by Zoe York
For the first time in his life, Kent had a problem and no clue of how to fix it.
— SIX —
Kent twisted, snarling at his reflection. It was the first she’d seen of him not falling in love with the mirror.
“Problem?” she asked.
“Several. Why am I wearing this?”
“Because the gho is the traditional uniform—”
“So?”
“And a man visiting to impress his wife’s family would want—”
“I’m an American. I get a pass.”
“It’s the required dress for work and school here. If the goal is—”
“I can’t kill anyone in this.”
“That’s not the goal, Kent. Getting the Amber Room is. Why wouldn’t you wear something that makes our travels easier?”
He frowned and plucked at the fabric of his multi-colored sleeve. “When was the last time you were here? What makes you so certain about this? I don’t quite buy your premise.”
“What exactly is your problem? Are you saying that you don’t appreciate the traditions of my people?”
“I did not say that.”
“That our clothing is hideous?” She leaned in with her arms crossed, thoroughly enjoying watching him squirm.
But Kent wasn’t a pushover. He leaned in too. “All of a sudden it’s my people and our clothing. You weren’t loving this place last night.”
He looked like a cat waiting for the mousetrap to snap, but he hadn’t set a decent ambush. “I stand by what I said then and what I say today. I love my mother’s people and my father’s too. Governments? They disappoint, but people are the heart of a country. The clothes stay on. Besides, I look rather nice in my mother’s kira.”
These outfits belonged to her parents. Her father with his blond hair looked more at ease in it than this blond-haired man before her. That wasn’t to say Kent looked bad in it. There probably wasn’t much he didn’t look good in.
Dangerous line of thinking.
She rechecked the folds of her green and pink kira and pinned the second length of it near her shoulder. The silver brooch here matched the one on the opposite side, simple, but polished and neat.
She caught Kent staring in the reflection and shrugged. “I like it.”
“My wife’s hot.”
“Why, thank you.”
“Yours look’s cooler than this.” He pinched the wide sleeve of his gho. “Mine looks like a lame kimono.”
“You’re being insulting again.”
He turned to the side, checking his profile over his shoulder. “Fine. I’ll do it. If anybody can pull this outfit off, it’s me.”
“Along with an entire nation. You look like a husband that my imaginary family could be proud of.” Her real one too. She let herself imagine it, only because it was so ridiculous. A man like Kent was too flirtatious to ever settle down. She couldn’t either. She had too much to prove to the world.
Something thunked. Kent crossed the room in long, quick, strides and pressed his ear to the wall. “I think our friends are heading out. Grab your things, and move.”
They rushed to follow the German tourists out the hotel, down the street, and to the gated entrance of Bhutan.
Step one: Get exit stamps from India. Done in two seconds, but then, that had never been the worry.
Step two: The border itself.
It wasn’t so much a road or pedestrian walkway as a glob of shoving bodies. Day laborers, men in suits, tourists with maps, all with wide eyes that looked northward. Some stopped for pictures between the two nations. A few braver ones snapped selfies with clenched-jawed guards in sharp-creased suits.
“Are you ready?”
Kent, predictably, winked. “Things women never have to ask me.”
They inserted themselves in the thick of the crowd. Those who appeared overtly western were pulled straight away. Meanwhile, agents waved in other groups with barely a second glance.
Elena was among them. She held open her passport, and after a quick glance, was ignored. One second. That was the sum total of time she took to let go of Kent’s hand and ease the passport into a hidden interior pocket of her kira. It was also the time it took for things to go to shit.
Kent barked out her name.
By the time she turned around, three guards pinned him in a tight circle of suspicion. Elena pushed her way back. If the soldiers flipped through every page of his passport, they were screwed. Sure, they had backup stories, but it’d alert the Bhutanese central government and God knew who else.
She sidestepped two large men, popping up on her toes to catch Kent again in the crowd. He pointed to her and waved. As she closed the distance between them, Kent’s laugh sliced through the air, and the elephant sitting on her chest eased up a little.
The great charmer indeed.
Kent bowed at her approach, his passport still clenched tight in his hands. “I was just telling them how much your mother hates me and how we’re really hoping the baby will make things better.”
“Probably not. Need this?” Elena flashed her red passport. One man reached for it. She met him halfway, shoving it into his chest, before directing her attention back to Kent. “As long as you don’t start complaining about things that can’t be changed, we won’t have a problem.”
“So now it’s my fault?”
“Well, it’s not hers. She’s from a different time and a different place. It won’t hurt you to be a little more—”
“Me? Me? I’m not the one who...”
The soldier flicked her passport between them. “Welcome home, and welcome to Bhutan. Next!”
Their lovers’ spat continued for another two intersections until they were well away from the checkpoint. With one last look over his shoulder, Kent stretched and held out a primed fist.
She bumped it with one of her own. “Now, we just need to get a rental car and—”
“I like fighting with you.”
“That’s...okay. I’ll get a rental car. Hang outside. I think—”
“That man has western clothes.”
“Focus, Kent.”
“So does that one and that dude over there.”
