Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 145091 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145091 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
“Did he make me feel better that the woman I thought I cared about turned bad and I had to kill her?” Kyle asked, pouring out another drink. “Yes. Until she came back from the dead. Now I’m questioning things again.”
Drake was pretty much questioning everything. In this case at least a couple of his questions could be answered by the man sitting across the table from him. “Start talking.”
Brad frowned down at the glass in front of him. “Shouldn’t this have like some soda in it? Or ice?”
Kyle snorted. If there was one thing Kyle could be pretentious about it was liquor. He had surprisingly elevated tastes when it came to liquor and wine. And food. Or maybe not surprisingly since his mom and stepdad ran a restaurant empire, and Top didn’t serve fast food. Kyle reached for Brad’s glass, taking it away from him. “You don’t cut this perfection with freaking soda. This was aged in oak barrels for fifteen years. When you smell it you can smell the peat and loam of the Highlands of Scotland. There is history in this glass. You don’t deserve it. Go make yourself a white wine spritzer or something.”
“Oh, that sounds…” Brad shook his head. “I’m fine. Working. No need to drink, and also I get the feeling I’ll have to sleep with one eye open, and that’s not really fair.”
“Talk or you’ll sleep way longer than you want,” Drake threatened.
A long sigh went through Brad, and he sat back. “The day I showed up in Romania to get you all I’d been told was that Lev Sokolov’s handlers were done playing around and were ready to bring his daughter in for questioning. I assumed that meant they’d decided the likelihood of him being a true double agent was too much of a risk to leave him in the field, and they were going to use Taylor to get him to talk.”
“And you were okay with that?” He could only imagine how they would use Taylor. Most of the people he knew had a conscience and would never hurt a prisoner, but those weren’t the people who usually were left with prisoners. He knew sometimes it was important to get a person to talk—especially when other lives were at risk—but he couldn’t stand the thought of Taylor being left at the mercy of the Agency’s best interrogators.
“It wasn’t my place to be okay with anything, Drake.” Brad took on a professional tone. “I was working another mission, and you were involved in it. As far as I knew, you had done exactly what you’d told me you’d done. You had slept with her to get intel, and you didn’t care what happened to her. You pivoted quickly. We were in Budapest eight hours later, and you never mentioned her name again.”
“That feels cold.” Kyle took another drink, sipping this time. “And maybe meant as a distraction. Drake’s not good at acknowledging his feelings.”
Drake sent Kyle a pointed stare. “And you are?”
A big shoulder shrugged. “Takes one to know one. How did you end up meeting her? I ask because I’ve been your friend for years and never heard her name, yet there seems to be a connection.”
“She was after.”
Kyle nodded. “Understood.”
After the world had blown up. After Kyle had walked away.
“I met her at a safe house. We were both there at the same time. I was into her but then the Agency came and hauled her away and I had to rethink. Until now I worried maybe her being there wasn’t such a coincidence,” Drake admitted. “I know that sounds paranoid, but I’d been caught in a bad place, and we were worried about a potential leak. She was in the area. I wasn’t sure if she’d meant for me to need the safe house or if that was merely an effect of what she’d done. We figured out a few months later that she had nothing to do with my asset being killed, but by then the damage was done and she was still under investigation for aiding her father’s betrayal. Which turns out to not be a betrayal at all.”
“What’s the deal with Cuban medicine?” Kyle asked. “She said her dad could only get…”
“CIMAvax,” Brad replied. “Years ago the Cubans created a vaccine against lung cancer. It works as a treatment as well. Because of trade embargoes and sanctions against the Cuban government, these medications aren’t available to Americans unless they sneak into the country. I believe the drugs are available in Peru as well. There are similar drugs now making their way through the FDA, but it could still be a while before they’re routine.”
“And they work?” Kyle asked.
Drake nodded, his gut in a knot. Taylor had been trying to save her father’s life, not helping him betray his country. It was illegal, what he’d done, but Drake could understand it. How could someone simply accept death when there was a drug out there that could prolong their life or cure them? Wouldn’t anyone with the resources have done what Taylor did? “All indications are yes. We’ll have them on the American market at some point, but that doesn’t help the people who are dying here now. Is Lev Sokolov actually dead?”