Sea Haven 02 - Spirit Bound

months older than me and we were closer than a lot of young kids when our parents were massacred. He was severely injured. In our business, that’s a death warrant. We don’t get nice retirement checks. Men like Gavriil and me live without real identities. Sorbacov, the man who came up with the idea of taking the children of his country and training them . . .”
    “Using brutal force to turn them into killers and spies,” Judith corrected.
    He nodded. “He has too much to lose if any one of us starts talking. We’re ghosts and he can’t afford for any of us to surface. The moment I knew Gavriil’s wounds were serious, I made my way to him and helped him escape the hospital. I took him to a doctor I knew was safe. He disappeared after that, although we have a way to get in touch with one another to indicate we’re alive and well.”
    He watched her face closely, knowing he was starting the story with his injured brother because it would appeal to her compassionate nature. He couldn’t stop being who he was. His training had given him the ability to read every expression, to adjust quickly if he was losing a battle. So far, she was looking at him with soft eyes, not really understanding where he was going with it all, but willing to understand.
    “The information stolen was on a microchip, a tiny little speck really. It had been sewn into a coat and the thieves had known exactly where to find it. They cut it out of the coat and disappeared. That chip is extremely important and I was sent to track it down.”
    He studied Judith’s face. She’d gone very still and there was a very small frown forming on her face, as if she was puzzling something out in her mind.
    “I found the wife and her lover and they led me straight to Jean-Claude La Roux.”
    Her head went up, her gaze jumping to his. The breath left her lungs in a rush, as if he’d sucker-punched her—and he probably had. He took a step toward her. Judith backed away, shaking her head, raising one hand palm out to ward him off.
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Before I could get to him, La Roux was brought up on charges in France and was sent to prison. The chip was never offered on the black market and we knew he hadn’t had time to sell it. We tried diplomatic means to get him transferred to Russia, but France refused to cooperate. In the end, as a last resort, I was sent to the prison to assess the situation. We needed to know if he still had the chip and how were we going to get it back.”
    Judith pressed a hand to her stomach. “You didn’t come here to retire as Thomas Vincent. You came here because you think Jean-Claude gave me the chip.” Her dark eyes went stormy. “Did you think I let him murder my brother rather than give it back to him?”
    “Judith.” He took another step toward her, but she backed away again, this time putting the counter between them. “That’s not true. I shared his cell. The walls were covered in photographs of you. I believe he’s obsessed with you, but wasn’t certain why. I spent two months in that cell with nothing to do but look at those pictures of you.”
    “Oh, God. You want me to believe you fell madly in love with me because of some pictures in a prison cell? Do you really think I’m that stupid?” She looked around her as if desperate for a way to escape. “What do you want, Thomas? Or is it Stefan I’m talking to now? Just tell me, and then go.”
    “I don’t know when I fell in love with you, Judith. I wish I could tell you, but I realized that first day I met you, when you came toward me that my life was going to change.”
    She shook her head, rejecting his admission. “Tell me about you and Jean-Claude and why you’re here. The real reason.”
    “I knew, after meeting him, the only way to get the information we needed was to get him out of prison and take him to a place where we could interrogate him ourselves. That was the plan, and then Sorbacov stepped in. He ordered other agents to aid La Roux’s escape and sent me here. I knew it was a setup. I’m too valuable to babysit an ex-girlfriend on the off chance that La Roux would somehow manage to escape our agents. He had to be planning to use me as bait to bring Lev out into the open.” It was a measure of his distress that he called his brother by his given name.
    “So you were really sent here to babysit me? And your government helped Jean-Claude escape? Wow, you found the perfect way to keep an eye on me. All those