by Rachel Grant
Her heels dragged in the soft earth. In one motion, she pushed up, slamming the back of her skull into Zack’s chin. She swung out with her cast arm, smashing the hard case against the gun as Sophia ducked.
An explosion sounded in the same moment the gun fired. Ivy’s vision was blurred thanks to the tranquilizer, but in the blur of movement, she could see Sophia coming at Zack. Ivy dove to the side. Her muscles were sluggish, and she stumbled and had to roll to get out of the way.
The jungle filled with the acrid scent of smoke. What had blown up? It wasn’t the AUUV, because it was in the other direction.
Luke, Ian, and Dimitri fought hand to hand with Zack’s men, who must’ve been disarmed in the confusion caused by the explosion.
Where was Julian?
She spotted the sleeping boy tucked in a nest of vines. His mother must’ve seriously drugged him for him to sleep through the explosion, but in this moment, Ivy wasn’t judging. She crawled across the jungle floor toward the boy, trying not to put weight on her cast arm, which throbbed from smashing it into Zack’s gun.
She’d grab Julian and take cover in the bomb shelter.
Feet from the boy, someone grabbed her ankle. She kicked backward, wishing for the first time in her life she were wearing stilettos. The grip only tightened, and she was pulled back, into the center of the fray. She twisted and saw Zack had her in his grasp.
Sophia launched herself at the man, kicking his forehead, snapping his head back. “Get Julian!” she shouted to Ivy. “Protect him.”
Freed, Ivy scrambled to the sleeping child, scooped him against her chest, and ran for the bomb shelter.
A bullet pierced the air, and the man Dimitri had been fighting dropped. Thank you, Kaha’i.
He turned to go after Zack and saw Ivy and Julian were missing. “Where is Ivy?” he asked, using the ear radio.
“In the bomb shelter,” Kaha’i responded. “I’m covering the entrance.”
He ran toward Zack, whose head appeared momentarily on the other side of the float that hid the AUUV. Zack must’ve chased after Ivy, because the float was near the shelter.
“Good.” If he blew up the AUUV, Zack would go with it. He patted down his pocket. “Fuck. I lost the remote for the detonator.” His gaze scanned the ground. No time to search the jungle. “Where is Sophia?”
“She’s on the slope below the float—I think.” Meaning she’d disappeared in Palea’s blind spot.
Zack’s head had dropped below the float, but his hand appeared, holding a knife that arched downward.
Dimitri heard Sophia’s grunt of pain, then glimpsed the top of her head as her body slammed into the rusted float, shaking it.
“Blow it up!” Sophia shouted.
It hit Dimitri that Sophia had known exactly where the AUUV was, because they’d had to tell Rudy in the thirty minutes before the handoff. He’d probably been wired and she heard every word as they went over the layout and plan, which meant she even knew about the TNT.
C-4 couldn’t be ignited with a bullet, but TNT could.
“Get clear, D,” Kaha’i said. “I’ve got a line on the TNT.
Dimitri rounded the float and pulled Zack away from Sophia, taking a blow to the face and feeling the sting of a blade to the arm.
“Sophia’s not clear!” he shouted to Kaha’i. He turned to see his sister slumped back against the aluminum hull.
She’d been stabbed in the gut. Blood trickled from her mouth. “Tell Palea to take the fucking shot.” She kicked Dimitri in the chest, pushing him down the steep slope in the same moment she grabbed Zack by the hair, pulling him to her.
Dimitri tumbled down the hill. “Do it!”
A bullet sounded. Then came a small blast, followed by a second, roaring explosion. Dimitri’s body pitched in the air.
He landed, bashing his cheek on a jagged rock and abrading his chin on the rough ground.
He slumped as the world spun around him. All he could see upslope was a haze of smoke.
One by one the team checked in on the radio. Luke, Ian, and Kaha’i were fine. The bomb shelter protecting Ivy and Julian was intact.
Slowly, the smoke cleared. Where Sophia, Zack, and the AUUV had been was a giant crater.
