by Liz Maverick
“Is Maks on this new team of yours?” Nick asked, pretending to be suspicious about the Russian merc as he watched Tristan lurking sullenly in the background.
Sokolov’s face turned sorrowful. “Alas, no. My comrade seems to be, how do you call it? Lone wolf. Da. But is okay with me, since he turned down Hudson Kings and Sixth Ward before. Too picky. No offense taken. Is very good offer for you, Nick. I think we already have good mission protecting Russians targeted by Hudson Kings.”
Oh, fuck. Not good. Not. Good. Sokolov had figured out it was the Hudson Kings that were running the missions to bring Russian sleeper agents down. Or maybe he was just fishing. If he really had it figured out, then he also knew that Nick was part of the team that had brought down Sokolov’s girlfriend, Anya Gorchakov.
Nick forced himself to look blank. He wanted to call Roth. Hell, he wanted to call Jane, who’d probably already figured he was a no-show for breakfast by now. “You lost me,” Nick said, hoping he looked realistically confused.
“Nyet. The opposite. Finders keepers,” Sokolov said.
“I’m not following,” Nick said. “What’s my other option?”
Vlad Sokolov stared at Nick. That annoying, jolly sarcasm wasn’t showing on his face anymore, and Nick suddenly missed that look. Because now he looked like a hard man with soft hands who watched others shovel his dirt. “You give me twenty million dollars with interest, I feel much better, is good, but there is still problem. Damage still done. Reputation is . . .” Sokolov jiggled one spread palm in a “so-so” gesture. “I build good team, prove good missions, make money, fix reputation.”
The idea of Nick leaving Rothgar for Vlad Sokolov was so ridiculous it took all of Nick’s control not to laugh in the man’s face. What he really needed to do was get out of here so he could warn Rothgar that Sokolov, at minimum, suspected the Hudson Kings were breaking covers of the top Russian sleeper agents in New York.
He made a show of being conflicted but thinking about it. Finally, he said, “I need to talk to Rothgar about leaving his team. If you don’t want him to retaliate, I’ve got to lay some groundwork.”
“Not tonight, Nikolai. Tomorrow back to Rothgar. Tonight, we drink to agreement.” He gestured to the black car at the curb. “Have hazing. Nyet. That is not right word. ‘Initiation.’”
Nick had the distinct sense that Sokolov’s version of initiation did not involve cosmopolitans or confetti. “I’ve got someone waiting on me who will think it’s pretty weird if I don’t show.”
Sokolov looked Nick straight in the eye. “I take care of my team; I take care of their loved ones. She will wait too long, but she will be safe. Is okay. I know many girls for you.”
Nick stopped breathing for a moment. He knows about Jane. “Loved ones.” He’s figured out she’s more than a fish sitter. He saw the fledgling dream of the lightness and joy Jane had brought into his life slipping away. “Can we do this in an hour?” he asked, really wanting to say, “I really don’t want to leave that girl alone in my bed. I want her to open her eyes and see me still there next to her.”
“Into the car, Nikolai,” Sokolov said, gesturing for the guards to open the iron gates. Sokolov walked down the path beside Nick. The driver opened the back door of the town car and gestured with a gun for Nick to get inside.
Nick climbed in, the Russian got in beside him, and the car pulled away from the curb.
Jane, I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you woke up, Nick thought, staring out the window into darkness punctuated by neon lights. I’d give anything to have you in my arms right now.
“Tonight, we make sure you join team. Tomorrow, you go back to Rothgar. Just one thing, Nikolai. Is all good, you do what I say, I protect Jane MacGregor as if my own family. You act like bad dog, you tell Rothgar more than ‘I quit,’ maybe I won’t kill you. Maybe I kill Jane MacGregor instead.”
If Nick thought that was bad, apparently there was a kicker.
Sokolov took a labored breath, a gurgling whistle made worse by all the smoke he’d inhaled. “Maybe you also say to Rothgar, Sokolov knows he took Anya away,” the Russian added. “So, I take one of his.”
