Poison Evidence

by Rachel Grant

  “How very cliché of him.”

  “I said the same thing when I caught them.”

  “There’s more to it than that, or you wouldn’t have remained mum when accusations were flying hard and fast your way. Every reporter covering the story wanted to know why you left him a year before the world learned he was a traitor.”

  And here was the hard, embarrassing part. She raked her fingers through the warm sand. She drew a triangle, then another, before wiping them away and looking out toward the gently lapping waves. “After we’d been married for three years, Patrick and I began trying to conceive. The timing was right—I was thirty-three and ready to be a mom.” She stroked her belly. “I didn’t even know how much until we started trying.

  “He was in his early forties and had said he wanted to start a family almost from the moment we got married, but it took a little time for my biological clock to catch up with his. For about six months, we were actively trying to get pregnant. The day the test showed two lines, I was so excited, I couldn’t wait to tell him.”

  She closed her eyes. The shock of going from ultimate joy to ultimate pain hit her, even now.

  “I went to the office to surprise him, and like every bad cliché you’ve ever heard, I stepped into his outer office—it was after hours, and Perry, his right-hand man who was indicted along with him, had left for the day. I heard voices in his office. One shrill, young. I recognized the voice. The intern. Twenty-two. She’d been with us for three months, and I’d thought she had a thing for Perry—who, like Patrick, was too old for her. But she was an adult, and it was none of my business as long as it didn’t interfere with her work.”

  She dug her fingers in the sand again. It was grounding, the warmth and texture. She was here. With Dimitri. She just had to accept the pain that accompanied the memory would never fade. “I don’t blame her. She was young. Foolish. Starstruck. Don’t misunderstand—I was and remain pissed as hell at her—but I can cut a small amount of slack for her immaturity. Patrick did have that charisma. He was hard to resist.”

  Dimitri’s knuckles turned white. Was it wrong that she liked the outward sign of jealousy?

  Probably.

  “The news articles always made it sound like yours was a marriage of convenience. The logical choice—a merger of MacLeod and Hill.”

  “If only it were that simple.” She closed her eyes. It would have hurt so much less if that were the case. She opened her eyes again and stared out at the turquoise water. “And that right there is one of the reasons I never bothered to set the record straight. They had their own narrative. The truth was irrelevant. The media wanted to paint me as a villain right along with Patrick. They implied repeatedly that anyone cold enough to marry him for his money must be in league with him. If I denied their accusations, they would have said, ‘the lady doth protest too much.’ I couldn’t win. So I said nothing.” She raised her chin defiantly. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I married Patrick for love.”

  She traced another triangle in the sand, swallowing to fight the heartburn that came with admitting her shameful secret aloud. She’d loved Patrick and he’d…he’d sold CAM to terrorists while she was still in the research and development stage.

  “Perhaps the only thing more insulting than the press’s treatment of me was being called a whore by the man I’d just had sex with.”

  “I’m sorry. I was so far out of line.”

  “Yes. You were.” She wiped away the shape. “No one in the press seemed to care there was no reason to marry Patrick for a business alliance,” she continued. “MacLeod-Hill had already merged. Jessica—the girl. And yeah, I’m going to call her girl, not woman, because she might have been twenty-two, but she was still such a child.” She shrugged. “The feminist in me has to justify my word choice, even in private.”

  “No objections.”

  “Jessica was upset. Crying. I’m human, so I eavesdropped. After all, a girl was crying to my husband after hours in a closed office.” She glanced out toward the sea. Her hand curled into a fist. “Patrick told her she needed to be patient because he couldn’t leave me until after I was pregnant. He needed the baby to hold on to the institute, because of the contract he’d signed when we added him to the name. A MacLeod or MacLeod descendant would always be on the board and would have an equal part in all financial decisions regarding the institute. If no MacLeod wanted the task, they could appoint a representative. Patrick was trying to lock up the institute. He intended to steal it from me and use our child to retain control.”

