She wouldn’t be able to stop the bombs Segorski would likely use in his quest to disperse the powder, but at least the ricin itself wasn’t going to kill thousands. He had aims to cement Russia’s incursion into the Crimean Peninsula. Ukraine, along with Crimea and all of its precious oil, was ripe for the taking, and Mother Russia was making her move.
Ella’s victory was a small one, but it was a victory nonetheless. And maybe when Segorski didn’t get the end result he wanted, he’d come after Dresden. Do Ella’s dirty work for her.
But not until she’d found out the details of Dresden’s organization. Please, God, not until then, or everything she’d gone through over the last year would be in vain.
“Dresden promised me a bomb maker,” Segorski reminded Ella.
She turned and began striding away from the Russian.
“Bomb maker,” Segorski called out, snapping his fingers at his men to hurry up and get the product loaded into the briefcases, which contained metal cylinders to house the vials.
She didn’t stop. “Not my concern,” she said over her shoulder. Then she pushed open the door and stepped back out into the chilly day.
That feeling of being watched was gone now. Ella mourned it but continued to the Rover. She got in, drew in a deep breath, and started the vehicle.
She had to leave Sarajevo. Her heart raced, threatening to beat out of her chest. The heart that had been dead for months.
Jude was onto her now. There was too much risk with Jude involved.
She had to run.
Chapter 2
Silence greeted Jude as he picked the lock and made entry into the loft in the middle of Sarajevo proper. This particular building still held pockmarked evidence of the three-and-a-half-year siege of Sarajevo that had ended in 1996. Bosnian Serbs had surrounded the city and pounded it with tank artillery and small arms fire. The city had burned, and nearly 14,000 people had been killed during the conflict. Sarajevo had managed to recover, but some of the buildings remained sentinels to the war that had nearly decimated it.
The loft Jude had sought was on the third floor, and though the building looked battered on the outside, the loft had been transformed into a posh condominium with hardwood floors and floor-to-ceiling windows along the south side of the space. The interior was filled with all the accoutrements of a well-to-do tenant. A leather sofa, ebony end tables, and a large, heavy oak dining table with twelve chairs for entertaining dominated the two main rooms. Heavy, steel appliances appeared brand new and unused in the spacious kitchen.
Jude made his way through the condo, his gaze cataloging every surface, finding nothing intimate or personal in nature. This was a safe house for her. She’d purchased the property under an assumed identity, Alejna Hurtic. Age twenty-six, daughter of a farm worker, Alejna was known for her escort work and lovely, vivacious nature. She was considered a dark beauty, much sought after but rarely caught.
And she’d apparently managed to amass a fortune in her scintillatingly dubious profession because her digs represented a lot of money. Logically, Jude knew it was part and parcel of what they did in the world of black ops. Create an identity, assume it with as much or as little engagement as needed, and use every resource at your disposal to garner money for your activities. Off-grid was how black ops worked, and there was no better way to survive the game than to re-create yourself.
She had done well with this one. Had she in fact earned her money in the business Alejna supposedly excelled at? Jude’s mind went there, knowing it wasn’t true but unable to stop the wave of possessiveness that tightened his scalp and fisted his hands.
Goddamn her for driving him to this madness. Stalking her and now resorting to ambush. But she had yet to show, and he was worried he’d lost her again. He’d left that rise above Dresden’s compound knowing that hanging around and blowing the building sky-high wasn’t going to accomplish anything. Dresden only used manufacturing facilities and storehouses once before moving on. So Jude had immediately headed here.
A source of his—okay, Vivi Granger—had listed this city as having potential as Alejna’s, a.k.a. Ella’s, location. Vivi was the only one who had never stopped believing in Ella’s innocence. She’d reached out to Jude two weeks ago and agreed to feed him as much information as she could get. And she had. Ella had become a master at evasion, but Vivi was wicked with a computer and excelled at possibilities and pattern recognition. She could find anyone, or at least a link to them. She had access to Ella’s CIA workup and file, so she knew how Ella moved, how she thought.
Jude didn’t know how he felt about Ella’s ability to outmaneuver him. The conflict inside him was buried under the need to be in her space, breathing her in. Anger could wait, right? He just needed his hands on her for a moment to make sure she was alive.
But now darkness was falling, and with it, Jude’s hopes of catching El—her—off guard.
Damn, Dagan, get your shit together. Her name is Ella. You’ve held her. Loved her. You thought she died, but apparently it was all a lie. Don’t let her steal the last part of you by refusing to say her name.
He breathed in deeply, let the oxygen work its magic on his muscles. Slowly, he relaxed. And then a key inserted into the lock of the front door, and Jude froze in the shadows beside the enormous bank of windows.
There wasn’t a single sound after the almost silent snick of the door behind whoever had entered. No footfalls echoed over the oak flooring, no small sounds rode the air. There wasn’t even the soft shush-shushing noise of cloth over cloth as someone moved. But they were in the condo now. Jude could feel them.
A small trail of light nearly blinded him as a
