AC/DC screams through my head.
“Nothing,” I say quickly. Too quickly. Then cover it with a subject much more pertinent to our current circumstances. “Just wondering why that guy tried to take me with him at first. Why not just take the damned box and go? Why did he deliberately come after me?”
Jax blows out a breath and runs a hand through his hair. “I’ve been wondering that too. If he was the man who killed your mom, how did you recognize him?”
“His shoes. I had a long time to study them while I was lying under that bed. And there was some mud spattered on the hem of his black pants. When that guy came in, I noticed it right away.”
“And you said he left after speaking to someone about searching the house?”
“Yes.”
“And you left there and went straight to the bank?”
“That’s right.”
“Mia, did anyone follow you from your mother’s house?”
Follow me?
I shake my head. “I don’t know. It didn’t occur to me to look. I just knew I needed to get to the bank, so I went straight there.”
He studies me for a long moment, then stands back up and paces to the window. “Let’s say they followed you and learned I was also after the same box.” He walks to the door, looking out, and then walks back. “That could have been why he jumped us at the bank. We were downstairs in a private area. Easier to cage us in there than on the street. Plus, he wouldn’t know if you had the contents or if I had taken them from you…”
I watch him pace, processing the possibilities out loud.
“Mia, he probably knew you were at your mom’s house. He must have known she wouldn’t have kept something that important in her home and was betting she had relied on you to take over her assignment.”
Goosebumps spring onto my arms. “What? You mean he was just toying with me? He knew I was under the bed?”
He nods. “He might not have known exactly where you were hiding, but that you were somewhere in the house.”
My stomach heaves and I cover my mouth, terribly afraid I’m going to throw up. Could this be true? Had he been playing with me all along, waiting for me? While I’d feared for my life, he’d only wanted what Mom had so carefully hidden?
I circle back to the same question. “If he only wanted the box, then why try to take me too?”
Jax lifts a shoulder. “Insurance, maybe. Or maybe he wasn’t sure how much you knew of your mother’s business. He might think you are a co-worker, so to speak. Especially now, after the way you attacked him. Ordinary people don’t have the balls to do something like that.”
I don’t tell him that Mom had forced me into martial arts classes from the time I was little or made me take nearly every self-defense class under the sun. I can protect myself, at least I can in a classroom. But jumping Black had been instinct, fueled by grief and fear. There had been no technique, just rage.
“Another theory is that he suspected that you recognized him as your mother’s murderer and couldn’t risk keeping you alive.”
I look up at him and pull his jacket closer around me. “Then why didn’t he try to kill you too? You would be a witness also.”
He grins at me again. “In case you didn’t notice, he tried. And failed. I think we both took him by surprise. And I think he made a mistake jumping us at the bank, he realizes that now. There were cameras everywhere. If we’d been found dead, then his face…”
He trails off and paces back to the window.
“His face what?” I ask.
“He might not have cared if he’d been caught on camera because he might not have intended to be in the States long enough to be caught.”
“What are you thinking?”
“You said your mother wanted the contents of that box to be taken back to Russia.”
I nod, trying to follow his line of thinking. “Do you think the man who attacked us is from Russia too? That he planned on stealing the box and going back there?”
Jax shrugs. “It’s possible. It’s easier to be careless when you have a ‘do not go to jail’ card in your pocket. Plus, he’s with the Feds. He can just about make up any story he wants and most locals would believe him when he flashes his badge.”
I freeze. “The Feds?”
He sighs heavily, his breath shaking out in the silence. “When we were fighting, his jacket opened and attached to the pocket of his shirt was a Federal ID. I’m guessing that’s how he got past the security at the bank. He’s connected with the government somehow. He’s highly trained and, I’m getting the impression, highly motivated. Or a good forger.”
My head is spinning. The government was after my mom? What had she done? I had always felt that there were things she didn’t want to tell me, aspects of her life she felt were best hidden. But this is beyond even my greatest imaginings.
“God, what in the world is in that box?” I ask, glancing at it as warily as I would if it were a snake.
Jax squats down in front of it. “I don’t know, but it’s gotta be something pretty valuable or pretty dangerous. Ready to find out? Do you still have the key?”
Panic shoots a stream of adrenaline back into my system. The key? Oh please tell me I’ve still got the key. In all the ruckus, what if I’ve lost it? My hand shoots to my pocket, relief making the air rush from my lungs when my fingers close around the tiny piece of metal.
“I guess we should open it, right?”
I’m ashamed to say that a small part of me wants him to tell me no. Insist it is a terrible idea, and we should just leave it alone. I laugh. “Can we just take a nap instead?”
He smiles the tiniest bit, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.
Tears burn the backs of my eyes as fear ripples its way through me. Until right now, my mom’s integrity has only been in question. In a moment, that question will be answered, good or bad. And I’m afraid. Terribly and awfully afraid I will be destroyed by the answer. And what then?
Will I still love her?
Will I be ashamed of her instead?
Large hands cover mine, their warmth sinking into the cold of my own. I look up into his blue, blue eyes, the kindness I see there nearly shattering me.
