Page 20 of Poison Evidence

But that didn’t mean they weren’thalfwayto Celebes. He could make good on his threat. She’d visited her share of remote places for work, but she’d always been well supplied and had a satellite phone. He’d made no such promises. “Whoareyou?”

He was silent for a long time. She could hear water splashing against the hull as they floated, dead in the water. Negotiating.

Or so he’d said.

At last, he took a deep breath and said, “My name is Dimitri Veselov, although I haven’t used that name in more than a dozen years.”

“Russian.” So much for her ear for accents. She hadn’t picked up Russian in his speech at all. Not even in bed, when adopted accents and speech patterns tended to disappear. Laurel, a linguistic anthropologist, would be so disappointed in her utter failure.

“Da,” he said.

One simple word in Russian and chills went up her spine. “You’re a spy,” she added as her belly twisted and flipped and pretty much tried to leap from her body via her throat. Holy hell, as if marrying Patrick weren’t bad enough, she’d screwedanotherspy. Her career would never survive this. She could kiss her top-secret security clearance good-bye. Poof. A lifetime of work decimated by one night in bed with a man she’d believed was helping her.

It had crossed her mind last night that she was risking her clearance, but she’d discarded the thought with little consideration. He’d been the hero of the night. The man who saved the president of Palau.

She was such a fool.

Her security clearance was vital for CAM’s satellite link. Sitting on the berth above her was equipment that could directly access the most advanced and highly encrypted mapping database the US military had developed. CAM was but another data supplier to the massive system.

But really, it was futile to worry about her job when her very freedom was in jeopardy. People thought she’d been complicit with Patrick, but this…this was the final nail in her coffin. She could be facing prison.

“Iwasa spy,” the man she’d slept with mere hours ago said. “I’m freelance now. Sort of.”

“A mercenary.”

“Unwilling mercenary.” He slid down the wall, joining her on the floor. “I was trying to get out of the business. I was pulled back in. Not my choice. Hell, being a spy wasnevermy choice. I was selected when I was fourteen by the GRU. Do you know what the GRU is?”

“Russia’s version of the CIA.”

“Essentially, yes. And because ofmyhigh IQ, I was recruited. They called it that—recruitment—like I had a choice. But with my parents dead and no adult relatives to intervene, they just took me and began my training.”

“Do you expect me to feel sorry for you?” She put as much bitterness in her tone as she could, and yet…she did feel sympathy for him. She had no reason to believe a word he said, but something about his voice, the pause before he mentioned being orphaned, had sounded like authentic pain.

But then, what did she know? Nothing. Not even the Universal Transverse Mercator for where she was. She’d take a lat and long if she couldn’t get a UTM, but all she had was the guesstimate that placed her somewhere in the Pacific but not yet in the Celebes Sea.

“I don’t expect anything from you, Ivy, except your hate.”

“Well, at least there I won’t disappoint you.”

His mouth curved in a sad smile, but his voice dropped to a lower, sexy register. “Oh, Poison, you couldn’t disappoint me if you tried.”

She raised her hand to slap him again, but he caught it, preventing the blow. He held her hand, his thumb caressing her palm. “I hate doing this to you. If there were any other way, I’d have left you out of it. But I can’t work CAM, and I’m worried about the men who attacked the party last night. By taking you out to open sea, I’m protecting you. They won’t find you here.”

“Bullshit.” She yanked her hand back, angry that her belly had fluttered at his touch. A reaction she couldn’t control, but which shamed her nonetheless.

“The guys you met last night were probably just the first wave. Scrambled the moment they read the article about you mapping Peleliu with CAM. They were unarmed except for tools they could buy here, meaning they probably flew commercial to get here quickly. But odds are, a boat loaded with Syrian and Iraqi terrorists and a shitload of guns departed from the Philippines at the same time. By my calculations, they’ll be here in a day, maybe two. You’re in danger, Ivy, and I promise, I won’t let those assholes find you.”

He was probably right about a second wave coming, but that didn’t make the freaking Russian spy her protector. “Somehow, I’d feel safer in Koror, away from the asshole whoactuallyabducted me.”

“That would be a mistake.” He sighed. “We can go round and round on this all you want, but the facts remain the same. You’re with me. I can let you boot up CAM or not. If I let you, you’ll have a chance to contact your coworkers, who have direct information on your global position. Hardly the predicament of the victim of an abduction. A defining point of abduction: no one knows where the abductee is.”

She hated that he was right on that point. She might be clueless as to her particular latitude and longitude, but no less than the might and power of the US Navy knew exactly where she and her equipment were.

So was this an abduction? Or something less nefarious?

Given that the guy in control was a closet Russian, she was leaning toward the nefarious end of the continuum.

He nodded toward the aluminum cases. “I assume you have a direct satellite uplink, which means you’ll be able to send and receive emails, no matter where we are on this big blue planet.”

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