by Donna Grant
“Let me do some more digging on these people,” she asked. “I want to find out more. Besides, I can tell you’re leery about asking Callie to do anything.”
He mentally calculated how long they could remain at the house. They had another handful of days. And Eden was right. He didn’t want to ask the Loughmans. They’d do it, especially Callie, but they needed to focus on things coming at them, not have their attention divided. When the attack did come at them, they needed to be prepared.
Maks gave a nod. “All right.”
“We can stay here, right?”
“For the time being. We’ve got a few days before I think we’ll need to move.”
“I’ll work fast,” she promised and turned back to the computer.
He touched her arm. “Why not rest tonight? You can start fresh in the morning.”
“I’d like to work now. I need to do something, and this is me contributing. I’ll be fine. I promise.”
Maks dropped his hand. Eden went back to work as if he didn’t exist. Not that he blamed her. He did the same thing when he was working. Maks walked quietly from the room. With a few clicks, she had music playing from the computer. With one last look at her, he walked out to check the perimeter of the house.
18
Janice stared out at the city from the window in her office. Her people had been searching for any trace of Maks and Eden since the train station in Budapest and had gotten nothing. The Elders weren’t at all happy, and if she didn’t get some results soon, she wasn’t sure what would happen to her.
Her people had everything at their disposal to locate Maks and Eden. If it had been anyone else, they likely would’ve already found the couple. But Maks wasn’t just anyone. He was better than any other spy. He’d been nicknamed the ghost because of how good he was. All this time, everyone at the Saints had assumed that they had control of him.
That was laughable. No one had ever had control of Maks Volkov. That much was painfully obvious. The fact that he’d duped not only the CIA and the FSB but also the Saints wasn’t something anyone was taking lying down. In fact, heads were going to roll. Quite literally.
All she could do was pray that hers wasn’t among them.
A knock on her door caused her to turn around as it opened. She stared into the brown eyes of the head nerd. Damn, but she really needed to try and remember his name. Eventually. “Yes?” she asked.
“You might want to come down. We might have something.”
She frowned as she strode toward him. “You should’ve told me that as soon as you knocked. Come on.”
Every second wasted was a second that might very well cost Janice her life. She used the code to get into the room as the nerd hurried past her and got into his chair.
“Show me what you found, people,” she called out.
The nerd was the first to say, “Once we lost the two subjects in the station, we expanded our search outside of the building. Unfortunately, we didn’t get anything.”
Janice drew in a breath while trying to hold onto her patience. They wouldn’t have brought her down here if they hadn’t found something.
“We soon realized that they would’ve likely left the city. So, we began using the CCTV cameras, going grid-by-grid. That’s when we found this.”
An image of a man getting into a car and bending over to hotwire it filled the screen. A second later, a woman joined him in the vehicle. All the while, their faces were obscured. Right until the car drove away, and the woman’s head turned to the side. There, filling the large screen on the wall, was none other than Eden Fontaine.
“Where did they go?” Janice demanded, hope filling her.
There was a beat of silence before the nerd said, “We lost them.”
Her gaze snapped to him. “Again?”
“There aren’t cameras on every corner of the city.”
“But you know what they’re driving. Look for that.”
The nerd visibly swallowed. “We did. And nothing. Until just a few minutes ago. One of the new cameras set up at the border of Hungary and Romania caught this.”
Janice looked at the screen to see the same car Maks and Eden had stolen in Budapest, now leaving Hungary and heading into Romania. “Where did they go?” When no one answered, she sighed loudly. “Let me guess, you lost them again.”
“We’ll keep looking,” the nerd hastily replied.
“I want every border crossing out of Romania watched. Send teams of men to Romania for when Maks is found. I want boots on the ground within two hours,” she barked.
Fingers flew over keyboards, and voices filled the room as calls were put in to carry out her orders. She stared at the screen. Why would Maks take Eden to Romania? What was there for him? Nothing, at least as far as Janice knew. But Maks wasn’t stupid. If he went to Romania, then he had a reason. In order to figure out what he was up to, she needed to know what was in that country for him.
Janice turned on her heel and left the room, confident that her orders would be carried out. Once in her office again, she picked up the phone and dialed. Her call was answered on the second ring. The American male voice wobbled with age and often fooled people into underestimating the intelligence still there.
“He’s in Romania,” she said.
There was a beat of silence. “Interesting. Do we know what’s there?”
“Not yet.”
“Do you know where he is exactly?”
She pressed her lips together. “Not yet. My team just found footage of him crossing into the country.”
“How many hours ago?”
“Lunchtime yesterday.”
There was a snort through the receiver. “So he could’ve already left Romania and gone somewhere else. Don’t call again until you have him. And, Janice? You better find him. Alive. We want answers.”
“Yes, sir,” she said as the line went dead.
