Poison Evidence Page 18

  “It’s just, I can’t turn back. Not for you. Not for me. It’s impossible. And when you asked me to cut a deal… Well, you don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “Then tell me. Why are you doing this?”

  “Why did you divorce Patrick?” he asked again.

  She was too raw to go there, to share that pain with this man who’d cut her nearly as deep after she’d surrendered so completely. She pushed up from the ground. The landscape had shifted. Or maybe she had. Either way, she needed a new map to navigate what she’d just discovered was landmine-laden terrain. “I’m going for a hike. Don’t follow me.”

  “Ivy, it’s not safe—”

  “Just leave me alone. Please.” She pushed aside branches and headed for the saddle of the island. She’d give herself an hour to get her head together, then it was back to the cave to get ready for another night of data collection. She would find the AUUV, hand it over to a team of SEALs, and go the hell home.

  Dimitri watched Ivy escape through the thick vegetation. He had no choice but to follow her, for her safety. She was unarmed, and he had no doubt more men from Hill’s former organization were on the hunt for her and CAM.

  But he’d give her space, as she requested, and follow at a distance.

  Shit. Could he be a bigger asshole? She’d misinterpreted his words in the worst, most painful way, which told him something about her relationship with her ex.

  He’d witnessed so much of her strength, he’d failed to see how much pain she hid. So maybe she was a good actress—in one area, at least.

  But then, hiding pain from one’s enemies was a basic survival skill, and this was a reminder that even though they’d made love, even though he’d come to care about her far more than he should, they were still and would always be enemies.

  And he’d unintentionally used sex to break through her strongest defense shield.

  Ahead of him, she skirted around one of the skylights, a small opening that looked down on the lower chamber of the cave. Where he’d just made love to her, then gutted her because she dared to ask him to find a reason to live.

  He covered her trail as he followed. He’d have to do the same on the return. At least the soft canopy bounced back quickly, and evening rain would likely erase any vestiges of their passing.

  At last, Ivy settled in a patch of sunlight, but instead of staring upward, she faced the soft ground and drew shapes in the dirt. Thirty minutes passed as he watched her, hidden from her view by a leafy plant, but he had no doubt she was aware he guarded her.

  She jumped up all at once and turned back for the cave. He tucked himself deeper in the shadows as she passed, then visited her seat in the sunlight. He paused before erasing her markings, his heart feeling tight at the necessity for wiping away this glimpse into her psyche.

  A series of triangles were drawn in the dirt, followed by symbols and complex equations he couldn’t begin to understand.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Luke held Undine on the tarmac and kissed her one more time. The Raptor jet was refueled and ready for the long flight to Palau.

  She dropped back to her heels with her hands behind his neck. “Don’t underestimate him. He’s Dimitri Veselov, not Parker Reeves, and he’s not your friend.”

  He nodded. “Don’t worry. I won’t make that mistake again.” He released Undine and nodded to Ian Boyd. “Let’s roll.”

  Undine hugged Ian. “Watch his back,” she said. “Or I’ll kick your ass.”

  Ian laughed. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Luke took a step toward the jet, then stopped and faced her. Her long dark hair whipped up in the wind, and, as it always did, his heart flipped just looking at her. His fiancée. His past. His future. “I love you,” he said with feeling, not the rote words of their daily good-bye before he headed to work.

  Her eyes lit, and she smiled. “Cool.”

  He laughed. Her reply only pulled him in deeper. Leaving Undine for a job would never be easy; they had too much lost time to make up for.

  She grabbed his shirt and kissed him one more time. “I love you too. Stay safe, both of you. And bring Ivy back.”

  “Will do, Undine,” Ian said, then climbed the steps to the private jet.

  With one last look at the woman who’d become his world, Luke followed Ian up the steps, then gave a low whistle as he took in the plush corporate jet. “This is quite the step up from the military flights we used when heading to a deployment.”

  “Working for Raptor has its perks.”

