“How is Garrett?” Jason asked.
Abbey sat on the brick hearth in front of the crackling flames of the fireplace. The Malibu house was cold, but the fire gave the room a semicircle of warmth. She took a sip of white wine, and her red hair fell across her face as she looked down. She didn’t look at him. She’d barely looked at him at all since he arrived.
It was late. Dark. No light came through the windows. He’d waited for hours for her to get back from the hospital.
“So far, the doctors say there are no signs of a concussion,” she told him, her voice flat. “No brain swelling. But they want to keep him for another night. I can pick him up tomorrow.”
“I’m glad he’s okay.”
Abbey put down her wineglass. Her fists tightened, and her voice sounded choked. “You’re glad he’s okay? He’s not okay. Neither am I. For God’s sake, Jason, someone tried to kill my husband. Again. Can’t you leave me alone? Can’t you stop dragging me into your life? I can’t take this anymore.”
If she’d shot him, she couldn’t have wounded him more deeply.
“Abbey,” he murmured, trying to figure out what he could say. “The last thing I would ever want is to see you hurt. Or someone you love. You know that. If you want me to go, I’ll go.”
She got to her feet, and a long sigh breathed from her throat. “No. I don’t want you to go. I sure as hell would never trust anyone else from fucking Treadstone. You didn’t bring this with you, and whatever is going on, it would be happening whether you were here or not. But you have to understand how I feel, Jason. Nothing ever changes between you and me. Whenever I think I’m free, I’m not. Sooner or later, this latest thing is going to be over. And when it is—it kills me to say this, but I have to—I never want to see you again.”
Bourne kept every emotion off his face.
“Don’t think I blame you for that,” he said. “Because I don’t. You’re smart. And you have my word. Next time I go, I’m gone for good.”
She turned her back on him and stared at the fire. “So what do you want now?”
“Tell me about the person who assaulted Garrett.”
Abbey shrugged. “I can’t tell you much. It was dark. I think—I think—it was a woman. I’m not one hundred percent sure, but the physique didn’t look right for a man. Regardless, man or woman, she was really fit. Strong. I mean, I know Garrett’s not a big guy, but she had the drop on him. He said he heard something and went outside to check. Stupid.”
“He was trying to protect you.”
Abbey turned around again, her arms folded over her chest. “It wasn’t this girl of yours, right? The one with no name? I mean, from what you say, she sure as hell could do it. And she doesn’t like me.”
“It’s not her.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Then who, Jason? Who’s doing this?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know yet. Right now, the first thing I’d like to know is why Garrett’s a target. If the person who has the Files is behind this—if she’s coming after him herself after Holtzman failed—then Garrett must know something that she’s determined to hide. The most obvious thing is that he knows who she is, whether he realizes it or not.”
“Garrett already told you everything he knows,” Abbey said.
“Did he?”
“He told you about Jumpp and Mr. Yuan. It sounds like that’s where all of this started.”
“Except we think Mr. Yuan and his team are all dead. So there has to be someone else.”
“If he knew, he’d tell you.”
“Well, I need to talk to him again,” Bourne said. “Tomorrow. When he’s out of the hospital. I need to go through his life piece by piece, Abbey. Somewhere in there is a detail we’ve missed. He knows something. Or he knows someone. None of this is happening by accident.”
Abbey finished her wine. She put the glass down on the hearth. “No.”
“Excuse me?”
“No, you can’t talk to him. I won’t let you.”
“Abbey, I’m trying to figure out who wants him dead.”
“Then talk to someone else. Figure it out. You’re good at that. But I don’t want you anywhere near Garrett. He’s jealous of you. He doesn’t like you. He doesn’t need you badgering him while he’s trying to recover from getting smashed in the head. Don’t you get it, Jason? Garrett’s my husband. I may have rushed into it, and yeah, maybe part of me was on the rebound from you when I did it. But I’m married. I have to put him first. Are we clear about that? Stay away from him.”
Jason stared at Abbey in the shadows. She’d always been strong, but she had a reservoir of determination now that made her even more attractive. His feelings for her hadn’t died. They were embers that could be coaxed back to life with a breath of air. But he couldn’t let that happen. The best thing he could do for Abbey was find the Files.
And then leave her alone.
“Fine,” he said. “Whatever you want.”
“Jason, look, I’m sorry—”
“No, you’re right. Garrett’s off-limits. But I still need information about him. Tell me who to talk to.”
Abbey hesitated. “Well, you could always—”
She stopped as a bell rang, a muffled chime from Bourne’s pocket.
He dug out his phone and saw that he had a text message from a number he didn’t recognize. It was a video file, and below it was a brief note.
Tick tock, Cain.
With a frown of trepidation, Jason tapped the screen to play the video. As soon as he did, the screaming began, and he quickly muted the sound to keep Abbey from hearing the horrible soundtrack to what he was witnessing. He left the room and went out to the house’s marble foyer and closed the door behind him. Then he turned the sound back on. As he watched, his anger rose in his chest like fire. His eyes blinked shut, then opened. For someone immune to the sadism of the world, Bourne had met few killers with the barbarity of the Russian strongman named Cody. This man was worse than Lennon. Worse than the Medusa operative Miss Shirley.
