The Guardian

by Donna Grant

  There was a beat of silence, then Owen said, “Was?”

  “He was killed on a train out of St. Petersburg just minutes after he sent the message,” Maks explained.

  The sound of fingers tapping on a keyboard came through the phone. “Give me a sec,” Callie said.

  She was the best hacker he knew, which was why he’d called. If there had been a way for him to gain the information without involving the Loughmans, he would have. They wouldn’t understand it because, in their eyes, they were part of his mission to take down the Saints. And they were.

  But they had survived attempts on their lives and still managed to come out ahead. If Maks could keep them out of the line of fire, then he would. They had earned at least that.

  “Tell us about Luka,” Owen urged.

  Maks briefly closed his eyes. “I knew him from the FSB. He was a high-ranking official who earned his position after years as a spy. He trained most of the assets currently out in the field. He’d even been captured and tortured by the Chinese for a few years back in the day. He’s a fucking hero.”

  “You liked him,” Natalie said.

  There was no denying it. “I did. Even though I didn’t exactly trust him and only met him a couple of times. He seemed genuine. His love for his people and country were evident.”

  “Who do you think killed him?” Owen asked.

  Knowing that would make things easier for Maks. “It could be the CIA. But they usually try to flip people like him to their side, not kill them.”

  “Unless they thought he was about to spill some secrets,” Wyatt interjected.

  “Maybe. But if there was something against the US, it would’ve been mentioned, and I heard nothing. That’s not to say there wasn’t something. Then there’s his agency.”

  Natalie asked, “Do you think the FSB would do that?”

  “They’ve done more for less,” Wyatt said.

  Maks twisted his lips. “Wyatt’s right. They have. Every agency has. So, it could be them, especially if he was about to leak something about the head of the FSB or Russia.”

  “Then there’s our favorite group,” Callie said, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

  Maks rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Yeah. It could be any of those three.”

  “FSB, huh?” Wyatt asked. “How deep are you?”

  “Deep.”

  Owen sighed loudly. “And there’s nothing else going on that would put a target on you?”

  “Other than me continuing to gather information about the Saints? No,” Maks told them.

  Callie let out a whoop. “Okay, I got past the firewalls at the FSB. I won’t be able to stay long before they figure out their system has been breached. I looked up Luka Fedorov, and his record is stellar. He’s someone the US would want as an agent.”

  “And someone his country wouldn’t want to let go of,” Natalie added.

  “Wait,” Callie said before pausing. “Oh, shit.”

  Maks frowned, wishing he could see whatever it was she was looking at. “What is it?”

  “His record is being wiped as I’m reading it,” Callie said.

  “Do they know you’re there?” Wyatt asked.

  Maks listened as Callie furiously typed on the keyboard.

  Finally, she answered, “I don’t think they did.”

  “Did you get the file copied?” Owen asked.

  A chair squeaked, then Callie said, “Unfortunately, no. There was too much information. What I did get was his address, email, and a phone number. I’m digging through that now.”

  Silence stretched as Maks finished off the protein bar and downed some water. He didn’t know when he’d get to eat again. If there was time, he’d get a few minutes of sleep, but that would have to wait until he found a better location.

  Minutes felt like years before Callie’s voice reached him again. “Maks, how well did you know Luka?”

  “Not well. I met him a couple of years ago. I wasn’t part of his department. We attended a few of the same meetings. It was more just a nod in passing, though, nothing more. I think the most we spoke was in an elevator once where he said he had seen my record and was impressed by it. He wanted to know who had trained me because I was so good. I knew from those who worked for him that he was hard but fair.”

  Wyatt then said, “He had your file. Or at least a copy of it. It’s on his desk in his home.”

  Maks wasn’t surprised that Callie had managed to get into the surveillance cameras of Luka’s home. “I knew he’d read it. He told me as much.”

  “When was that?” Natalie asked.

  Maks shrugged. “About a year ago.”

  “Then why would he have it now?” Owen questioned.

  Maks shook his head. “Maybe he wanted to recruit me to his division?”

  “Or perhaps he wanted to know if you were someone he could trust,” Callie said.

  Maks leaned against the wall and considered that. “Maybe. There is any number of reasons he could have my file.”

  “Could he have known you were really CIA?” Natalie asked.

  Owen made a sound in the back of his throat. “It’s possible.”

  “Give me another few minutes,” Callie said.

  Wyatt quickly seconded his wife. “You can’t see, Maks, but she’s getting a lot of information. We’re copying it now in case the FSB tries to wipe this, as well.”

  “Understood,” Maks said.

  He might have learned patience as a spy, but that didn’t mean he liked it. His mind began to drift, thinking over the last few hours, when the sound of a chair being rolled brought him back to the present.

  “Uh, guys,” Natalie said. “Look at this.”

  Maks wanted to demand that they tell him what it was, but he held his tongue.

  “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, my friend, but your face is plastered everywhere in Europe,” Wyatt said.

  That certainly got Maks’ attention. “Why? What does it say?”

  “Just that you’re wanted for questioning, and to detain you if seen,” Own answered.

