We look up at each other at the same time and share a grin.
“I’m having fun,” I say, wanting him to know he hasn’t hurt my feelings by not liking the food I put together.
“Me, too.”
“Even though you make me crazy sometimes,” I add.
He lifts his beer, tilting the bottle toward me. “Right back at ya, babe.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Thibault leaves after dinner to go find a cell signal, taking with him the note I left on the counter with the information for Holloway on it. I’m sitting at the kitchen table with a deck of cards when he gets back, trying to ignore my nervous stomach. The baby is asleep in the cabin’s only bedroom in the bassinet. Will Thibault expect to sleep in there with us, or will he take the couch? Could I share a bed with Thibault and calm down enough to sleep? Doubtful.
“Are you ready to play some crazy eights?” I ask as he swings himself into the kitchen on his crutches.
“Yep. I hope you’re prepared.”
“I am. I’ve been warming up.”
He smiles, sitting down across from me. “How does a girl prepare for a game of crazy eights, exactly?”
I shuffle the cards. “I’m not going to share all my secrets with you.”
“Well, I hope you’re going to share some of them.” He keeps staring at me until I look up. “What do you think?”
“I think I can do that. I believe I already have, actually.”
He nods. “That you have.” He takes the first cards I deal him and arranges them in his hand. “So who is it you were living with? Can you tell me that?”
“One person permanently, another from time to time.” I give us both more cards.
“Do these people have names?”
“Yes, they have names.” I know this is serious, me talking about the details of my carefully guarded life, but he’s being so ridiculous . . . trying to pretend he’s not being nosy when that’s exactly what he is.
“Do I get to know what their names are?”
“Will it make a difference?” I put the deck of remaining cards down on the table and flip the top one over next to it.
“To what?” he asks.
“To whatever it is your team is doing with the information I already gave you.”
He shrugs, putting a card down on the discard pile. “Maybe. I won’t know until I hear more.”
I sigh in defeat. What he’s saying makes sense, and I don’t see the harm in telling him something minor like who I was living with. “I was living sometimes with Alexei, and all the time with a girl named Sonia.” I play my best card and wait for him to take his turn.
“Is Alexei missing or something? Did I hear that guy Sebastian say that?” He puts a card down.
My smile disappears as I glance up at him. He’s not looking at me; all his focus is on his cards. “You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t see the point in doing that.” He moves the cards to different positions in his hand. “We’re either going to get to the bottom of this, or you’re going to keep holding out on me, and eventually I’m just going to have to decide whether I can continue to function in the dark or if I’ll have to step back.”
I put a card down, not really paying attention to strategy anymore. “I don’t know why you think that me possibly having a few secrets means you’re functioning in the dark.”
“You never know what one piece of information can mean to the entire picture.” He drops his discard on the table. “I’d rather know it all and put the pieces together myself than have you decide what I need to know and what I don’t need to know.”
I bite my lip as I look at the cards I’m not really seeing. The suits swim before my eyes. He’s pushing again, but I told myself I was going to try to trust him. “It just feels like . . . an invasion.”
He looks at me over his cards. “Of your privacy?”
“Maybe. Or just my safety.” I rearrange my hand, my eyebrows drawing together as I try to figure out what to do. This was supposed to be about a hand of crazy eights, not delving into the details of my life.
“You think telling me these things is somehow going to put you at risk?”
I nod, looking up at him. “I think it could. I think it could also put you at risk.”
“I’m a big boy. Why don’t you let me decide how much risk I’m willing to take?”
“That’s the thing . . . You might not know how much you’re taking by knowing certain things.”
He sighs and shakes his head at me. “Did you or did you not see my war wounds?”
I can’t help but smile. “Yes, I saw your war wounds. They’re very impressive.”
He loses his smile. “Seriously, though . . . I do this kind of thing for a living. I’ve been training for years. I’ve even done things with the police department, gone to their training programs and their conventions, worked in the field with highly qualified personnel in both the police department and the military. I can handle it.”
“But if something happened to you or somebody in your family, I would never forgive myself.”
“I understand. But I wouldn’t do anything that would put those people at risk.” His voice softens. “Just talk to me. Pretend I’m a priest and you’re in the confessional.”
“I don’t go to church, but if I did, it wouldn’t be to the kind that had a confessional.”
“Okay, then pretend I’m a counselor. Like a therapist.”
“Do you think I need therapy?”
“Who doesn’t?” He puts down a card.
The room goes silent as we work our way through the deck. The cuckoo clock in the other room squawks, alerting us to the top of the tenth hour.
Cuckoo! Cuckoo! My life is crazy. I’m sitting in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, playing cards with Superman. My mouth opens and words tumble out. “Alexei is gone. I don’t know where he is.” The confession pops out of me like a cork from a Champagne bottle. Crazily enough, I feel a huge release of tension I didn’t realize I was carrying.
“Do you think Pavel did something to him?” His calm acceptance makes it easy for me to keep talking.
“I’m pretty sure he did or he knows where he is. He didn’t seem upset when Alexei stopped coming around. That tells me he had something to do with it.”
