Under Fire (Love Over Duty #1)(61)

Well, maybe he did, but admitting it meant admitting Cabe and Mac were right. What they were doing felt too urgent, too important, too  …  everything  …  to get wrong. Because if they didn't get it right, then Louisa was at risk. And that made him a liability.

He hated the idea that she was in his home right now and he wasn't there to protect her. He'd hated the look in her eyes when she'd left the bathroom, and when he got home he was going to make sure she understood this was only a delay in getting to know each other better. Except he hated the idea that he might have to go back to her and tell her that they had no new information, that he hadn't achieved anything that might reassure her that she was safe.

"You flip my glove box open again and I'm gonna kill you," Cabe said. He was sitting upright, arms folded across his chest like he had since they'd come to a stop, eyes forward. "How long do you want to give this before we call it a dead end?"

Six shook his head. "Let's do another couple of hours. Then I think we tell the cops we are putting cameras outside his home."

"You know, if we truly believe there is potential for this drug to be a weapon, I bet we could get some kind of authorization from Aitken to investigate this further."

Andrew Aitken, Six's CIA contact within the Ops Directorate, was a great call. Six looked at his watch. It was close to midnight, too late to call him now.

"I'll hit him up in the morning. The Russian angle alone will probably be enough to pique his interest. I don't really love the idea of getting caught up in a CIA versus FBI battle over jurisdiction but doing nothing appeals to me even less."

The two of them fell into silence again, and time crept by painfully slowly, the neon green numbers of the dashboard's clock taunting Six. He fiddled with the earpiece he was wearing, a protocol when they were out on a job to ensure they were never out of contact.

A runner jogged passed the truck, completely ignoring Six and Cabe, both of whom were dressed in black, fading into the background their specialty. He was bulky, the kind of gym rat who only worked out his chest, which was covered in a dark hoodie, an odd choice given the August weather. Something didn't fit and it wasn't just the slouchy gray track pants that he had to periodically stop to pull up.

"You seeing this?" Cabe whispered to Six.

"That's not Kovalenko, but I'll take anything we can get."

They watched as the man ran toward Kovalenko's home. He looked left, then right, as if checking out the neighborhood.

Six reached to check his weapon. "Shit." The man ran straight past the house. Disappointment flooded him. He'd been so certain- 

"Bingo!" Cabe said as the man doubled back and abruptly ran down the narrow path alongside Kovalenko's home.

After a few moments of darkness, a flicker of light as if from a flashlight appeared in the upstairs window. Six ran through the scenarios. Kovalenko was still alive and on the run, but needed something from his house to flee. Or Kovalenko was dead and something needed cleaning up  …  evidence needed destroying  …  something.

"We going to pick him up as he leaves, or you want to follow him."

"Follow him," Six said. "He might tell us something if we stop him now, might not. But if we follow him, we'll learn more. I'm going to follow him on foot, I'll keep you posted on location. Stay close."

Six slipped out of the truck and closed the door quietly, disappearing into the shadows behind the truck.

Several minutes later, the guy left the house and headed straight past them again on the opposite side of the street. Now he carried a small black sports bag.

Confident that the dash cam would have captured the man's entrance and exit from the house, Six began to jog, careful to place his feet deliberately on the ground to avoid the usual slap of boots on the sidewalk. This he could do. This felt like taking action. And there was no way on God's green earth that the guy could outrun him.

Less than two blocks away, the runner dropped from a run to a walk, then headed for a car on the other side of the stoplight. He fumbled in his pocket, then the lights on the car flashed and he squeezed his large frame inside.

"Cabe, get up here. He's getting into a car and will be mobile in less than a minute."

As the driver pulled away, Cabe's truck pulled up alongside and Six jumped in. Instead of calling the detective on Louisa's case, they called Noah, feeding him all the information they had. Keeping a steady distance behind, they trailed the truck for twenty minutes until it came to a stop outside a nondescript two-story condo unit in San Ysidro. The dirty cream-colored stucco was chipped and faded. Four pitiful plastic loungers were placed around an empty pool.