Page 72 of Babies for the Boss
“I explained the situation to her, and I asked her if she was willing to play spy.” I pause. “She agreed. She made contact with Fedor’s organization as a woman with a grievance—she had been shot, for no reason that I had seen fit to explain to her. She told him she faked her death in order to escape me.”
Tears spill down Molly’s cheeks. “That sounds like her.”
“She told him that she was tired of being undervalued and mistreated by a man who considered her expendable. She said she was happy to tell them everything she knew, and she told them enough to be credible, and Fedor?—”
“Bought it,” she says.
“He has always been susceptible to a capable woman with a good story. It’s one of his consistent vulnerabilities. Not to mention the fact that Vet has a reputation that makes her an asset to anyone. She told him she didn’t hold her shooting against him—that was just business. But when I told her to play dead, it was a bridge too far for her reputation.” I watch her face continue its processing.
She snorts a laugh, then blows her nose from all the crying. “Dammit, I think I love her.”
“Should I be jealous?”
“Like a sister, you jerk.”
I smile, confident that Molly does not hate me for keeping this from her. “Given her injuries, she couldn’t do much outside of touring his operation. That was what we needed. The information she fed us from inside is how we knew the compound layout. How we were able to go in the way we went in, with the precision that kept my men alive. Vet is the reason it worked. She is back overseas now, under a new identity, doing what she does.”
Molly looks at me for a long moment. Then she picks up the pillow beside her and hits me with it.
It’s not a violent blow, and I accept it without moving. She hits me with it again, which I also accept, because I have earned this and I know I have earned it.
“You let me grieve her,” she says. “I sat in that hospital bed, and I cried about her, and Igor was sitting right there, and neither of you?—”
“I know.”
“I told you she was my friend. I told you that while you were standing there, and you knew, and you said nothing?—”
“I know, Molly.”
“Why?”
“Igor told you about Vet in front of the doctor, because the doctor could have been on Fedor’s payroll. If Igor had told you the truth, your reaction would not have been genuine. He did it to keep the doctor in the dark.”
Her eyes turn sharp. “Igor used me.”
“Igor used you to keep Vet safe within Fedor’s organization. I cannot think of many better reasons to be used. Can you?”
She’s quiet for a breath. “But you could have told me when we got home, when we were alone, any?—”
“I still didn’t know who here was in with Fedor, if anyone. I didn’t know if there were bugs listening to our private conversations either. Now that Fedor is dead, Igor is doing a sweep of our properties. We will know soon whether he had people here.”
“And you let me just…”
I hold her gaze. “I made a calculation. I weighed your grief against Vet’s security. I am sorry for hurting you, but Vet is safe and alive now. I believe you will see the cost of your grief to be worth her life.”
She looks at me for a moment. The pillow is still in her hand. She puts it down. “That’s the most honest you’ve ever been about making a call.”
“You have been asking me to be honest about my calls. I’m attempting to honor that.”
Something changes in her expression—her heat begins to fade into something more complex, as anger yields to relief, exhaustion, and the emotional aftermath of grief that proves to have been premature. “She’s really alive?”
“She is really alive.”
Something crosses Molly’s face that’s not quite a laugh and not quite a sob and is entirely human and entirely her, and she presses one hand over her mouth for a moment and breathes through it. “Will I see her again?” she asks, when she has finished breathing through it.
“When it’s safe and when her cover allows it, yes. That is a promise.”
She nods, absorbing this. Then she looks at me with the directness that means a subject change is coming. “I’m still not going to Chicago.”