  “Did Keith give you a spiel to pass on to try to recruit me?” Luke asked as he stowed his suitcase in a storage compartment.

  “Pretty much. But he also knows it’s futile.”

  “Yeah. I’m out of the game. If this weren’t personal, I wouldn’t be here.”

  They settled into their seats. One of the pilots sealed the door, and they were airborne just moments later—a perk of being able to use the small Port Angeles airport—no waiting as they would have at SeaTac or Boeing Field.

  Definite perk. But still, Luke wasn’t interested. His life was in Washington with Undine, and he was happy working for NOAA—and thankful his bosses had approved open-ended leave at the last minute so he could embark on this mission.

  It didn’t hurt that Curt Dominick personally made the request, but still, after last fall, his employers were more than happy to give him whatever he wanted, as long as he continued to wear the NOAA uniform. They wanted to move him into public relations, but he’d flat-out refused. He didn’t want to be the poster boy for the organization. He wanted to be an anonymous marine biologist. He wanted to continue his study of the effects of sonar on marine mammal navigation.

  But today, the whales would have to wait.

  “Here’s everything we know about Veselov,” Ian said, setting a thin stack of files on the table between them. “And here’s what we know about Jack Keaton.” He set another, even thinner stack on top. “There is a real Jack Keaton. He was in the Air Force. Right age, height, and build for Veselov to pass as him. Eighteen months ago, the real Keaton took off, crewing on sailboats to travel the world. His last known stop was Australia about six months ago. Someone fed Veselov the ID, which has the DIA worried about the real Keaton. They’re trying to trace his steps and track him down.

  “Veselov showed up in Palau about five weeks after Reeves bailed from the Osprey,” Ian added.

  Luke flinched. Dimitri Veselov wouldn’t have escaped if Luke hadn’t let him.

  “He set up shop as a charter captain,” Ian continued. “And generally ingratiated himself with the locals and American expats very quickly. Took several officials out on multiday trips for free—to get a feel for the ports, he said. Likely he was laying the groundwork for his search. Had a reputation for being congenial. Good drinking buddy, and he knows boats and the water like no one’s business.” Ian paused. “A good spy is always everyone’s best friend. The friendship is usually genuine, or his cover might crack—it’s hard to fake it for extended periods of time. As a case officer, I always zeroed in on one trait I liked in the spies I ran and used that to work my way in.”

  Luke grimaced again. He’d met congenial Parker. He hated that he’d still believed the persona, even after learning he was a spy. “Who invited him to the party?”

  “The governor of Melekeok—who he’d taken on several cruises through the Rock Islands. It’s possible Veselov chose to target the party, knowing Ivy would be there and he could swoop in and save her.”

  “I thought it was assumed he got lucky there? He wasn’t connected to the men who attacked the party?”

  “The DIA believes there is a link between Veselov and the assault.”

  “According to Ivy, he killed three men on the boat—two of whom were the same men who attempted to abduct her in the mangrove swamp.”

  “Yes. The DIA believes he betrayed his partners. Probably to further win Ivy’s trust.”

  “Motherfucker,” Luke said.

 
“It gets worse. She told Dominick that she slept with him after the assault—before he abducted her.”

  “So…if he’s had any luck winning back her trust, we can assume Ivy’s drinking his Kool-Aid. She may even try to protect him.”

  “Yes. Given that she willingly turned off the signal for CAM and she hasn’t reported in since the initial call when she explained why, it’s possible she’s protecting him already.”

  “Everyone seems pretty certain she wasn’t involved in Hill’s treason,” Luke said. “What’s your take?” He figured no one else would have as honest an assessment, given that Ian had been the one to take down Hill in the end.

  “I wondered when I first met her, but after getting to know her, no way. She doesn’t fit the profile. She’s not like the women who ally themselves with terrorist groups and arms dealers. Believe me, I know the type. She and Cressida have grown close. She feels guilty in the way that only the innocent feel, like she’s responsible for what happened because she didn’t see through Hill’s lies and couldn’t warn anyone.”