This man was pure evil.
He watched the video from beginning to end. Then he watched it again, his emotions now dead and chilled, watching for any details he may have missed. He focused on Tati’s face. Tears pouring down her cheeks, mucus dripping from her nose, her mouth wide open as she pleaded with Cody not to make her do it. But the man had no mercy. He forced her, using his own bear paw over hers to squeeze the shears closed. When it was done, when the guttural moaning ended with the boy unconscious and Tati curled up on the floor, Cody spoke directly to Bourne on the camera.
“It gets worse from here, Cain. Get me the Files.”
“Jason?” Abbey said.
She’d come into the foyer behind him. He turned around and shoved his phone back into his pocket.
“Jason, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
A frozen silence hung between them. He knew she wanted to help, but he didn’t need help. He needed to cool his thirst for revenge, uncoil the tension in his body that made him want to drive to the airport and fly to Estonia and take apart Cody limb by limb. He needed leverage. He needed the Files.
“Jason, tell me what’s going on,” she insisted.
His voice was harsher than he wanted it to be. “You can’t have it both ways, Abbey. Either you’re in or you’re out. If you don’t want to be part of my life, then don’t ask me for details.”
She bit her lip, accepting the rebuke. “Yes, okay.”
“Garrett,” he snapped. “Who do I talk to?”
“He has an assistant. Lana Moreno. She was in Seattle, but she followed him down here when he moved in with me. She’s got an apartment in Santa Monica, and she works out of there. Lana knows everything about Garrett. She runs his whole schedule. She’s been with him since Jumpp, and she stayed with him when he went out on his own.”
“Lana Moreno.”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I’ll talk to her in the morning.”
He glanced at the front door. That was the way out. Open it, head out into the cool coastal night. Leave Abbey alone. Except he didn’t want that, and neither did she. They stared at each other, only inches apart, desire rising between them. He could imagine his fingers running through her hair, feel their clothes falling to the floor, feel himself carrying her naked body to the bedroom. So much time had passed without her, and yet it seemed as if no time had passed at all. It would be so easy to pick up exactly where they’d left off.
“I need to go,” he said, because in another moment, he would stay. All of the nerve endings on his fingertips wanted to touch her again, but the two of them were like magnets, pushing each other away when they got close.
“Yes. You better go.”
She knew it, too. He saw the old flame in her dark eyes.
He turned for the door, dragging himself away from her. But her voice stopped him with his hand on the doorknob.
“Jason, tell me what’s going on. Please. I can see it on your face. I know you too well. You need to talk to someone.”
He waited, not looking back. She was right; she was always right.
“I’m running out of time,” he said.
“Time for what?”
He opened the door, letting the ocean air blow between them, but he lingered on the threshold. “To find the Files. If I don’t find them soon, a woman’s going to die in a terrible way. And it will be my fault.”
*
Shadow went to the minibar in her Beverly Hills hotel. She found a half bottle of champagne, unwrapped the foil, and smoothly popped the cork. She took one of the champagne flutes and poured a glass for herself, then went to the window and looked out on the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Rodeo Drive. Even after midnight, glamour couples walked the sidewalk, showing off skin and money.
She sipped her champagne, thinking about the transition in her life that the last few months had brought. For years, she’d been able to escape to her anonymous getaway on an island off the Northumberland coast. She could be a nobody there. She had no identity as Shadow. But all of that had blown up when Jason Bourne—when David Webb—returned to her life. She’d given up the cottage on the island; she could never go back there. Now she was head of Treadstone, and there was no escape from that responsibility. Rewards came with it—money, power, an elegant lifestyle—but some nights she missed who she’d been.
That was a weakness she couldn’t indulge for long.
Choices had to be made. Hard choices.
She took her champagne back to the computer on the hotel desk. With a tap of the mouse, she rewound the video from the Treadstone camera and played it again, watching Jason in the foyer of the Malibu house and then seeing Abbey join him. She studied the chemistry between them, equal parts love and sex, with a clinical curiosity. The urge for them to come together battled with the need to stay apart.
Years ago, Bourne had looked at her that way. Same love, same passion. And she’d pretended to feel the way he did. Or at least, she’d allowed herself to believe she was only pretending. But her own emotions didn’t matter. For now, she was only concerned with Bourne and what he would do next, and she’d known all along that if he would tell anyone the truth, it would be Abbey Laurent. That was why she’d bugged her house.
I’m running out of time.
Then a moment later: If I don’t find them soon, a woman’s going to die in a terrible way.
Of course. So that was the secret. That was what he was hiding from her.
Shadow reversed the video again and slowed down the playback. She analyzed Bourne’s face, his eyes, his body, all the tells he hid from the rest of the world. But not from her. She still knew him inside and out, knew every strength, every weakness. She’d owned him, controlled him, danced him like a marionette for years without him even realizing she was there. She could predict how he would behave in every stressful situation.
By the time she shut down her computer a few minutes later, one thing was clear.
She had a problem.