Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 109368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 547(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 547(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
But for her …
“All agents have an officer. Your officer runs the operation, details what they want and how they want it, and the agent acquires and passes along the intelligence to them. Usually, we met in London. London is called the City of Spies for a reason. Not only because of James Bond. It’s because beneath everyone’s noses, London is a crossroads. It’s full of exiles and dissidents. Spies from all over the world move through the streets of London trying to collect intelligence.”
“You were one of them.”
“London was my home base. And aye, it’s where I met my officer more often than not.” Grief tightened sharply in my chest. “Her name was Natalya. She was my officer from the beginning and had been a foreign spy, recruited by MI6 when she was a university student to betray Russia. After she acquired the intelligence they needed, she was recruited into the agency permanently. She was twelve years older than me.” I took a deep breath, not wanting to hurt Silver but wanting her to understand. “I fancied myself in love with her.”
“Oh.” She lowered her lashes, covering her expression. “Were you two …?”
“No. Natalya fell in love with another British agent about a year after moving to London. By the time she and I met, she was very happily married to Ian. There was never anything on her side. She loved her husband. Deeply. And he loved her.”
Silver met my gaze again, concern in her hazel eyes. “What happened to her?”
“When … when we plan to meet to pass intelligence on, an officer will walk what we call an antisurveillance route. They’ll establish a theme. For instance, shoe shopping. Natalya would take detours into stores pretending to look for a pair of shoes so that if anyone was following her, they’d think she was just shoe shopping. If she spotted the same person on her route, we called it a double sighting and we’d abort the meeting.
“That day, she met me, and she told me she’d wasn’t sure if she’d had a double sighting. I was angry because even a sliver of doubt meant she should have aborted. But we were in the middle of a highly urgent operation, and she wanted the information I’d acquired. The next thing I knew she started seizing in the restaurant. I tried CPR, but she was dead within seconds. A sniff of her drink revealed a hint of almond. Toxicology reports proved she’d been poisoned with a liquid form of cyanide.” I dragged a hand down my face at the memory of her sightless eyes staring up at me.
“I’m so sorry,” Silver whispered, sincere emotion in her words.
“It wasn’t even for the intelligence I’d given her. It was a state-ordered assassination. After twenty years, they killed her for betraying Russia.”
“Oh God.” She covered her mouth, shaking her head.
“Ian, her husband, blamed me. And I didn’t blame him for blaming me. The meeting should never have happened, and I have no idea how I missed that someone had the opportunity to poison her drink. I should have protected her, and I didn’t.”
“So you retired early?”
“I couldn’t attend Natalya’s funeral because Ian didn’t want me there. But only agents and officers attended. No outside friends or family.
“And I knew that would be me if I died on the job. Except there would be no grieving wife. I was a fucking ghost. That’s what I was. A ghost.”
“And you didn’t want to be that anymore.”
“I didn’t realize that was why I quit. I thought it was guilt. Failure. I thought I wanted to be alone. Of course, quitting meant starting over as someone new. Especially after what happened to Natalya. Ramsay McRae is my sixteenth and last alias.”
Her lips parted in surprise. “It’s not your birth name?”
“No. No one but me and the agency know my birth name. I became Ramsay six years ago, and that’s who I am. The agency paid well, but I dabbled in high stakes gambling during my career and accumulated what I called my safety net in case I needed to disappear. I bought Stòr. But then I got Akiva. And Quinn.” I smiled at Silver’s small chuckle. “And everyone on Glenvulin.” I held her soft gaze. “Then you showed up.”
“The nosy American,” she teased, though her eyes were still dark with all the secrets I’d revealed.
“I have traveled the world and met many people, Tierney Silver … but I’ve never felt what I felt the moment we met.”
“What did you feel?”
“Like I already knew you,” I confessed gruffly. “Like you knew me.”
She blinked and her tears slipped free. “That’s how I felt too.”
“You scared the shit out of me.”
Silver laughed, wiping at her wet cheeks. “I bet I did.”
I grinned, that hope building in my chest. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, woman.”