Elaine looked to her side at Derek where he sat in the driver seat of his Mustang, a pair of binoculars perched on his nose. She was still surprised that he’d offered to help her. She, on the other hand, wished she hadn’t offered to help Daniel. It had been instinctual a knee-jerk reaction to keep him safe. Something she’d adapted to doing since she and Tasha had gotten close over five years ago. But now that she’d had time to think about what exactly she had offered, she got this sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She’d gone to extreme extents to get out of the game for good, to be normal, to create a safe and healthy environment for Katya to grow up in. But now here she was, risking it all for Daniel and his married girlfriend. She suddenly remembered why she was averse to forming relationships.
“Who’s Katya?”
“What?”
Derek lowered the binoculars and spared her just a glance before he turned to look back at Daniel’s house. They were parked six houses down the street, far enough not to arouse a hit man’s suspicion but close enough to get there in a minute when trouble went knocking.
“All the kids are named after someone in the family, I figured you picked up the trend. So who is Katya?”
Elaine looked forward the weight of the subject sitting heavily on her that she shifted in discomfort in her seat.
“I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen you nervous about something,” she turned to him, catching his teasing smile, “It’s kind of funny.”
Elaine rolled her eyes, “I’m learning that lowering my guard permits all these feelings to lay their assault. It’s disconcerting.”
“I bet. So are you going to answer me?”
Elaine looked down at her hands, her fingers twirling together. She remembered she used to do that as a little girl when she was feeling shy. She hadn’t thought of her childhood in years. Spending time with Katya was unlocking memories she thought she’d safely hidden away.
“It was my mother’s name, well the name my father gave her when he bought her. I never could find out her real one.”
She felt him tense up beside her and his voice was hard and unforgiving when he asked, “Which country was she trafficked from?”
Modern day slavery, it was more common than anyone wanted to admit and the most tragic. All the known traffickers were the first heads Elaine had cut off in her first years as a killer. She was young, small, deceptive and they only realized that when it was too late. She never got tired of cutting off the Hydra’s heads. She did it every chance she got. But that was over now.
Elaine smiled at him and he smiled tightly back, “Ethiopia. Her situation actually turned out to be one for a romance novel.”
“Oh yeah? How so?”
“Father fell in love with her, treated her better than his own wife and everyone else followed his lead. I found out she got him to pull out of human trafficking.”
“What happened?”
She looked out her window, fists tightly clenched on her lap, “His wife was tired of being disrespected. My mother was found in her bed, brutalized, dead.” She felt his hand cover hers and she quickly intertwined their fingers. It was comforting, anchoring her. “I’m not sure what reaction she expected from my father but happy he was not.”
“He murdered her?”
Elaine snorted, “Too easy. He abandoned her in the worst part of Astrakhan and paid some men to do to her what she had done to my mother. He didn’t even bother to collect her body, her son had to pay someone to do it and bury her.”
“Elaine, how old were you?”
“Around five.” She’d stood at the foot of her mother’s bed wondering why mama looked so broken with blood everywhere. Then her father had come in and bellowed his anguish and she knew then that something was very wrong. Her life had changed that day. She tightly shut her eyes and chased the memories away. That had been Katarina’s life, not Elaine’s not hers, not anymore.
“How do you know all this?”
“I found out when I got older.” She quickly wiped the tears away before turning to Derek. “You called me Elaine.”
He nodded, “That’s your name.”
“You never call me Elaine when we are alone.”
He lifted his arm, his hand cupped her chin and his thumb stroked her cheek. He was wiping away a tear. “Maybe because you look like a Katarina to me, and you’ve been so for five years. I don’t know why you want to change your name, despite the obvious. But even then people looking to disappear, start a new life usually just change their last name. You’ve changed everything about yourself, even the red streaks in your hair are gone.”
She pulled her chin out of his hand, “There are too many nightmares, too many sins associated with Katarina Paraji. Elaine Smith isn’t a killer for hire, she’s a protector.”
“Does this mean I can’t call you my kitty kat anymore?”
Elaine laughed at the sad clown frown on his face. He was so ridiculous, she could see why she liked him so much. He wasn’t one-dimensional like she used to be. A deadly man who killed as easily as he nursed his rambunctious nephew’s bruised knee, who loved as easily as he hated and yet always tried to see the good in people, give them a second chance despite the evil he dealt with on a daily basis. He was everything she’d been denied the chance to become.
“So you really quit the CIA?”
He sighed and nodded, “Yes, I really quit the CIA. It just wasn’t the same anymore.”
She leaned her head back against the headrest, “You got bored, that’s why you quit?”
“That and the guilt. I didn’t want Katya to grow up thinking her father didn’t want her.”