Janice drew in a breath, hating that her hand shook as she lowered the receiver to the base. There was no way she was going to let someone like Maks Volkov ruin her career. He was nothing but a speck on the road she’d been on. But if she wasn’t careful, he could spin her out of control and have her rolling downhill to end in a fiery crash.
“Not going to happen,” she told herself. “He’s merely a spy who has forgotten what it means to give someone loyalty. He needs to be reminded.”
And if that meant taking his life, she wouldn’t hesitate.
19
Eden woke to the smell of coffee and bacon. Her stomach rumbled in response. She stretched her arms overhead and yawned. Her eyes opened, and she realized that she was still in the office, but she wasn’t at the table anymore. Instead, she was on the sofa. She didn’t remember getting there or finding a throw to cover herself with.
She was frowning when she sat up and swung her legs over the side. Her neck was tense, as were her shoulders and upper back, which meant that she had spent considerable time on the computer without stretching. Usually, she woke bent over her desk, not on a couch.
While trying to figure out when she’d finally passed out from exhaustion last night, she rose to her feet and folded the blanket. Then she walked out of the office to see Maks in the kitchen once more. There were plates on the island, as well as two coffee mugs that had steam rising from them.
He glanced up as she walked toward him and grinned. “Morning.”
“Morning,” she replied.
“You really need to be more careful. I’ve no idea how long you were asleep hunched over the laptop, but that can do serious damage to your back.”
She bit the side of her lip. “I know. How did you get me to move to the sofa?”
“I didn’t get you to do anything. I carried you to it so you could sleep properly.”
At this bit of news, she winced. “I’m sorry. When I work that late, I’m pretty out of it. Not sure you could’ve woken me if you tried.”
“I didn’t try,” he said with a chuckle.
“But thank you. I a
ppreciate you moving me. I would be in worse pain if I’d stayed hunched over all night.”
Maks lifted the pan and transferred the bacon onto a plate to drain. “Why not just go to bed if you knew you were getting that tired?”
“Usually, it’s because I’m on the trail of something and don’t want to stop. I’ve done that before and wasn’t able to remember what I’d been looking for the day before.”
“Ah. Makes sense, I suppose. Hungry?”
“Famished.” She took a seat at the island and quickly dumped some cream into her coffee before moving a few slices of bacon onto her plate. “How do we have bacon? I wouldn’t think that’s something that lasts for months.”
Maks shook his head. “It isn’t. I walked to the store and bought a few items.”
“Walked?” she asked, shocked. “How far away is it?”
“About five miles. I needed to get in a run anyway. I used the time to do that, get some items, and also check around the village to see if anything was amiss.”
She raised her brows. “Wow. Well, thank you for the bacon. Did you find anything?”
“Nothing, thankfully.”
“Weren’t you worried about someone recognizing you?”
He shrugged. “I made sure I went early when there were few people about. The shopkeeper was more concerned with getting set up for the day than paying attention to me. I’ve done this many times before.”
“Oh, I’m sure you have. I just know that if it was me, I would’ve been seen by everyone.” She took a bit of bacon and chewed. “If we need to go, then we can go. I can work anywhere.”
“This house has a secure connection to the internet. We won’t have that if we leave, and if we get on the internet searching for anything about the Saints, we might as well paint a bullseye on us.”
The fact that Eden hadn’t thought of that proved just how ill-prepared she was for what was going on. “Of course.”
“Don’t beat yourself up for not thinking of these types of things. That’s what I’m here for. It’s what I do daily. You concentrate on doing what you do best.”
She flashed him a smile. “That, I can do.”
He finished off a piece of bacon. “Did you find anything interesting last night?”
“A few things that caught my attention. One of the women who was murdered happened to be in a relationship with a man that the papers went out of their way to hide.”
“Did you find him?”
“I did,” she replied with a nod. “He’s in British parliament. He’s been married for thirty-five years, has two kids, and five grandchildren. The interesting part is that when I dug into him, he was a nobody. His rise in politics was quick, and within just a few years, he had a seat in the House of Commons. That’s when things really got interesting. He suddenly became someone everyone wanted on their side. From what I could learn about him, he has brought nothing significant to the table other than the fact that he could take a fish out of its scales.”
Maks swallowed his bite and drank some coffee. He lowered the cup back to the island before he said, “That is interesting, and I wish I could say that was something odd, but it isn’t. Things like that do happen.”
“When he was all but homeless just two years before he was first elected into parliament?”
“Some might say he had a windfall.”
She chuckled. “It was something like that for sure. I managed to find an early interview with him where he let it slip that someone had come into his life and helped him to get back on his feet. You could see it on his face that as soon as the words were out, he regretted them. He never mentioned anything like that again, and no one ever asked him that question again. At least that I could find.”
“Hmm,” Maks said. “This could certainly be an intervention by the Saints. But why him?”
