Don't Say a Word - Barbara Freethy [125]
She stuck out her tongue, breaking the tension, and he felt his face relax. He had been tightening up. He just hadn't realized it until she'd pointed it out.
"You know, we're even on the secrets issue," she told him. "I may know yours, but you also know mine." She paused. "Except maybe one."
He waited for her to elaborate, but she simply set down her milk shake and stood up.
"We should get to work," she said. "We need to make plane reservations for tomorrow, and-"
"What's the one thing?" he asked, extremely curious.
"I'm not going to tell you."
"Why not?"
"Because it's personal, and…" She paused for a long moment. "It would probably scare you to death."
He gazed into her eyes and saw a question there, a question he was terrified to answer. "I guess everyone is entitled to one secret," he said lightly. He got up from his chair and retrieved the laptop. He sat down on the bed with his back against the headboard and opened the computer, hitting the button to boot up.
Julia sat down on the bed next to him. "I'll tell you if you really want to know," she said.
"I don't think I do."
"Okay, but fair warning… before you leave for good, I'm going to tell you."
"I'll keep that in mind. Now, I think we should take the first flight out tomorrow." In fact, if they could get on a flight right now, he would. Because another night with Julia wasn't going to make the leaving any easier.
"Let's see what you can get," Julia said.
His fingers flew across the keyboard. Within five minutes they had reservations on a seven a.m. flight to Dulles. "Now what?" he asked.
"Look up my mother's name, Natalia Markov."
"Here she is," he said a moment later, pulling up a page on Russian ballet dancers. There was a grainy black-and-white photograph of the ballerina. He adjusted the screen so Julia could see it better. He heard her sharp intake of breath and knew that she'd remembered something.
"I know her," she said softly. "That's my mother. She's beautiful."
Natalia was stunning, Alex thought. She looked a bit like Julia, but she had a lighter, more ethereal quality to her face and figure. As he studied her picture, he remembered something his father had said earlier, something that had gotten lost in his head until now. "Stan knew your mother," he said aloud.
"That's right," Julia said. "Your father told us that Stan helped them set up the defection. Why didn't he tell us that? He made it sound like he knew nothing."
"He said he was too scared for his family to look into my father's death. I bet he knew the death was fake all along." He thought back to their meetings.
"And you- you must have reminded him of your ' mother. Yet, he gave nothing away. Hmm."
"What are you thinking?"
"I wonder if Stan hired someone to break into our apartments."
"That's ridiculous."
"Is it?" he queried. "Think about it. We went to Stan first. He knew about you before anyone else would have time to find you."
"He's a dignified, respected, older man. I can't see him breaking and entering."
"What about manipulating? Directing? Calling the shots-like he did when your parents tried to defect?"
"You really believe that's possible? What about the guy in the cap? Or the men who followed us to Napa?"
Alex shrugged. "They could all be working together, or different parties could be coming at us from different directions."
"Great. I feel much better now," she said dryly.
"I'm going to call Stan, confront him, see what he has to say." Alex set the laptop aside and grabbed his cell phone off the table. He waited impatiently for Stan to answer. A message machine came on instead. "Call me immediately," Alex said. "It's extremely important. Don't let me down." As he hung up, Alex realized Stan had already let him down, just like everyone else in his life.
"He'll call back. He cares about you," Julia said, putting her hand over his. "I saw the way he looked at you, as if you were his son."
"Yeah, well, I'm not his son."
"Don't judge him until you have all the facts."
"Fine." He tipped his head toward the computer screen. "Did