I knew I was nothing like an FBI agent. I wasn’t brave, or heroic. But my mom’s medical bills were piling up and the FBI paid a lot better than the grocery store….
So I went to work at the FBI’s New York office as a specialist and met Sam Calahan, and Alison, and Gwen and Kate, and they were real FBI agents, cool and confident field agents who kicked down doors and pointed guns—even Kate, who was only a little thing of 5’2”, but could take down a bad guy better than anyone. They tolerated my quietness and they all became friends, especially Kate, and I really missed her when she moved to Alaska.
Carrie became like a second mother to me and I worked hard, surveilling anyone she pointed me at. In my first year, I got the goods on every bad guy I was told to watch. I was good at my job, but I was still hiding behind a camera lens, invisible... and very, very lonely.
Then one day, Carrie showed me a grainy black-and-white photograph of the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen. This is Konstantin Gulyev, she told me. And you and I are going to bring the bastard down.
For two years, I tried to do exactly that. I watched his every move, listened to his calls, but he was too smart, too careful: I couldn’t get the evidence we needed to bring him down. And I started to find myself drawn to him. I couldn’t understand why. He was a criminal, and criminals had killed or hurt everyone I’d ever loved.
Then there was Boston, and what happened in his hotel room.
And now, everything was different.
7
Hailey
THE MORNING AFTER Boston, I needed three vanilla Americanos just to keep my eyes open. After we’d packed up my equipment, Calahan and I had made the long drive from Boston back to New York, but heavy rain and howling winds had slowed the traffic and what should have taken five hours took closer to seven. I’d only arrived home an hour before I had to get out of bed again and I’d spent that hour lying awake, going over and over what had happened in Konstantin’s hotel room. I was still shaky from how close I’d come to getting killed. But there was that look I’d seen in his eyes, right at the end, when I’d told him I was no one…. At that moment, he’d stopped being terrifying. He’d seemed almost...protective.
And the way he’d looked at me, when we both realized his leg was between mine....
Under the covers, my hand had crept slowly down, over my stomach, and into my panties. It had started off slow and gentle, just a way to calm me down so I could sleep. But it gradually got faster and more urgent, little details driving my fingers faster and faster. The feel of his pecs against me, the way his muscled leg had spread my thighs, the hot hardness of his cock through his pants…
My heels dug into the mattress, my knees came up, and suddenly I was rocking and gasping, my thighs crushing my hand between them. And then, panting in the aftermath, what the hell is wrong with me? This is Konstantin Gulyev!
Now, slumped at my desk, I was struggling to stay awake. Calahan had been silently brooding all morning. I knew he was worried about Alison. We both were. She was at the hospital right now, and any minute the operation to transform her into Christina would be starting. Thanks to us failing in Boston, in a few weeks she’d be sent right into the lion’s den.
I busied myself pulling together everything we had on Christina. Compared to Konstantin, we knew very little about her. She’d suddenly appeared in his life about four months ago, sexy and glamorous and always dressed in amazing designer clothes. I stopped for a second, staring at a photo of her and Konstantin as they prepared to board a private jet. That bit of my brain that noticed details was scratching at my mind, trying to tell me something was off, but I was too tired to figure out what I was seeing. I kept going and only stopped again when I came to a close up shot of Christina. She was gorgeous, but there was something about her I just didn’t like, a cruelty in those clear blue eyes….
Wait, am I jealous? Is that why I don’t like her? I felt myself flush and got on with my work. Alison was going to have to mimic every detail of this woman: the way she walked, the way she spoke. I started going through the most recent photos of Christina, taken by an Interpol team while she was in Milan. One, taken shortly before the crash, showed her climbing into the sports car, the wind lifting the back of her loose blouse to reveal—