“Let’s do it together,” he says, his voice as gentle as his gaze.
Together.
I nod.
Turning, he sits next to me and pulls the heavy metal across both of our laps. I slide the key into the lock and turn it, feeling more than hearing the tumblers click.
And together we lift the lid of what is surely Pandora’s Box.
Chapter 9 – Jax
Russian.
Fuck.
The damn documents are written in Russian.
I speak Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, German and Arabic. But Russian, not so much. A few words jump off the paper that I recognize.
Аэропорт is airport.
Доставка means delivery.
Разум is mind, I think.
Синтетический is synthetic I feel sure, remembering the word from a list of synthetic drugs being shipped around the world not long ago.
Миллиграмм is milligrams. I remember from that same bust.
Is this a recipe? I scan the paper again.
Ед. Изм is unit.
I turn the page, and freeze. There’s a world map of airports, all forty-four thousand of them, it looks like. The next page has the airports broken down by country. The next page lists the airports located in large cities.
Included in the documents is the diagram of a bag. Младенец, it says at the top. Infant? I’m not sure. Мешок means bag, I know.
“Why would there be a diaper bag in all this stuff?” Mia asks and it clicks. Yes, diaper bag. The diagram is a black and white sketch, so no ducks and bunny shit on the side to further indicate its purpose.
I stare at the papers, trying to make everything make sense. In the back of my mind, I was expecting some type of weapons plans, maybe instructions on
creating weaponized plutonium. But this … what the fuck does a diaper bag have to do with national security?
“What does this mean?” I ask, and I scan her face, looking for duplicity. There’s none there, just wide eyed curiosity and large doses of fear.
“I don’t know. This is written in Russian, Mia. The place your mother wanted you to go.”
Mia stares up at me, as if looking at my face will bring her the answers she’s seeking. Her gray eyes are huge, and grow glassy as they brim with tears. When her chin quivers, I wrap an arm around her shoulders. She leans into me, her face pressing into my shirt, her rapid breath hot against my skin.
“This is bad, isn’t it?”
I nod and realize she can’t see the gesture. “Yes. It’s bad.”
She begins to cry, her entire body quaking under the intensity of her sobs. Her fingers dig into my skin, as if trying to sink into me, seeking some type of stability that will hold her steady in this whirlwind that has become her life.
Even as I stroke her back, her hair. Even as I hold her tighter and pull her onto my lap so that I can hold her closer, I know my actions are foolish. This woman’s mother has been hiding unknown, yet clearly top-secret level information and God only knows what she’d planned to do with it. Sell it to America? Russia? China? The highest bidder?
I shake my head. That doesn’t make sense either. Why steal Russian documents then ask her daughter to take them back to that same country? She must know that would be a death sentence.
If Mia is telling the truth.
I continue to hold her even as I process the possibilities. Yes, Mia looks, sounds, and acts innocent, which is Spy 101. The best spies are the best actors. Their abilities to pass lie detection ingrained. To have a beautiful, innocent looking spy on the payroll would be very beneficial to any country. I look down at the documents again. To carry a fucking diaper bag? Are they using a baby as a mule? An ordinary looking family to carry out whatever the rest of this is?
How am I supposed to believe anything she says or does now? Everything she does from this point forward will take on new meaning.
“I just don’t understand,” she whispers, staring into the box. She lifts additional papers to find money, both dollars and rubles. I thumb through the stack of one hundred dollar bills. The stack is a little over two inches thick, so probably fifty thousand or so. There are also four stacks of rubles. Beneath that, a stack of ten-thousand dollar bonds. Shit. I look beneath the bonds and find a key as well as another address to a bank in South America. Nothing more.
“What does all this mean, Jax?” she asks and I look down into those storm gray eyes again. If she’s a spy, she’s the best one I’ve ever encountered. But, dammit, I don’t want her to be. I want her to be the innocent she appears.
I keep my voice calm. I’d been conditioned about suppressing my feelings and presenting a cool front during my training. “I think there was a lot more to your mother than you were aware of, Mia.” I gently remove the box from her grip and place it by my side. No way am I letting her anywhere near it now.
“Tell me everything about her.”
“Everything? You can’t be serious.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “I’ve never been more serious. And considering I saved your life earlier, I think you owe me a little honesty.”
“If I had known you were going to hold it over my head, I would have asked you to keep your saving to yourself,” she says, then sighs dramatically. “I have a lot on my mind right now and you’re only making things more difficult.” She tucks her hair behind her ear.
Is that her “tell?” Does she tuck her hair behind her ear when she’s nervous? She’s clearly nervous now. How can I use that to my advantage?
I suppress my own heavy sigh, deciding to take another direction. I can’t press her too hard. “Fine, that’s just fine. No problem. Why don’t you do a brain dump on me then?”
She wrinkles her nose. “What’s that mean?”
I stand back up, go to the window then back to the door to look out. “Unload everything that’s going on in your brain.” I grin at her, trying to lighten the mood. “Nothing dirty.” She scowls and I go on, “Just … start talking and dump it out. I might be able to help you make sense of it. Maybe we can piece things together.”
