Page 73 of Disguised as Love

In the store, I slumped my shoulders and picked up bottles of water and snacks. It wasn’t a gourmet meal, but it would be something to last us until we could get real food. I considered texting Ilia and Ito-san, but without knowing where they were and whether they needed silence and not some vibrating phone, I couldn’t risk it. I’d just have to wait until they showed up.

The man at the counter eyed me when I paid. The cheap jacket layered over the expensive suit was an oxymoron that would be remembered, but it couldn’t be helped any more than I could help the fact that I was a giant Black man in a city that bled White. If Volkov had sent out an all-points bulletin, then everyone and their brother would be looking for us, and I was easy to identify.

I left the store with our supplies in a bag, but I didn’t head back to the car right away. Instead, I took a quick tour of the docks so the clerk wouldn’t know I was with Raisa if he was, indeed, watching from the store windows. At the pier, I noticed the building Raisa likely called the boathouse. When I peeked in the darkened windows, it appeared to be some sort of cross between a repair shop and storage shed. There was a dingy up on a set of sawhorses, but there was no one around working on it. The door was locked when I tried it. I’d have to either pick the lock with absolutely no tools or break a window to get in later. For now, I skirted the building and headed back along the side streets until I came up behind the Lada I’d stolen.

I knocked on the window, and Raisa practically jumped out of her skin. My stomach twisted. I’d left her defenseless, unless you counted the car itself. I had one gun?the one I’d taken from Gennady that first day. I should have insisted that Ilia or Ito-san get me at least one more. It was yet another failure in a long series of them.

Raisa unlocked the vehicle, and I dropped into the passenger seat.

“We need to get off the street. Sitting here is only going to make us more conspicuous. The boathouse. How did you plan on getting in?”

“We had a code. I don’t know if they’ve changed it…”

“I’d rather be in the car because it’s easy to drive away from a situation, but the clerk was already eyeing me like he knew me.”

“And I have to pee,” she said with a small smile.

I couldn’t stop the small chuckle that escaped. Raisa Leskov seemed above such mundane human necessities. But it was a good reminder to me that she wasn’t some damn princess to be put on a pedestal. She was very much flesh and bone, and the bull’s-eye on her was one that could end her if I didn’t keep it together.

We left the car and journeyed back the way I’d come from the boathouse, staying out of view as much as possible. Raisa tried the code she knew at the door, and to both our surprise, the lock clicked open. We eased into the semi-darkness. The small dingy looked like it had seen better days, and an outboard motor that likely belonged to it was torn apart on a workbench off to the side. I went to examine the tools in hopes of adding to our weapon stash while she headed toward a door at the back.

“Where are you going?” I grunted out.

“Bathroom,” she said over her shoulder.

I watched as she went in and then returned to looking for weapons. I found an old pocketknife along with screwdrivers, hammers, and nails. I couldn’t take many of them with us, but I took a few things to add to my arsenal. When Raisa came back out, I handed her the knife. She took it without question, sliding it into the pocket of her coat.

She went to one of the cupboards at the back as if she’d been in the building a million times and pulled out blankets. She stacked them on the floor in a way that would make them invisible from the door with the boat propped up as it was. I followed her, joining her on the pile and dragging the final blanket on top of us before handing her a water and a bag of nuts from the supply I’d bought. She took them without question, just like she’d taken the knife.

After several minutes of silence, she turned to me and said quietly, “Tell me something about you. Something real. Something that will take my mind off where we are and why we’re here.”

My shoulder and thigh were touching hers, the warmth of our bodies fighting against the chill that filled the semi-darkened building. But it wasn’t the cold or the fact that we were being hunted that caused goosebumps to litter my skin. It was the thought of telling her anything. Of letting her under my skin more than she already was. Of letting her see pieces of me no one had ever seen.

“What do you want to know?” I asked.

“What made you want to be a chemistry major?” she asked. I almost smiled because I’d forgotten I’d told her this little nugget that first night on our way to Russia, and it was not the topic most people asked of me. Their first question was usually where I’d played ball?football or basketball.

“I knew I wanted to be an FBI or Secret Service agent, and both agencies like candidates with diverse backgrounds, so I dual-majored in chemistry and foreign languages.”

“You speak more than Russian?” she asked with surprise.

“I speak Russian, German, and Spanish decently. I know enough Japanese to be stupid and dangerous rather than fluent.”

“Why did you choose Russian?” she asked.

“Statistics. Russian organized crime was on the rise in the States, even more so than the cartels or Italian mob. It was that or Chinese, and they both required learning complex alphabets, but Russian is the easier of the two.”

She snorted.

“What?”

“I can’t imagine you taking the easy road on anything.”

Her response brought a smile to my face?one she returned and made me want to kiss her again. She tapped her foot under the blankets into my ankle, and that made my smile grow even more. I’d told her to kick me instead of letting me kiss her. She had her head on better than I did after years of undercover work.

“What made you decide to solve the world’s energy crisis?” I asked her.

“I always liked science. It made sense to me in a way that our world sometimes didn’t. But the real reason was because of Vivida. She was the daughter of one of our maids at the palace, and she used to come with her mom to work. She played with Malik and me for years. When she was eight, she was collateral damage in a shoot-out over a pile of lumber…” she trailed off for a moment. “She died because two men were trying to keep their families warm. My dad bought the entire neighborhood enough wood to last several winters after that, and I vowed to find a way to find cheap energy.”

---