Page 30 of France Face-Off
Once inside, with the door closed behind them, Striker turned to face her.
“How was the meeting?” he asked when he really wanted to grill her on her true identity and ask her if she’d killed half a dozen men.
“Heated,” she answered, slipping the jacket from her shoulders. “We need to get dressed for dinner. It starts in just a few minutes.”
“We’ll get dressed in a minute,” he said. “What was that all about?”
She looked away. “What?”
“That hug in the stairwell.”
She shrugged. “I told you…I’m tired. I don’t know what came over me.”
“It must take a lot out of you to interpret for politicians and government officials all day,” he commented. “Is it harder than killing someone, Anya?” he said, using the name she’d gone by when she’d lived in Russia with her parents.
Alex spun, all color leaching from her face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He pinned her with his stare. “Anya Federov, daughter of Mischa and Pavel Federov, sleeper agents in Russia for the CIA.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Does that ring a bell?”
She folded her jacket over her arm. “I don’t?—”
“Don’t bother lying, Anya. I know who you are, and apparently, others do as well.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “That had to be the reason someone attacked you last night. They know who you are. The question is, did they do it because you killed a buddy of theirs, or are they after something your parents might’ve given you before they died?”
She stood for a long moment without speaking. The circles beneath her eyes seemed darker. The shadows in her eyes deepened.
“Look, Alex…or Anya…I don’t know what your parents were up to or what they felt was necessary to pass to the CIA. I don’t care that you’ve killed bad guys. I’ve killed a few myself. I can’t judge you on that basis. However, I do need to know what I’m up against. If I’m to protect you or help to keep the Russians alive to get this deal signed, I need to know who wants to kill who, and if you’re going to slit my throat in the night.”
“I would never slit your throat,” she whispered, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. “I…I…hell.” She shoved a hand through her hair. “They know I didn’t die in that fire.” She looked up at him. “You know about the fire?”
He nodded.
“And my parents?” she asked, her voice catching on a sob. She swallowed hard. “They broke down our door, charged in with their machine guns and murdered my parents. I would’ve stayed and helped them, but I wasn’t armed. My mother told me to go. She wanted me to take a flash drive from the safe and leave the house.”
“They would’ve killed you if you’d stayed,” Striker said.
Alex reached into her bra and removed a slim flash drive. “I’ve held onto this for two years. I can’t get into certain files because they’re encrypted, and I’ve tried every combination of passwords I could imagine. I still don’t know what that file contains or why my parents thought it was so important I needed to live to get it out of the house before they destroyed my home with my parents in it.” A single tear slipped down her cheek. She brushed it away.
Striker’s heart squeezed hard in his chest. He wanted to take her into his arms and hold her through her pain. “I don’t know whether to believe you or to turn you over to the French police.”
“Sometimes, I think it would be easier to turn myself over to the Russians and be done with it. Living a life of hiding and running is exhausting.”
“So, you are Anya and Alexa?”
She nodded.
“Did you kill the mercenaries and the government official the CIA thinks you did?” he asked.
“The team of mercenaries were guns for hire,” she said, her jaw hardening. “They’d kill anyone for a price.”
“And the government official?”
She glanced away. “He was a family friend. I thought I could trust him to know I was still alive. I needed answers to questions about who killed my mother and father. We met by the river.” She laughed. “He picked the location because he could easily dump me into the river, and no one would know he was the killer. When he tried to push me in,” she turned to face Striker, “I ducked and pushed him. The river was up from recent torrential rains. He was swept away, his body found days later. It was ruled an accident.” Her lips twisted. “If I’d been the one to die in the river, it would have been the same. He was afraid I’d blow his cover, since he was my mother and father’s CIA contact in Russia. I learned later that while he’d been passing information to the US, he’d also sold US secrets to the Russians. He was the one who told the Russians my parents had something they really needed, and that they were planning to pass it to the CIA.”
“Was he the one who sent in the mercenaries?” Striker asked.
Alex shook her head. “No. He didn’t have those kinds of connections. He was a middleman, playing both sides for profit. Someone else sent the gunmen.” Her eyes hardened. “I’ve been looking for the past two years for that person. At the same time, I’ve been trying to break the encryption on the flash drive with no success on either task.”
“Why didn’t you turn the flash drive over to the CIA?”
