Read Online Limbo Man by Blair Bancroft - Free Book Online

you balked—and . . .” Vee waved her hand in the air. “You got dropped off a bridge, more dead than alive.”
    “Nice to believe I’m one of the good guys, but—”
    “It fits all the facts.”
    “We don’t know all the facts.”
    “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Nick!”
    “Yeah, well, I’m having trouble believing I’m on the side of the angels. Probably just a wiseguy who got caught in a gang war.”
    “When you woke up in the hospital, did you feel like a bad guy?” Vee demanded.
    “Hell, no. Never crossed my mind.” Nick paused, thinking hard. “It didn’t take me long to figure out I was a tough guy, but bad guy, no. Not until the local cops called in the Feebs, who called in Homeland Security. Then , I had to begin to wonder. So, sure, my interrogators had a bit of an attitude, but when don’t they? I was inclined to believe the story that I was just some Joe who knew more than he should. Someone the bad guys felt they had to take out.”
    “But what if you’re an agent yourself?”
    “My fingerprints would have made their way to someone who knew that. Someone would have come forward, told the truth.”
    “Blast it,” Vee breathed. “I was so certain I’d nailed it.”
    “You said it. Wishful thinking. I’m a bad guy, through and through. Your worst nightmare, come to life.”
    “That’s bull,” Vee declared, standing up and beginning to clear the table. “I choose not to believe it.”
    “Then you’re the fool I first took you for.” Nick thrust his hands in his pockets, rocked up onto the balls of his feet and back down again. “That’s a good-looking cruiser in the boathouse. Do your watchers have orders to keep me in?”
    “They do double duty.”
    “Bat from both sides of the plate?”
    “Something like that, but don’t let them hear you say that. Dad’s people tend to be sensitive about their macho image.”
    “So if I take off, I’d better have you with me.”
    “And I’d better tell them to keep their RPGs off their shoulders.”
    “Nice,” Nick murmured. “That makes me feel so secure.”
    Vee opened her eyes wide. “Did you really think I was a toothless wonder?”
    He allowed his eyes to examine her from the golden blonde top of her head to the tip of feet that looked dainty, even in sneakers. “Just a tasty morsel laid on by the Feds for my personal delectation,” he drawled.
    “If you weren’t so precisely, disgustingly correct, I’d shoot you.” Turning her back on him, she began to stack the dishwasher.
    Nick lost his train of thought in admiration of her jean-clad derrière. Ah, da . There had to be light at the end of this particular tunnel. “Vee?” It was the first time he’d called her by her nickname. It felt good. But hope sparked by her speculations was fading fast. Her theory was crap.
    “Vee . . . you’re forgetting I woke up in the hospital speaking and thinking in Russian. It was maybe three days before I discovered I could read and speak English.”
    A sauce-stained plate in her hand, Vee leaned back against the dishwasher and stared at him. “Who else would be chosen to go undercover with the organizatsiya than a native Russian? You must be Russian American, someone who spoke Russian at home, American English in school.”
    “Makes sense,” he muttered, “but you’re right, it’s too way out.” And there were other, uglier reasons a Russian might speak perfect American English. Including being undercover for the GRU instead of any Western intelligence agency. Govnó!
    “Go.” Vee shooed him out of the kitchen. “We’ve got dish TV. There’re probably twenty sports channels. Enjoy. Don’t think. You’ve screwed with my head enough for one day. Out! Disappear. Be gone.”
    Nick slunk out of the kitchen like a chastened schoolboy. But in his soul he was Russian, he knew it.

 
    Chapter 6
     
    What the . . . ?
    The smoke-filled room enveloped him, the cement block walls as stark as the people in it were colorful. The room