Chapter Forty
Dimitri stared at the sleeping boy. Julian Fredrickson. He reached out to brush aside the soft blond hair on Julian’s forehead, but stopped. This was normal, undrugged sleep; a touch might wake him, and Julian needed sleep.
Ivy had taken him to a doctor in Koror, who’d examined Julian both before and after he woke, and they’d determined the sedative he’d been given, while strong, hadn’t harmed him. She’d waited until this afternoon, the day after the explosion in the jungle, when he was awake and alert, to break the news to him that his parents were gone.
She’d held him while he cried, and after hours of confusion and heartbreak and tears, he’d finally fallen into a fitful sleep just an hour before Dimitri was released from questioning. He’d been granted two hours to see Ivy one last time before being taken to Guam, where the process of dissecting Alyssa and Rudy Fredrickson’s espionage, and assessing the damage they’d inflicted on US national security, would begin.
It was almost certain covert operatives abroad had been compromised, and this work would be vital to getting those men and women to safety back in the US.
Dimitri would help in every way he could—which was likely extensive because he knew the keys to the codes Sophia had used. If it was determined the GRU really didn’t know he was alive, or if they could be convinced of his death, the Justice Department would build a new identity for him. In all likelihood, it would be years before he could settle in the US. Years before he could see Ivy again.
He had a mere two hours with her and his nephew before the next phase of his non-life began.
Perhaps it was for the best that Julian was sleeping, considering Dimitri would disappear again. As he navigated his grief, Julian needed an adult who would stick around, which Ivy had said she wanted to do.
Dimitri draped an arm around her shoulder, and together they slipped out of the sleeping boy’s room in the hotel suite. Ivy pulled the door shut without making a sound, then turned into Dimitri’s arms.
“Thank you, for taking care of him,” he whispered as he squeezed her against his chest.
“Of course.” She pulled back from the embrace and took his hand, tugging him away from the closed door and toward the far side of the living room of the deluxe hotel suite, where she dropped onto the sofa and patted the seat next to her. Luke and Ian had gone down to the hotel bar, to give them time alone.
“According to the DIA, Rudy doesn’t have living family members. You’re Julian’s only known living relative.”
“But I can’t claim him without tipping off the GRU.”
“Exactly. If Rudy really has no family, Julian is likely to go into foster care until he can be adopted.” She gripped his hand. “I’m going to request he be placed with me. As you’re his only living family member, I’d like your permission to adopt him.”
He couldn’t meet her gaze, could barely breathe, so he studied the veins on the back of Ivy’s hand as emotion swamped him. Finally, he managed a breath and a choked “You’d do that?”
“Of course,” she repeated.
He met her gaze with his good eye. His face had been battered in the explosion, more than he’d realized at the time. His left cheek had fractured, and his eye was swollen due to lacerations above and below. He could still see, but vision in that eye was blurred. “There’s no guarantee I’m ever coming back. If the GRU knows I’m alive, I won’t risk you—or Julian—that way. I’ll disappear forever. You’d be stuck raising a child who isn’t yours.”
“He’s not mine—yet. But he will be. I can and will love him as my own. And I hope someday he’ll come to love me, but even if he doesn’t, I’ll still be there for him and give him all the love you would, if you could.” She gazed toward the closed bedroom door. “He’s
hurting even more than you are right now. If I can’t be there for you as you wade through what your sister did, then at least I can be there to lavish love on him.”
His heart ached for Julian, but at the forefront of his emotions was the pain of betrayal. “I still don’t want to believe she could be so cruel.”
His baby sister. He’d given up a part of his soul to protect her, only to learn that she was the person who’d orchestrated the forfeiture.
“I don’t either. And I know it will be hard for you not to blame yourself.”
“It is my fault. She said as much—”
“No, Dimitri. It’s not your fault. Blame the GRU. Blame everyone who abused her. Blame the drunk driver who killed your parents and left you unprotected. Blame her. But don’t blame yourself. You didn’t make her into what she became.”