She chews on her bottom lip and I look away, walking back to the window to recon the area. I can tell she’s still struggling to decide whether she can trust me, just as I’m stepping lightly with her. The situation reminds me of navigating a minefield. One misstep and the whole thing blows up. I need to handle her with care while also taking one step at a time.
Finally, she nods. “Okay, but there’s not much to tell.”
“Even the smallest thing can be important.”
“Well, Mom was in the Army, but that was long ago,” Mia revealed.
I stop my pacing and turn to her. She didn’t think this important? That her mother was in the military? I stay silent, letting her speak.
“I thought she retired years ago, before I was born,” she continues. “We lived off her pension.”
“Your father?” I ask, trying to be delicate.
She lifts a shoulder and pushes her hair behind her ear again. I watch her closely. “I never knew him. She wouldn’t talk about him and I stopped asking because she would always look so sad.”
She laughs and leans her head back on the wall behind her.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. Just remembering how I used to make up stories about him in my head. One time he’d be a movie star she’d met and fallen in love with, but was tragically killed in an accident. Another time he would be a secret agent, watching me from afar but not daring to reveal himself. That sort of thing.”
If she’s being honest — and that’s a big if — her instincts as a child might have been stronger than she could have imagined. I mull this over. Playing a hunch, I ask, “Did you move around a lot as a kid?”
She looks up at me, her eyes wide. “We did. All the time. I went to, like, a dozen different elementary schools. We didn’t settle in California until I started high school.”
“That was how long ago?”
“Eleven, twelve years. My freshman year.”
“And you think she retired at that point and you settled here in Sacramento?”
She nods. “Yeah. After that, she was just, you know, Mom.”
“What types of games did you two play when you were little?”
Her face crumples and I immediately regret the question, but don’t take it back. Instead, I pace and wait. My patience is rewarded when she says, “We’d play hide and seek, and she’d teach me how to find the best spots, how to stay quiet. We’d wrestle a lot and I almost got better than her at it. She’d put up targets and we’d take turns shooting at them. With Mom, everything was a contest.”
“Real guns?”
She shakes her head, then nods. “Well, real guns when I was older. She taught me how to use guns and shoot, but when I was little, it would be with toy Nerf guns. She’d have me do crazy things like roll and shoot. I got pretty good.”
“Did she teach you how to speak Russian?”
“No, never Russian. But I learned Spanish and French, German. A little Japanese.”
“Did you ever hear you Mom speaking in Russian?”
Her forehead furrows. “I don’t know if it was Russian, but I remember her talking on the phone sometimes when I was little. I didn’t understand anything.”
“Did your mom have many visitors?”
She laughs. “Never. She didn’t date. Didn’t have lunch with friends. Nothing like that.”
“How did she spend her time?”
She chews her bottom lip again, then touches the place it is split with her finger. “She was on her computer a lot, but she didn’t work, not after she retired. Like I said, we lived off her pension. She didn’t have me until she was older. Forty-two. She talked about being tired and just enjoying free time aft
er so many years of service.”
“And you believed her?”
“Why wouldn’t I believe her? She’s my mom.” Mia covers her face with her hands. “Was my mom. Of course I believed her. I love her.”
I study her, trying to judge her level of sincerity. I find it difficult to believe that a woman could raise a child all of her life and that child never pick up on the fact that she was a spy. Because that’s what she must have been. Maybe her retirement from the “Army” happened to coincide with her connection to another government agency. Perhaps more than one.
“Did she travel often?”
She immediately shakes her head, then pauses, biting her lower lip, her tongue playing at the split. “Never when I was younger, not even in high school. But about a year ago, she made a friend. Sylvia was her name. They’d travel together for weeks at a time.”
“Mia.” I wait until her eyes lift to mine. “Did you ever meet Sylvia?”
She shakes her head.
“See a picture of her?”
Mia frowns. “No, actually I don’t think I did. Mom would show me pictures she’d taken, but I don’t remembering seeing one of her friend.”
“Was your mom in any of the pictures?”
She stares at me, her eyes growing glassy as she realizes the purpose of my question. “You think she was lying to me, don’t you?”
“Was your mother in any of the vacation pictures, Mia?”
She swallows and the tip of her nose grows pink again. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I don’t know for sure.”
I knew for sure. I’d bet every dollar I had that Mia’s mother was lying to her. That she was letting her daughter pore over stock photos, making up lie after lie of her adventures. I wonder if she’d ever felt guilty.
Deciding to come back to this line of questioning later, I ask something more important. “What about the instructions? Didn’t you say she gave you a set of instructions on what to do with the contents of the box?”
Her face grows dark. “Yes, but I’d rather read it privately, if you don’t mind.”
“Are you fricking kidding me? Of course I mind!” I blow up. “I’m risking my neck for you, sweetheart. Do you know how easy it would be for me to sink a bullet in your head and walk away with that box and letter? I’d be hailed a hero for recovering documents of this importance. The President would probably pin a great big medal on my chest.”
Badass: Deadly Target (Complete): Military Romantic Suspense Page 6
