They ate dinner together in the restaurant car and then lingered over coffee. Kat’s system was messed up from all the travel and adrenaline over the fight. No matter how tired she should be, she couldn’t get there. Apparently neither could Johnny. They were awake and red-eyed, facing each other over a table and trying to appear normal.

Hell, maybe they did appear normal. There were Western tourists on this train who looked the same kind of worn-out yet oddly awake that they did. Overnight flights from the States and then a train ride across the Russian landscape, which the tourists had probably never seen before, tended to excite even the most staid of travelers.

Add in a fight for her life, and maybe Kat had a better reason than most for still being awake and jittery. She kept expecting Sergei’s men to burst through the doors and take them hostage, but it didn’t happen. If Sergei’s people were coming, they would have done so by now.

She told herself to relax, but it was easier said than done. For Johnny too, she suspected. She put her chin on her palm and watched the landscape slide by.

The days were getting longer. In May the sun would never quite set completely, at least not in the northern reaches of the country. She’d missed it, oddly enough.

“Where did you grow up?” Johnny asked, and she swiveled her head.

His beard was filling in, a mixture of silver and black. It made him more handsome than she could bear. Except that she had to bear it, didn’t she?

“Saint Petersburg. But you know that.”

“In an orphanage.”

“Yes. In an old convent. The walls were spectacular—rich mosaics and frescoes—but we weren’t allowed to touch. I don’t think it occurred to any of us to even attempt it.”

“Valentina hated it.”

“She did. She was an introvert and she wanted to be left alone. There was no such thing as being alone in a dorm room full of children.” She paused for a moment. “I’m not an extrovert by any means, though I’d say the years have taught me to enjoy people. No one wants to truly be alone.”

He didn’t respond to that statement. “So why did you move to Novosibirsk?”

“Because I was ordered to do so. I wasn’t there for very long.” Hot emotion clogged her throat. “About a year after I had Roman, I had to leave him with friends and return to my duties.”

A cloud crossed his face. “They made you leave your child?”

She shrugged, though it hurt deeply to remember. “I saw him as often as I could. He knew I was his mother. We spent holidays together, long weekends. It was much like getting a divorce and sharing custody, I imagine. When he got older and more independent, I had him often, though he still went to stay with Peter and Ludmilla whenever I had to leave the country for work. It was during one of those periods when the accident happened. They were all killed.”

“Jesus.”

Her emotions were too close to the surface right now. Sitting in this cozy booth, talking to the man she’d once loved so much—the man who had never known his own child—and trying to pretend they were strangers after that scorching kiss they’d shared earlier… She wanted to tell him everything, wanted to throw herself into his arms and ask him to hold her, but it wouldn’t turn out the way she wanted it to.

He would despise her for lying to him. He would never understand why she’d had to do it. Johnny was too honorable, and he’d have sacrificed himself for her if she’d let him. Except it wouldn’t have been only them who paid the price. Roman would have too.

They certainly wouldn’t be sitting here now, talking about the past while journeying into the heart of Russia. They would all be in a cold grave somewhere, their bones long since crumbled to dust.

Kat shivered and rubbed her palms along her arms.

Johnny frowned. “Are you cold?”

“It’s nothing. Someone just walked over my grave.”

“That’s an odd thing to say.”

“Is it? It’s a saying I used to hear in the orphanage.”

His expression was serious. “Let’s not discuss graves or anything to do with them. It’s bad luck.”

She set her napkin on the table as a huge yawn cracked her jaw. Finally. “I’m going to head back to the cabin now.”

His eyes glittered hotly for a moment before the fires banked. “I’ll go with you.”

“No, stay. You still have coffee.”

She’d started to turn away when he caught her fingers. Heat flared and rolled just from that simple touch. She brought her gaze to his. He looked solemn and sorrowful.

“I’m sorry you lost people. And I’m sorry I dragged you back here. I would have left you in the States if I’d known.”

The corners of her mouth trembled. “And you would be dead right now. You need me, John Mendez. So here we are. We’ll expose the connection between Sergei and DeWitt, and we’ll clear your name. You can go back to work and forget you ever met me.”

“Impossible.”

“No, we’ll make it happen. You’ll see.”

He shook his head. “That’s not the part I’m talking about. Forgetting you. That’s what’s impossible.”

* * *

Mendez watched her go. She was a painful reminder of what he’d lost. Worse, he’d caused her pain by bringing her back to Russia. He’d had no choice though. This was where the plot against him began and where it ended.

