She was too important to do it wrong.
He released her, planted his hands on the wall behind her, and leaned away. She murmured a complaint that shot a jolt of lust straight to his groin, then, as if she realized what she’d done, she drew back and covered her face.
“Shit,” she whispered. “This is why I need to go. I can’t do this . . .”
He pulled her hands away and pushed strands of hair out of her eyes. “Halina, explain to me what I ever did to earn such loyalty from you. Love doesn’t warrant the kind of sacrifice you’ve made. Even people in love don’t do what you’ve done.”
She held his eyes for long moments. Her expression serious. Her eyes matter-of-fact. Just before she spoke, she tilted her head in that sweet way that made his heart squeeze. “Those people didn’t live my first twenty-five years without you.” She shook her head slowly, a sheen of tears growing in her eyes. “For those magical ten months you gave me, I gladly traded my remaining years of living in the open to make sure you stayed safe. I’ve lived countless what-ifs over the years, wished a million times I’d had other options to choose from at the time, but I’ve never regretted my decision. Not one day since I made it.”
Emotion swelled his throat closed. His eyes burned with tears. And, shit, he didn’t know what to do with it all. He hadn’t cried since those dark days after she’d abandoned him. He’d been so lost. Felt like the world was against him. Now he knew his worst days had been only a tenth as difficult as hers. That not only hadn’t she abandoned him as he’d believed, but she’d been watching over him this whole time.
He suddenly knew he needed to know more. Right now. He picked her up by the ass, turned, and slid to the floor with his back against the door.
“What are you doing?” She laughed the words, but sank onto his lap, her arms around his neck.
“Tell me about Russia,” he said, keeping his voice soft. “I’ve been trying not to ask, but there are a million things I want to know about your childhood.” He pulled her to him for a kiss. “I want to know everything, but just tell me one thing now.”
She scraped her lower lip between her teeth and looked up at him through her lashes. “I want to tell you about Saveli.”
Her voice was soft, affectionate. Fear coiled in Mitch’s chest. “Okay.”
“He didn’t grow up in Moscow. His family moved there when he was in high school. Until then, he lived where I grew up.”
“Why didn’t you get placed with his family? He turned out okay, well . . .” Mitch grinned, “except for that whole pretending to be your husband thing.”
Halina laughed, but only for a couple seconds. “Saveli was a second cousin. My uncle was a closer relative, so the state asked him first. He saw me as free labor and grabbed me before Saveli’s parents even knew what had happened to my mom and dad.
“I had another cousin,” she said. “Saveli’s age. My uncle’s son, Misha. He was . . . wonderful.” She nearly breathed the last word. “He hid food from the dinner table when the men ate to make sure I got something to eat. He’d claim responsibility for mistakes I’d made so I wouldn’t get punished. He helped me with my homework. I’m a scientist because he was enthralled with chemistry. He was very close with Saveli. They were best friends. Like brothers. And the three of us spent a lot of time together.”
Foreboding crept into Mitch’s gut. “I’m not sensing a happy ending here . . .”
Halina shook her head. “I don’t have to talk about this now—”
“That didn’t mean I don’t want to hear it.” He rubbed her arms. “I was just preparing myself. Go on.”
She licked her lips. Took a breath. “When he was fourteen, my uncle decided he was old enough to start going on jobs.” Halina swallowed with visible effort. She flicked a look at Mitch. “You know what those jobs were, right?”
“Murder for hire?”
“Or assassinations, whatever.” She looked away. Shrugged. Scraped her lip between her teeth. “Misha changed. Closed me out. Turned his back on Saveli. Didn’t want to talk to us. Didn’t want to spend any time with us. Avoided us at every turn. I was crushed. Sure I’d done something wrong. Now I know he did it to protect us both, but it took me a long time to understand that.
“Anyway, one night, he went out on a job and something went wrong. I never found out what, just that my uncle was livid. I’ve never seen him so angry. I thought he was going to beat everyone in the house to death and set it on fire.”
Halina shivered, a violent tremor that snaked through her body and had Mitch pulling her closer. She stayed there as she continued, but her voice had changed. Gone weak and shaky.
“Misha groveled just like he was supposed to, promised he’d make it right. And then he disappeared. Just . . . didn’t come home the next day. No one would tell me what happened. I asked once too often and got the beating of my life. My uncle never showed any concern. Not an ounce of remorse or sadness.” She pressed her eyes to his shoulder. “Misha was his only son.”
Mitch’s heart ached. “I can guess that’s when Saveli’s parents moved their family to Moscow. And now I understand why Saveli was so loyal to you when you needed him to escape . . . me.”
Halina nodded against his shoulder. She stayed there a minute, pulling herself together, then sat back and met Mitch’s gaze. “My uncle and his men are why I understand Schaeffer. You’ve been around, seen bad people, bad things. Prosecuted them. But I’ve lived with them, day in and day out. I know how they act. How they talk. I understand the different looks in their eyes, the shift in their expressions, in their voices. What appeases them. What angers them. And what makes them snap.
“I knew after I’d worked at DoD two months that Schaeffer was a man like my uncle. But by then, I was already in love with this country. In love with the work I was doing.” She lifted her hand to his face and those beautiful eyes turned so soft. “In love with you.”
Mitch’s heart stretched beyond its limits. He leaned in and kissed her. Tasted her. Savored every curve of her lips, every touch of her tongue. He wrapped her in his arms and lifted her off the floor.
A strangled sound came from her throat as he carried her toward the bed. She pulled out of the kiss, panting and squirming against him. “Mitch, I can’t stand to see those visions of you . . .”
He laid her back and a crinkling sound filled the air.
“Wait,” she said. “The papers—”
“They’ll live a little wrinkled,” he murmured against her throat as he kissed her there, running his hands up her sides and beneath her shirt. “God, you feel so good.”
“Did you even hear me?” she asked, her voice a little dreamy, a little breathless as her hands caressed his arms. “And did you even look at these papers?”
“Yes, I heard you.” He kissed her throat. Her skin was so soft. “And no, I didn’t look at them.”
“Then you don’t know what I found?”
“No.” He ran his tongue into the V of her shirt. God, she tasted good. “Later.”
“I highlighted all Classified’s connections with Schaeffer—the contracts for chemicals sold to DARPA with Schaeffer’s signature. The shipping invoice that lists the warehouse in the Sierra Nevada mountains as the destination for the tanks—”
Mitch lifted his head and forced a few more gears to turn in his brain. He’d been focused on taking down Classified Chemical for contamination violations. He’d planned on slamming them with enough fines to make them buckle and hammer them with enough violations to hinder their operations. Schaeffer’s name had come up randomly in Mitch’s research and, ironically, hadn’t been of much interest to him.