  “Why did she divorce Hill?”

  “She told Cressida he was banging an intern.”

  Luke picked up the file that outlined Veselov’s life as Jack Keaton. He read the statements gathered by the DIA and FBI, surprised that both organizations were willing to pass on the information, but then, Ivy was a senator’s cousin and once again, the attorney general was personally involved because one of his wife’s subordinates was in danger—and it appeared the DIA had set her up for the bullshit assignment.

  DIA was in full damage-control mode and were probably more than happy to have Alec Ravissant privately fund her exfiltration—as long as they did it nice and quiet like and left the DIA out of it.

  After he reviewed everything twice, he tapped a name that had popped up in both Ivy’s and Veselov’s dossiers. “Ulai Umetaro lives in an apartment above his floatplane hangar in the same marina where Veselov lived aboard Liberty. They are drinking buddies, and Umetaro was Ivy’s pilot for that first week in Palau. We start with Umetaro.”

  “Agreed,” Ian said. “He’s the most likely to know where Veselov has been searching for the AUUV over the last few months.”

  Ivy rubbed her eyes again as she slouched in front of the computer. It was two a.m. and clear that she was fried, yet she resisted going to bed. Of course, Dimitri understood. The wall between them was impenetrable, but their sleeping arrangements remained the same. “Time to bring RON home and get some sleep,” he said firmly.

  She tapped the power meter on the display. “There’s enough juice to finish the flyover of that island.”

  “You’re so fried, you’re liable to crash him into a hillside.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” She sighed. “Tomorrow, we need to visit the island. I need to ground-truth the data. CAM is having trouble identifying a few features and needs calibration.”

  “Can we go at dusk?”

  “I’d rather go earlier. I don’t have the same night vision that RON has, and the vegetation there is really thick. My luck, I’d rub up against a dozen poison trees in the dark.”

  “Fine.”

  She brought RON back to the cave and closed down the system, then retreated to the lower level. “You coming?” she asked when he didn’t follow.

  “No,” he said. He’d give her the space she needed. “I’m going to sleep on the hilltop. Too hot in the cave.” Too hot sleeping next to Ivy, wanting her but knowing it wasn’t fair to her. The deeper they got involved, the more she’d want him to fight. The harder it would be for her to face the final outcome.

  So he’d leave her alone. Done and out.

  She stopped on the staircase and met his gaze, then gave a sharp nod.

  He grabbed a sleeping pad and thin blanket from the supplies and climbed the hill. He set up his bed near one of the skylights. He could hear her, guard her, from here.

  He stripped down to boxer briefs and lay down. Without light pollution, clouds, or moon, the stars were crystal clear. A vast universe unfolding above him.

  It put him in his place, seeing the cosmos. He was but one man, insignificant amid the vastness of time and space. He’d done something good and important once, that night with Luke on the Interceptor. He’d helped save thousands of lives. But even that wouldn’t register against the hundred billion planets in the Milky Way galaxy, let alone the multiverse and all the infinite possible universes.

  In an infinite number of those universes, he’d never been a spy. In at least one of those, his parents didn’t die in that car wreck, and after the Iron Curtain came down, they moved to the US, where he met Ivy in college. In that universe, he probably was a science major of some sort. Marine biology, or astrophysics if that Dimitri could handle the math. They married after graduation and had three kids. Patrick Hill was a goat who was killed in a farming accident, and the man who raped Sophia was never born.

  In that universe, he wasn’t a killer.

  A satellite drifted across the sky, hard to spot among the multitude of stars. It could be a US spy satellite, searching for him, here, in this universe, where he was a spy and an assassin for Team Russia with no future.