  She cleared her throat again. “It’s humiliating to discover your entire marriage was a lie from the start. I mean, I know I’m awkward. Geeky. As a woman, everything I do will be based on my looks and not my accomplishments. I know I need to lose fifteen pounds and my laugh is too nasal. And I utterly hate it that in that moment, I went into that awkward, insecure place where I felt ugly and undesirable. I have a fricking genius IQ, and I still went to the same low common denominator where I judged myself on my looks and desirability.

  “Jessica was young, beautiful, skinny. Probably better in bed. I mean, he actually wanted to be with Jessica, otherwise he’d just have sent her on her whiney way. But he laid out his timeline so he could keep fucking her, me, and keep the institute.”

  She wanted to jump up and pace, but if she did, she might make a break for the jungle, to escape before hearing Dimitri’s story. This was the price she’d agreed to, and she would pay it.

  “When I confronted Patrick, he went there too. Blamed me for his affair. Don’t forget, I still didn’t know what he was. I didn’t know he was an arms dealer. A traitor. At the time, he was the center of my collapsing world. And he said I was too cold. Too obsessed with my work. It was my fault he turned to a twenty-two-year-old twit for entertainment. And yeah, I knew he was full of shit, but at the same time, it’s hard not to hear it, when the man you’re in love with says that to you. Hard not to believe it.”

  Dimitri ran a hand over his face. “And when I said…what you thought I meant, you went right there again.”

  “Well, yeah. You’re the first man I’ve had sex with since Patrick.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged. “So in the end, I blamed myself for my sham of a marriage and not the asshole who was a lowlife con man. I felt so utterly stupid. Inadequate. And less than a woman.”

  “And you were pregnant.”

  She swiped away a tear. Dammit, she’d thought she was done crying over Patrick’s betrayal. “Yes.”

  He sucked in a breath and held it there. Finally, he let it out in a rush and said, “Did you…?”

  “No.” She let out a deep sigh. “No matter who the father was and no matter how mercenary his reasons for providing sperm, I wanted my baby.”

  “So what happened?”

  “It was what’s known as a chemical pregnancy. I took the test early—more than a week before my period was due—and there was just enough hCG in my urine for a positive, meaning the egg was fertilized and implanted, but for whatever reason, it didn’t take. Research indicates up to seventy percent of all conceptions end in miscarriages, which sounds really high, but most women never knew they were ever pregnant. With a chemical pregnancy, usually the period arrives on schedule, as mine did. If we hadn’t been trying to conceive, I’d never have taken that early test, never would have known about the chemical pregnancy.”

  “And you wouldn’t have surprised Patrick at the office.”

  She stroked her belly. Sometimes she felt as if that phantom pregnancy was still a part of her. But then, it had shaped everything that had come later, so maybe it was.

  “At first when I confronted him and Jessica, Patrick pulled the classic ‘she means nothing to me’ right in front of her. My stupid ego… For half a second, there was that gratifying surge, that feeling of being desirable. Being wanted. But I didn’t believe the lie for more than a moment, and then he launched into how it was my fault. I didn’t tell him I believed I
was pregnant. I went to a hotel and tried to figure out how I could get him out of my house, life, and the institute all while carrying his child.

  “A week later, he was hosting a big political party for my cousin Alec. I’d been crying nonstop. Was utterly humiliated. Later, I wondered if the crying, if the heartbreak made my uterus inhospitable. You know, so the chemical pregnancy was also my fault.” She swiped at another annoying tear.

  “I told Alec I had the flu and skipped the party. Late that afternoon, I got my period. That was a shock. I spent the night laughing and crying. Grieving and feeling relieved and then feeling guilty. Basically I was an utter wreck and completely alone. My sister Hazel and I are really close, but she never liked Patrick, and I…I just didn’t need that kind of support. I was too raw. Humiliated at work. Homeless. Babyless.” She glanced around the beach. “I could’ve used an island escape like this one.”