He grimaced. “It’s not that easy.”
“I know.” She snuggled close to him and pressed her lips to his neck. “I know.”
He pulled back and studied her face. “It’s going to be a long haul, Ivy. I can’t ask you to wait for me when I might never be free.”
“Well, it’s not really so much about waiting. You see, my libido died a long time ago, and you revived it. I believe the resurrection is biometrically secured to you.”
He tilted back his head and laughed. Only Ivy could make him laugh like this, now. “You’re saying I’m the only man who can turn you on?”
She grinned. “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
He placed a hand behind her neck and pulled her face to his. “I love you, Ivy. I’ll do everything I can to come back to you and Julian, but it’s not in my control.” He kissed her then, pouring his emotion into a kiss that would have to sustain them for months, years, or even, possibly, forever.
When the kiss ended, she stroked his jaw, tracing scrapes along his chin, gingerly skipping over the bruises on his cheek. “I love you too.” She tucked her head under his neck and snuggled against him. “Ulai’s prognosis is better. They might bring him out of the medically induced coma tomorrow.”
“I heard that from Kaha’i.” He stroked her back. “He also said it looks like Zack is the one who attacked Ulai.”
“I suspected as much. But why did he go after Ulai?”
“Kaha’i thinks Ulai caught him in the hangar, attaching a tracking device on the seaplane. They found similar tracking devices on the yacht and inflatable Luke rented—which is how Zack knew where to find you and where to find us. He didn’t know where we hid the AUUV, but he knew where we’d tucked the boat away on shore.”
With Ian acting as translator, Kaha’i had questioned Zack’s men who’d been taken alive in the jungle. Ian had shared some details with Dimitri. Zack hadn’t acted prior to the confrontation in the jungle because he didn’t know where Dimitri had stashed the AUUV, plus he was well aware of the hazards of attacking the Hammer directly, as proven when he lost the three men who’d boarded Liberty.
Ivy frowned. “We led Zack right to the handoff.”
Dimitri shrugged. “Given his history with Ian, he probably had been keeping tabs on him. He couldn’t have known it would lead to me. He probably targeted Ulai so he could find me.”
“What would have happened if Zack and I hadn’t shown up? Would you have let Sophia have the AUUV?”
He’d thought about that a lot in the last twenty-four hours. “I honestly don’t know. Sophia is probably responsible for the deaths of several special forces operators and for massive leaks that ravaged national security. I don’t think Ian or Luke could have let her walk out of that jungle, and I couldn’t blame them.”
“She was counting on you to protect her,” Ivy said, “once again.”
He nodded. “I wouldn’t have, though.”
“So we’ll hold on to her last act. She pushed you away and pulled Zack in. She sacrificed herself for you.”
“She sacrificed herself for Julian.”
Ivy nodded. “And in so doing, she saved you. We can give her credit for that.”
Dimitri considered Ivy’s words. Could one selfless act make up for the horror of what his sister had done?
No.
But it did help by giving him one moment to believe in. One morsel of the bright-eyed girl he’d played with as a child had survived and remained part of the complex and disturbing woman she’d become. She was victim and villain.
Was she worse than Zack Barrow, a greedy, power-seeking traitor to his country, or just a mirror image?
He couldn’t answer that because he didn’t know Zack at four years old, but he had known Sophia. And the part of him that loved his sister—and who would love her to his dying day—didn’t want to believe that girl was the worse villain, even though what she’d done to him had been vile.
A cry from the bedroom brought Ivy to her feet. Julian was awake and crying for his mother.
Ivy turned to him before running to the bedroom. “Do you want to meet him?”
Dimitri touched the bruises on his face as he considered his answer. He wanted to meet his nephew more than anything, but his needs came second. “My face might scare him.”
Ivy nodded and headed for the bedroom. She left the door open so he could glimpse inside as she entered and picked up the four-year-old. Her face blanched with pain, and she adjusted her grip so her cast arm didn’t bear his weight. “Hey, buddy. Ivy’s here.”
