by Cari Z
Mendoza grunted. “The one with the dog.”
“That’s me.”
“You’ve got a good dog.” That was the extent of their conversation, which I was grateful for.
A few hours turned into five, but Katie genuinely had a good time. We went out for a late dinner after, then stumbled home and into bed—my bed, not hers—without even bothering to shower. My sheets smelled like motor oil and exhaust the next day, but I didn’t care because Katie was wrapped around me like a tentacled beast, clinging in her sleep. I kissed her gently, then got up to make tea.
Everything was good until later that afternoon, once she came back from classes. I was checking the official photos from the event, and I exclaimed when I found one of us in front of a very nicely painted set of—yes, you guessed it, flames. “Look, we made it in!”
“Made it in what?”
“The press photos, Katie! These are the ones that get sent around, really publicized.” I turned my phone so she could see it. “They even got my name and occupation into the caption. Excellent,” I continued as Katie stared. And stared. “It’s really… Babe?” When she finally looked at me, her expression was one of horror. “What’s wrong?”
“These are publicized?”
“Yeah.” I groped for something to say, anything, that would take that look off her face. “Not widely, I mean. Mostly just for racing enthusiasts, shared on blogs and the like. What’s wrong?”
“I can’t be in pictures like this.”
I frowned. “Why not?”
“Because I can’t! It’s not safe!”
Her frantic tone made me shiver. “How is it not safe? Is someone looking for you? Stalking you?”
Katie stood and backed away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Babe, come on, just—”
“Sam, we’re not talking about this!” She ran her hands through her hair and gripped hard, so hard it pulled the skin tight across her forehead. “Fuck. It was just one, though,” she said, mostly to herself at that point, it seemed. “Just the one, right?”
“As far as I know,” I said quietly.
“And you haven’t posted any, have you? To Facebook or anything?”
“Just a couple of shots on my Instagram.”
“Take them down.” Her voice was so hard, I was bruised just listening to it.
“No pictures of you at all?” I clarified.
“No. And why would you post any without asking me first?”
“Why is it outlandish for me to want to put up pictures of myself with my girlfriend?” I demanded, a little angry myself. “You already said you aren’t ashamed.”
“This isn’t about shame, it’s about privacy.”
“Well, maybe you should have bloody well told me that.”
“And maybe you should have inferred something from the extra security measures I added to my side of this place and figured it out!”
Oh, that’s it. “Don’t,” I ground out. “Expect. Me. To read. Your mind. It’s just going to lead to both of us being disappointed.”
“Yeah, and we wouldn’t want any more disappointment layered on top of everything else that’s gone wrong tonight,” Katie replied, her voice thick with disdain and…worry, perhaps. She turned and walked into her half of the duplex, Miranda padding after her, then shut the door and locked it behind her. I stared at it for a moment, then slumped back onto my couch with a sigh.
Thing was, I was a realist. Always had been. I’d never gotten into the habit of expecting things to go perfectly in life, not since my dad had died when I was twelve. So this fight? It didn’t bother me that much. I mean, it did bother me, since I didn’t like fighting with Katie, but I knew it wasn’t the end of the world. No single little fight ever could be. I took down the pictures, and sent a request in to the marketing people at the track to have those removed as well. I didn’t think it would fly, not since they owned the rights to them and hey, we were a pretty lovely couple, but it was worth a shot. And then?
I made tea. I made dinner. I watched a movie, got ready for bed, fell asleep and woke up the next morning. The door was still locked, and I didn’t push it. Katie needed space? That was fine. Miranda was out in the yard, and I let her in through the back door. After a bit of consideration, I took her to work with me like always. Katie had classes, and she wouldn’t want Miranda to be uncomfortable just because we were temporarily on the outs.
When I headed outside, I was surprised to see a familiar black sedan pulling up. Mrs. Jones got out, and as she passed me she paused. “It seems things are a bit messy over here this morning.”
