“He’s an undercover man. That’s how they catch criminals. It’s not pretty, but it works. Thompson needed information andlikely didn’t know if he could trust you. He approached you in a way that made sense.”
That type of deceit would never make sense in her world. But she wasn’t in her world anymore. She was in a world of pretense and lies. A world where men handled guns with silencers as comfortably as a pen. A world where people dumped phones so they couldn’t be tracked. A world with explosions. A world where bodies were burned beyond recognition. A world that was not safe.
A world she didn’t have the skills to navigate alone.
“Can I trust him?”
“Come to DC. I’ll get to the bottom of this. I’ll protect you.”
She wasn’t going to DC. There was no way she was dragging Christian deeper into this mess than she already had. Sage and Ryker had saved her life. Literally. If she went to DC, she’d bring the danger that was stalking her to all of them. She would never do that. She loved them all too much.
“Can I trust him?” she repeated.
“Rose, this is not the time for you to be stubborn. Come here. Let me help you.”
She asked a third time, pouring ice and determination into her tone. “Can. I. Trust. Him?”
Christian sighed wearily. She didn’t know if he was still tired from surgery or exasperated by her refusal.
“Men like Aleksei Thompson don’t change. He has excellent skills, and they’re still sharp. He wouldn’t be a trainer if they were rusty. Soldiers and agents don’t get the commendations and reviews he received unless they’re loyal and willing to serve at any cost. He might lie to you. He might do things you don’t like or agree with, but a man like that would give his life to keep an innocent civilian safe. A man like that would die for you if he had to.”
And that was the kicker, wasn’t it? Her heart hadn’t been wrong in recognizing the goodness in Aleksei—it had just been wrong in interpreting his general goodness as affection for her specifically. Being around him, knowing that he’d played her, knowing their deep conversations had been faked and that his feelings for her were an act was going to be hard. Really hard.
But whether she liked it or not, if she wanted to live through this, staying with Aleksei was her best option.
Chapter Eighteen
Rosemary jolted awake in the passenger seat of Aleksei’s F150. The last thing she remembered was him eating a toxic-looking egg sandwich and studying a paper map in the parking lot of an all-night gas station while the dogs snored, snuggled together in the back seat. She hadn’t seen anyone navigate using a paper map since she was a kid, but he seemed comfortable doing it. It was probably a military thing. She wasn’t going to ask. She needed to work on creating distance, not on getting to know him better.
She rubbed her gritty eyes, trying to figure out where they were. When she’d asked him where they were headed, he’d said, “working on it.” Maybe he hadn’t figured it out yet. Maybe he was intentionally keeping her in the dark. It didn’t matter. At this point, she had no choice but to follow his lead. She’d left her car in a remote parking lot at Ricketts Glen and ditched her phone. She’d followed orders like a robot, the pain of his betrayal leaving her numb.
Sleep had helped. Now, curiosity nipped at her.
The truck was stopped on a dirt road. The headlights illuminated a steep hill to the left and a sharp drop to the right.It was hard to see in the darkness, but the few trees out her window appeared to be growing sideways, giving her a sense that the road was too narrow for the truck. At any moment, it seemed they would tumble over the edge. She gripped the armrest as if her fingers had the power to hold the tires to the road. In the rearview window, there was nothing but black. The quiet of the forest around them was ominous. This place felt unwelcome.
Of course, maybe it was the giant fence topped with wicked-looking barbed wire blocking their path and the hugeNo Trespassingsign that was creating the vibe.
“Wait here,” Aleksei said as he jumped out of the truck, leaving the driver’s door ajar. Cold air nipped at her face while she watched him jog to the side of the road and fiddle with a square metal box on a post. Worried that her wig might have shifted while she slept, she flipped the visor down and ran her nails under the edges, giving her scalp a good scratch before ensuring the wig was straight and firmly in place. A soft creak brought her attention to the road, where the fence was parting in the middle, swinging inward.
Aleksei hopped back in, an expression of relief on his face. “I wasn’t sure if that was going to work. If it didn’t, we’d be making camp right here on the road, and Virus would be pissed. Scratch that. More pissed than usual. His everyday mood is pricklier than a puffer fish.”
She rubbed her eyes again. He wasn’t making any sense. She wasn’t sure if it was because she was still groggy from sleep or he was talking nonsense.
“What didn’t you think would work? And did you sayVirus? Is that a person?”
He laughed as the truck engine roared to life. It was a deep, warm rumble that made her think of morning-after breakfasts and kisses over coffee. Her mind jumped away from the imagelike a hand that got too close to a flame. Her subconscious needed to stop filling her head with romantic images.
“Sorry. There’s a fingerprint sensor near the gate. We’re in Trout Run. Virus is a friend of mine. He’s not particularly friendly, but he is a friend. We can trust him.”
He’d saidwe,notI. As if they were a couple.
Head, not heart. Focus on the facts.
“Where’s Trout Run? Why are we here? And if this guy is so unfriendly, do you think maybe you should avoid calling him Virus?”
More warm rumbling laughter turned her bones to marshmallow, but the sound was shorter this time. Aleksei’s hands gripped the wheel firmly, and he continually scanned the sides of the road. The ground to her right slowly leveled out as they drove. Now she saw only thick trees on both sides and the dusty gray-brown road that cut through them.
“We’re about seventy miles west of Ricketts Glen, but it took us several hours to get here because I took all the back roads. I wanted to avoid cameras on the highways. The route I took is rural, so we won’t be easily trackable like we would on the highway. We need a safe place to rest and regroup, and I don’t think anyone will think to look for us here—at least not for a few days.”