Julian asked for his mom in perfect Russian. It surprised Dimitri to realize Sophia had taught him the language.
Dimitri didn’t know which of the three of them cried harder as Ivy stroked his hair and held him, whispering words of love to the boy she’d just met.
Epilogue
Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands
10 months later
Accent: German. Age: late thirties. Attitude: interested, too interested.
Ivy never should have let Hazel talk her into this vacation. But getting away to take a break after Patrick’s very public conviction had seemed like a good idea, and her sister Laurel had offered to take Julian along on her family’s annual trip to Orlando. Now Ivy wished she’d gone to Disney World instead. How could she have passed up the opportunity to see Julian’s delight as he rode Dumbo for the first time?
Instead, she was at a posh resort on Grand Cayman, playing wing woman to Hazel in the crowded hotel bar. That part she didn’t mind; it was when men set their sights on her that made her uncomfortable. Funny that all it took to become desirable was to put out “not interested” vibes.
Hazel thought she was still off all men thanks to Patrick, and that was what Hazel would always have to believe. The FBI had drilled into her the importance of silence, or her adoption of Julian would be in jeopardy, and the chance for a future with Dimitri would be impossible.
She hadn’t heard a word from him since they’d said good-bye in her Koror hotel room. Not his fault, she knew, but still she ached with the uncertainty of their future.
In her mind, she wrote him long letters. The first would have told him of her mixed feelings when she learned she wasn’t pregnant. Disappointment, but also relief that Dimitri wouldn’t miss the experience of being by her side as she carried his child. And the adjustment for Julian would have been harder if she’d been pregnant too.
She’d wanted to tell Dimitri everything about those first months with Julian, holding him as he cried for his parents. But she didn’t dare commit the words to paper. If found, they could ruin the life she was trying to build.
Strings had been pulled to make her his foster mother, but that was only the first step. They’d needed to be certain Rudy Fredrickson had no living relatives, and that the couple had no will with provisions for their son.
A handwritten letter by Alyssa Fredrickson listed an unnamed brother to be appointed as guardian should anything happen to her and Rudy. The letter was locked away in FBI files and couldn’t be used to support Ivy’s claim.
In the meantime, she and Julian built a relationship. It wasn’t smo
oth or easy, but the love was there, and it was enough to build on. Julian was learning to find joy again as he settled into his new life. It was all Ivy could ask for.
Now Hazel was dancing with the friend of the German man who was hitting on Ivy, while Raptor operative Sean Logan watched them both from the corner of the bar.
Alec had insisted a bodyguard accompany them—while threats to Ivy had ended with Patrick’s conviction, traveling outside the US was still deemed a risk. But Hazel and Sean had clashed from the start because Sean intimidated any man who approached her.
Two days into a seven-day vacation and Ivy wished she’d gone with Laurel and Julian to the Magic Kingdom.
Beyond the open-air nightclub was a stretch of beach, and beyond that the turquoise Caribbean Sea. She longed to be out on the water, or better yet, on a deserted island with a certain reformed Russian spy. Island life was only fun with the right company.
She apologized to the man who’d asked her to dance and crossed the room to Sean’s side. “I’m going paddling,” she said. She’d feel better on the water. Calmer.
“I need to go with you.”
“I really want to be alone. You can watch from the beach. I’ll stay within sight of the resort.”
Sean’s mouth pinched, then he gave a sharp nod. As one of Raptor’s top operatives, she knew he hated this kind of babysitting duty. He was usually off in foreign lands guarding much higher-risk targets than the boss’s cousins, and with CAM firmly in the hands of the Pentagon, Ivy was in no danger here.
She headed for the exit, only to find Hazel, hands on hips, planting herself before her. “Oh no, you don’t, big sister. You promised.”
“I just want to go paddling.”
“We paddled all day. Tonight you said you’d dance.”
She shrugged. “I’m not feeling it.”
“So you didn’t like the German guy. That’s fine. There are a dozen other nationalities to choose from. How can you possibly resist a Jamaican accent?”