I scowled. Katie had gone and, what, told on me? What were we, five? “Oi, if she called you to tell you about how whatever is going on with her right now is all my fault, I’m going to—”
“Not at all,” Mrs. Jones broke in. “Katie didn’t blame you for anything. There’s an issue, but it can be dealt with. Katie is…” She pursed her lips. “Still not used to her change in circumstances, and everything that can bring up. I’m sure she’ll apologize in due time, but if I could also recommend a little patience?”
I nodded. “I can do patient.”
“I’m sure you can, Miss Wynne.” She continued on her way to Katie’s door. I didn’t stay to watch it open.
Honestly, I’d expected the cold shoulder to go on for a while, no matter what Mrs. Jones had to say. But I got a text from Katie over lunch, asking me to come to her side for dinner so she could explain things.
What things? I texted back.
Maybe I’d finally find out some of her mysterious past. I’d agreed not to push, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t curious.
I’ll tell you when you get here. A minute later, she added, I’ll apologize then too.
“I was taught to do it in person,” Katie said breathlessly that night as soon as I walked through the door. I tilted my head in question. “Apologizing,” she went on. “It’s rude to do it over a phone when I should tell you in person. I’m sorry for yelling at you.”
I smiled a little and sat at her dinner table. It smelled like cream and mushrooms and spices, and the plate of pelmeni confirmed it. “It’s fine.”
“It isn’t.”
“Well, no,” I agreed, “not really. But I get not wanting your pictures up on the Internet if it can be helped. I won’t put any more on any of my social media. The track says they’ll take theirs down after the next race, so…” I shrugged. “It’s something.”
“Yeah.” Katie sat across from me. She looked somber. “I appreciate that. It’s… It’s a safety issue for me.”
There was that chill again, freezing my throat and making it hard to speak. “Do you really have a stalker?” I asked quietly.
“Something like that,” she admitted.
Oh, no. No. “Bloody fucking shit.”
“I should have said something earlier,” Katie went on, not quite looking at me. “It wasn’t fair not to tell you, but I didn’t want to make you worry. The odds of me being pursued aren’t that good anymore, but I prefer not to take chances. That’s the reason for no pictures.”
“Babe, honestly.” I shook my head. “This reason, I totally understand.”
“It probably means I can’t go to the track with you.” She did look over at me now. “If you even still want me to. Want us to. You know.”
“Want us to date?” I smiled again and gently prodded her with my toe. “Want to call you my girlfriend? Want to eat your delicious dinner and take you to bed and eat out your pussy until you scream my name?”
Katie finally smiled back. “Yeah. That.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Chapter Three
I’ve got to say, of all the ways I saw the thing between me and Katie ending—and I could picture it since I wasn’t all sunshine all the time no matter what I tried to convince people of—I didn’t see it happening the way it did. For all my traveling, for all my worldliness, I was still unprepared for the sight of a gun in my face an
d the sudden grip of a too-broad hand across my throat as I woke up, far too suddenly, on my couch. I’d just meant to catch fifteen minutes before Katie got home from running with Miranda. I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep, but I knew with a certainty that terrorized my nerves that I was awake now.
My first reaction was to scream, but I couldn’t. His hand was too tight, almost crushing my trachea. I tried to kick him and he settled one heavy knee into my midsection, pressing it deeper into the couch. He was too far away for my hands to reach his eyes, and after a moment I wrapped them around his thick wrist, trying to push him back somehow, to lighten his grip.
“You scream, I shoot you.” He had a high forehead, slick black hair, and a faint Russian accent. “Understand?”
I nodded, as much as I could with him holding me so tightly. He eased off a bit, and let me get a good gasp in before he said, “Where is Ellie Markov?”
“Huuh…I-I—don’t know—Ellie Markov,” I grunted. He rolled his eyes, then let go of my neck to smack me across the face.
“Hey!”
The smacking hand went to his pocket, where he pulled out a phone. “I know you know her.” He turned it so I could see the screen. My heart sank. It was the picture of Katie and me from the track. Fuck.
