Page 51 of Close Pursuit

He sighed and considered the question. The Big Two were the obvious choices—the CIA and the FSB. It was a toss-up in his mind which bunch was trailing him.

What he couldn’t figure out was why the tails had actually tried to catch him and Katie. Why hadn’t the team just hung back and tracked where he went? Who wanted to actually apprehend him? That was a new and worrisome wrinkle in his ongoing dance with the intelligence services.

Dammit, Katie was still waiting for an answer. That girl was preternaturally patient about getting answers to her questions.

He said carefully, “My best guess is some intelligence agency was tailing us. Which one, I have no idea. Why? Because we’re Americans who came to town on a Russian military aircraft, and that would send up warning flags anywhere on earth.”

She digested that evasive truth in silence, although he could practically hear the wheels turning in her head. If only she were a little less quick on the uptake.

He’d promised her he would never lie to her, and he wouldn’t. It had been a stupid promise, made on impulse, but he was stuck with it, now. Still, it didn’t mean he couldn’t repackage the truth to his advantage.

“How is it you were able to call in that Russian plane to come get us? My brother was a Navy SEAL, andmaybeon a mission he could have pulled off something like that. But that would have been the extent of it.”

There was no way to sugar coat the fact that he’d been doing his father a favor by being in Zaghastan in the first place and that the plane was payback. “Family connections,” he said shortly.

“You called Daddy?” she blurted.

He snorted. “I haven’t initiated contact with him in a decade.”

Which wasn’t to say they had communicated. He mentally winced at splitting hairs with Katie. But hell, his entire life was a series of half-truths and evasions. Why should his relationship with her be any different?

He and his father hadn’t shared an honest moment between them in pretty much forever. Peter wanted him to “come home” and become a cryptographer for the FSB or even become a field operative—a spy—for the FSB in America.

But his old man knew not to ask Alex outright to do it. No, it was Peter’s intent to manipulate his son into doing his bidding and not to risk Alex turning him down outright.

His father couldn’t seem to grasp that for Alex, ‘home’ was America. Not Mother Russia.

The last time they’d spoken about him working for the FSB, Alex was eighteen. They’d had a violent shouting match over it, in fact. His father had insisted Alex was Russian in his heart and had wanted no part of hearing that his son preferred the corrupt, capitalist, imperialist regime in the United States.

He’d have thought his father would catch a clue when Alex put himself in jail to avoid the bastard’s aggressive recruiting tactics. But no. Even after four years in jail, his father was still coming after him. Peter had just learned to be more subtle and vicious about it.

Tough. He still felt the same. He was American—even if the U.S. government didn’t trust him any farther than it could throw him. He couldn’t blame the Americans.

“Who was following us back in Zaghastan?” Katie asked, startling him out of his bitter ruminations.

“The guy I jumped was American. I have no idea who he worked for.”

He didn’t mention the burner phone resting in his pocket waiting to ring. He was deeply interested to see who eventually spoke on the other end of that phone.

“Was it just me, or were those rebels who came up the valley the night Dawn was born trying to kill us?” she asked soberly.

“It’s not just you. I thought the same thing.”

“Were they American, too? Did the guy you attacked work with them?”

“I don’t know.” Personally, he doubted it. Given his father’s insistence on telling him about that emergency bunker, he guessed Peter had knowledge of some Russian operation in the Karshan Valley that he’d thought would endanger his boy.

Weird way of showing love for your kid. Knowingly send him into a death trap…but give your kid an escape route. His father was one twisted bastard.

“Why in the world would Americans attack us? Did they not know who we were?”

“Oh, I’m sure they knew exactly who we were.”

Katie’s head whipped toward him. He swore mentally. He probably shouldn’t have said that.

He sighed. “Like I said before. I have enemies. I don’t think that team was attacking you. I think they were attacking me.”

“Who specifically would attack you andwhy?”

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