CHAPTER 31
Jane thought the end to her last relationship was a mess. Turns out, it was nothing compared to being abandoned the morning after food sex. She sat up in bed. “Hey, Nick,” she yelled at the bathroom door, giggling at the grime mashed into every inch of her skin. They never showed this part in movies. That said, laughing over it in the shower with Nick’s body (well, and his brain, of course, but his body was still very much on her mind . . .) sounded like an excellent way to finish off the weekend and take the pulse of the morning after.
Jane shoved the covers to the foot of the bed and headed to the bathroom, realizing she didn’t hear water. In fact, she didn’t hear anything.
Um . . .
In fact, Nick Dawes wasn’t home. Jane cased the apartment and then came back to the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed. He’d seriously left her encrusted in chocolate and reeking of old sex and warm champagne without a note (she checked) or a word (since he wasn’t here) or a text (she checked) or an e-mail (she checked).
The glamor of last night’s fantasy sex was in shreds. It was reality that covered absolutely everything. Strawberry hulls, chocolate smears, champagne in a small puddle on the floor on one side of the bed, odd-looking stains all over the sheets, and a condom that had missed its mark next to the wastebasket.
A sick feeling came over her, a wave of total humiliation as she realized what might be happening here. He was the boss, she was the employee: he expected her to clean up.
Okay, no jumping to conclusions. That is the stuff of Big Misunderstandings. Think for a minute.
Jane just sat there, dirty, naked, and disheveled, looking at the wreckage and checking her cell phone, willing there to be some reasonable explanation. She imagined telling the story to Nana. And then imagined telling it to Ally. But at the end of it all, even if the most ridiculous scenario was true, Nick had to know all he had to do was explain. Something. Just tell the truth. Or a lie that a smart woman could read as a truth. Leaving without a word was the worst thing he could do. It was so easy to say something. Even something bad would do. “We shouldn’t have done this” . . . “Now that I’ve milked the cow, I’m done” . . . “I’m allergic to chocolate” . . . “You’re too fat to be my girlfriend” . . . “I don’t want a relationship” . . . “I was thinking of Rothgar when we did it” . . . “I did it for a mission” . . . “The sex really wasn’t as good as those noises I was making” . . . or simply: “I changed my mind.”
Leaving her like this was not the Nick she knew. Not the Nick she’d come to know on the phone, or in person, or certainly last night when he whispered romantic things in her ear—lies? He knew she had abandonment issues. Oh, man. This could not be happening again.
Okay, think. Maybe it wasn’t happening. There must be some honorable reason for this. Maybe he’d had second thoughts about her going off script and acting like an operative at the consulate. Maybe things were more dangerous than he’d realized, and it was suddenly too dangerous to be together right now. But he could have just said so. And then there was the issue of timing.
Nothing could have changed so drastically between now and the moment they’d fallen asleep.
He’d left her here like this, a mess. A mess to clean up a mess. Without a word, without a note. There was no excuse for that. And no reasonable explanation except for one thing: she’d been conned. And she should have known what a con looked like better than anybody. Nick Dawes wasn’t a badass romantic like she’d thought; he was merely an ass.
She could not tell Nana about this. It was literally too embarrassing, Jane breaking the “fool me twice” rule. She needed Ally. She needed a shower. She needed to build a bonfire and burn all this nasty morning-after shit.
No tears, Jane. No tears. You’ve been down this road so many times in so many ways with so many people. With total s
elf-possession, Jane stripped the bed and started the laundry. She got a garbage bag from the kitchen and cleaned all the food and “bio” left behind. She cleaned the walls and removed the sticky rings from the bedside tables and scrubbed off the drips dirtying the wastebasket, completely naked except for a pair of hideous orange-and-blue-floral dishwashing gloves.
And then she took a really, really long shower and washed every inch of her body until Nick completely ceased to exist. After which she got dressed and grabbed a jacket and her purse and keys and phone, collected Rochester and fastened his leash, and then glowered at the fish and walked out without feeding them. Rochester looked at her dolefully but said nothing.
CHAPTER 32
Nick woke up in Lower Manhattan against a trash can on the corner of Hudson and King streets, which was clearly what Sokolov considered the next best thing to sticking a shiv in Nick’s gut. It was a clever message to accompany his parting words: “Tell Rothgar you’re quitting to come to me, get your things, and leave. I only wish I could come with you for this.”