“You’re the stalker.”
The man shook his head. “Not a stalker. I don’t care about Ellie Markov. I care about her father. She will tell me where he is, after you tell me where she is.”
“No.”
This time when he hit me, it was with the edge of the phone. “You want me to shoot you, then? I can do it right here, quiet, on your couch. Right through your head. Quick death, easy cleanup.” He tapped the barrel of the gun just above the bridge of my nose. “The entry wound would be small. You could still be displayed at your funeral.” He leaned in closer. “Where is Ellie Markov?”
I could barely hear what he was saying, I was hyperventilating so badly. Oh my god, I didn’t want to die, I didn’t want to be shot on my fucking couch by a Boris-and-Natasha wannabe, and I didn’t want to say anything about Katie.
My bravery wasn’t quite tested. A second later Boris arched back, his jaw tensing so hard I could hear his teeth grind for a moment before he fell over onto the floor. I looked over at Katie—Ellie?—standing in the doorway, her face blank and eyes hard as she loaded a new cartridge into her stun gun. The leads from the last one trailed from the back of Boris’ bare neck.
She snarled something in Russian as she walked over, leading Miranda straight to me before turning and taking the gun out of Boris’ hand. He made a pathetic swipe at her, and she threw his knee-dropping trick, only she did it straight down into his groin. I fought to find my voice again as she ground his junk into the floor, making him wheeze.
“Katie…fuck.” I coughed and tried again. “Katie!”
She turned and looked at me, but didn’t get up, and her grip on the gun didn’t waver. “Are you all right?” she demanded.
No. Not even close. But now wasn’t the time to be bringing that up. “I’m fine, just…can we call the cops? Let’s just call the cops.”
“No cops,” both she and the man beneath her said. He looked almost grateful, but all expression went away a second later when she turned the pistol over and backhanded him across the face with it. She knocked him right the fuck out, and finally straightened up. “No cops,” Katie said with a grimace. “I’ve got to call Agent Jones. She’ll know what to do.”
“Agent Jones—you mean Mrs. Jones?”
“Yeah.”
“Your family friend in the black sedan.” My voice would have been higher if my vocal cords could have managed it then. Miranda whined and tried to lick my face. “She’s…what, FBI?”
“U.S. Marshal. She works in the witness protection program.”
You might as well have told me she was a fucking astronaut for all I was able to follow things at the moment. I blamed being almost shot in the head for my fuzziness. “Do you work for them too?”
“Sam.” Katie came over and cupped my face in one hand. Her thumb was tender on my swollen cheekbone, but her expression was hopeless. “I’m in witness protection.”
After a discreet pick-up of Boris and three hours of painstaking explanation, here’s what it boiled down to—Katie Hansen was actually Ellie Markov, who in turn was the daughter of a Russian mafia member turned informant who’d been put into witness protection after testifying against his former gang in exchange for getting his son, also a member, a deal that might one day let him see the light of day again. Ellie was his only daughter, and she’d taken the opportunity to disappear, but not along with her father. He’d gone one way, she’d gone another. Here, apparently. To Colorado, all the way from New York. The Brighton Beach part of her story had been real, at least.
I hadn’t been expecting Brighton fucking Beach, of all places, to be the one spot of verisimilitude in Katie’s—Ellie’s, wow, and that was hard to get in place in my head—story, but at that point I was so deep in painkillers and denial that I might as well have been watching an episode of Vice. The next part shunted me back to the painful real world right quick.
“What do you mean, leave?” I demanded.
“Ellie’s location has been compromised,” Agent Jones said implacably. She looked like an ‘Agent,’ I had to say. “We can’t guarantee her safety here. We have to move her. We’ll make arrangements to have your home monitored for a few weeks and make sure no one else comes looking for her, or troubling you.”