“Your point?”
He tugged at the collar of his gho. “No point, I guess.”
“Good. Now, let’s—”
“It’s just, you insisted I wear this to prevent drama. It didn’t work, and that’s fine. But there’s a lesson to be learned here.”
“And what’s that?”
“You’re not right about everything, Elena.”
— SEVEN —
Kent had stayed on her bad side since he’d called her out this morning, and she was perfectly willing to leave him there. If there was one thing she hated, it was people who had to be right all the time. She hadn’t asked him to walk down a mountain on his fingertips, merely to put on a damned outfit.
At least it hadn’t affected her driving. Unlike the bus, here, she was in complete control. With her life in her own hands, she handled the narrow roads like a pro, even if her fists were clenched around the steering wheel.
Kent hadn’t said anything too wide of the mark. Just the truth. Still, she didn’t like being truthed to death.
“Elena, can we talk?”
“No.”
“People who think they’re right all the time usually end up getting proven wrong at the worst of times. I didn’t say it to be mean, just to prove a point.”
“I will not be chastised like a child.”
“That’s a little strong.”
“Fine. I will not be chastised like a child by a boy-man who is—”
“Boy-man?”
“More concerned with what he’s wearing than—”
“Jesus, lady. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t apologize? I can’t win with you.”
“Then stop trying.” Jerk.
And that had been the end of their conversation until they reached the capital city of Thim
pu. Gold-capped buildings peeked over the road. Ancient monasteries and white-walled forts were the trademarks of this country. Back home in Stockholm, buildings loomed. Here, the height felt more like a warm shelter from the spring chill.
The small town where she’d trained in the north of Sweden had ten or so stoplights. Here in the capital of Bhutan? None so far, and perhaps none for many years to come. Traffic moved slowly, thanks to blue-suited patrol officers, who popped from little red and orange huts when too many cars rumbled through an intersection at once.
Many men wore ghos, but just as many sported western clothes. She absolutely dared Kent to say something. Blessedly, he kept his mouth shut until they hit one of the busier areas of the city. “Do you need me to drive the next leg?”
“I once sat in the same position for nine hours straight to get the perfect shot.”
Kent’s head lolled to the side. “Let me guess. You killed the guy, along with twenty other terrorists, using the same bullet. So, no, you don’t need me to drive.”
“Something like that. Pump the petrol.” She pulled into the station and slammed the door behind her. “I’ll get canisters for extra.”
She left Kent and the attendant speaking in broken English and stepped inside the small store. No one paid much attention to her as she filled her arms with liters of bottled water. Someone bumped against her, or maybe she hit something on the right.
No.
No way.
She was being pick-pocketed. Elena dropped her bundle and whirled around with her arm out, sending an elbow into the throat of the young man shoving her phone into his pocket.
The cashier rushed over screaming, but the gagging teenager stumbled backward with his hands locked against his reddening, veiny throat. She grabbed the phone. The thief moved like Frankenstein’s monster. His rigid arms and face locked in terror, and his legs seemed unsure of the floor beneath him. Rivers flowed from his eyes as he turned and stumbled away.
Damn. That move was one she’d perfected early on in her career. It could kill without medical attention.
Elena dried sweat-drenched hands against her kira, picked up her phone and water bottles, and threw some money at the gap-mouthed cashier.
The man’s jaw hardened to stone, and his eyes shrunk to pinpricks of suspicion.
“Silly boy. I know his mother. She’ll have him when I tell her what he tried to do.” She’d spoken in Nepali. It was a natural slip—to speak the language her mother had taught her, but at hearing it, the cashier threw her money back.
“The boy has no mother, Southerner,” the man said in a crisp Dzongkha, the language once forced on her mother’s people.
Time to go.
She left the money and got the hell out of there. In a capital of fewer than a hundred thousand people, news traveled fast, especially news involving both a foreigner and a Lhotshampan...and possibly a dead teenager. She had to find that kid, get him to safety, and place Thimphu firmly in their rearview mirror.
“Kent.”
Kent and the gas attendant, by now the oldest damned friends in the world, were doubled over in back-slapping laughter. “Are you finished, my lovely wife?”
“Yes, dear husband. We should get on the road.”
“Well...” His eyes flickered over her shoulder to the cashier now yelling out behind her. “Probably a good idea.”
*****
“My stupid eye. I didn’t see him coming. Hell, I can’t even see him now.” Elena twisted her whole body around to see out of the right side passenger seat.
“You can.” Kent had paid the lot attendant god knows how much money and got out of there, leaving the backup tank behind. If they didn’t have time to go back for the extra gas, they sure didn’t have time to look for some thief who’d laid hands on Elena.
“He couldn’t have been more than sixteen. He didn’t deserve that.”
“It’s not your fault, Elena. You didn’t start this. You sure as shit finished it, but you didn’t start it. There was a threat, and you removed it. It’s not as if you rushed him for no good reason. Your body reacted the way it was supposed to.”
