Page 67 of Locked and Loaded

Dragan's eyes widened slightly, and then he went back to looking out the windshield, but his mouth had gone into a hard line.

"I take it you hadn't put that part together yet," she said.

It made her feel somewhat mollified that she wasn't stupid, that she'd reached that conclusion first. But it also terrified her.

"You're right. I just hadn't gone that far. But yes."

Lennox drew in a shaky breath. Dragan reached over and took her hand and squeezed it.

"But that didn't happen," he said.

"No," she said. "But it easily could have."

He squeezed her hand again and then put his own back on the wheel. "We can't play the game of what could have been. All kinds of things could have happened, but they didn't. This is where we are."

"You said something changed. What changed?"

When he didn't speak, she glanced at him. "I know you're torn about telling me something, but just spit it out. We're already here."

A slight nod. "Two things. A ‘fake’ Lennox Crowe just told the reporter from the Chronicle everything I just said. That means that you are no longer necessary.”

Lennox blinked. She’d gone from proposed kidnap victim to superfluous in the blink of an eye. “Okay. So they used a fake me to get the story out. Wait, how do you know that?”

“Fontaine has a great many contacts.”

“Of course he does.” She bit back a sigh. “What’s the second thing?”

“Katya and Nikolai are both dead."

Her knee hit the underside of the dash. Nausea flooded through her. "Oh, my God. What happened?"

"The official story is that they were on a yacht off Marbella. They'd been drinking and fell overboard before anyone could get to them. The story they're telling the cops is that Nikolai and Katya had a volatile relationship, she stabbed him, and then he shot her before he died. The crew tried to save him, but they couldn't."

Lennox stared at him. "None of that is true, is it?"

"No. One of the men who's after you came forward as a witness. It was a hit. Whoever's behind all this took them out, and they got a lot of people to lie about it, and lie successfully. This person has resources far wider than we anticipated."

"It's my fault."

"It isn’t, Lennox."

"But I went to see Katya. It was the maid, wasn't it? She was there the entire time. She works for whoever did this."

"Yes, I'm pretty sure it was the maid. I have someone looking for her — maybe we can get some information. But I doubt we'll find her."

Lennox struggled to draw breath. It was her fault. Two people were murdered. Her fault. When she started looking for her sister, it had never occurred to her that it would end up getting people killed.

"It's not your fault, Lennox."

"If I hadn't talked to Katya, none of this would have happened."

"That's not true."

"How do you know that?"

"Katya told me she already knew the maid was watching her. She'd known for a while. They were under surveillance. She'd already told Nikolai they needed to leave — they needed to go somewhere where they couldn't be found. He wouldn't listen." Dragan's jaw tightened. "She said he was too arrogant to believe anyone could touch him. That's not on you. That's on him, and it's on whoever sent those assassins."

Lennox turned her face toward the window, watching the landscape roll past without seeing any of it. The adrenaline had drained away completely now, leaving nothing but a hollow ache in her chest and the weight of two deaths she didn't know how to carry.