Sokolov. The name rotated like a sick chant in his head. What he hadn’t told Leah was that today was only the second time he’d laid eyes on the man. The first time had been when he’d watched Sokolov murder a woman in front of him. He’d discovered Sokolov’s deception that day, but it had been too late to save the men breaching Shazada’s compound. Ian had lost his best friend because he hadn’t been fast enough, good enough, smart enough. When he’d volunteered to lead the extraction team, he’d been salivating for revenge. They’d saved the remaining four soldiers, but it hadn’t brought Finn back.
The aftermath had been ugly. Ian had holed up in a crappy Kabul hotel room and spent three days drinking himself blind. He’d left the FSK shortly after, no longer trusting himself to do the job with the icy calm he’d become legendary for. Every time a soldier was killed, he had Finn’s face. Every time a woman was brutally raped by the Taliban, she had the same vacant eyes as the woman Sokolov had murdered. Later he’d learned he was suffering from PTSD, but at the time all he’d known was the ease in his soul had been replaced by a burning rage that licked at his very sanity.
Now Sokolov had returned from the dead and there was nothing under the sun that would stop Ian from returning him to the grave—for good this time.
Leah reappeared holding a paper cup with the green Starbucks logo, her carry-on still bumping rhythmically behind her. He studied the slender American who’d brought with her a past he’d thought long behind him. She’d admitted that Sokolov had rarely touched her—no doubt because the man was only truly excited by depravity. Still, the idea that he’d touched her at all, that he’d had his filthy mouth and hands on someone so innocent made Ian want to howl with fury.
Leah stopped in front of him and took a sip of coffee. “You look like you want to kill someone. You’re scaring people.” She glanced meaningfully over her shoulder and he followed her gaze to a dumpy, middle-aged woman in a flower-print shirt who was eyeing him with extreme suspicion. She had her phone in her hand and looked as if she were about to hit send on a call to airport security. Ian smiled reassuringly at the woman, but that only seemed to scare her more because she took several steps back, bumping into a man edging past her with a McDonald’s bag.
Ian took Leah’s arm and led her to the row of plastic chairs in the waiting area. She sank gratefully into one of the gray bucket seats and he sat in the chair beside her. “How are you feeling?”
She lifted her eyebrows. Was she surprised he asked? “I’m tired.”
“Why don’t you close your eyes for a bit? We aren’t boarding for another twenty minutes.”
She looked as if she might argue, but then apparently changed her mind. She probably thought dozing in public was the safest way to get some shuteye. Slouching back in the chair, she turned her head to the side and closed her eyes. Within minutes her soft breathing told him she was asleep. He eased the cup from her hand and set it on the floor beside him, then sat back to scan the lobby.
He doubted Sokolov had gone far. The rat had come back for one reason: revenge. Ian had destroyed his career in the GRU, and he clearly hadn’t forgotten. It seemed they both had a score to settle, and Ian fully expected another appearance from him.
That was okay; let the Russian come to him. He’d be ready.
Chapter 12
Leah didn’t think she’d be able to fall asleep, especially with Ian so close. The way he’d watched her all evening had made the hairs on the back of her neck tingle. She wasn’t the only one who found him intimidating, as evidenced by the woman in the flower-print shirt. He was an imposing man, both physically and by the way he focused in on a person as if he were a predator and they the prey. In this case, she was the prey.
The underlying ferociousness didn’t seem to put off everyone, though. She’d noticed men in the airport sizing him up and standing a little straighter, the women giving him once overs and trying to catch his attention by dropping bags or tripping into him. Ian’s easy smile and crinkled blue eyes did a decent job of hiding the fighter beneath, but Leah wasn’t so sure those women would be openly ogling him if they knew just how deadly he really was.
Then again, she was aware of what he was and still found herself sneaking glances at him. The frisson of electricity she felt every time she got near him fascinated her. She’d never once felt such sparks of attraction with Vincente, so having her breath quicken each time she accidentally brushed against a man she’d just met flummoxed her.