  Callie halted that line of talk when she said, “I think Luka had a second phone. I can’t find any texts or calls going to either of your mobiles. I’m taking the encrypted line you gave me and reversing the search. Yep, there it is.” A few keystrokes later, she said, “This was a burner, so there’s no record.”

  Maks had hoped there would be something for him to go on, but it wasn’t looking as if that would happen. “Thanks for trying.”

  “I didn’t say I was finished,” Callie told him, still typing.

  Owen said, “Both Callie and Natalie are working. Hell, Callie even has Wyatt at a computer, going through what she copied from Luka’s home computer.”

  “Please tell me there’s something,” Maks said. But he knew there wouldn’t be. Luka was too smart to get caught like that.

  “Damn,” Wyatt said. “I honestly thought I’d come up empty, but I’m on my third email, and I’ve figured out who killed him.”

  Maks braced himself. “Who?”

  “The Saints. In an email, he mentions a private, world organization that is taking over. We’ll have to do more digging to figure out what he found, but I think it’s a safe bet to say that the Saints are responsible.”

  Maks swallowed, his thoughts racing. “Since Luka texted me, they must think I’m part of whatever he was doing.”

  “Uh…I think that’s a good assumption,” Natalie said. “Callie showed me a couple of tricks, and I just used one to figure out who plastered your face everywhere.”

  Owen said, “It’s the Saints.”

  “But they’re hiding behind a company,” Callie said. “Right?”

  “Yep,” Natalie agreed. “It’s called SynTech, and it’s based in Vienna.”

  Maks wasn’t that far from Vienna.

  Wyatt interrupted his thoughts by saying, “Don’t do it. You can’t go into a company like that and erase everything about you.”

 
“He’s right,” Natalie said. “They’re information brokers. That’s all they do.”

  Callie made a sound of frustration. “Which means that they’re not just looking for your name, they’re looking for your face everywhere. I hope you covered your tracks well because IBs dig deep to uncover everything about whoever or whatever they’re looking into.”

  Maks pushed away from the wall. “I can’t just sit here doing nothing. I’m here, undercover in the FSB, specifically to gather intel on the Saints.”

  “We can get you back to the States,” Owen said.

  “We all know there isn’t anywhere I can go where the Saints won’t find me. I won’t put all of you in jeopardy like that. Thanks for the offer, but I’m staying here.”

  Callie said, “We’ll keep digging. If we find anything else, I’ll let you know.”

  “Until then, be safe,” Wyatt told him.

  Maks disconnected the call and strode from the building.

  5

  The next morning, Eden was at her desk before anyone else. She hadn’t been able to sleep. In fact, she’d spent most of the night continuing her search for Maks. Which proved much more difficult than she wanted to admit.

  When Kyle walked into the office, Eden followed him with her eyes. He got situated for the day and typed in his password before pulling up the page he’d been working on. As his specialized algorithms began to work with the facial recognition software they all had access to, he rose and went to get coffee.

  Eden knew she couldn’t get to his computer in time to discover anything before he returned. Not to mention, his desk was out of the way, just as hers was. The last three big clients they had competed with each other for had him winning two, and her one. She didn’t care about that, though. What mattered was that she found Maks first. She couldn’t explain why, only that she knew she had to.

  She looked to where Kyle was and glanced at his computer again. Something in a red box kept flashing on the screen. She couldn’t read it from her location and the fact that he had a film over his screen that prevented others from seeing what he did.

  With nothing to lose, Eden got up and walked toward his desk. Her hands were shaking, her heart racing. She knew that she could get caught by Kyle at any moment, and she didn’t know what she would say to him. The more she tried to come up with a plan, the more her brain refused to work.

  Her mouth was dry, her ears ringing. How did anyone do things like this for a living? She feared that her heart might burst from the stress and kill her right then. But, somehow, she reached Kyle’s desk without incident. Once there, she didn’t know what to do. She looked around, hoping something would jump out at her. But there was nothing.

  She turned her head, her gaze locking with Kyle’s. She tried to smile, but she wasn’t sure her lips actually lifted in a grin. Kyle started toward her, anger blazing in his eyes. Eden moved a lock of hair behind her ears and glanced at the screen. She memorized the location then faced Kyle when he reached her.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  She laughed. “I work here.”

  His lips didn’t even twitch.

  Eden cleared her throat and licked her lips. “I wanted to apologize for yesterday. I was rude to you, and I’m sorry.”

  He continued staring at her, his face showing nothing.

  “All right then,” she said with another forced smile. “Later.”

  On the way back to her desk, she felt her knees shaking. She didn’t breathe normally until she was once more seated in her chair. When she looked up, Kyle was still staring at her. She ignored him and hurriedly typed Amsterdam Centraal into her search. She put in filters for the last week and then added in the facial recognition software.

  While that ran in the background, Eden looked at every Maks Volkov in Europe between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-eight with blond hair and blue eyes. That narrowed down her search to four hundred thousand seven hundred and forty-eight. She’d done the same search last night on her home computer and had come up with the same number.

