Page 104 of Don't Look Back

The guy went through a range of expressions before sighing when he saw the pages were clearly a map file as described. He turned toward the door. “I have tape.”

He grabbed a dispenser from his office across the hall and pressed it into Rand’s hand, then pulled the door to the tech room shut and locked it with a key. “You need anything else printed, ask me.” He gave him his business card. “Call or text if I’m not here.”

Rand shrugged. “Fine.”

Back in the conference room, Rand closed the door and dropped the stacks of paper on the conference table with a heavy sigh of his own. There was a mirrored camera dome mounted to the ceiling above the table and he had no reason to think Grigory would give him privacy. “Damn editor,” he muttered.

Freya’s voice was crystal clear through the bone-conduction headphones. “Well done, Lieutenant Commander. We’re in the network.”

“This better be worth it. If my career is going to implode no matter what, I should be enjoying my vacation with Kira.” He lined up the printout in two rows of three sheets and started taping the pages together.

Freya chuckled but said nothing. She knew the comment wasn’t for her so much as to establish him muttering to himself. It would be the fastest way for him to communicate with her, so he would be a mutterer for the foreseeable future.

As he worked, Freya gave him a quick update, confirming his suspicion that Nadia was angry because Grigory intended for Aleksandr to marry Kira.

Map constructed, he sat down again in front of the laptop and opened the link to chat with his fake agent.Vicki was ready and waiting. She’d logged in under Rand’s agent’s name and used a very good face-changing filter so the twenty-nine-year-old Valkyrie could pass for Rand’s fifty-year-old agent.

“This is so not how I planned to spend the ass crack of dawn on Monday of my four-day weekend,” Vicki said.

“Shit. That’s right. Tomorrow’s the Fourth. Dick move for Jerry to send that edit letter on the Sunday night of a holiday weekend.”

“I swear he had it drafted on Thursday, but waited to send for maximum vacation and holiday fuckery.”

Rand was going to owe his very nice editor a fine bottle of wine after being maligned like this. “Sorry you got pulled in. Did you have plans today?”

“I had a hot date with a SEAL.” Vicki grinned. “But he’s twenty years too young for me. Good thing he’s fictional, or it would be indecent.”

Rand laughed. He’d met Vicki a few times. She was young and smart and, now he knew she was a book nerd in addition to being a computer nerd. He was impressed that she hadn’t outed him as Reece Foresman, especially considering she wasn’t bound to any code of silence and the dedication had been blatant.

He suspected she liked having her secrets and wondered if she’d been given the chance, would she have revealed what she knew to Rand, or just pretended ignorance?

“SEALs are overrated. Big egos. Always bragging about how special they are. That’s why I write about Green Berets. They’re humble. Less effective, but humble.”

Vicki let out a snort laugh. “Quit it. You know I love SEAL books and that’s what you should be writing. I’ve told you that from the start. Jerry would probably have accepted the book no problem if your hero was a SEAL. SEALssell.”

“Well, I’m not changing my hero in book three to a different branch of the military. That’s the kind of continuity error that readers pick up on.”

“Yeah. So it’s just everything else we have to change.” Her brow furrowed. “Where the hell are you, anyway? I thought you were in Malta. Are you in some sort of office?”

“Yeah. Get this, I hooked up with that woman I told you about, the art historian who helped me with the research for this pile of shit.” He waved to the stack of papers on the table, just in view of the laptop camera. “That I now have to rewrite?—”

“Shit. Artifact smuggling was the first thing Jerry wanted you to cut.”

“I know. The prick. But honestly, I might have something better. See, it turns out, Kira—the art historian—is the long-lost daughter of some Russian oligarch with a roomful of art stolen by Nazis during World War II. This would make a fantastic fucking twist if I take out the smuggling like Jerry wants.”

Vicki leaned toward her computer camera. A fisheye distortion made her forehead huge. “Holy shit. Really?”

“Yeah. I’m going to try to convince her to go back to her dad’s house. Think of the research potential.”

“That’s cold. Even foryou.”

“It’s not like I planned this. It just came my way. But there’s more. I’ve got another oligarch who wants to buy me off to clear a path for him to woo Kira.” He stuck to sharing only the details he was supposed to know. “That’s where I am now—the conference room in his villa. Kira’s off with the oligarch, who’s probably showing her his art collection.”

“Shouldn’t you be with them? Especially if he plans to make moves on her. Youdolike her, right?”

“Sure, but if we don’t fix my book, I’m going to have to seriously consider the old guy’s offer for Kira. I need this advance. I quit my day job a month ago. And shit, I put a yacht rental on my card yesterday to impress her. I expected the rest of my advance to be in the bank by the time the bill comes due.”

“Cancel the yacht, dumbass.”

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