  She pushed to her feet. She was through the worst of it and could pace without fleeing now. “The divorce was ugly. I wanted him out of the institute, but there’d been a prenup separating the business from the marriage, so that wasn’t going to happen. He fired Jessica, then she sued for sexual harassment and named me as one of the defendants. Possibly because I’m so unappealing, my husband had to go hunting among the interns. He paid her to make the suit go away—there was a nondisclosure, so I don’t know the details. All I know is he didn’t use a dime of MacLeod-Hill money to pay off his mistress. I think he must’ve used blood money from Syria.” Her breath caught. “I suppose it’s possible he got the money for selling CAM.”

  “You could have told the press all this when they hounded you.”

  “They already hated me. Why would I want to share my humiliation with them?”

  “They might’ve had sympathy for you.”

  “Right. Have you noticed how kind the media has been to Hillary Clinton for her husband’s affair? They attacked her sexuality, her brains, her decision to stay with him. If she’d left him, they’d have attacked her for that. I had left my husband. The reason was no one’s business but my own.”

  “You still blame yourself,” Dimitri said. “Even knowing your ex is a sociopath, or has Borderline Personality Disorder, you still internalize it.”

  She grunted an acknowledgment. “I’m a human and insecure in some areas. What he did tapped into it.”

  “For the record, I think you’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever known. And being with you has been by far the best sex I’ve ever had.”

  He said it with such sincerity, she couldn’t help but smile. Her ego was easily fed. “I’m supposed to be above these things. To want to be judged by something other than my value as sexual plaything.”

  “It’s not wrong to want to be desirable. That’s basic evolution right there.”

  “My libido died that day, in Patrick’s office. I didn’t want or even think about sex until you started flaunting your body at the marina.”

  He grimaced. “I suppose I should admit they taught us to use all our assets in spy school.”

  She winced. To be taught to use sex as a tool from a young age—if she remembered correctly, he’d been barely more than a child when he started spy school—horrified her. “All?”

  “If I’d wanted sex training, it would have been provided. But the idea of that left me cold.”

  “How old were you? When you started?”

  “Sex or spy school?”

  “Well, I meant spy school, but now I’m curious about sex too.”

  He stood and crossed the small stretch of beach between them. He slipped an arm around her waist and kissed her. Deep, but not a precursor to anything more. Just a kiss. Sweet and soft. “I was seventeen the first time I had sex—on my own terms, consensual on both sides.” He released her and stepped back. “And I was fourteen when I was selected for the embed program. My sister was eleven.”

  “Your sister?”

  “Yes. She’s the reason I need to find the AUUV. If I don’t, she and her son will both be killed.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It was Dimitri’s turn to share, but before he launched into his story, he checked the fishing line—coming up empty. “Would you believe I caught a fish this”—he held his hands three feet apart—“big just last week?”

  Ivy laughed. “Never.”

  He tightened his lips as if in deep introspection, moving his hands an inch closer together. “Well, maybe this big?”

  There was something so…north-northeast of normal about the moment. Stranded on a tropical island with a Russian spy. His earnest, silly joke.

  For a moment, she felt…light. Like everything would be okay. Or at least not like Spontaneous Combustion Man lurked around every corner, holding lighter fluid in one hand and a blowtorch in the other.

  Worst. Superhero. Ever.

  And then there was Dimitri. Who, come to think of it, also resembled the actor Ryan Reynolds, just a tiny bit. More Green Lantern in looks than Deadpool. But if she had to choose, she’d go for the darker hero. More Dimitri-ish.

  Deadpool with Captain Kirk’s eyes. Now there was a superhero she could root for.

  She noted that his fishhook was clean of bait. “I suppose it’s my turn to collect grubs.”

  “Not today,” he said. “We should head inside and not push our luck being exposed like this.” His voice had turned serious. Break time was over.

  “Canned tuna for dinner again, then,” she said with an exaggerated sigh.

  “We can dress it up with ramen noodles.”

  “What, you’re not willing to splurge on macaroni and cheese?”

  He smiled and kissed her. “Do I know how to wine and dine a woman or what?”

  “Well, at least we have wine.”