“Do you think he . . . killed him?” His tone is compassionate. Concerned.
I’m battling tears now. I hadn’t let myself think that far. I wanted to believe that because Alexei was family, it wouldn’t happen. “I don’t know. It’s hard to say with Pavel. He might’ve just sent him somewhere and told him to stop contacting me.”
“Is Alexei your boyfriend?”
I shake my head, almost laughing at the idea. “No, he’s definitely not my boyfriend. I took care of him. Cooked him some meals. Kept him company. Let him stay over when he seemed like he needed to. He always slept on the couch.”
“Oh. So he’s a kid?”
“Only in his head. He’s twenty-five years old, but he has the mentality of a child.”
“And he’s the one who likes ketchup-based spaghetti sauce, I’m guessing.” He smiles warmly.
I scowl at him. “Excuse me, but everybody likes ketchup spaghetti sauce.” I calm myself, realizing it’s not him I’m angry with. “But yes, he’s the one I started making it for.”
“I knew it. Well . . . kind of; I thought for sure you had a three-year-old hanging around.”
I try to smile but keep my eyes on my cards to help control the tears that are still threatening. “Yeah, he’s really young at heart. He smiles a lot. He’s fun to be around. A lot less serious than Pavel or anyone else in the family.”
“And what about your roommate?”
“Sonia? She was Pavel’s girlfriend, on and off. We’re not friends.” Bitch sold me out. I’m not one for revenge, but if I were, I’d get some on her. She almost ruined everything, and all I asked her to do was pick me up and bring me some clothes.
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“Why aren’t you friends? How did you become roommates?”
“Because she’s Russian, and it’s hard to be friends with any of them. And she was always worried that I was having an affair with her boyfriend, so there was a lot of jealousy there. Pavel is the one who set us up to live together.”
“Did you? Have an affair with him, I mean?”
The thought nauseates me. “No, never. Pavel’s dangerous. I work for him, but I would never let him get that deep into my life.”
“But I thought . . .” He looks toward the bedroom.
“That he’s Tee’s father? He is.” I sigh. I really don’t want to get into this, but I’m already halfway there. “Pavel is not a nice person, obviously. And he likes to drink. One night he came over very drunk looking for Sonia. When she wasn’t there, he refused to leave. Then he started drinking more and told me to drink with him. I tried to say no, but he was very insistent. I figured if I nursed a drink long enough, he’d pass out and I could go to my room and let him sleep it off.” I shrug. The rest of the story is not pretty enough to share. I numb myself to it so it won’t push me off the deep end.
“But he didn’t pass out because he probably has a really high tolerance to the alcohol.”
“Either that or he wasn’t as wasted as I thought he was to begin with.” I huff out a breath to keep the tears away. “End of story.” I’ve blocked all the details from my brain, and now that Tee is here there’s no point in dredging them up. I choose to believe that the night with Pavel happened for a reason, and that reason is my son. Tee is a silver lining I never saw coming, but I’ll take him happily.
“So you never dated or were in a relationship?”
“No. But he was pushing harder in the last few months to change that. It’s part of the reason I decided to help the police out. I don’t want him in my bed. I had this premonition that it would be the beginning of the end for me. He likes how I keep his books, but that wouldn’t keep him from killing me if I made him angry enough.” I try to laugh, but it sounds like someone’s strangling a bird. “He’s the one person in the world I’ve been able to learn to hold my tongue in front of. Mostly. He’s like a walking nightmare; you never know what mood he’s going to be in, and it changes so fast, like lightning-quick. You can’t trust him from one second to the next.”
Thibault nods, his expression dark. “I don’t think guys like him are ever respectful of women, even when they’re sleeping with them.”
“He’s definitely not respectful. I’ve heard stories that would turn your hair white. Like I said, it’s why I’m helping put him in prison. Or I was, anyway.” I look toward the bedroom. “I don’t know what I’m going to do now that I have a baby to take care of.” I refuse to think about the fact that it’s Pavel’s baby. I don’t want to imagine what that could mean legally. Later. I’ll worry about that later, after we’re safe.
“Mika . . .” Thibault extends his hand toward me.
I jump to my feet, angry with myself. I’ve said way too much, and now he thinks I’m begging for his help with my poor-me comments.
I busy myself with getting out a glass and the juice.
“How did you get in touch with the police?” Thibault asks. “Did you just call them up and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got information for you,’ or did they find you?”
I sigh. “No, it was me. Pavel got arrested, so I went in to bail him out, and when I was there a detective went up to him and basically told him he was going to bring him down one day. I happened to see his nameplate on his desk, and I never forgot it. So when Pavel was pushing me hard one day, telling me I wasn’t allowed to sleep with anyone other than him, talking about how we were going to be together soon, I decided to call the guy.”
“What’s going to happen, do you think, now that you’ve been missing for a few days?”
“Well, Pavel knows that I had a baby, and he told the nurse it’s his. He probably assumes I’m hiding with a friend or something. He’ll keep looking for me. It’s not his style to give up.” I sit down at the table with my glass of juice. “I don’t know what Holloway thinks. I haven’t talked to him in a while, so he only knows what your people have told him.”