“That’s what I wondered. It took some time, but I learned that his great-great-grandfather happened to invest in a British company that did work in both Russia and Europe.”
“Okay…” Maks said with a shrug.
Eden couldn’t hold back her smile. “The company was actually owned by a Russian, who was known to have been a part of the KGB.”
Maks slowly nodded his head. “The dots are connecting.”
“Little by little. It’s not a slam dunk, but there are too many coincidences, and I don’t believe in them.”
“Neither do I. And this is just from looking into the murder of one woman?”
Eden nodded and grabbed another piece of bacon. “That’s right. Her death was ruled natural since the medical examiner said she had a heart attack, but if that date was on the sheet you gave me, then she was likely killed by the Saints.”
“I agree. And if she was having an affair with this man in the British parliament, who the Saints helped to get into his position, then the woman must have stumbled across something she shouldn’t have.”
“Or was about to say something she shouldn’t,” Eden offered.
Maks’ lips twisted. “Either way, she’s dead.”
“Sadly, yes.”
Eden finished her bacon and coffee and slid off the stool to begin cleaning up.
“You don’t have to do that,” he told her.
She didn’t even glance his way as she washed their plates. “I know.”
The kitchen got quiet as the water ran and she cleaned. She dried her hand on a towel when she finished and turned around to find herself alone. Eden walked upstairs to get changed for the day and spotted the door to Maks’ room closed, and heard the water running from the sink in the bathroom.
Eden hesitated, though she wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as if she’d knock on the door and tell him that she’d like for him to remove his clothes so she could see a full frontal. Instead, she continued on to her room and softly clicked the door into place. She stripped out of the clothes she’d slept in and put them and yesterday’s clothes in a pile. Then she found her spare pair of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. She opted to put on socks and her shoes, just in case they had to leave quickly.
After washing her face, brushing her teeth, and getting the tangles out of her hair, she took the dirty clothes downstairs and started a load of laundry. Might as well take advantage while she could. There was no telling when they’d have to leave, or if she’d be in the same clothes for days at a time. Although, when running for your life, no one really cared what they were wearing or how long they’d been in it. Needs changed quickly in such instances.
Eden made her way to the office and began working once more. It wasn’t long before she was lost in the search again, going down one rabbit hole after another. Sometimes, nothing came out of it, but she did uncover a few gems along the way. She made sure to put everything in a document for easy access, and then she copied it multiple times. There was no way she was going to go through all of this work and have it lost if the Saints took it.
For the next three days, she worked, finding more and more information while Maks continued cooking and hunting and even cleaning. He brought her water to keep her hydrated, which reminded her to get up and walk around, stretching her muscles. They would chat for a few seconds, but he always left quickly so she could get back to work.
Lunches were nice. They were simple meals of sandwiches or soup, but she came out of the office and let her brain rest for a little while. Her favorite meals were dinner. Every evening, Maks had something for them to eat. There was also always a bottle of wine for them to share. This was the time when they really talked.
Usually, it was her speaking about her family, but Maks didn’t hold back. He told her more and more about himself and the time before he joined the Army. And the more she learned, the more she found him incredibly interesting. And the more she wanted to know.
It was only after the wine had been drunk and the kitchen cleaned that they went back to the office and she would show him what she’d found that day. She was always ready to tell him, but he was patient that way. Something she’d never been
able to conquer. For an hour, they’d sit on the sofa together while she went through everything.
Sometimes he took notes, sometimes he gave clues to things she hadn’t known, which helped her search and uncover even more. On the third day, she finally got to the first pen drive. It was loaded with information. So much, that she knew she was going to need a few days just to sift through all of it and put it in some kind of order before she could even determine where to start searching.
“I wish I had more to show you,” she said as he scrolled through the documents and images on the pen drive.
After a moment, he said, “I’ve seen this man before.”
Eden peered closer at the older man bent with age with thick eyebrows that had been carefully cut. What was left of his hair was white and wispy, with only a few strands atop his head. He was impeccably dressed in a suit as he got into the back of a black Jaguar.
“Do you know his name?” she asked.
Maks shook his head.
She shifted the computer and opened another screen to see if she could match the man’s face to a photo somewhere else to perhaps get a name. “William Holder,” she said when several photos popped up of the American business owner with ties to Hollywood investments.
The frown Maks wore grew deeper the longer he looked at the photo. “I saw him in the CIA building when I first joined. He was in an office with other suits. There were men like him everywhere. But…I’m certain I saw him about two years ago at the FSB headquarters.”
“There’s a real possibility that William Holder could be a Saint. Maybe even one of the Elders you spoke of,” she offered.
Maks moved the laptop completely onto her lap and got to his feet. “I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve seen him somewhere else, as well.”
“Don’t force it. It’ll come to you eventually.”
“We don’t have that kind of time. There’s something about his face that I recognize, something from long ago that I should remember.”