Page 139 of Ford

“Yeah,” RJ said. “I didn’t know he’d be there—he just came out of the restaurant. I went to meet York—or at least that’s what I thought. I had no idea that an assassin had set me up to take the fall.”

Stavros’s estate sprawled on a hill overlooking the Caspian Sea and seemed plucked out of some Tuscan hillside, complete with columns and Renaissance architecture and fountains. The house itself, all fifty-seven rooms of whitewashed stucco and rough-hewn timber, sat in the embrace of fifty acres of lush beech and oak trees. Behind them rose the mountains to the north.

The blue haze over the rugged line of mountains, the scent of pine winding down into the valley, and the touch of summer on the breeze turned a longing inside RJ.

Home.

RJ just might give in to the urge to hop on the plane with her brothers and head back to Montana.

Except for the fact that York was still running for his life—or at least Coco’s life—in Russia.

And a killer still had his sights on the general.

She took a sip of the lemonade brought out by one of Stavros’s people. Guards, house help, assistants—the man had a virtual army at his disposal and had opened his house to Ford and his friends.

He’d even gassed up his private jet and offered them a ride home.

Nez and Trini had already left, needing to get stateside before the higher-ups went looking for them. Ham had stayed behind with Scarlett, Ford, Tate, and Wyatt.

Wyatt. The poor guy said little, sitting away from them, his face hard. The fact that Coco hadn’t responded to his phone calls or his emails showed in the knot on his face.

They were gathered beside a crystalline blue pool. Scarlett sat with her feet in the water, leaning back on her hands. Ford sat beside her, close enough to touch her. Which he did occasionally, just reaching over to weave his fingers between hers.

Sweet.

But it only deepened the dangerous ache for York.

He swooped in to take possession of her thoughts—no, her heart—like a pulse there, thrumming, reminding her that she’d lived because of him.

Probably that’s all it was, this crazy affection she felt. High-stress romances never worked—a lesson she’d learned from Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock.

Except…what if she was instead Sydney Bristow? She got her man, Vaughn.

RJ met Tate’s worried expression. “York showed up anyway and saw the disaster go down. Instant chaos, and the general’s men all ordered us to get down. I did, too stunned to do anything but obey, and a gun fell out of my bag—”

“You went into Russia with a gun?” Tate said, leaning up from a pillar that held up the porch.

“No, of course not. Somebody planted it. But it looked bad, and I just stared at it and then, all I could think was…run. So, I did. Not sure what I was doing until York practically tackled me. He hid me in an alley, then got me to a safe house for about a week, laying low while the FSB looked for me.”

“We eventually figured out that my emails to him had been hacked—he was the contact that Roy gave me—and went to Coco to figure out who’d hacked them.”

“Roy was our source who alerted us to the hit on the general,” Ham said. He sat at a nearby table, nursing his own lemonade. He’d been quiet, thoughtful, and pensive since they’d arrived at the villa. She liked him—he possessed an all-American, boy-next-door persona, blue eyes, and the very strong sense of right radiating off him.

She’d discovered that he ran some sort of gym franchise in America, when he wasn’t out saving lives with his global SAR team, Jones, Inc. RJ had overheard him talking with Scarlett about her swimming skills last night on the terrace. That, added to her drone search-and-rescue abilities, and RJ thought the man might be offering her a job.

Interesting.

“What I don’t get is why you had to go, RJ.” This from Wyatt, who had turned toward them. “Aren’t you a secretary?”

“Ananalyst.”

Ford’s jaw tightened.

“Okay, yes, I’m an assistant, too, to Sophia Randall. She’s a handler, and Roy works for her. We’ve been hunting down some rumors of a shadow faction inside the CIA who might be trying to manipulate events in order to increase tensions between the US and Russia.”

“Why?” Wyatt asked.

“Arms,” Tate said quietly. He glanced at Wyatt, then Ham, and finally to RJ. “Right? Because with increased tension comes a demand on the market for weapons.” He walked over to the table and pulled out a chair. “It might be why we thought the Bryant League was behind the bombing of the San Antonio arena—domestic terrorism always breeds a need for more personal security.”

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