She raised her brow at that, “You mean knowing that her father didn’t want her?”
He glared at her, “Don’t be a nagging Nelly.”
She shook her head chuckling, “English isn’t my first language and I know it’s nagging Nancy, not Nelly.”
He dropped his head back on the headrest, “Potato potato. So, are you going to teach Katya to speak Russian?”
She shrugged both shoulders, “I don’t know. I want to forget my past, I don’t want it to taint her in any way.”
“I speak Russian.”
“And several other languages. What’s your point?”
He glared at her then poked her in her side. She was sensitive there and she jumped with a sharp laugh moving away from him and closer to the door.
“My point is, she doesn’t need to know you’re past to speak the language. We’ll teach her, just for the fun of it. It might actually come in handy in the future.”
“Okay. But we won’t bombard her. One language a year and if she doesn’t want to learn, what, thirteen languages between us? She won’t have to.”
He nodded his agreement, “it’s way more productive than ballet lessons.”
Yeah, she definitely agreed but it didn’t mean that Katya wouldn’t be taking it and piano. She’d taken ballet and it had helped with her grace and her past career. She wanted a well-rounded, disciplined child.
“Which sport do you think she’ll take too?”
Derek groaned, “I knew it was too good to hope. She’s going to be one of those kids, always exhausted at the end of the day like she was working a full-time job.” She opened her mouth to retort, but he held up his hand, silencing her, “The summers are mine to decide on, let’s just agree on that. No activities, or learning camps unless she going to a fun filled camp. And when she’s older, we’ll travel either with the entire crew or just the three of us.”
“The three of us?” Elaine fought a smile. She was not going to count her chickens just to have one little bugger egg hatch and ruin everything. But the look in his eyes, as he stared at her… she might just start counting and boil the rest of the eggs, just in case.
“Yes, the three of us. I was serious about giving us a chance. I want us to be a family, I want us to be together. And maybe, I don’t know, we could have a son we’ll name after me,” he waggled his eyebrows with a cheeky grin she just had to laugh.
Then the alarm went off, destroying the teasing mood.
Derek sat up straighter and lifted his iPad from his lap, “Someone triggered the motion sensor in the backyard.”
“Going in or out?” she asked already pushing open her door.
“In,” Derek answered following her out of the car, holding his gun in his hand. He screwed on the silencer, “so what’s the plan?”
God, she felt so uneasy asking this, it made her anxious, “Derek, I don’t want to… could you…”
He winked at her, “Maybe if I save his ass he’ll lay off my girl.”
Elaine just shook her head and followed behind him as they ran to the house. They kept low, their feet light on the ground. She was quite amazed at how he moved, like a wild jungle cat and how he pulled open the screen door without it making a single sound. The last time she’d been at Daniel’s house, it creak loud enough to disturb the still night air and she had thought if it were an op, she would have been caught the second she touched it. How did Derek know to carefully open it?
“Get the key from under the flower pot. I’ll need you to open the door so I can go in guns blazing.” He whispered.
“One, you only have one gun or two,” she lifted the flower pot and retrieved the key, “how did you know the key was under there?”
“Another American tradition. People will never learn, and they wonder how burglars get easy access into the houses.”
Elaine slotted the key in and gently turned the lock. “Ready?”
He nodded, “Nice and easy. We’re going in blind so let’s not rush it,” he slipped in and she followed him in, closing the door quietly behind her.
They heard the loud crash then a scream and finally two heavily accented voices yelling. Elaine’s blood ran cold. She knew one of those voices. Without a warning to Derek, she ran up the steps, down the hall and into Daniel’s room. He was down on his knees with a burly man standing behind him, holding him down as he struggled. Luciana was on the bed, with another dark cladded man straddling her and rage boiled inside Elaine as she caught on to his intent. She lowered, pulled a blade out of each boot and was ready to charge for the bed when she heard the sharp whisper of two gunshots followed by a scream as the man holding Daniel down dropped to the ground heavily. She turned to look at Derek at her side. His face was completely void of emotion except for his eyes. The glare in them promised pain and death.
“Get off her!” the words were quickly followed by a commotion and Elaine turned to find Daniel fighting the man who’d been straddling Luciana. She, on the other hand, was hunkered against the headboard, pillow held against her chest as she stared in abject fear at Daniel and her attacker.
Derek moved to go help, but Elaine held him back. “Derek, there is another man here.”
He went stiff, lifted his gun higher, his body moved with it as he searched the dark room with his eyes. Then he came to a stop at the door leading to Daniel’s bathroom.
“Call him off,” she said in Russian, “Or none of you will be leaving here alive Dimitri.”
****