CARTER
BUDAPEST, HUNGARY – MARCH 2019
Drawing together the floor-to-ceiling curtains in my small hotel room, I waited for the line to connect with my wife. My third attempt to reach her in the last few days with no luck. My unanswered calls had been met back with quick texts letting me know she was “fine” but it was a bad time to talk. I was growing impatient with her dodging me.
Since she wouldn’t pick up, I had to assume she was still angry at me for being abroad on a mission that was one of my choosing.
I’d pushed the Agency to let me follow a lead for an assassin known as The Chechen. He was responsible for the death of an MI6 officer I’d worked with on an op last year, and it drove me crazy he was still out there living his best fucking life.
The deceased officer’s fiancée, Zoey, was also MI6, and she hated my guts with a passion—blaming me for Preston’s death. I didn’t want to give her false hope that I had new intel about The Chechen until I could confirm it myself. So there I was in Budapest, not only apparently wasting my time on a dead lead but pissing off my wife by being away.
But Zoey had lost the love of her life, and our CIA-MI6 joint op wouldn’t be considered a success in my book until the assassin was six feet under.
I couldn’t forget the day of that op, though. Questioning every decision. Every moment. I’d run through every scenario wondering if the outcome could’ve been different somehow.
Preston and I had been engaged in hand-to-hand combat with The Chechen, when we learned he’d activated a bomb in the city. I was better with explosives, so I left the primary site to defuse it. I may have stopped the bomb, but Preston died and the animal who killed him got away.
“You left him.” That damn phantom ache was back where Zoey had repeatedly beat at my chest after finding her fiancé dead. “You could’ve saved him.”
I’d held her wrists so she’d stopped hitting me, but then gave in. Let her do it. Let her blame me.
To be honest, if it was her there instead of me, I’m not sure she’d have left Preston’s side. She would’ve chosen to save him over a thousand.
Trying my wife again, I rasped, “Come on, Rebecca. Pick up.” Frustrated at my call going to voicemail, I set my phone aside. I had one more possible lead to check and then I’d go home. Maybe take time off and try to reconnect with my wife. Things hadn’t been great between us lately.
It didn’t help that I could feel her physically pulling away from me in the last six months. She’d gone so far as to sell off almost all of her family’s businesses—only keeping one small holding, The Barclay Group—without giving me a heads-up first. Then she began traveling a lot more. Never gave me her schedule or a damn reason why. So yeah, we needed to find some time for each other.
I was a second away from getting my laptop to go back to work when my phone rang.
Rebecca. Fucking finally. “Hey,” I answered.
“I’m sorry, I was tied up.”
I dropped down on the bed and worked free the top two buttons of my shirt. “With what? Are you even home?”
“I am. I was just working on something.”
“You planning to tell me what it was?”
Silence. Typical lately. I’d swear she was the one who worked for the Agency sometimes, not me. She was a better secret keeper. “I want to get away with you. You never sold your parents’ place in Sweden, did you? Or was it Switzerland?” I couldn’t remember, but it was somewhere near mountains. “Let’s go next week.”
“You want to take a vacation?”
“I think we need it.”
“Not a good idea. Not right now. I’m . . .”
I swallowed. “You’re what?” Irritated, I stood and began pacing the small room. “What’s going on? Talk to me.”
“I can’t do this over the phone. But you’re right, maybe we should talk.”
The blood drained from my face. “Talk?” I waited for her to continue, and when she didn’t, I asked, “Are you leaving me?” Was she really doing this over the phone?
She’d brought up divorce once, a few years ago, but the following morning she’d asked to have our entire conversation from the night before redacted—stricken from the record.
“What? God no. How would that look?”
I should’ve felt relief at her immediate rejection of the idea, but I couldn’t feel anything other than anger at her “how would that look” comment. “Then what’s going on?” I asked instead of following up on that bullshit remark. I didn’t want to get into a fight while I was on the other side of the world.