He felt cold and alone, and it didn’t help that from the place where he was slumped on the ground, when he looked up at the sky, the lights in the skyscrapers reminded him of stars. I want to be at home with Jane.
Blood dripped down the corner of his mouth where Sokolov had taken a molar; his hands were sticky with it. Shaking a little as he got out his cell phone, he punched the autodial for Roth. “SOS, Roth,” he said softly. “I’m a little rough. Need a pickup.” So much for “dignity.” I do not think that word means what you think it means, Sokolov.
Rothgar told him Shane was on the streets already and would detour. So, Nick waited for his brother. Who he really wanted was Jane.
Shane got him into the car and drove him back to the Armory, where Missy took a look at his mouth, gave him plenty of sympathy, and told him she’d arrange to have him get a fake tooth back there if he wanted before smothering him with first aid.
Afterward he told Rothgar and the guys in the war room what went down—leaving out pretty much all the details about exactly how he and Jane had had the best fuck of his life just prior—and provided substantially more detail about being dragged out of bed and taken to Sokolov’s by Tristan.
Tristan’s lack of loyalty to his presumably ex-mercenary team, the Sixth Ward, did not sit well with the boys. “Brooklyn hipster,” Chase barked, as if that explained everything. It was a funny thing; though Rothgar and the Sixth Ward’s leader, O’Neill, were competitors, they respected each other, and sometimes when there was nowhere else to turn, they traded markers. O’Neill was a big reason why Cecily was still in one piece today.
The minute Nick explained that Sokolov (a) knew that the Hudson Kings were involved in the sleeper-agent missions and (b) knew that they’d been behind outing Sokolov’s girlfriend, Anya, Rothgar stood up and walked over to the mission boards. Without a word, he added SOKOLOV.
Nick was no longer on his own with this, and he clearly didn’t have a choice in the matter. It didn’t bother him one bit. He rubbed his sore jaw, thinking he should have done this a lot sooner. But that was hindsight—and also before Sokolov had shown an interest in Jane.
Missy and Dex had their heads together; they headed for Dex’s computer, Missy tossing over her shoulder, “We’re going to check something on Sokolov.”
Rothgar nodded and turned back to the rest of the guys. “First thing we do is neutralize Jane,” he said.
Nick did not like the sound of that. It must have shown on his face.
“You get her out of your house, you don’t see her until this is resolved, you don’t make her more of a target than she already is,” the boss clarified.
Nick liked the sound of that even less. “Well, yeah, I really need to talk to her, explain to her that my not being there this morning was because of Sokolov, you know. Make sure she knows that I care . . .” He trailed off as every guy in the room was looking at him like he was insane.
“What are you talking about, brother?” Chase said. “If she thinks you ditched her after sex, you’ve already solved the problem. Don’t bring her back from the dead only to die.”
“You want me to not explain myself?” Nick said, his lip curling in disgust.
Rothgar looked like it was taking some work to stay patient. “Jane MacGregor didn’t bat an eyelash when she acted as an operative on your behalf at the consulate,” he said. “From what I understand, she did it as a favor to you. Do you really think a woman like that is going to walk away if you ‘explain’ yourself? I think she’s going to run straight at you and ask how she can help, which is going to keep Sokolov’s nice big target on her back. Consider that a compliment from me and a warning.”
Chase snorted. “Nick wants to tell her the truth. Oh, he is so gone over her.”
“Let me make myself clear,” Rothgar continued. “I’m not saying that all things being equal I’d tell you to lie to get her to stay away, but I am saying that she already thinks you’re an asshole and has told herself not to see you again. The smarter move is to keep her thinking exactly that for a little while longer, just to fix the problem while she’s clear of you—and this situation—and then tell her the truth. She’s already where you need her to be.”
Hating me. Nick thought about his crazy, sexy, awesome night with Jane and tried to imagine how it would feel for her to wake up in that bed in the morning totally alone. “Is there something particular you’d like me to say?” he asked tightly, shaking his head in total disgust.
