A Thin Disguise by Catherine Bybee

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“You have me on a tracker,” Leo told Jax as he hoisted his bag up on his shoulder.

“I’m not sure about this.”

“You don’t have to be. You’re going to Amsterdam, I’m following Olivia. I told Neil I’d call for backup if I needed it. I might be a fool for doing this, but I’m not stupid. The fewer faces seen with her the better.”

Jax leaned in, placed a kiss to his cheek. “Be careful.”

“I will. See you back in the States.”

She pointed at him. “You owe me a drink,” she said as she backed away.

“I do?” What did he miss?

“Yeah. We get here and we’re practically engaged and now you’re leaving me for another woman. What will I tell my parents?”

Leo laughed as he turned and walked away.

The second Olivia had walked out of Leo’s room, he was up, dressed, and packed. She’d barely gotten back to her hotel and he was waking Jax to give her a heads-up.

As he expected, Olivia was mobilized and running, and he was right on her tail, not even bothering to hide.

He followed in the rental car from the second she left her hotel. They weren’t out of the city twenty miles and she pulled over.

He watched as she glared into the rearview mirror and jumped out of her car.

Leo pulled the key and put it under the mat.

“Fuck off, Grant,” she said the second he got out.

He popped his trunk and grabbed his bag. “You know, if you don’t stop leaving after we make love, I’m going to start believing you really don’t care.”

She marched over. “I don’t.”

He met her between the two cars, reached out, and pulled her close. A quick kiss to her ticked-off lips. “Good morning.” He left her staring and headed to the passenger side of her car.

“What are you doing?”

He looked over his shoulder as if the answer were obvious. “Taking two cars is a waste of fuel. And since we’re going in the same direction . . .” He opened the door to the back seat, threw his bag in.

She marched up, grabbed the bag . . . and tossed it out. “We’re not doing this.”

He picked it up, tossed it in . . . pressed one finger to her chest to back her up, and closed the door. “Yes. We are.”

She glared. “You’re really starting to get on my nerves.”

“I know.”

He opened the door and encouraged her to get in. “I can drive. You don’t look like you got any sleep last night.”

She walked around him, her middle finger in the air, and climbed into the driver’s side.

Leo laughed and took the passenger seat.

As soon as they were on the road, he texted Jax, told her to come and get the car.

“How did you know where I was?”

Claire!

“I can’t tell you all my secrets until you stop running away.”

Leo noticed her white knuckles as she gripped the steering wheel. “What did Charlie tell you?”

“Who was the shooter?”

She checked her blind spot, grunted.

“I took care of you two to one last night. You owe me.”

“I faked it.”

He busted out laughing.

Olivia said something in a language he didn’t understand.

“The way a woman moans and cries . . . that can be faked. But the way your body pulsates around my—”

“Shut up, okay.” She hit the wheel.

“Who is he?” Leo asked.

She stayed silent.

“Claire and Sasha are combing through the files . . . the ones you helped them get way back when. And they already have the recruit names. You can save them some time, and they can start gathering information that might help us when we confront him.” Leo kept saying him, hoping she would either correct him or go with it. Either way she was confirming and knocking the search down considerably.

“We aren’t confronting him. I am.”

Score. It’s a boy!

He would venture a bet that Olivia before the amnesia would have never let that slip. Or maybe she was starting to trust him just a little.

Leo reclined his seat, crossed his arms over his chest, and closed his eyes. “It’s okay. We have a few miles for you to get used to the idea.”

“Goddamn it. He told you, didn’t he?” Olivia was pissed. “Damn you, Charlie.”

Charlie hadn’t told them anything. Even denied seeing Olivia in the first place . . . but gee, thanks for stopping by and be sure to do it again after the wedding.

“I’m going to take a little nap. Let me know when you want me to drive. We need to be rested and go over a plan.”

“My plan. One that doesn’t involve you.”

He really was exhausted. He was secretly hoping they were driving for more than a day. “Good luck with that.” Leo let his brain settle, and he started nodding off.

Only once Leo had fallen asleep did she allow herself to look at him.

Such an annoying piece of beautiful shit.

He wasn’t shaking, much as she tried to move him along.