“I’m not worried about that.” I should have been, but I wasn’t. It would probably hit me before long. “But, Ellie…” I looked at her, and the hopeless expression was back. The one that made me think this really was it.
How could it be, though?
“I have to go,” she said quietly. “It’s not safe for you if I stay here.”
“Maybe he was acting alone.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Agent Jones broke in. “Ellie is leaving. You have an hour to pack your things. I’ll make arrangements for help moving them.” She went into the backyard, leaving me and Ellie and Miranda alone. We were on Ellie’s side of the duplex. I couldn’t quite make myself look back into mine yet. I might have to burn that couch now.
“Wow.” Shit, I sounded like a pack-a-day smoker with bronchitis. “So. This sucks.”
“Sam, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, I get it, I know.” I smiled, but it was a watery thing. “I don’t think it’s a flaw that you didn’t foresee a Russian gangster breaking into my half of the duplex.”
Ellie gripped her hair roughly as she shook her head. Her eyes glimmered. “I should have been more careful, I should have told you about the picture thing earlier. Oh my god, he could have killed you.”
“Or you.”
“Maybe eventually.” Well, that response didn’t make me feel any better. “But I’m better prepared to deal with his type.”
“I know. You kicked his ass.”
“My father taught me how to handle men like that.” For a moment her voice was hard, and I could almost picture her as the killer she might have been if things had gone differently in her life. “But I never meant to bring this to your door, I swear.”
“I know.” I reached for her hand and she gave it to me eagerly, as if she’d been waiting for hours to hold me back. “So, what?” I tried for casual but missed by a mile. “Now you’re relocating? Again? Back undercover?”
“Yes.”
“You’re leaving Denver.” The unspoken ‘and me’ was clearly heard by Ellie, because she came around the table and hugged me desperately.
“I have to,” she murmured. “I have to go. It isn’t safe, I have to go. Not just for me, but for you too.”
“I get that.” I did, and I hated that my brain was being so fucking reasonable when I wanted to yell and scream about it. “But I don’t like it. I wish…” I let it end before I could embarrass myself. Wished what? That I could go with her? That it didn’t h
ave to end like this, with us four months into something that had the potential to be great, and now had to fizzle down to nothing? I was so fucking angry I could barely see, angry at Ellie and Agent Jones and myself and mostly at fucking Boris for ruining a future that I’d hoped could be mine.
“I’m sorry.” She kissed my cheek, then my lips. “I’m so sorry you were hurt. I was ready to— If he’d—”
She’d been ready to commit murder for me. I’d seen it in her face. “I know.” I initiated the kiss this time, soft as a petal against her skin. “I know.” I wiped the tears from her cheeks first, then my own, before I got to my feet. “Let me help you pack up.”
“Y-yeah, okay.” Because we should do it like it was a Band-Aid, right? Rip it off so the pain burst so hard it made you dizzy, then dimmed quickly. The sooner she was gone, the sooner I’d stop thinking about her.
Lies. I knew it, she knew it. Even Miranda, soulfully staring up at us with her one brown eye, seemed to know it.
Agent Jones was more efficient than she gave herself credit for. Ellie’s half of the duplex was empty by sunset, and my hand was cramped from all the paperwork I’d signed, promising not to tell anyone about any of this on pain of death. The van pulled away with Ellie’s belongings, and Agent Jones gave us one more moment alone by heading to the sedan.
“You should keep Miranda.”
“Oh, no…” Actually, the thought of watching both of them drive away was just about crippling me. Miranda getting to stay with me might just be the only thing that could get me through the next five minutes without bawling.
“You should,” Ellie insisted, a little bitterly. “Who knows what kind of life I’ll be able to give her next time? She loves you, she loves it here. You should keep her.”
“Ellie—”
“I really hate that name,” she muttered. “Could you use Katie? Please?” She shrugged a little. “It won’t matter for long.”
“It’ll always matter,” I said, and pulled her into a hug. She clung with more strength than she’d ever used on me before. “You’re Katie to me. I like you that way.”