Page 52 of Don't Look Back

Worse, because he’d messed with her emotions, she was even more vulnerable. Her gait was angry and lacked signs of situational awareness. Because she wasn’t protecting herself, he had no choice but to follow and protect her as best he could from a distance.

Before she turned onto the main street where she was supposed to meet Kulik, she pivoted and faced him. “Stop following me.”

“No.”

“I meant it when I said go home. You sure as hell aren’t staying in my room.”

“You’re in danger, Kira.”

“And whose fault is that? Maybe the person who had intel he didn’t bother to share?”

“I wanted to extract you from Stoltz’s hotel room the minute I found out, but I knew you wouldn’t appreciate that, and, more important, we’d get more information from him if he didn’t know we were on to him.”

“Butweweren’t on to him. You were.”

“You had your suspicions. You said as much to him, but you never said a word to me.”

“Don’t make me the villain here, Rand. I’m not the one who knew for afacthe wasn’t Andre.”

“I fucked up. I should have told you. But youdidhave your suspicions, and if you’d shared them, I’d have told you everything. As it was, I wasn’t about to let you see him without me by your side again, and I’d hoped to get more information from him if I played along with his charade.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

The truth would sound like an excuse: He absolutely would have told her if not for Freya’s instructions. His rationale for following her command was solid. Freya was a former operative who had run this kind of op for years when she was in the Special Activities Division. He had no one else of higher rank to consult with. Plus, he trusted Freya.

But Freya underestimated Kira, which meant so had Rand.

Excuse or not, he owed her the unvarnished truth. Still, he made sure to keep the blame on himself. “Freya wanted you to be unwitting, thinking we could catch him off guard if you didn’t know. But I never should have agreed to that. It was the wrong call, and I’m sorry I didn’t trust that you could hold your own with him. In the end, he was the one who broke cover.”

“Don’t you get it? Given our history, Freya willalwaysthink I’m less-than. I’m sure she thinks I wasn’t good enough for her brother and that I was a fool. That you went with her assessment even after I told you about Apollo, well, that hurts even more.” She turned and resumed walking toward the main road, where there were crowds of tourists.

He chased after her. “First, you were too good for Apollo. Second, I don’t for a moment think Freya thinks less of you.”

“Bullshit. There’s no other reason to hold back that information.”

He clamped his mouth shut. He wasn’t throwing Freya under that bus, even if she did make the bad call. When this was over, the two women had some painful history to sort through. Rand wouldn’t make that harder.

“Freya is a former covert operator who ran ops like this and called the shots when she did. She slipped into that role here and was making the same kind of decisions she would for anyone.”

“This isn’t Freya’s op, Rand. It’smylife. I’veletyou join me, but I never asked for Freya’s help.Youdid that. And then you made her the boss. Not me.”

Every word was a hammer on his heart. She was right.

“How did Freya even know the man isn’t Andre?”

He braced himself for another volley of anger. “Remember when I said I have supplies in my rental car? Freya gave me a whole kit for taking photos and planting bugs. Including this ring”—he held up his hand and tapped the championship ring with his thumb—“which takes photos. I snapped his picture last night at the reception and sent it to Freya along with all the others.”

She took a step backward, retreating from him, her face showing a mix of emotions. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.” She turned away from him again. “You tracked my phone without my authorization. You sent photos to Freya… I might have appreciated that, but…not like this.”

“I’m sorry, Kira.” He spoke, once again, to her back as she walked away from him.

All he could do was follow at a distance and hope that before the night was over, she’d accept his protection again.

Kira couldn’t think about Rand and secrets that were also betrayals. She had a fake cousin who’d lured her to Malta and a meeting with an oligarch—or rather, an oligarch’s son, from what she’d managed to learn before going to sleep last night—to get through.

Reuben Kulik sat at a two-person table close to the street. He smiled at seeing her, then frowned when he looked behind her. He must’ve spotted Rand. “Kira, my dear, we agreed this would just be the two of us.”

She made a show of glancing backward. Rand was rapidly approaching. “He’s not with me.”

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