The Watched Girl

by Rachel Rust

  “You were in the same room with Sergei Romanov at that lumber warehouse, which is more than any of us can say.”

  “But I didn’t see him.”

  “Did you hear his voice?” Thatcher asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What did it sound like?”

  “It was low and hoarse. A really thick accent.”

  “You’d be able to recognize it again?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And that’s what we need you to do.”

  “You need me to recognize him by his voice?” I asked. “Do you have a video of him that I need to watch and listen to?”

  “Unfortunately, it’s not going to be that easy. There is no known video or audio recording of Sergei Romanov.”

  “We’ll need you to identify his voice another way,” Thatcher said.

  I eyed them warily. “How?”

  “Well,” Eddie says with a slight grimace and a scratch at his head, “That’s the part you probably won’t like.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Eddie handed me a file from across the coffee table. Inside were large glossy photos of a man. He was in his sixties, with a thin build, thinning gray hair, and a tanned, angular face.

  “This is Jack Chenko,” Eddie said. “A partner with Soyland, Chenko, and Thomas. A venture capitalist firm in Denver.”

  “And?”

  “And,” Eddie said with a sigh, sounding like he hadn’t gotten any sleep last night, “Jack Chenko is Sergei Romanov. Sergei Romanov is Jack Chenko.”

  I studied the man in the photos. “I don’t understand. If you already know who Sergei Romanov is, then why do you need me? Just go get him.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Thatcher said. “There is no evidence linking Jack Chenko to the identity of Sergei Romanov or his trafficking business.”

  “Except his face,” I said, holding the picture up for them to see. Duh!

  “No one has ever ID’d Sergei Romanov,” Eddie said. “The last known photo of Sergei is when he was in his twenties and it’s too distorted to use. Did you see his face last night?”

  “No, I had a pillowcase over my head.”

  “Exactly. They didn’t want you to see him. No one sees him.”

  “But that Brandon guy sees him, he knows him. Can’t you arrest him and have him ID Sergei?”

  “No. Brandon is one of our best chances at finding Sergei. We need keep him on the streets to follow him around and watch him. See where he goes, who he has contact with.”

  Han nodded in agreement. “Besides, Brandon Sabato would never ID his boss. Sergei would put a bullet in his head before he could speak a word, because no one ever lives to identify Sergei Romanov.”

  “And what’s going to happen to me if I identify him by voice? Will I get a bullet in my head?”

  “No, because you’re not going to ID him.” Eddie handed me a small rectangle of plastic. A driver’s license with the picture of a thin blonde woman. “Theresa Roberts is going to ID him.”

  “Who is she?”

  “She’s nobody,” Han said. “She doesn’t exist.”

  “It’s a dummy ID,” said Eddie. “Natalie Mancini is in a roadside motel outside of Denver, under the protective care of the FBI, with Sergei’s men watching her. And Theresa Roberts is about to make her debut … through you.”

  “I’m going to be Theresa Roberts? Like witness protection or something?” The thought of changing my name, and my hair, and leaving my family was more than I could possibly fathom in that moment, and my head began feeling light and heavy all at the same time.

  “No,” Eddie said. “It’s not permanent, you only need to be Theresa Roberts for one night.”

  “Thank God,” I muttered. “When do I need to pretend to be her? And how?”

  Thatcher answered, “Next week there’s a fundraising gala in the ballroom of this hotel for the Rapid City Regional Hospital, for their planned children’s hospital addition. And Jack Chenko is a large benefactor. He will be there … and so will Theresa Roberts.”

  “And so will my father,” I said, feeling my stomach sink. “He told me about the fundraiser a few days ago.” As their leading orthopedic surgeon, my father was at all fundraising events. He never missed an opportunity to flash his white smile and network with colleagues, even if it was on the night of his kids’ birthday.

  “We thought maybe that’d be the case,” Thatcher said. “But if we do our jobs right then he won’t know you’re there.”

  “How?”