  They’d better get a lead on the AUUV tomorrow. He didn’t know how much longer they’d be able to work together before he did something stupid, like start to hope for a future with Ivy in this world.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “I’ve done all I can without visiting the island to calibrate,” Ivy said as she stood from the workstation. She checked RON’s resting place, the narrow area where floor met ceiling in the dome-shaped space. Ninety percent charged, he’d be ready to fly by darkfall.

  “We’ll go out an hour before dusk. Tourists kayaking through the channels will be heading back to port then, and we’ll be less likely to be spotted.”

  She nodded. That gave them a few hours to kill. “May as well eat something. What can of food should we open tonight?”

  “We could fish. There’s a decent beach on the lower inward curve of the island.”

  “You aren’t worried we’ll be seen?”

  “I’ll set out the inflatable kayak. You’ll put on your bikini. It’ll look like we’re day trippers.”

  She crossed her arms and fixed him with a stern look. “If I’m going to wear the bikini, you’re going shirtless.”

  He laughed. “Of course.”

  It would be good to spend time out of the cave, to pretend, even if only for an hour, that she was just a simple tourist enjoying paradise.

  It wasn’t until she dropped her towel on the beach and reached for the sunblock that she realized her miscalculation. They didn’t have any spray, so Dimitri would have to apply it. It was too early in the day and she burned too easily to forgo the lotion.

  She held up the bottle. “When you’re done messing with the fishing pole, could you…?”

  He dropped the rod and reached for the bottle. She lifted her hair and presented her back, bracing herself for his touch.

  Which didn’t come.

  “Dimitri?”

  Featherlight touches came, high on her back, but there was no scent of lotion. No rubbing. The fleeting caress of fingers. Like the first night in the shower. He must be tracing the bruise she’d forgotten about.

  “Does it hurt?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

  “Not since the day…after.” The day he’d abducted her, and the pain in her back had become the last thing on her mind.

  It must’ve been too dark in the cave for him to notice it when he’d made love to her, or he’d simply been distracted.

  As he had that first night, he kissed the mark on her back, the physical reminder of all the ways in which a man who’d promised to love, honor, and cherish her had betrayed her in the worst possible way.

  “I’m so sorry, Ivy. I tell myself I’m better than your ex, but I’m not. I’m worse.”

  She turned to face him, but then couldn’t meet his gaze. She rested her forehead on his chest. “
You can’t possibly be worse than Patrick.” At least, she didn’t want to believe it. “If I tell you why I divorced him, will you tell me who is so important to you, you’re willing to abduct me?”

  It was unfair, really, this trade. Her story was minor compared, she suspected, to his. But he wanted to know why she left Patrick. Telling what happened was always humiliating, but she’d do it if it meant understanding Dimitri’s actions.

  He released her and picked up the fishing pole again. After a long silence in which he tied on a hook and baited it with grubs he’d collected from the jungle, he cast the line into the sea, then planted the pole in the sand.

  He dropped down on the towel next to her, then plucked the forgotten bottle of sunscreen from the sand and applied the sun-warmed lotion to her back. He ran his hands over her shoulders—more caress than application at that point—and kissed the back of her neck above the bikini tie.

  “I’ll tell you,” he said at last. He leaned his forehead on her back. “I’m no longer certain who is captive here and who is captee.”

  “I’m no one’s prisoner,” she said. “From the moment I had the opportunity to shoot you and didn’t take it, I’ve stayed with you of my own free will. Don’t for a moment think it’s been otherwise, or I’ll prove you wrong and leave right now.”

  He nodded and took her hand in his. “I don’t want you to leave. And not because of CAM.”

  His low-voiced words were exactly what she needed to hear. Patrick had only wanted her for the institute. The Navy only wanted CAM. And the DIA hadn’t wanted her to leave Palau even after she’d been assaulted because of what they’d hoped CAM could find for them.

  Even if it wasn’t true, it was nice to think Dimitri was interested in her for something other than what her high-tech little buddy could do.

  “You first,” he said. “Tell me what happened with Patrick.”

  “The simple version is he was banging one of the interns at the institute.”