. She took an assignment I was supposed to run, and then she never came back. I’ve blamed myself and tried to find a way to get her out for the past year. I miss her so much. She’s the only family member I’ve been able to hold on to all these years. They let us talk to Mom and Dad on the phone twice a year, but never more than that. Mira’s the only real family I have.”

  Tears slide down her cheeks, but I have to question if they’re crocodile tears—it’s part of my training and part of my job. I just don’t know her well enough yet to read her real emotions. She’s kept them repressed longer than any normal person, and from such an early age, so she has impressive
control over them. All the more reason why my guard is up, and I’m leery as hell of everything she says.

  “Can I talk to her on the phone? Will you call her? Let me just hear from her that she’s okay.” The desperate pleading in her voice now is genuine. She’s unsure if we’ve told her the truth about Mira.

  “Nick, why don’t you go pick Mira up and bring her here? Roman and I can entertain Kira for a while. Maybe you can bring Brad back with you too.” Nick hesitates for only a second before reading my mind.

  “Sure, I can do that. Call if you need anything else while I’m out. We’ll be back here very soon.” With that, Nick leaves us alone with a very apprehensive prisoner.

  Roman locks the door and resets the house alarm once Nick is off the porch. The motion sensors around the house will alert us if anyone unexpected shows up. The doors and windows are set to remain locked unless the deactivate code is entered. The only way out is if she breaks a window or someone rams the door. From the frightened expression on her face, she knows all too well she’s trapped.

  When she lifts the bottle of water to her lips, I notice her hand shaking as she takes a drink. Is that from nerves or an extra dump of adrenaline as she readies herself for the flight-or-fight response? At this point, I’m going with nerves. She’s made no move to get up from the couch. Her eyes aren’t focused on anything in particular. She’s merely staring off into space, lost in her own thoughts while she attempts to make sense of everything.

  Her world as she knew it was thoroughly and completely upended. The truths she based her life and actions on turned out to be lies, all designed to use and manipulate her. The people she trusted revealed their true character. Now she’s clinging to the one hope she has left in the world, and that’s her sister—the only genuinely loyal person she has ever known.

  “I will be very upfront with you, Kira, as long as you’re honest with me. If at any time you lie to me or try to run from me again, you’ll be forcibly removed from my country. Do we understand each other?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “We’ve been given two weeks to get to the bottom of this allegation. If we don’t have indisputable and irrefutable evidence by then, I’ve been ordered to put you on a plane bound for Moscow. This is normally a full-scale FBI investigation that could take months and teams of agents to complete. We have a team of three, plus a couple of Russian spies, to accomplish an impossible mission in record time.”

  “I’m up for it if you are.” Her eyes meet mine, and I see the fire and determination ignite in them again.

  “I reviewed all the documents on your flash drive. Nothing in there directly implicates Senator Hunt in any type of espionage ring, unless they’re using very sophisticated ciphers.” Roman folds his arms over his chest. The accusation in his tone is heard loud and clear.

  “That’s not my fault. I copied as many documents from his office computer as I could, hoping I had the ones that would be useful. Silas knows I didn’t have time to delete or alter anything before he stole the flash drive from my house. If you’d let me review them with you, I may be able to put two and two together easier.”

  “I am not sharing classified documents with you for any reason. Now, if the damaging evidence isn’t on his computer in his office, exactly where do you think we’ll find it, then?” Roman is testing her, seeing if she’ll take the bait.

  “You don’t really think the only place he works is in his office, do you? I’m sure he works on his laptop at home or on his phone whenever he travels. His docking station was empty, so he must’ve taken his laptop with him. He’s one of the last men in the world to carry a briefcase with actual papers in it. I’m sure at least some are classified, top-secret documents.”

  “You didn’t complete surveillance on him before you worked your way into his office and into his files, did you?” Roman pins her with a look of utter disgust.

  “No, I took a calculated risk, betting that the information would be on his computer in his office, where he’d most likely access the Intelligence Committee files.”

  “Wow. We really are starting from scratch on this case, aren’t we? How are we supposed to wrap it up within two weeks?” Roman looks at me for answers, but I don’t have them yet.

  “We’ll work this the same way we work any other case. One blind leap of faith at a time. We’ll start with the basics, weed through the garbage, and hope we come out smelling like roses in the end. There will be a lot of surveillance, little to no sleep, and being spread very thin since we won’t have a lot of help.” I shrug my shoulders, not knowing what else to say to make him feel better about our odds.