  Dimitri hid the kayak in the jungle, leaving it inflated and ready so they could use it later to row to the other island, then he grabbed his fishing gear and followed her up the path, wiping away their footprints in the sand as he went. The coming evening rain would take care of the rest.

  Inside the cave, she witnessed a subtle shift in Dimitri’s demeanor and recognized it as the return of his darker self as he braced himself for the coming tale.

  “I think this calls for something stronger than wine,” he said, making a beeline for the provisions. He grabbed the lone bottle of scotch. “Drink?”

  She shook her head and settled in a camping chair in front of the folding table. He sat across from her. “So. Your sister and nephew,” she prompted.

  “As I said, Sophia was eleven when we were recruited. We’d been orphaned—drunk driver in the other car—and had no extended family. Wards of the state. We were sent to an orphanage. If you know anything about Russian orphanages, I can promise, they’re even worse.” He cleared his throat. “Officials came looking for kids with high aptitude who could speak English and found us.” He paused, then added, “Our mother was American.”

  Ivy startled at that. It had never occurred to her that he was part American—even legally so. If his mother was born in the US, he had a claim to citizenship.

  “Montana,” Dimitri said in answer to her unasked question. “She ran away from home at sixteen. Ended up in West Berlin when she was nineteen. She was there for the music scene at first. Travel was allowed from West Berlin into the East with a visa. My mom had friends with family on the East side and made several visits. She met my father, who was from Grozny but serving in the Soviet military, in East Berlin.”

  “So you’re Chechen and American.”

  He shrugged. “The name Veselov is more Russian than Chechen, and to the best of my knowledge, I have no family in Chechnya. I was born in West Berlin. Raised in Moscow and trained to be an American. I’ve lived in the US since I was twenty-two. I really don’t know what I am.”

  She shook her head. “Born in West Berlin. You could claim German citizenship too.”

  “It would take some work to find my birth certificate, and I doubt the surname on the document is Veselov. You see,
my mother never told me her last name or why she ran away. She promised she would, when I was older.” He shrugged. “Any paperwork that included her maiden name was lost when we became wards of the state—if not sooner.”

  “You mean you don’t know if you still have family in Montana?”

  “I probably do. When my parents died, I fantasized about grandparents or aunts and uncles who would claim us. But I gave up those dreams. Dreams are dangerous. Plus, when I was older, I started to suspect what she might’ve been running from, and that maybe her family wouldn’t be any better.”

  She slid a hand across the table and gripped his fingers. His story was going to be a hell of a lot more painful to share than hers had been.

  So her husband cheated on her with someone younger and prettier. Boo-fucking-hoo. Sometimes, all one needed was a bit of perspective.

  “I was six months old,” Dimitri continued, “when my mother was granted a visa to bring me into East Berlin. At that point, she just…stayed. My parents married, and when my dad was discharged from the military, we all moved to Moscow. I don’t remember Berlin or anything about living in the former GDR. My first memories are in Moscow, around the time my sister was born.”

  His grip on her fingers tightened. “When Sophia was six, bullies at school began harassing her because our mother was American, and my mother sat me down and told me it was my job to protect her. I was the boy and was tough like my dad. Bullies never messed with me. I vowed to my mother that no one would hurt Sophia under my watch.

  “We were a typical happy family, with the slight oddity of having an American mother in the Soviet Union, until our parents died when I was eleven. After that, we were sent to the orphanage, and there were more bullies to contend with. But I kept my promise. After three years, when we were recruited into the embed program, it was…a huge relief. It wasn’t a home per se, but it wasn’t the hellhole we’d been in. In the program, we were safe. There were no more threats of separating Sophia and me. Food was plentiful and hearty. Our English was an asset, not a reason to pick a fight. We were proud, patriotic Russians.” He paused and held her gaze. “It’s important to remember, I do love the Russia of my childhood. Hell, I love Russia—the place and people—now. What I don’t love is what I was forced to do for the government, and that the country has returned to a dictatorship.”