Of course he didn’t leave. The night before had been off the charts. All of the memories that they’d shared since they met funneled into those hours and made the night so much more memorable.

What was she going to do?

He would just keep returning. And what would happen if he returned at the wrong moment and was seen? What if . . .

If she told him what she knew and made him promise to stay out of sight. Or devised a plan where he had to stay out of sight to keep her safe . . .

And what of Claire and Sasha? Maybe they could find dirt on Friedrich, the man who had put a hole in her, something she could hold over him so he ponied up the information on who put the hit on her?

Isn’t that what she really needed to make the man talk?

Once again, she looked at Leo.

If someone came to her right then, threatening Leo, would she talk?

She was so screwed.

Olivia set her hand in the space between their seats and tried to ease the constant tension that lived between her shoulder blades. She wasn’t going to stop any of them from getting involved.

Controlling that involvement was her only choice.

Maybe she could get out of this without someone taking a bullet for her.

If she hadn’t realized how foolish it was to get involved with someone before, she sure understood it now.

But just like with Amelia, she didn’t know what was coming. There was no warning with her. At least with Leo . . . and the others, she knew the imminent risk. They knew to watch over their shoulders. Even more . . . Leo and Neil’s team were all seasoned. They could take care of themselves. Maybe not against an assassin’s bullet . . .

She sighed, trying to push that image out of her head when Leo silently slid his hand in hers and squeezed.

Four hours into the drive and they were just outside of Prague when Olivia allowed him to take the wheel so she could sleep.

When Leo asked if there was a particular route she wanted to use, she told him there wasn’t a reason to zigzag until they were leaving.

He opened a map on his phone. “So stay on the 50.”

She nodded. “Avoid Vienna.” She pointed to his map. “We’ll cut through Slovakia to get to Hungary.”

Instead of giving any reason for her to believe he had no idea where they were headed, he nodded and took the wheel. “Vienna sounds romantic.”

“Just drive, Grant.”

It wasn’t long before she was sound asleep in the passenger seat, her hands wrapped in his jacket and tucked under her cheek as a pillow.

She was hedging.

He felt it when she let him in the car and confirmed it when he took her hand and she didn’t stop him.

When they stopped to get gas, and he used the bathroom and she was still there . . . he breathed.

There he was, driving through countries instead of counties toward complete uncertainty and he couldn’t stop smiling.

If for no other reason than he knew exactly where she was, and for now . . . she was safe.

For almost a month that hadn’t been the case.

He never wanted that to happen again.

She slept for two solid hours before opening her eyes and doing a cat stretch.

Olivia was beautiful when she was waking up. “Where are we?”

“In the middle of nowhere, but it sure is beautiful.” Rain had started to fall, slowing the drive slightly.

A road sign passed, and she looked at her map with a yawn.

“Have you gotten any sleep since you left Colorado?”

She looked at him, blinked several times.

“Don’t you think you should go into this rested and ready for anything?”

“It’s hard to sleep when someone is trying to kill you,” she told him.

“I’m not going to let that happen. Maybe we get a place outside of town and regroup. We go over your plan.”

She huffed. “Budapest is more than a town.”

So that’s where they were headed.

“Still . . .”

“You’re not wrong.”

“Glad you see it my way. Now, what does one eat in Czechia? I’m starved.”

Two bites in and Olivia apparently made up her mind.

“His name is Friedrich Schmidt. Better known as Mr. Wet and Sloppy.”

They sat across from each other in a small diner in an even smaller town.

“You’re kidding.”

She shook her head. “And I didn’t give him a second chance. Not that it mattered. He moved on within a week, and so did I.” She took a bite and chewed in thought. “We had a lot of classes together.”

“Was he an orphan, too?”

“I don’t remember. I think there was an uncle, but I wouldn’t bet money on it. Most people with families didn’t talk about them much when they were around those of us who didn’t have families.”

Leo cut through some kind of beef and filled his fork. “Was there bad blood between you?”

“No. We stayed friends after the ill-begotten kiss. Got in trouble pulling pranks together.”

He thought of the kids on the campus. Imagined what Olivia must have looked like in the uniform. “Did he work for Pohl?”