  “What happens at the end of that time? What if we find incriminating evidence but not enough to prove his involvement?” Roman asks.

  “You, Nick, and I will probably keep working the case until resolution, but it’ll be without Kira’s help.”

  “What about Mira? Will she be sent back with her sister?”

  “I didn’t tell the deputy director about Mira.”

  Roman’s jaw drops, and he stares at me in utter disbelief. “Better watch out for those blurred lines, Silas. They’ll trip you up every time.”

  “I hear you. But I think I crossed that line about a year and a half ago when I recognized Mira and didn’t turn them both in immediately when I found Kira. Something about it just never felt like the right thing to do, though.”

  “For all of our sakes, I hope you’re right.”

  Off the record, I hope I’m right, too.

  Chapter 6

  Kira

  Two weeks?

  That’s all the time they’re giving us to find hard evidence against a heavily involved politician? How is that even possible?

  If that’s true, we’re wasting time sitting in this house, hashing out who trusts whom instead of just getting the job done. We need to move with what we already know and figure out the rest as we go. If I’m sent back to Moscow, I’ll be executed within days. They’ll interrogate me first for any information that could possibly help them, but they’ll get rid of me, nonetheless. Mira will have to spend her life in the shadows, always looking over her shoulder out of fear someone will find her.

  “Silas, we should go to his house in the DC area and check it out. Right now. We can slip inside, get his briefcase, and check the contents right there while we’re in his office. He’ll never know we were there. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find the documents in his possession. It’s entirely possible he keeps them at home instead of at the office. His aide said the senator’s been out of the office all week because his daughter is getting married at his house this weekend. Maybe he took the evidence home with him.”

  “I’ve never found working by luck to be…lucky.” Silas slowly cocks one eyebrow at me, as if my idea is the craziest suggestion he’s ever heard. “We need to stake out his house, check his security system, note their schedules—along with their neighbors and any rent-a-cops. He could also live in a gated community. There’s a lot more to this job than just a simple B&E. Plus, if the wedding is at his house, too many people will be going in and out for us to slip in undetected.”

  We don’t have enough time for a full-scale stakeout approach. I start to voice my objection, but the motion sensor alarm catches my attention instead. The front door slowly opens, and Nick enters first. He stops in the doorway to glance around before fully stepping inside. Standing directly behind him is my sister, Mira. When she sees me, her bottom jaw drops, and her eyes remain wide and unblinking. Her hands fly to her face, covering her mouth as her eyes start to water. She shakes her head, disbelief clearly showing in her features.

  When I stand, I extend my arms out to either side, and she rushes into my embrace without saying a word. We hold each other, not moving other than to squeeze each other tighter and tighter. Mira’s sobs break free, tearing through her body and making her shake uncontrollably in my arms. I’ve never seen her react so intensely before, so I’m naturally concerned by her outburst. I slide my ha
nds to her shoulders and push until she’s an arm’s length from me.

  “Mira…talk to me. What is it? What happened to you?”

  “Kira, I can’t believe you’re actually here. My last assignment went bad…very bad. When the explosives detonated in this old building, the structural integrity was worse than we’d anticipated. All that was left of the two-story structure was rubble. That’s when I realized I finally had a chance to get out. They’d think I was still inside until the debris was cleared, and by then, I’d be well hidden away.

  “So, I ran straight to a women’s shelter, where I knew men weren’t allowed and they wouldn’t find me. But I found ways to check the message system without being traced. I intercepted one of the messages they sent back to Moscow. They reported you were dead, Kira. They told Moscow I was missing in action, presumed a deserter, so they interrogated and executed you when you didn’t tell them where to find me. All this time, I’ve believed you were dead because of me, and that I was all alone. I’m just so happy you’re alive.”

  She throws her arms around my neck again, squeezing tighter this time, while softly chanting “thank you” over and over again. Since we were little kids, I’ve been the one to help Mira stand on her own two feet, show her she is more than capable, and encourage her to keep fighting. She was never cut out for the life we were forced into living, and I’ve always felt it was my responsibility to keep her alive. Over the last year I’ve been looking for her, I’ve questioned if she withered up and died, or fought and blossomed like the magnificent rebel I know she is deep inside.

  “I’m fine, sissy. They never interrogated me. They never hurt me in any way. They asked me several questions about you, but that was nothing. That communication was sent to draw you out because they had no idea where you were. I’m just so thankful you didn’t fall for their tricks. You found a good hiding place, because I’ve been looking for you for the past year and a half and didn’t find a single trace of you.”