  Eddie laughed slightly and put his hands palm up.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “I just need to trust you.”

  “Something like that.” He smiled a crooked grin and I couldn’t help but smile back at him, despite the nerves firing inside me. Something told me that even though I could trust Eddie, I wasn’t going to like their plan, and being Theresa Roberts wasn’t going to be much fun—or very safe.

  “What do I do until then?” I asked.

  “You’re going to need to remain here for the next week as we—”

  “An entire week?” I half-shouted.

  Eddie put a hand up to calm me.

  “Yes,” Thatcher said. “We need to prepare for the gala and we can’t chance anyone seeing you outside these walls. If Sergei’s men knew you were here, they’d come for you and our operation in Denver would be ruined.”

  “And what am I supposed to do for a week?” I asked. “Can I at least have a phone to call my dad or—”

  “No. I’m sorry, but there cannot be any outside communication.”

  “But—”

  Thatcher’s hand went up. “The answer is no, Miss Mancini. No phone. No Internet. No communication with anyone. The answer is and will remain no.”

  I sat back with a pout. The FBI sucked. My life sucked. Sergei Romanov could blow me.

  Eddie organized the manila envelopes into orderly piles on the coffee table. “You can read if you want, educate yourself on Romanov and his men.”

  I stared at the folders, full of papers and photos. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I was sort of itching to dig into them. My academics-loving brain adored reports and print-outs.

  I excused myself to get dressed and brush my teeth, and then curled up on the sofa and began reading through files. Lots of grainy security photos of people, multiple aliases for different people, different “last seen” locations. Truth be told, the whole thing was confusing and didn’t make much sense. There were so many assumed connections between people that it was difficult to know where one criminal ended and the next began.

  Thatcher left shortly after I dove into the files. Han and Toby discussed something in hushed voices in the tech lair.

  Eddie sat next to me on the sofa, watching me read until I finally turned to him.

  “Can I help you?” I asked with fake snobbery.

  He smiled. “Learning anything interesting?”

  “It’s confusing. You really understand all of this?”

  “I like to think I do. I mean, we do our best, but sometimes, admittedly, we miss a connection.”

  I thumbed through the thick file on my lap. His job was so much more complex than I had realized it would be. Lots of paperwork, lots of patience, just waiting and watching. Information gathering. Some of the files were decades old. Multiple agents had worked on them, meaning some had probably long retired before their bad guy was even detained or killed.

  I grabbed a hand-written document that contained several dates and times, and random notes about the daily movements of someone named Punchy.

  “Punchy,” I said with a slight snort.

  Eddie laughed and playfully flicked at the paper in my hand as I was reading. I ignored him. He flicked it again.

  “Stop.”

  He raised his finger to flick the paper again, and I laughed, twisting away from him. The second I turned back around, he flicked the paper again.

  I pushed my elbow into his side. “You’re annoying. I thought FB
I agents were supposed to be all mature and serious all the time.”

  He grinned. “This is me being mature and serious.”

  I stared straight at him. “Bullshit. I’ve seen you serious. You like to yell at me when you’re serious… ‘Don’t follow me,’ ‘don’t ask me questions,’ ‘get back in the car.’”

  The night we had spent together dodging The Barber and his men, Eddie—as Victor—had repeatedly been too serious for his own good. Prickly and demanding. I had wanted to punch him a few times.

  Eddie laughed. “First of all, you were a pain in the ass and snuck into my car. And second, I was trying to save your ass that night, remember?”

  I chuckled. “Yeah, I know. And you did.”

  “Besides, that wasn’t me yelling at you … that was Victor.”

  “Oh sure, blame your nonexistent undercover alias.”

  “He was a dick, wasn’t he?”

  “I called him that a few times.”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  Eddie and I broke into laughter, which dissipated as we continued to sit side by side, legs touching.

  “You smell like minty gum,” I said. “How’s the no-smoking thing going?”