She slouched in the gray bucket seat and closed her eyes, but her thoughts continued spinning. Which man did she believe? She’d been with Vincente for six months and she’d known Ian for half a day. It shouldn’t have been a contest—and yet she found herself conflicted by the undeniable ring of truth in Ian’s story. Confused and frustrated with thinking in circles, she drifted into a dreamless sleep.
She awoke, disoriented and heavy-lidded, when it was time to board. Ian took her arm again, the heat of his palm burning through the silk blend of her shirt as he led her onto the plane and ushered her into her seat. She vaguely remembered him reaching across her to buckle her seat belt, the action bringing his stubble-roughened cheek close to her lips. He smelled good, like cologne warmed by male heat, and her heart gave an involuntary blip. Then the buckle clicked and he leaned back, taking with him all his warmth. She thought she mumbled thanks, and leaned her head against the cold glass of the window and promptly fell asleep again.
She re-awoke when they landed four hours later, feeling more rested but desperate for the bathroom. As soon as they disembarked she ran for the ladies’ room. After using the toilet she splashed water on her face and studied herself in a mirror lit by blazing energy-efficient lights.
“What are you going to do?” she asked her reflection. She didn’t want to believe that she’d shacked up with a terrorist for six months, or that she’d let a murderer touch her. Nausea welled in the pit of her stomach at just the idea of it. She wanted to believe the man with whom she’d spent weekends antique shopping and eating Chinese food with was innocent, and the man she’d only known for twelve hours was the liar. But she couldn’t convince herself.
In her gut she believed Ian. She’d seen the shadows lurking in his eyes when he spoke of his friend and witnessed the rage when he saw Sokolov. It had taken his genuine emotion for her to realize the feelings Vincente displayed had never been as intense. In fact, his emotions had always seemed carefully cultivated, as if he were a car salesman or a con artist putting on a show.
Then of course there was the whole part where Vincente had completely abandoned her to suffer Ian’s wrath. It made her chest burn to remember how he’d looked directly at her, how palpable her relief had been knowing he’d come back for her, and the feeling of utter despair when he’d blown past her. He’d left her behind as if she were a crumpled fast food bag on the side of the road. How trustworthy was a man who would do something like that?
Still, she wasn’t entirely ready to trust her instincts about Ian over cold, hard reason. As it stood, Vincente was the only one who’d shown her proof of identity. Before she beat herself up too much for managing to find the worst boyfriend in D.C., she wanted evidence that Vincente was indeed Sokolov.
Sighing loudly, she adjusted her ponytail and channeled her inner Olivia Pope. “You are a strong, independent woman,” she said to the mirror. “Handle this.”
When she walked out of the bathroom Ian was texting on his burner phone, his duffle at his feet and her carry-on upright by his side. The fluorescent terminal lights glinted off his hair, teasing out blond and red highlights. He was wearing a simple gray t-shirt that showed off the definition in his arms, a pair of worn jeans, and scuffed sand-colored combat boots. Although he was texting, he was aware of his surroundings and looked up when she emerged. When his sea-blue eyes collided with hers a school of butterflies took wing in her belly.
Uh-oh. She knew that sensation.
Panicked, Leah immediately tried to tamp down the hot flare of a
ttraction. Was she crazy? One ex-spy on her dating resume was enough. It didn’t matter that Ian Haugen was tall, confident, and smart. She didn’t care that her body was reacting to him in a way that it hadn’t ever for Vincente. Actually, she couldn’t even recall the last time she’d felt such a fast-hitting pull of lust for someone.
She looked down at her vagina. “No,” she said out loud.
Ian Haugen was not boyfriend material. Hell, he wasn’t even one-night stand material. Her task was to verify his story, give him whatever information he needed to help him catch Vincente, and head back to D.C. to lick her wounds.
Ian was grinning widely when she approached. “Did you just say no to your, um, to yourself?”
