throwing the plate, not the food on the plate.”
“Whatever.” He looked at her now. “It’s good to see you.”
They stepped back into the empty living room.
Zoya sat on the small wicker sofa. “You always turn up in the strangest places.”
“Where I immediately bump into you.”
“You didn’t bump into anybody. You’ve been following me.”
“You saw me?”
“No,” Zoya admitted. “You’re invisible when you want to be. But Brewer told you where I was, I assume.”
“Yeah.”
Court sat down next to her. Even with the sickness and the injuries that racked his body, he wanted to move closer, to press himself against her, to kiss her. But instead he kept a couple feet of distance, because he found her body language hard to read.
“How have you been?” he asked.
“Since you shot me, you mean?” Court had indeed shot Zoya in the hip months earlier in Scotland, the instant after Zoya shot Brewer because she thought Brewer was about to shoot Court.
With extreme understatement, he said, “Yeah . . . that was a mess.”
He rubbed his forehead; perspiration dripped to the floor.
Zoya softened a little. “Something . . . something is not right with you. Are you sick?”
“Picked up a little infection. The fever comes and goes. I’ll be fine in a couple of days.”
She looked at him like she didn’t believe him, then said, “You need to get to Templeton Three, in Maryland. They’ll patch you up. Then Hanley will come yank you out of your hospital bed and throw you back out to the wolves.”
Court sniffed out a tired little laugh. “That kinda sounds like something he might do.” He added, “Hey, sorry about your friend.”
“What friend?”
“Ennis.”
She looked at him with confusion. “He wasn’t a friend. He was my contact at Shrike.”
“Okay,” Court said, and Zoya cocked her head now.
“What?”
“I mean, last night, at dinner. It kind of looked like you guys were getting along.”
Zoya pushed a long strand of dark hair back behind an ear. “I was working him.”
“Okay.”
“I was.”
Court nodded now, took another gulp of water, and looked away.
When he did not speak, she said, “Ennis was my only route up the food chain at Shrike. He was also a gossipy fool, if you want my opinion.”
Court said nothing.
Zoya cocked her head again, and a little smile grew. “You’re . . . jealous?”
Now he turned away, but affected a laugh. “Yeah, that’s it,” he said, with poorly sold sarcasm.
“That’s hilarious.” She said this with a little smile, and then her smile went away.
It seemed every time Court encountered Zoya Zakharova, there was both affection and mistrust in the air. So far, on their previous meetings, he’d been able to eliminate the mistrust over time, but he worried this was getting harder and harder to do.
Shooting her hadn’t helped, but that wasn’t the only rift between them.
Zoya replied, “We aren’t good, you and I.”
“I know,” he responded, though, in truth, her words saddened him.
“But,” she added, “you saved my life back there. Not for the first time, either.”
Court thought back to the mad battle in the hotel suite, running it quickly through his mind like an organized after-action report. “Well, you shot the big dude, and the little dude did a header out the window. I’m not sure I did anything more than create a diversion.”
“Yeah. Well, you are my walking, talking flash bang grenade.” She smiled at him again, squeezed his good arm. “It’s good to see you, too.”
Court’s right arm hurt, his left shoulder burned, he was exhausted and feverish, but this small moment of human interaction made him the happiest he’d been in months.
Since the last time the two of them shared a tender moment.
He knew what this meant, of course. It meant he was in love with her, and he worried still that it would be his undoing.
He shook his head to clear these thoughts away, and she looked at him strangely, wondering what must have been going on in his mind. But before she could ask, he got back to business. “Anyway. You’re out, now. This op is over.”
“Oh . . . great. This is where you start telling me what to do, isn’t it?”
“No, I just—”
She shook her head. “It’s not over. Not even close.”
“What do you mean? You’re blown.”
“I’m blown at Shrike, but I can’t leave Berlin yet. Something is about to happen.”
“Yeah, you’re about to get shot by Russian assassins.”
“Not with you watching my back.”
Court shook his head. This was an insane argument. “I’ve got assholes running around Berlin trying to kill me, too,