  She hadn’t had his photo to scan in to match, however. Eden did that now, and it didn’t take long for the computer to give her an answer: No Match.

  Wanting to be sure she hadn’t missed anything, she ran the search twice more. Each time, it came back with the same answer. The next time, she expanded the search worldwide. It gave her over two million hits.

  It took longer for the detailed search to run, and she was confident that she would find something this time. No sooner had that thought gone through her mind than her computer dinged that she’d gotten a hit. But it wasn’t on the name. It was on her search of the Amsterdam Centraal train station.

  Eden switched screens and found a snippet from a CCTV camera that showed someone who looked like Maks, at least in profile. She glanced at Kyle, but he wasn’t at his desk. When she searched the floor, she found him in Janice’s office, no doubt giving her the news. That didn’t deter Eden, however.

  She hadn’t actually thought she would get a hit on Maks so soon using facial recognition and the cameras from the train station. Based on what she saw, he’d definitely been there the night before. She quickly got the footage from the other cameras in the station and added in the facial recognition software. To her surprise, she caught sight of a man who could be Maks twice more, but he was always careful about his face being turned away from the cameras.

  That was something someone who had been trained did. Something done consciously. Normal people didn’t notice or care if a camera picked up their face. But a select few did. Criminals.

  And spies.

  Which one was Maks?

  Eden continued looking through the CCTV footage to see if she could find anything else. Just as she was about to shut it down, thinking it was a dead end, her gaze snagged on a man leaping in front of a train. She feared that she might have found someone committing suicide, and she had to know if they were okay. She lost sight of him as the train stopped, so she switched cameras to find another angle.

  She found him again. He wore the same type of jacket that the other man in the footage had, but he now carried a backpack and had on a baseball cap. He landed from jumping in front of the train, easily clearing the tracks. Then he took off running to the other side before climbing up to that platform. No sooner had he straightened than the train opened its doors, and people flooded out, swallowing him.

  But she had her gaze locked on him. Switching from camera to camera, she followed the unknown man up the stairs to the main floor of the train station. When he turned a corner, she got another profile shot of him. This time, she was positive that it was Maks Volkov.

  Instead of taking the information to Janice, Eden encrypted all of it then pulled out a pen drive from her purse and put all the footage on it. Kyle might be able to uncover what she had eventually, but she wasn’t going to worry about that right now. Eden wasn’t even sure why she was suddenly rooting for Maks. She didn’t know him, but something kept telling her not to give the information she had gained to SynTech or the client wanting to find Maks.

  “He better not be some serial killer,” she mumbled to herself.

  With her taste in men, it would be just her luck. She shook her head, refusing to go down that road again.

  Eden decided to try and find out who it was that wanted the scoop on Maks. That wasn’t something shared in an environment like this. Though she had worked on her own long enough that she had gotten used to knowing who her clients were. SynTech’s policy was that it didn’t matter who the client was. They were paying for a service, and every IB had a duty to deliver.

  This time, Eden wasn’t okay with that. Yet no amount of digging gave her anything. She wasn’t used to coming up empty. There was always some information—good, bad, or ugly—out there on anyone and everything. For Maks and this unknown client to both have nothing out there? Yeah, something wasn’t right.

  Eden closed her eyes and stretched her neck to give herself a little br
eak. The ding on her computer had her back at it again. She’d done a worldwide search for Maks’ name. Not a single result matched the picture they had been given.

  Maks had been caught on camera in Amsterdam, so he wasn’t some made-up individual as a test for them. But if his name didn’t match any records around the world, then that could only mean one thing: Max Volkov wasn’t his name.

  By the time lunchtime came, Eden could barely contain her frustration. She decided to get out of the office and grab a bite as well as meditate a bit to try and get herself back in balance. As she rose to leave, she saw that Kyle was still in Janice’s office. The two men from the previous day were also there. She didn’t give them a second thought as she left the building.

  Once outside, she drew in a deep breath. The temperatures were still chilly, but the sun was shining, and the sky was a beautiful, clear blue. Eden found herself relaxing as she walked the streets. There was something about Vienna that drew people. After all, it was the best city to live in the world. Not only was there culture, history, and amazing architecture, but the people were also friendly, and the vibe of the city was a beat that pulled in tourists as well as those who moved there permanently.

  Eden chose her favorite café and grabbed a seat near the window. Locals sat outside, but she preferred not to shiver as she ate. After she ordered, she found herself watching passersby. People watching was something she loved. As her gaze moved from face to face, she did a double-take, her breath locking in her lungs as she thought she saw Maks.

  But as she searched again, he wasn’t there. She inwardly gave herself a shake. Her brain was too focused on Maks if she was seeing him in the crowd. Thankfully, her food arrived, and she could stop thinking about him. At least that’s what she told herself. As she bit into her sandwich, her mind went back to what little she had learned about Maks. It wasn’t much. The only one who seemed to have found anything was Kyle, and she wasn’t sure if Kyle had found the CCTV footage of Maks jumping in front of the train and going up the opposite platform.