“Don’t be absurd.”
He slipped his phone into his pocket, the smile lingering. “My truck is in long-term parking. You ready?”
She nodded and reached for the handle of her carry-on at the same time he did. Her fingers brushed against his and her heart did a defiant pirouette. “I got it,” she snapped.
The corner of his mouth lifted in amusement. He relinquished the handle to her and slung the duffle over his shoulder. “My buddy from Kabul is already at the office and I can’t tell you how eager he is to meet you.”
That cooled some of her lust. She hadn’t really thought about how she was about to meet a man who’d suffered months of torture at the Taliban’s hands thanks to her ex-boyfriend. How would he receive her? If the positions were reversed, she wasn’t sure she’d be very kind.
Ian’s hand clasped her elbow as he moved her forward. “He knows Sokolov lied to you, and he knows better than anyone what it feels like to be one of the man’s victims. You’ll be safe.”
She gave a terse nod and he released her arm. She didn’t have any reason to believe Ian would come between her and a man he had gone through hell with, and yet she was reassured by his words.
Leah followed Ian out of the terminal and into a cool summer morning. The sun was just beginning to color behind the blocky silhouette of the Oslo airport, and a gentle breeze rippled over her shirt. The long-term parking lot was a flat, wide square of freshly blackened pavement. Leah was astounded by how clean it was: there wasn’t a single cigarette butt or a smeared piece of gum to be seen. Cars slumbered in neat rows, casting hulking shadows over the painted lines delineating slots. A bird trilled from a copse of trees beyond the lot, and the air smelled like a mixture of morning dew and airplane exhaust.
Ian led her to the back of the lot and depressed the button on his a key fob. The floodlights flashed on a black pickup truck that looked almost identical to the one he’d rented in Scotland. He threw his bag into the bed of the truck and then took hers and lifted it over the side. Leah walked around the hood and opened the passenger door. Before she pulled herself inside she hesitated.
This was her last chance. If Ian was who Vincente claimed he was, she was signing her own death warrant by getting into the truck. Then she remembered the cold look on Vincente’s face as he’d flown past her on the motorcycle, and she climbed in.
Ian twisted the key and the engine leapt to life with a powerful purr. The blue lights on the dashboard blinked on and so did the temperature gauge over the console. It was eleven degrees Celsius. She had no idea what that was in Fahrenheit, but it felt like the high forties to her.
“How far is your office?” she asked as he shifted the truck into gear.
“About twenty minutes.”
At the parking booth he opened his wallet and flipped past both pounds and euros before finding his parking ticket stub beside a wad of kroner. Leah had never seen Norwegian currency before and liked how the notes were different colors: the fifty was green, the one hundred red, the two hundred blue, and so on.
The blonde woman manning the booth smiled pleasantly at Ian and took his ticket before saying something in Norwegian. He replied in like, and Leah was fascinated to hear the guttural, Germanic language tumble from his mouth. Once he paid the woman an unseemly amount of kroner that Leah really hoped exchanged into far fewer dollars, Ian pulled out of the lot and headed toward an interstate ramp.
“How many languages do you speak?” she asked. She was vastly impressed when he had to take a few moments to think about it.
“Seven.”
“Seven! Which ones? English, Norwegian, Russian…”
“Swedish, Finnish, Arabic, and French. What languages do you speak?”
Chagrined, she said, “Two. English and legalese.”
“Legalese?”
“Lawyer jargon.”
Ian’s teeth flashed. “How long have you been a paralegal?”
“How did you know I was a paralegal?” she asked suspiciously.
“You mentioned it.”
“I did? You have a good memory.”
“Yes.”
“About five years, right after I dropped out of law school.”
He flipped on his blinker and used the right lane to pass a slow-moving hybrid. “Why did you drop out of law school?”
She looked out the window, watching as the city of Oslo flew past in a gray blur of concrete, lights, and cars, and mindlessly repeated her mother’s lament. “I can’t commit to anything worth doing.”
