Inside was a single packet, close to the back. Ella pulled it out, noticed whatever was inside was about the size of a thumb drive, and stuck it in the pocket of the jeans she wore. Then she walked away. She ducked into a restroom, checked each stall to ensure she was alone, and then pulled her shoulder holster off before putting her gun at the small of her back inside her waistband. She pulled her sweater down over it and trashed the holster before pulling her coat back on.
She exited the bathroom, keeping her gaze forward and searching out of her periphery for any sign someone was following her. All seemed clear. A homeless woman was sitting beside one of the active tracks, and Ella removed her heavier coat and handed it to the woman. The woman smiled and removed her lightweight sweater. With winter bearing down on Moscow, she was probably enjoying the promise of warmth. The slight woman offered up the lightweight sweater she’d been wearing. Ella took it and put it on.
Then she walked out of the station’s back entrance. She hopped into the first cab she came to and demanded to be driven around Moscow until she told him to stop. The driver glanced at her in the mirror, shrugged, and set about doing as she’d asked.
And it all happened just in the nick of time because as they pulled away from the curb, Jude walked out of the station, spotted her, and went completely still. He was too far away to catch her, and there were no traffic lights close enough to hold the car still for him to catch them.
Ella’s heart jumped to her throat. His lips moved, forming the only word he ever left her with on an op…safe. Her sob caught her, ripping from her throat as she did the only thing she could do. She pressed six fingers to the window and watched him until the cab carried her out of sight.
Chapter 7
Once again he was in the shadows of an apartment. This one was being rented by a Daisy Harper of Omaha, Nebraska—a.k.a. Ella Banning. The flat was a total of four rooms. Kitchen and living room were combined into one large area, with a small bedroom down a short hall and a bathroom at the end of the hall.
The furniture had probably been around for forty or fifty years and the same with the appliances. It was in a building right in the middle of Moscow, surrounded by offices and other flats. The paint was peeling, the wallpaper had been stripped bare in some places, and all in all, it was a small hellhole.
So while he was in the same kind of shadows as her Sarajevo safe house, the digs were definitely different.
She hadn’t shown yet, but Jude felt in his gut that it was only a matter of time. He’d followed her to the train station and lost her, finding her again as she hopped a cab and drove away. Always she was running from him, and he was sick and tired of it.
“Objective in sight,” Rook informed across his ear mic.
“Roger that,” Jude responded.
“Disable the objective and wait for us.” King McNally growled this time.
Jude didn’t respond to that. He estimated he had approximately five minutes from the time she entered until King and Rook made their entrance. He wanted to get one answer out of her before his team leader and teammate arrived.
“She’s in the building,” Rook said, voice whisper quiet.
“Disable, Jude. Do not engage her in conversation. Do you understand?” King was adamant that Ella wasn’t what she seemed.
It was shocking for Jude to realize that wasn’t the most important thing to him anymore. He didn’t care one way or the other. She was his, and she was in grave danger. She would go willingly or not; King would get angry with him or not, but Jude was going to ask his question, and he was going to do it today.
A soft click heralded her entrance into the flat. Night had long ago fallen, the threadbare curtains covering the windows almost no hindrance to the lights of Moscow. Outside, horns from irate drivers blared, and night traffic noises infiltrated the silence.
Ella stepped in and went completely still. She sensed him, no doubt about it. Jude’s body came alive—adrenaline spiking, breath roughening, and dick going brick hard behind the fly of his cargo pants.
It was always like that with her. He grimaced. It always would be.
“I want to know why,” he bit out.
Her chin dropped almost to her chest, and then she straightened her shoulders and lifted her face, finding him unerringly in the darkness.
“Goddamn it, Jude,” King said across the mic. “Disable. Do not engage.”
Ella smiled, sad and haunted. “Things happened, Dagan. I just didn’t want us anymore.”
“Lie,” he growled. The tense line of her body, the way her pupils contracted in the low light, showed she was lying through her teeth. “That’s a lie, and I won’t hear another one from you, Ella.”
She turned, shaking her right arm and more than likely dislodging the small blade she carried on the inside of her forearm. “Lies are all I know now.”
“Tell. Me. Why.” He was demanding it of her. She owed him at least that.
The thump of boots echoed through the small flat. Jude was out almost out of time.
“I won’t,” she whispered, and her agony rebounded through Jude. “I can’t.”
He nodded. She wasn’t going to give him what he needed. So he’d take it.
He moved fast—in his space beside the hallway one second, on her in the next. She lifted her right arm and tried to cut him with her blade; he dodged, knocked her arm to