  “So far so good. Haven’t had one in two weeks.” His hand went to the fresh scar on his temple. “Not since that night.”

  “That night,” I repeated quietly. It’s exactly how I had labeled it. That night. That night when I had been bargained to a trafficker. That night when I had been kidnapped by The Barber. That night when I’d had my life threatened. “One hell of a night.”

  “To say the least.”

  We stared at each other. There was so much I wanted to say. So many questions—questions about the current issues of Sergei, the knowledge that we had been paired up together on purpose. But mostly in the forefront of my mind, as I stared into Eddie’s dark eyes, I wanted to ask him about us. Was there an us? Did he want there to be an us? Was it even realistic to think that we could be together? Or was I just a stupid girl with a hopeless crush on the boy who had saved my life?

  “Natalie,” Eddie said, softly.

  “Hmm?”

  “I really am sorry if I came across as a jerk on the phone the other day. I didn’t mean to be.”

  “It’s okay, you were working. I understand.”

  His eyes studied my face. Under his gaze, my heart thumped wildly. Finally, he was here in front of me again. No one was chasing us, no one threatening us. He was all mine, if only for a moment.

  “Can I ask you a question?” I said.

  “Sure.”

  I took a deep breath, trying to ignore the pounding of my heart echoing in my ears. “I was just wondering, I mean, if you and I … on that gravel road … if we are…” My thoughts and words were a jumbled mess, and the lurching of my nervous stomach made talking even more difficult. “Do you think you and I are, um…”

  Eddie’s finger brushed mine, as though he knew what I was asking, and that only served to increase my hormone-fueled idiocy. I went mute while my brain screamed at me to say something meaningful.

  Eddie looked away with a wrinkled brow. “Natalie, I think you and I need to—”

  “Martinez!” Han called out from the tech lair. “Come check this out.”

  Eddie sighed. He glanced at me one last time before joining Han and Toby. Two minutes later, Eddie and Han left in a rush. So much for a heart-to-heart.

  That was the last I saw of Eddie that day. So I read more files and hung out with Toby, feeling more confused than ever.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The next several days dragged on. It was the same routine every day. I’d wake in the morning to find Eddie and Han, and occasionally Thatcher, studying files or discussing information. Sometimes they’d immediately stop talking when I entered the room.

  I never had much opportunity to talk to Eddie. We were almost always surrounded by Han and Toby, and an occasional random agent I didn’t know. And when Eddie and I did have a moment to ourselves, it was just that—a moment. There wasn’t enough time for a full conversation. Interruptions were constant. Eddie was busy, and my feelings for him had no place in the day-to-day operations of the FBI.

  The clothing options Agent Baker had left me were decent. Shorts and tank tops, and a few simple, cotton sundresses. After dressing in the mornings, I’d eat toast and scrambled eggs sent up from the kitchen and bug Eddie with my questions about how I was supposed to be Theresa Roberts. He was getting better at constructing creative non-answers like, “You’ll look like her, but you won’t be her. Don’t worry, we’ve got it all figured out.”

  Whatever that meant.

  Nothing made sense and no one would give me a straight answer. Not even Toby, and I was starting to bug him for information just as much as I was Eddie. But not Han. I avoided Han. He liked to give me the stink eye when Eddie wasn’t watching. Han seemed more interested in throwing me out on the streets like a fresh piece of meat in order to get Sergei Romanov to come sniffing around. Who cared if I got eaten up, as long as Han got his man.

  Lunch time in the suite consisted of a BLT from the kitchen, though one day I tried the spaghetti. It was nasty, so it was back to the BLT after that.

  The hotel was full of FBI agents, but I didn’t see many of them in person, only on the computer monitors as Toby would point them out. The tourist-looking guy in the corner of the lobby reading the paper. A man in a suit asking for a refill of soda in the restaurant. The maid watering flowers on the fourth floor. Her face was familiar—Krissy, one of the agents who helped Eddie take down The Barber. I was glad she never came up to the hotel suite. Last time I saw her, I had been drunk on wine and most likely did not make a good impression.