She snorted and shook her head. “It’s my body’s fault. I can’t trust it anymore. I’m five seconds too late for everything. I didn’t sense him until—”
“You sensed him enough to stop him. Imagine how bad things would have been if he’d kept your phone.”
“Well for one, he’d still be alive.”
“You don’t know that he isn’t.”
She uumphed and tapped the window. “Turn left. I think I saw someone stumbling around the corner.”
“Good. Now we can leave.”
“We can’t. Let me check. Please, Kent. I don’t need this weighing me down either.”
It must go against what her training told her to do. Instinct had sent her arm back, and now she wasn’t trusting it. That same instinct ought to be screaming the need to drive the fuck on, but with one small part of her gone, she seemed unable to trust the other ninety-nine percent.
Worse, she was throwing him off his game. Everything inside him said, fuck the thief, ignore the woman, and get the hell on with the mission. And he would.
Definitely.
For sure.
Or would have, if not for the look on her face. The confidence was gone. Her lips hung too low. “I’ve killed before, Kent. You don’t know what it’s like.”
Well, shit. Kent signaled and took the car down the narrow street, one eye on the road and the other on the mirror for cops. “I have and I do.”
“Really?”
Her shock said so much more than those six teeny letters. The urge to correct her, even at the risk of digging up memories better off buried, twisted in his chest. Something primal. Deep. A basic yearning to let her know that he was a man, one who’d been through fire and come out on the other side—a man willing to go back and pull her out of it. “If it means anything to you, Elena, I have killed. That doesn’t make me any better or any worse than you or the person you thought I was before. You don’t judge a man by his body count. You judge him on what he did, what he felt he had to do. Taking a life isn’t a prize.”
“I didn’t...you don’t look like...”
He didn’t look at her face, not certain he’d like what he’d find: shock, or worse, admiration for his kills. He kept his eyes locked ahead. “You put on armor after going through hell, and everybody’s armor is a bit different. Heads up. I think we found your boy.”
A lanky teenager bent against the wall, back heaving and palms braced against his shaking knees. The boy’s eyes bugged out, and he turned as if to run, but Kent drove behind to cut him off while Elena hopped out of the still-swinging door.
Kent reached for his gun, but the kid’s guttural voice squeaked what could only be an apology. Elena spoke to him like a mother with a crying kid in her arms. A pained smile cracked the boy’s face. Then she tapped her eye and Kent knew she shared something with the boy that she hadn’t yet trusted Kent with.
He turned away and walked back to the car, giving them the moment. Elena returned not much later, smiling. “The neck is mostly cartilage, and he’s young, but all the same, I gave him a small fortune and promised him more when he came back from the doctor’s office.”
“Ah.” Kent put the car in reverse, driving them out of the alley. “And how are you going to find him?”
“I won’t, but it was the only carrot strong enough to make him move. He’ll go...and look, there he is now.”
Kent punched the horn. The kid jumped in the street and pivoted enough for Kent to capture his image on his Ambra issued phone. He’d make sure the kid got his money. It might not be now, but someday—when the kid applied for work or a permit—he’d have his picture taken by the government. He’d be databased and catalogued, and Kent would be waiting on the other side to give the once nameless face a belated gift. “In one to three years, we’re going to be out on a beach celebrating.”
“You’re flirting
right now?”
“You’ll know when I’m flirting, Elena. Right now, I’m simply speaking the truth. And the truth is, you’ll want this date.”
“Because?”
“Because that’ll be the day I make your promise to that boy come true, dear. When you join Ambra, you’ll find that our best weapon is intelligence. Finding information and using it. Sometimes to steal. Sometimes to help. Sometimes to find the perfect partner for a mission...”
“Enough already.”
“And sometimes, to find a thief you promised something to. It’s a date, then?”
— EIGHT —
She wouldn’t fall for it. The man proved himself a troublemaker time and time again. There was no way his antics were looked upon favorably by this Dragon, who had so much power.
Elena lodged another brick in the wall surrounding her heart. It had started to crumble in the bus and again in the hotel, but her job was too important to screw up, even for an annoying cutie like Kent. The weird mix of him—cocky and sweet—drove her insane.
A good insane.
A dangerous insane.
An insanity that she didn’t have time to entertain.
The car rolled to a stop at the checkpoint outside the city gates. She needn’t have worried. The charm offensive rolled on strong, and that, combined with their passports, visas, and marriage certificate, were enough to get them waved through.
He’d been quiet on the ride, other than double-checking the directions every half hour or so. Kent looked as if he wanted to say something. His full lips would part, his eyebrow would quiver, and he’d close his mouth. Finally, she’d had enough. “What?”
Kent shook his head. “It’s not my place to ask.”
“But you want to?”
He shrugged and rewrapped his scarf. The poor thing had absolutely no tolerance for cool weather.
“You should be on a mission in the islands, I think.”
Kent’s fingers snapped, and that wide smile of his did more for the chill than anything mechanical. “I have said this countless times. No one hears my plaintive pleas. No one cares.” He looked over expectantly. “I care,” he mouthed, egging her on until she laughingly gave in.
