Page 104 of Poison Evidence

Dimitri swallowed, trying to take in the words. “Yulian’s father is dead.” He knew this because he’d killed him.

She kissed the sleeping boy’s forehead, then took a step closer. “No.”

He watched his sister approach, uneasy and not sure what was off. Wasn’t this what he’d asked for? But where were the handlers who used his love for his sister to control him? “I don’t understand.”

“Rudy!” Sophia shouted. “Come out. It’s time for a family meeting. At last.”

Family. Rudy really was Yulian’s father?

“Stop pointing your gun at him, Dimitri, you’re scaring him,” his sister admonished. “And it’s time for you to be introduced to my husband.”

“You can lower your gun, D,” Ian said. “I’ve got mine on Fredrickson.”

“Thanks,” Dimitri said as he lowered his weapon.

“Rudy, get the fuck out here.” Sophia spoke in a singsong voice, stroking the sleeping child’s head in a show of not wanting to disturb the boy.

Leaves scraped against leaves as Yulian’s father left his hiding place and descended into the circle of the overgrown gun emplacement.

“What the hell are you doing, Alyssa? You weren’t supposed to bring Julian here.”

“Well, I could hardlynotbring him when Dimitri made his presence mandatory to the exchange.Youwere supposed to stop that from happening, but you fucked up and made everyone suspicious of you. How this goes down is on you.”

“Why isn’t Julian moving? What did you do to him?” Rudy asked, his gaze on the boy.

Dimitri couldn’t quite take it all in. His sister and the nephew he’d ached for years to meet. The traitorous DIA agent.

This was his family.

“I gave him a sedative. He’s fine.”

“Youdruggedour son?” Outrage filled Rudy’s voice. “Jesus, Alyssa. What if it makes him sick?”

“Would you rather he witness the shit that could go down here?” she asked, her voice full of hostility.

“What. The fuck. Is going on?” Dimitri asked.

Sophia—or Alyssa—faced Dimitri. “You struck a deal. Yulian and me, free of Russia, in exchange for the AUUV. I have good news for you, big brother. You’re getting your deal. I’m going to use the AUUV to buy our freedom.”

“Youare going to use it. Meaning you’ve been”—he nodded toward the satellite phone he’d tossed into the overgrown center of the gun emplacement—“the person on the other end of the call?”

His baby sister had been calling the shots? She’d set him up to abduct Ivy? His body flushed as he glanced at Rudy. The analyst had used his position in the DIA to send Ivy here to be abducted by Dimitri. He and Ivy both had been set up from the start—by the one person Dimitri had been trying to save.

The woman he’d been protecting from the moment she took her first steps shrugged. “Guilty.” Then she fixed Dimitri with a glare. “But I had my reasons.”

“Your reasons.” His voice came out hoarse. “How long? How long have you been pulling my strings?”

“Depends on which strings you’re talking about.”

He glanced from Rudy to Sophia. If Rudy was Yulian’s—or Julian’s—father, then the story she’d told five years ago had been a lie. How many other lies had shaped his life? “Were you raped by Boris five years ago?”

“No.” She glanced at her husband. “I wanted to go to the US with Rudy to have my baby and finally fulfill the role I’d been trained for since I was eleven, whichyoudenied me when you had me kicked out of the program. But Boris felt I was more useful in Russia as the Hammer’s handler. Always, always my role was subservient to yours. So I lied to you, and you got rid of Boris, which allowed me to assume the identity that had been set up for me years before. And I, for the record, have been a much more valuable spy than you ever were.”

She adjusted her son’s weight against her chest and stepped closer, absolutely unafraid. But then she hid behind a child, and no matter what she’d done, Dimitri could never hurt the sister he’d cherished his entire life.

She cupped his cheek with her free hand. “You can thank me for your assignment to join the Coast Guard. The powers that be still wanted you in the Navy so you could join the SEALs as their ultimate inside man. You’d have been so good at it, and I was sick of hearing your accolades. When I learned they needed someone to watch over Yuri Kravchenko, I suggested you. You got to cool your heels reporting on nuclear sub movements—which anyone with a decent spy satellite could see—in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, while I was in DC, working as a party planner for several embassies and married to a DIA agent who was oh so very pliable.”

“Fuck you, Alyssa,” Rudy said.

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