Someone shook her awake. Kat reacted instantly, shoving the heel of her hand upward, aiming for her assailant’s nose. She missed and punched air. Someone laughed. It took her a moment to remember where she was.

And who she was with.

Johnny hovered over her, his teeth white in the darkness of the room and the neon glow coming in the windows from Bourbon Street. The bass thumped in the bar beneath them. She wondered how she’d managed to sleep at all as she pushed herself to a sitting position.

“Time to go, sleeping beauty,” he said.

She reached for her phone and powered it up. The time flashed on the screen. Two a.m.

She hadn’t slept for long. It had been hours ago when he’d lain down on the sleeping bag and told her to rest, but she hadn’t been able to fall asleep no matter how hard she tried.

She’d been unable to take her eyes from his shadowy form across the room. She knew he slept lightly, knew that he would snap her neck in a heartbeat if she tried to touch him while he dozed. She’d considered the past twenty-one years and everything that had happened during them.

The lonely nights. The lonely years. If she’d been able to go to him and tell him the truth, she would have.

But she would have ruined his career if she’d gotten involved in his life again. She was Russian. A spy. And then there was the Russian mafia. She would never be free of them no matter how she tried.

Dmitri’d had her in his sights today but hadn’t killed her—she was pretty sure she knew why, though she couldn’t tell Johnny. God no. He’d go ballistic.

She could never go back to Russia. And she couldn’t stay in the United States as anything other than a shadow agent.

She was exactly the wrong kind of woman for a man with Johnny’s ambitions.

He wanted his life back. His command. He couldn’t have that if she was part of his life. Not that she would be after this was over. She’d known when she’d taken this assignment that it was temporary. She’d also known it would break her heart if she let it.

She was determined not to let it.

Kat got to her feet and shouldered her pack. Then she scrubbed her fingers through her hair and smoothed it behind her ears.

He didn’t speak again. He went over to the door and opened it, checking the landing before motioning her through. Then he locked up and went down the stairs in front of her. They emerged in the alley and then out onto Bourbon Street. They were in the heart of the action here. That’s why he did it. They were simply two more tourists in a crowd of tourists.

They passed down Bourbon and then hit one of the cross streets, moving toward the Mississippi River and the parking lots there. Within fifteen minutes, he located a Jeep with a canvas top. He popped the canvas and had the Jeep started before she could count to five.

She jumped inside and belted herself in. He squeezed the gas and the Jeep rolled toward the exit. He got out and paid the parking fee at one of the machines—whoever had driven the Jeep prior had conveniently left the ticket on the dash. She found it funny that he paid instead of ramming his way through the mechanical arm, which he could have done since there was no one monitoring the lot at the moment.

He climbed back inside and then made a left in front of the Westin. They went around the building, exiting right onto Canal Street, and headed toward the interstate.

They still hadn’t spoken. The canvas rattled and the tires whined on the pavement. It was loud inside the Jeep. She wished he’d stolen something else. Or let Ian get a car for them.

She propped a foot on the dash and draped an arm over her knee before turning to him. “So why Atlanta, cowboy?”

He shot her a glance, one sexy eyebrow arched. “Cowboy?”

She shrugged. “Cowboys are rash, yes? Loners. Gunslingers. You’ve been behaving like one, have you not?”

He laughed. “If you say so.”

“And you still have not said why Atlanta.”

“Because it has a major airport with direct flights to most destinations in the world.”

Of course. “Where are we flying to then?”

“I’ll tell you when we get to Atlanta. Do you have a passport with you?”

“I have a few. Which nationality should I be?”

“We’ll figure it out later.”

She frowned. “You lie, John Mendez. You already know where you intend to go.”

“Mostly, yes. I might change my mind though.”

She doubted that. “Please tell me we are not riding the whole way in this piece of junk.”

“We’ll find something else soon.”

“Ian can get us a car.”

“No. Ian’s cars can be traced.”

“Do you trust anyone?”

“Not really.”

“Why not?”

His hands flexed on the wheel. “You know we can make this trip in silence, right? It’s not necessary to talk to me.”

She huffed. “Maybe I want to know more about you.”

“There’s nothing to know.”

It had been over two decades. She thought there was plenty to know. But she couldn’t say that to him, could she? She was Kat Kasharin, Valentina’s twin, and she did not care about his past. She only cared about helping him because Valentina would have wanted it.

She turned her head to gaze at the passing lights of the city. Her eyes blurred. Dammit, she would not cry. The whole thing was ridiculous. Her story about being a twin was tissue-thin. She knew it, and she suspected he did too.

But so far he hadn’t pressed her on it. Not really. She hoped he would not.

She’d lost control of the situation. She was supposed to be keeping an eye on him—keeping him in New Orleans—until Ian assembled a strike team. Yet he was driving her across three states and refusing to tell her their destination beyond the airport in Atlanta.

Had Ian known it would be this way? She thought perhaps he had. Everything had happened so fast that he hadn’t been able to assemble a strike team—or a concrete plan—before Johnny was removed from his command. Ian called her once he’d known the arrest was happening and asked if she wanted in. He knew her true identity—though not everything about her—and he knew that she’d known Johnny in Moscow.

How could she have said no? She couldn’t. Not when Johnny was in danger. Not when Sergei and Dmitri had already taken everything she’d ever cared about away from her. Whatever else she did, she had to stay by this man’s side until the end of the mission.

But that didn’t mean she had to accept him steamrolling her.

“I’m hungry,” she said, more than a little churlishly. “Can we hit a McDonald’s or something?”

“I have power bars in my pack.”

“I want hot food. A hamburger. French fries. It’s not too much to ask.”

She could see his jaw tighten. She thought he would refuse, but then he spoke. “We’ll stop in Slidell. It’s not that far.”

“Thank you.” She hesitated. “We should inform Ian we’ve left the city.”

“He already knows.”

“You have spoken with him?”

“No. But you aren’t his only eyes and ears in New Orleans. He knows we left. Or he will soon enough.”

Typical Johnny. Still not prepared to trust anyone. “You are supposed to be working with him, not against him.”

He gave her a sharp look. “If you think I’m discussing every move I make with Ian Black, especially after his safe house was compromised so easily, you’re out of your mind. I agreed to wait for the strike team—but that was before Dmitri nearly blew your head off. Staying in New Orleans is suicide.”

He wasn’t wrong. They both knew it.

“All right. But he can still help us if you let him. He can provide cars, shelter, weapons, and intel.”

“I’m working with him as much as I can—and right now that’s not a lot since I don’t know how Dmitri found us. Unless you told him?”

She didn’t let herself react this time even though it pissed her off. “And I did that because? Then I didn’t bother telling him where we went why? You’re still alive because?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “I’ll grant you it doesn’t make a lot of sense. But who else knew where to find us?”

“Ian. Some of the people on his team, I imagine. Plus I’ve been in the city for a couple of weeks. If someone spotted me…” It was possible. Sergei had operations in New Orleans. She’d avoided the places where she knew he had people, though the majority of those wouldn’t know her or be looking for her. But all it took was one person from the old days to recognize her.

“Ian won’t be surprised we’ve left town,” he said. “He operates the same way I do.”

She studied his profile, the slope of his nose, the stubborn tilt of his jaw. The hot gleam in his eye. He still made her heart skip beats after all this time. Still made the blood beat hot and heavy in her veins. Love, sharp and impossible, sliced her heart in two. So much for escaping this mission with her heart intact. But then she’d known that from the moment she’d said yes, hadn’t she?

You could run from your past. You could put years and distance between you and the things that haunted you. But you never got over them. You never got free.