  Once a day the agents went on what they called a sweep. They dispersed through the hotel, checking corridors, and walking around the outside premises. Sometimes, Eddie would go with them. And the sweep never happened at the same time on any given day. Toby explained that this was because too much of a pattern was easy to pick up on and the agents were supposed to blend in like normal, everyday people. “Consistency gets people caught,” Toby had told me one morning as we watched Eddie walk down a second-floor hallway on the monitor. “If you want to blend in, be boring, but never do the exact same thing twice.”

  Sitting with Toby and viewing surveillance monitors was often the most exciting part of my day—aside from watching Eddie. And I watched Eddie all the time. The way he walked, the way he sat hunched over to read files, the way he ran his hands through his hair when frustrated, the way he crossed his arms over his chest whenever he stared the computer screens. He was always serious in his interactions with Han. He’d occasionally crack a joke with Thatcher, and he was pretty laid back with Toby. Eddie seemed good at his job, and I found that every bit as sexy as his ass.

  But it wasn’t just me observing him. I felt Eddie’s eyes on me all the time. Even when Thatcher and Han were right there, Eddie would watch as I crossed the room or sat down to read the newspaper—the actual paper, just like my nerd father. Sometimes when I caught his gaze, he’d immediately look away. Sometimes, though, he’d keep staring, as if he wanted me to know he was watching.

  But it was difficult to determine what his observations meant. He was FBI, trained to scrutinize people, to read people. Maybe he was just doing his job, nothing more.

  My confusion about our relationship grew throughout the week. Combined with boredom, my irritation began to simmer. Thatcher had been serious about me not having any connection to the outside world. I wasn’t allowed on the computers, and I didn’t have a phone—hence the real newspaper.

  Eddie and Toby tried to teach me how to play poker, but I ended up frustrated, throwing my cards on the floor. We stuck to blackjack after that. But mostly I played solitaire. Just me, myself, and I—because everyone else in that suite had the freedom to do more exciting things.

  Lying on my bed on the seventh evening—the night before both my birthday and the big gala where I
was supposed to be Theresa Roberts—I stared at the door handle to the balcony. Fresh air waited on the other side. It was June, so it was likely warm outside, but it was also evening, and evenings were usually crisp and low in humidity. My bedroom door was closed. I could sneak outside for a few minutes and nobody would even know. Dressed in a yellow sundress, which looked like it belonged in a fabric softener commercial, I longed for the freshness of outside air. To feel it whip around my legs and arms, and blow through the light cloth.

  I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling, splaying my arms and legs out like a starfish. I needed movement. I needed to stretch, walk, and see people and talk to people. I needed to talk to Eddie.

  I wanted to walk arm-in-arm with him down the streets. Get coffee, laugh about something funny we had seen on TV, and discuss current events and pop culture. I wanted to be normal with him. But, no, there I was stuck in a bedroom on the eighth floor of a downtown hotel, unable to even talk to my own dad and brother. Unable to tell them where I really was.

  Isolation and cabin fever scratched at me from the inside. My fists pounded on the bed underneath me. “Screw it.” It was my birthday tomorrow. I deserved a gift for myself.

  I launched off the bed and grabbed the handle of the balcony door. I opened it and stared into the black sky. There weren’t many stars visible, but the sky was more beautiful than ever, simply because it was there, in front of me without a window pane between us.

  I inhaled the warm air infused with the scent of ponderosa pines.

  The balcony was larger than I had imagined. The railing was at least ten feet out from the door, made of concrete and painted a light cream to match the rest of the building. I stepped up to it, resting my elbows down and leaning forward. Main Street below was busy, with several groups of people walking on either side of the street. Shoppers, coffee drinkers, and bar hoppers. Cars came and went on the one-way street, in accordance to the stop lights. Most business appeared open with their front windows lit up. Then it dawned on me that I didn’t know what day of the week it was.