Page 70 of Memphis

Silence, and then he said, “You really love him. You’ve always loved him,” as if just realizing this truth.

“Jerryn, I know you and I…we shared something in the past, but?—”

“Raja, I never expected you to feel for me what I felt for you. I always got that your heart was unavailable. It’s just…he doesn’t deserve you. You know that, right?”

“No, I’m no better than him. I realize you think I’m altruistic because of the targets I choose, but I’m still a killer. I’ve trained other killers. Neither him nor I deserve love, but we found it in each other. I…I need him.”

He sighed into the phone. “It would be best if you asked her. She’s always liked you.”

“I’m down.”

Tatiana McReynolds was an absolutelygorgeous ebony-skinned woman with long limbs and a crown of soft-looking kinky hair. She was dressed elegantly in a white shift dress and bare feet, sitting on the sofa in the modern style home she and Jerryn shared. She greeted me with a smile and pulled me into a hug as I sat down beside her.

“So good to see you, Memphis!” she gushed. It was weird hearing her speak in her real accent after she’d used the fake American one for so many years.

“Good to see you, too. Jerryn told you about my predicament?” I asked.

“Da. Your husband was shot. You’re trying to find the culprit.”

I nodded. “And I need your help, your…expertise.”

Her eyes drifted to her husband whom she obviously loved. I hated to mess up the little “don’t ask, don’t tell” agreement they made to save their marriage, but desperate times…

“I’m okay with it…for her,” Jerryn assured her.

She returned her gaze to me. “Come. I’ll help.”

I followed her into her home office, a space that was off limits to Jerryn. I felt privileged to watch this woman work. Born and raised in Russia and highly perceptive, Tatiana was recruited by her home country’s government to train and work in intelligence. She was sent to work in the US ten years ago, met and fell in love with Jerryn five years later. He pretended to be a software analyst while she pretended to be in data entry. Of course, they both eventually figured out the truth and made the aforementioned agreement. So yeah, I was soliciting help from an actual Russian spy who was planted in my country to fuck it up.

A means to an end and all that shit.

“All these people are related to your husband?” she asked as she tapped away at her computer’s keyboard.

“Correct.”

“Crazy family?”

“The craziest.”

She giggled as her elegant fingers continued to work.

I watched her until a text from Lilith came through:How you spend the night and leave this morning without saying good morning or bitch, fuck you or something?

I didn’t answer.

“This will take a while, but I will get the information you need. You can stay or I can send it to you. You have ProtonMail, TorBox, something like that? Oh! The Agency has its own host?”

“It does, but I’ll wait.”

She shrugged. “Okay.”

I’m not sure how much time had passed or how long I’d been sleeping in that chair in Tatiana’s office when she shook me awake and informed me that she was done, but I was rested enough to sit at her computer and begin loading the information onto the external drives I’d brought with me, and then I left,hoping I hadn’t fucked up my friend’s marriage while trying to save mine.

40

Jerryn met me at Ray’s and Lilith’s fortress of a house about an hour later. He seemed cool, so I supposed everything was good with him and Tatiana.

Holed up in Ray’s safe room, he, Jerryn, and I spent hours upon hours with few breaks going through the volumes of intel Tatiana mined—emails, dark web emails, texts, phone calls…hell, she’d even retrieved data from burner phones pinging at the Pierce mansion.

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