“I don’t care,” Rothgar said brutally. “That you don’t love her, that it was a fling and now it’s over.” He tipped his head. “The other option is that we bring her here. But it might tip your hand, telegraph even louder how much you care. Not sure that’s a win, tying her closer to us in the middle of all this, especially now that Sokolov knows we were behind nailing Anya as a spy. I’d say cut ties, get her away from you. We’ll put surveillance on her at Ally’s.”
“This is a very screwed-up conversation, if I can add my two cents,” Flynn said. “I don’t like the idea of Jane thinking Nick’s a total asshole. She might not come around after.”
Chase raised an eyebrow. “Are you getting broody, baby?”
“Jesus. Fuck,” Flynn said. “I’m just looking out for Nick. He’s the happiest he’s ever been when he’s thinking about that woman. He smiles. He laughs. And by the way, have you ever noticed that you do not deal well with emotions?”
Chase held up his palms in surrender. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is not about me.”
“True enough,” Nick muttered, thinking about Jane.
Rothgar gave the boys a cold look. “If we were talking about Jane being dead, courtesy of Sokolov’s bullet, I think even Nick can agree that would be a very fucked-up conversation. I’d like to not have that conversation. Flynn, if you’ve got a better idea, air it now.”
The squabbling instantaneously silenced. Flynn shook his head, telegraphing sympathy to Nick.
Shane looked square at him. “If Jane’s not going to stay at your place, she’s gonna go back to Ally’s couch to figure out what to do, like she did before she took your gig. Cecily and I are planning to take over Ally’s lease. We were going to wait until things were a little slower for both of us, but I could get away with moving in now, even with Ally still there. To tell you the truth, it’s probably going to take me crowding Ally’s personal space to get her to look for another apartment. So I’ll watch over Jane while the rest of you neutralize Sokolov’s threats. Neither Jane nor Ally has to know why I’m really there, and you know Cecily doesn’t spill Hudson Kings secrets.”
Nick shook his head. “I should be the one looking out for her.”
“When I was wondering about bringing Cecily into a mission, you told me I was crazy,” Shane said. “You said that if you had a woman that you cared about, no way in hell would you even seat her across from you in a restaurant during a mission. This is your restaurant moment. Now it’s real: are y
ou bringing Jane to the table?”
Nick felt himself grow cold. He remembered that conversation, and somehow, he’d forgotten the basics. Because Jane was . . . Jane. Game. Unflappable. His partner. He adored Jane’s enthusiasm, her willingness to roll up her sleeves, her ability to take everything in stride and not bat an eyelash. He could tell her the truth, and she could handle it, but both Rothgar and Shane were more to the point. He didn’t want her to handle anything this hot. If something happened to Jane because of him . . .
Jemilla Johnson told him to wait for his star. He’d waited more than ten years for Jane, and he wasn’t going to risk losing her like he’d lost Ms. Johnson. If she had to hate him for as long as it took the Hudson Kings to sort things out, he could live with that. The alternative was unacceptable.
“I’ll leave Jane to stew,” he heard himself say, silently praying that the philosophy of “act now, apologize later” would resonate with her somehow.
And once it was settled that Nick would be calling Jane to give her a more explicit kiss-off and not to explain why he’d left her to wake up naked, alone, and covered in last night’s sexcapades, Rothgar led them through an analysis of every possible solution there was for putting Sokolov out of commission, including cold-blooded murder and a deal with O’Neill’s Sixth Ward team.
It was a complicated mix. There was the issue of helping Sokolov save face now that he’d gone this far to teach Nick a lesson. There was the issue of the still-missing $20 million and who had it. And there was—
“We hit the jackpot,” Missy’s voice announced from the other side of the room. She and Dex were looking over, triumph plastered across their faces.
“We didn’t just get contact info from those three phones at the consulate party,” Dex said. “They used productivity apps to attach e-mails and plans to their to-do lists, and so now we’ve got notes and plans too. I’m happy to report that Vlad Sokolov is totally vulnerable to blackmail. He either got pissed when he found out Anya got caught in our last sleeper-agent mission and increased his participation, or it’s a coincidence that he’s independently ramped up his existing association with the Russian spy network. Because he is funding and training spies on a bigger scale now than before. No question.”