But she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on.

It occurred to Court that he’d been under the hot tarp for so long that his hair was probably pretty ridiculous-looking right now. It also occurred to him that he’d never once thought about such things in the middle of an operation.

Zoya looked at him for another five seconds, still not speaking.

He broke the ice with the absolute best opening line he could think of.

“Hi.”

She lowered the pistol slowly and looked at him a little cockeyed, as if she were still trying to size him up and figure out what the hell he was doing here. Finally she said, “The sniper? The laser? The safe?”

Court nodded. “Yeah. Me.” And then, “You okay?”

She slipped the weapon in her waistband, still not taking her suspicious eyes from him, and then she began moving closer. Court kept his hands away from his body, unsure if he was going to get frisked or punched, but unwilling to make any sudden moves to startle her.

She moved faster as she closed, reached out with a hand, and put it behind his neck, and instantly his defenses fired. From this position Court knew that someone, even a smaller woman, could hoist herself up and behind a larger man, get her arms around his neck, and put him into a blood choke that would turn his lights out in seconds.

But instead her hand behind his neck pulled him hard forward; she did not leap up and behind him, but she brought his face to hers and kissed him hard, pushing him up against the door.

Moments earlier he had been running for his life and dodging bullets, and now he was being kissed. After the brief shock he was actively involved in the action now—with the woman he’d thought about thousands of times since the first day they met.

They hugged silently for a moment, and then she broke free and took a step back. “We have to get out of here,” she said.

“We’re okay for now. They’ll run right through this building and back out onto the street. They’ll be looking for us on foot.” He added, “We need to talk.”

Zoya nodded. She put her back to the wall next to him and slid down to the floor, still looking his way in disbelief.

He did the same, leaning against the wall as he sat.

She said, “Brewer sent you after me?”

“No. She didn’t have a clue you were here.”

Zoya eyed him. “Until?”

“Until I saw you in Cassidy’s office. I told her you were here, asked her what the hell was going on.”

Zoya wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her arm, an expression of frustration on her face. Court saw that she thought he’d done the wrong thing by telling Brewer she was even here. “And what did she tell you about me?”

“That you’ve been in the wind for a couple of days. That’s really all I know. Some Mexicans tried to kill or capture you . . . but nobody knows why.” He snapped his fingers. “Oh, yeah. There’s a leak at the Agency, exposing Hanley’s sub rosa ops, and you and I are totally fucked.”

Zoya just shook her head and looked at the floor, taking it all in again.

Court said, “It’s really great to see you, though.”

She smiled at the floor, looked up to him, and leaned forward while sitting. They kissed again, hard. “You, too,” she finally said as she pulled back.

But soon she broke away, stood, put her hands on her hips, and began pacing the room.

He said, “I think you need to tell me what’s going on.”

Zoya stopped. “Why? So you can tell Suzanne? If you do that there will be a team of your cohorts from CIA here on top of me in an hour.”

“And that would be bad . . . why?”

“I’m here for answers. I haven’t gotten them yet. I’m not going back to the States.”

“Zoya, you need to realize I’m the only friend you have right now. I’ll help you if I can, but you have to talk to me.”

“Why were you watching Cassidy’s office?”

“I was on a transport flight to the States the other night. We landed at an airport in the UK. There was a prisoner on board, unrelated to anything I was doing, a Dutch banker with intelligence about the CIA leak. A group of shooters showed up and took him, I went after them, and in doing all that I found out that a guy named Terry Cassidy in London was a middleman for the whole op.”

She nodded, kept pacing. Court leaned back against the wall. “That’s my story. Let’s hear yours.”

“What I’m doing doesn’t have anything to do with a leak at CIA.” She made a face. “As far as I know.”

“What are you doing?”

Zoya hesitated, then said, “Not here. Not now. I’ll talk to you but let’s get somewhere secure. I have a flat in Soho. It’s a piece of shit, but—”

“I have a place in West Kensington. Twenty minutes on foot, less if we find a taxi. It’s not too bad.”

She thought it over.

Court said, “Or we could just say ‘fuck it’ and get a room at the Hyatt.” It was a joke, a reference to what Brewer had said, but Zoya didn’t get it.

“Bad tradecraft,” she replied. “We need to go somewhere we don’t need papers. Your place is good.”

“Right.”

In moments they were both listening to the door, and soon afterward they were moving through the primary school, looking for an exit.

They walked through the building in the darkness, their eyes wide and their ears open to detect any sort of movement around them.

They neither heard nor saw anything, but they were not alone.

CHAPTER 32

   Passing a stairwell on the right, Court eyed the deeper darkness there but detected no man-sized, man-shaped threats. He kept walking and turned his eyes forward towards the door up the hall, thinking he heard a noise on the other side.

They moved forward until the door one hundred feet ahead burst open, flashlights whipping around on the other side, and just then, out of the darkness of the stairwell to their right a huge form reached out, grabbing Court by his right shoulder and yanking him sideways, spinning him to his right and pulling him closer.

Court found himself inside the dark stairwell facing a massive human who loomed nearly a foot above him. Court drew his gun halfway, but a close-in glancing punch to his jaw stunned him and had him stumbling back in the stairwell, slamming into the wall to the right of the doorway.

His gun clanked to the floor but with his heel he kicked it back through the doorway towards Zoya, who was behind him in the hallway. She had her own pistol, but the only weapon he’d seen on her was a revolver, and it couldn’t have had more than five or six live rounds in it. His own weapon was only half-full, but he knew she’d need all the ammo she could get.