He’d expected at least some level of regret on her part for what she’d done seven years ago: wrong. He’d expected her to have more than a passing flicker of rekindled interest in him: wrong again. He’d expected to find her relatively street ignorant and easily manipulated: seriously wrong.
Still, he was pretty damn sure he wasn’t wrong here.
Mitch pulled up to the storage facility’s gate after only another five minutes. He rolled down the window and stared at the security keypad. A wave of exhaustion hit him. “Code?”
She hesitated, then said, “Zero-four-two-eight.”
He’d punched the first three numbers when their significance hit him—his birthday, April 28. Which made his mind shoot back to her fictitious last name—Raiden. And her perfume. And her request of the gunman to release him and Dex.
A little flutter stung his heart, but Mitch smashed it and hit the eight. While he might have been able to force his emotions back into the corners, he couldn’t keep his mind from wondering how often she’d thought of him over the years. As the wrought-iron gate slid open, that thought became the flame on a fuse of a million similar thoughts.
But he pushed them back. He’d get his answers. He wouldn’t quit until he had them. But first things first.
“It’s the last one on the end.” She straightened in her seat, but her voice was weak and one glance revealed the circles forming under her eyes. “Park around the back of the building. I have another car inside. We’ll switch it with this one.”
“Another car inside.” Unease tingled through his belly and he cast her a longer, assessing look as he eased down the row of storage units. “And an attack dog. A self-defense expert. Weapons training. What were you expecting, Halina? The end of the world?”
“The end of my world.”
“Do you have another identity set up too?”
She didn’t respond.
Of course she did. Her trainer was an expert in all things clandestine.
At nearly two a.m. now, the storage yard was an empty, lonely dark rows of boxes, each with an exterior light casting a pool of yellow on the wet black asphalt. Mitch sat forward and drove with one wrist draped over the steering wheel, scanning the shadows. When he didn’t see anything suspicious, he parked and pulled his weapon from his belt. “What kind of lock?”
Halina sat forward, wincing, her hand pressed to her head. “Key. It’s on the ring. Has a yellow cover.”
Mitch pulled the keys from the ignition and grabbed the door handle. “Stay here. I’ll come get you when it’s open.”
By the time he’d rounded the trunk, Halina stood beside the car, steadying herself with a hand on the roof. Dex clung to her calf.
“You never did listen.” He searched the ring for the right key as he approached the metal door. “Would never accept help. So damn proud. Always had to do things for yourself.”
“Which, if I recall correctly, was one of the things you liked about me. My independence. My strength. The way I didn’t rely on you for every little thing.”
“I liked a lot of things about you, Halina.” He stalked to the lock and jammed the key in. “That didn’t make any difference to you then; why would you bring it up now? Noticed you’ve lost your accent.”
He clicked the lock open, visualizing himself as hard and cold as the metal in his hand. That helped keep him focused.
“I didn’t lose it,” she said. “I—”
Mitch jerked on the door and the metal rolled up and into the frame with ear-stabbing clacks. Dex barked, deep and angry.
When he turned toward the dog, scowling, he found Halina crouched, hands covering her ears like claws. A horrific moan ebbed from her throat and tightened Mitch’s gut. Dex pushed his muzzle behind her hands and licked her face.
“Shit.” Mitch reached for her wrist to pull her up.
Dex spun on him with a vicious growl, then launched into a bark that pierced Mitch’s brain. His patience snapped.
“Derzhat’,” he yelled, shocked the small amount of Russian he’d learned all those years ago still lived in some crevice of his mind. His command to hold stopped Dex mid-bark, and the silence that followed caressed Mitch’s ears with relief. The shepherd lay down on the asphalt in an alert almost-crouch as if it took all his focus not to rip Mitch’s face off.
He pulled at Halina’s arm. “Up. Inside.”
She brought both hands to her head as she stood. “You’re an even bigger ass than I thought you’d become.”
“You have a habit of underestimating me.” He gestured toward the darkened space and ordered the dog to come. “Nas-tupit’.”
Dex trotted inside and Halina followed, still holding her head. “Stop bossing my dog around. And when did you learn Russian?”
“Seven and a half years ago.” Mitch felt along the walls for a switch and clicked on the lights. He barely took a cursory look around before he turned back toward the door and said, “Cover your ears.”
He yanked the door back into place with another round of brain-jarring clatters. Halina swore, stumbling toward a sofa along one wall of the large storage space, and Mitch took a longer look at the unit.
It was set up more like a studio apartment than a storage locker, and another, older model BMW took up half of the space. The car was white and in pristine condition. The other half of the unit held a small amount of furniture, centered around the sofa where Halina had curled into a corner and laid her head on the arm. One wall was lined with boxes of MREs, bottled water, and bags of dog food. Someone had piggybacked electrical off the lights and Halina had a radio, a television, a mini refrigerator, and a space heater set up around the room.
“What the hell is this?” Mitch asked, hands on hips. This was extreme, even for someone in hiding. “Are you one of those freaky Doomsday preppers?”
Halina peeked out from beneath the hand that covered her eyes. “Yeah. Today is my Doomsday. Can you get me my medication? In the box on top of the refrigerator? And a bottle of water, please?”
Mitch did as she asked, but didn’t try to hide his jerky, angry movements. After he handed those items to Halina, he pushed some of her hair away from the injury on her head and said, “Hold still.”
“What are you doing?”
It looked worse in the light and Mitch was glad he hadn’t seen it before. He didn’t need anything more to worry about or to make him feel sorry for her. He opened a new text message to his twin sister, Alyssa, who was a radiologist, attached the photo, and typed a quick note. “I’m going to ask Alyssa if she thinks you should go to the hospital, but she may not be awake.”
“Of course she won’t be awake,” Halina said with too much attitude for Mitch’s irritable mood. Halina and Alyssa had been friends while she and Mitch had been dating. “Why would she be?”
“Because she just had a baby.” Mitch shot a scowl at Halina while pacing in front of the sofa. “My first nephew, whose birth I missed because I was in the middle of that damn lake watching you.”
Halina swallowed both a migraine pill and a muscle relaxer according the bottles they’d come from. She also had the decency to look apologetic. “Sorry,” she said, voice soft with regret. “But it was your choice to float around in the dark like a psychotic serial killer.”
He turned on her and Dex tensed, but maintained his hold position. Mitch wanted to order her to talk. To shake her until the truth spilled from her mouth, replacing the lies she’d told him that had haunted him all this time. But the transition from the car to the unit and the cold air had given Mitch a sliver more rationality and patience and he managed to stop himself before he erected another wall between them.