Mendez scrubbed his hands through his hair—fuck, it was getting longer than he liked—and stared at the pink horizon as the train clacked along the track.

Maybe this was a fool’s errand. Maybe he should have stayed in the States and tried to coordinate something with his guys. He knew they’d been sent away from HOT HQ. As if that would stop them from operating. Clearly neither General Comstock nor the vice president understood a thing about HOT if they thought sending the operators home would prevent them from accessing information and weapons.

If anything, they were better placed to work a mission than they would have been beneath Comstock’s nose. Mendez no longer had access to his network, but if Yuri was still in Novosibirsk—and still a friend—Mendez could find out what was happening.

He could call Ian, sure. But something held him back. Not that he didn’t trust Ian, but there were forces swirling around Black’s Bandits that Mendez didn’t like. Who the fuck was Phoenix? That would be helpful knowledge to have, but Ian wasn’t telling.

Mendez wouldn’t reveal that information in his position either, so he didn’t blame the man. But he didn’t like it.

He sat in the dining car and contemplated all the angles until the pink was gone from the sky and darkness had set in. He tossed some rubles on the table and stood. Surely Kat was asleep by now. He’d slip into the room and lie down for a while. He’d been torn on whether to take a second-class cabin, which meant four berths, but that would entail watching two more people and having more traffic in and out of the room.

With him and Kat in a first-class cabin, there were two berths and two people with access. Three if you included the attendant. Each car had its own attendant. Theirs was a stout woman who looked like the stereotypical idea of a Russian matron. She didn’t smile, she didn’t respond to polite banter, but she served up hot tea from her samovar with brisk efficiency before moving on to the next cabin.

She wasn’t going to be in the cabin with them, however, and that was part of his reluctance to return. Still, he needed sleep and he couldn’t spend forty-eight hours in the dining car. Not to mention he had to be prepared in case Sergei Turov discovered their whereabouts and sent someone after them.

The attendant looked up as he entered their car. She didn’t give him a friendly nod and he didn’t expect it. Still, for the hell of it, he winked at her. Her face went stony.

“You are lovely and efficient,” he told her in Russian. “And your tea is delicious.”

If he wasn’t mistaken, a blush blossomed on her cheeks before she turned away with a humph.

He let himself into the cabin and locked it. It wasn’t completely dark. A small lamp burned dimly on the wall. Kat lay with her back to the wall and her face resting on her hands.

Mendez took a moment to study her. She could be Valentina lying there. The years faded under the dim light, and he was back in his apartment in Moscow, restless after making love to her. Restless because he couldn’t see a way forward for them.

Valentina had been Russian army—though according to Kat, she’d also been FSB. He hadn’t known that at the time. Yeah, it was a surprise because he’d thought they’d shared everything. And yet it wasn’t a surprise because it was the Russian Federal Security Service—and you didn’t offer up information on that organization no matter how much you might want to.

Even without the complication of her being a spy, the fact she’d been Russian army and he’d been an American intelligence officer had been fairly damning to their future. When he’d first seen her, he’d been struck by her beauty. What man wouldn’t have been? He’d had no thought of the future.

It was his dick that had set that particular ball in motion. He’d wanted to fuck her, plain and simple. So had any number of the guys he’d been serving with. But he’d been the first to approach her.

They’d been naked within hours of their first date. And he’d been hooked. He’d expected to hit it and quit it, but instead he’d been utterly addicted. Valentina was innocent and tough and sexy all at once.

It had started with sex and ended with love. He couldn’t say at what moment he’d fallen for her, but he remembered when he first knew. She’d been walking toward him in a snowy Red Square, her fur-lined hood pulled up to shelter her face, and she’d smiled. A chill had flooded his senses, stood the hairs on the back of his neck to attention.

He hadn’t been cold, and he hadn’t been scared. He’d been feeling the effects of a transformation in his system. And once he knew what it was, there’d also been a low-level despair that perched in the recesses of his brain, as if to remind him that nothing about the love he felt was going to be easy.

The gargoyle of despair had been right. It certainly hadn’t been easy. Especially when Valentina left his arms one morning and never came back.

Mendez gave himself a mental shake to rid his mind of those thoughts and stretched out on the berth. He had to get to Novosibirsk and find Yuri. And then he had to put a stop to whatever Turov and DeWitt were planning to do.

Even if he had to die to do it.