“There was only one person that I knew who worked for Pohl other than me. And the only reason I knew her was because she’d graduated the year before. She was part of the welcoming committee. Unbeknownst to her or me, Pohl used that connection to force my first . . .” She stopped talking, looked around.

Her first kill.“What happened?”

She put her fork down, grabbed her water. “I didn’t want to do it. I thought I’d signed up to be a spy. Something close to what you do . . . Sasha and Claire. Hack computers to stop bad people from doing bad things. Sip wine in Vienna and bug a mercenary’s room to learn their next victim.” She stopped talking, eyes blinking.

Leo reached out and took her hand.

She smiled, removed her hand, and picked up her fork again.

“Pohl put a gun to her head, told me to take the shot or she’d die. She begged me.” Olivia snapped out of the memory.

“I’m sorry.” Leo couldn’t imagine the pain.

“I was twenty-one.” She took a bite, spoke around it. “I never saw her again after that night. Couldn’t tell you if she was alive or dead. Anyway . . . Did Friedrich work for Pohl? Could have. We competed a lot in school. If I took him down on the mat, he worked hard to pay me back the following week. But that’s how the school worked back then. ‘You’re good, but they’re better.’ There weren’t participation trophies at Richter. You had winners and losers.”

“And Friedrich was a winner.”

“The guy couldn’t kiss, but he knew how to shoot.”

Once Leo realized that Olivia had resumed eating, he joined her.

“And you’re positive it was him in the car in Vegas?”

“Yes. It’s amazing what your brain remembers in times of stress. I saw the long barrel with a silencer, knew it was pointed at me. Our eyes met and I knew I was going to die.”

“That didn’t happen.”

She cleared her throat. “I gave it a good college try.” Olivia reached for her water. “Funny, though . . . I’m pretty sure I saw him in the hospital.”

That stopped Leo’s next bite. “What? When?”

“Early on. After I stopped thinking I was in Atlantic City and before I refused the pain medications.”

“Neil’s team was there.”

“He was in a hall. Looked like any other visitor when they wheeled me to another CT scan. I didn’t recognize him, but I remember him looking me in the eye. Of course, that could have been the medication, which makes more sense. If Friedrich was there and he’d botched the job, why didn’t he finish it?”

Leo shrugged. “Conscience?”

“You already pointed out we don’t have those.” Only she was smiling as she said it.

Leo picked up a piece of bread and soaked up the generous amount of gravy on his plate. “What makes you think Friedrich is going to be in Budapest?”

“I doubt he’s there, but I might be able to lure him in.”

Leo didn’t like how that sounded at all. “What stops him from taking a shot the second he sees you?”

“Charlie said it was a sanctuary for us. Or did he skip that detail with you?”

Leo kept silent and smiled. He was happy to see her cleaning her plate. Not only did she look tired, she looked thinner than when she’d left Colorado. “Must have missed that part.”

Olivia narrowed her eyes and dropped her hand to the table. “You son of a bitch. He didn’t tell you anything, did he?”

Leo wiped his mouth, put his napkin on the table, and shook his head. “Nada. Zip. Wouldn’t even tell us what he had for breakfast.”

He saw the frustration ripple through her and changed the subject. “So this bar—”

“Nightclub,” she corrected.

“Right, nightclub. It’s a no-kill zone?”

She moaned. “I can’t believe this.”

Leo leaned forward on his elbows. “Do you think women are the only ones who can fake it?”

“I’m going to make you eat those words,” she warned him. When Leo looked closer, he saw a hint of admiration in her gaze.

“Don’t I know it.” He removed his cell phone and hesitated. “Is there any reason I shouldn’t give this name to Neil?”

“Why ask? You’re going to do what you want.”

He set the phone down, reached for her hand.

She tried to pull away, and he held tighter until she looked at him. “Full disclosure from this point forward. I needed to get you here so you knew I was serious about doing this with you. I can’t sit back and do nothing. If I was that man, you wouldn’t want anything to do with me.”

She stopped pulling, and her voice lowered. “I don’t want you to die.”

It wasn’t the “I love you back” he was aiming for, but it was a start. “I don’t plan on doing that anytime soon.”

He waved the phone again with a silent question.

A single nod and he texted the name to Neil.