“That’s untrue.”
Leah turned to him and lifted a brow. “How would you know?”
“You committed to being a paralegal for five years.”
“She says that’s easy work.”
“She?”
“My mother.”
“But it’s not?”
“Not with my boss, it isn’t,” Leah muttered.
Ian continued with his reasoning. “You risked your life helping Sokolov because you thought it was the right thing to do, and you’ve committed yourself to coming with me for the same reason. I’ve known you for twelve hours and I can already tell you’re the kind of person who commits to what she believes in.”
Leah pushed back against an unexpected rush of emotion and slid her gaze to the road. It was the kindest thing anyone had said to her in a long time, and it had come from a man who barely knew her.
“What about you?” she asked, ready to change the topic. “What exactly is it you do now that you’re no longer Special Forces?”
“I find people.”
“Like runaways?”
“Sometimes. My friend Erik and I opened Northern Wolf Services when we left the military. We provide specialty services for private citizens, but we also occasionally take on government contracts. My particular skill set is in hunting people, usually people who don’t want to be found.” Then he added, “Or people who have been taken against their will.”
“Kidnapped kids?”
“Yeah.”
Leah turned her head to look at him. His face was unreadable, his gaze taking in the road and the cars they passed, cataloguing everything. He was an incredibly observant man, and she supposed that was why he was good at tracking down people. He didn’t miss much. “Do you always find the people you’re looking for?”
His lips twitched. “You mean, do I ‘always get my man’?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
His eyes left the road to briefly meet hers, and when he responded the expression in them was cold. “You better believe it.”
Holy crap. Chills raced down her arms, and she wasn’t so sure it was because of the crispness of the morning air. Ian reached over and turned the heat on. He added grimly, “Unfortunately, I don’t always find them in time.”
It bothered him, she realized. He was a man who took his failures personally. “So if you find people who have gone missing, what does your business partner, Erik, do?”
“He finds things.”
“Like stolen jewelry and stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“Does everyone at your company find something?”
Ian veered toward an exit ramp. “Not exactly. But you’ll figure that out soon.”
For some reason, that didn’t reassure her.
>
Chapter 13
Northern Wolf Services was located in downtown Oslo on a busy street lined with banks, corporate business offices, and brightly painted tourist shops. Sidewalks flanked both sides of the street, and neatly pruned trees and sleek trashcans were positioned every fifty yards. The grainy scent of baked rye wafted from one of the city’s most famous bakeries, and the air was heavy with salt from the harbor on which Oslo was settled.
Ian turned into the entrance of a parking garage and waved a security card at a laser reader and the rolled metal door lifted. Ten yards farther and Daniel, their building security chief, stopped the vehicle and stared past Ian to Leah. In Norwegian he asked Ian how he was that morning. Ian replied in English, which was standard Northern Wolf protocol. If he’d replied in Norwegian the man would have known something was amiss. Daniel gave a short nod and waved them on.
Ian parked in his reserved spot beside four other identical black pickup trucks, two black SUVs, and a shocking red sports car. Leah was staring at the vehicles so he said, “Company fleet.”
“Who gets to drive the super expensive red sports car?” she asked.
“Whoever needs to look like he has money.”
They left their bags in the truck and took the stairwell to the third floor where the main office was located. The first and second floors were for equipment storage and Northern Wolf’s personal training center. The fourth floor functioned as an emergency safe house.
Ian scanned his fingerprint over the glass keypad by the entrance, and the shiny metal fire doors slid open with a hydraulic whoosh.
Leah lifted a brow. “Who are you, James Bond?”
He shrugged. “We tend to piss off a lot of people.”
She followed him into a small entryway with walls of matte stone and a discretely placed camera in the corner of the ceiling. Ian knew that someone, probably Mia, was viewing them on a monitor. Barring their entrance was another set of doors with a keypad. This keypad required both a scan of his finger and ID card before they slid open and granted them access to the main floor.
Finding Lies Page 7