“How did Pavel know you had Tee? Did he see it on the news?”
“No, I called Sonia. I was freaking out, and I was worried that Alexei was going to come back and I wasn’t going to be there for him. I don’t know, I think I had a moment of insanity. I shouldn’t have called her. I shouldn’t have said anything to anyone. Like you said . . . I should have just disappeared and started over somewhere.”
He shrugs, his eyes filled with what looks like understanding. “You were going through a life-changing event with no one to talk to. Of course you reached out to someone you knew. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“Maybe.” I take a sip of my juice. “I’m usually pretty independent, but sitting there in that room with a baby I didn’t even know existed two hours before was really freaking me out. Most people have nine months to prepare. I had none.”
“And then I showed up in your room.” He gives me one of his most charming grins. “The weirdo stalking you, who you probably thought was going to sue your pants off for running him over.”
I have to smile at that. “I never considered you a stalker. You were pretty persistent, but I could tell you were just trying to look out for me. I understood that. And besides . . . I didn’t run you over. You hit my car.”
“Nothing’s changed, you know. I’m still trying to look out for you.”
I pick up my cards and then take the top one off the deck, putting it in with my hand. “Yes, something has. You’re not acting the same as you were before, but I understand why.” I discard and look up at him. If he can ask intense questions, so can I. He was warmer toward me before. He almost kissed me. But now he’s being polite and distant. The minute I started sharing my stuff, he closed up. I should be glad, but instead I’m offended.
He puts his cards down and folds his arms on the table, looking right at me. “I like you, Mika. I admire the hell out of you. I’ve told you that I’m going to help you no matter what. None of that has changed.” He pauses, looking down for a second before lifting his head again. “But I realized when I kissed you in the park that I feel other things for you, too. And I’d be cool with that, except for the fact that you’re not really being up front with me about everything, and like you said . . . I have family and friends to protect. I don’t mind putting myself at risk, but I can’t put them at risk in the bargain. Especially because they have kids, and those kids depend on them, like Tee is depending on you.”
It’s hard to tell which is the stronger emotion I’m feeling right now: sadness or frustration. I asked for this, probably, with my challenging question, but still . . . what right does he have to expect me to just open up like a damn book for him to read?
“You want me to tell you everything about my life? All the people I spend time with? Everything I say? Everything I do, every day, all day long . . . all my secrets?”
“I do. But I know it’s hard for you to be open like that, especially with someone you don’t know very well.”
“I don’t have any plan to hurt you or take advantage of you, if that’s what you think.”
“You can tell me that all day long, but until I know your story, I have no reason to completely trust it or believe it. Maybe I’m too jaded, being in the security business, but I also have instincts, and those instincts are telling me to be careful. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but I think you deserve the honesty.” He sits back in his chair, sliding his cards off the edge so he can look at them again.
This is the first time I’ve seen him be so cold. I go back to staring at my cards to keep myself from crying. He’s judging me too harshly for me to bear. “Yeah. Okay. So you feel this way because I’m a criminal. Because you think I’m like Pavel. I get it.”
He reaches out and puts his hand on my wrist, holding on to it. I should detach myself from hi
m, but his touch is like a magnet, and I’m not strong enough to resist the pull.
“No, Mika, don’t say that. I actually don’t see you as a criminal or like Pavel. I see you as somebody who’s a survivor. And there’s one thing I know about survivors, because the woman I love most in the world—my sister—is one: they’ll do anything they have to so they’ll be around to take their next breath. If something’s in their way, something that’s threatening them, they’ll take it down. And if a lie works better than the truth, so be it—you live to see another day. It’s survival. I get it. I don’t like it, but I respect it.”
I blow out a long breath, slowly pulling my hand from his touch, but not in an angry way. I’m still hurt to be branded a liar, but I appreciate his honesty. “I guess it’s fair to say that about me being a person who will do what’s necessary to survive. Not that I’m lying to you, because I’m not, but I do know I’ll go pretty far to protect myself.”
The room goes silent. We’ve reached an impasse, maybe.
“Come on, Mika . . . ,” he cajoles. “What’s the deal? Are you going to level with me and tell me what I need to know, what I want to know, or are you going to keep hiding things from me to protect yourself?”
I take a big breath in and let it out slowly, trying to make the tension that’s built up leave my body. “I don’t know. I guess I need to think about it a little bit longer.”
He throws down a card, the ace of hearts. He smiles sadly. “My grandfather used to call me Ace.”
I’m sad too. “Ace of hearts. How appropriate.” Since he’s doing a good job of bruising mine.
“What’s that mean?” he asks.
The air is charged with tension, with unspoken desires on my part. I asked him for a kiss once. I’ll never do that again, even though when I see his hands holding those cards, I wonder what it would be like to feel them on my body.
“Nothing. I just need some time.”
He nods. “Fair enough. I have Dev working on the situation, and he’s probably going to get back to me tomorrow or the next day. Until then, we can enjoy our spaghetti and card games and see where that takes us.”