Red Widow by Alma Katsu (good books to read for beginners txt) 📗

But this hasn’t happened.

After a minute—checking her watch, pretending to be thinking of some important thing, a reason to be standing in the aisle like this—Theresa turns around and scoots through a little-used back door into the hall. Once outside the vault, she feels better. It’s less likely that she’ll be observed out here. People come and go up and down the hall, and no one takes note. She joins them, walking with just enough purpose to give the impression she’s on her way to a meeting.

Lyndsey was talking to Jan Westerling. It could be coincidence: maybe Lyndsey saw Westerling crying and wanted to comfort her, but Theresa senses that wasn’t it. Lyndsey isn’t integrated into the office yet. She’s not part of the team. She doesn’t know Westerling, and isn’t the den mother type. Lyndsey was talking to Westerling for a reason.

It’s obvious what she’s doing: she’s talking to the reports officers for the three Russian assets. She’s trying to put the pieces together. Theresa listens to the sound of her own heels echo off the walls. Loud and sharp and insistent, drawing attention to her. You’d better run away. They’re coming for you.

Don’t look guilty. Whatever you do, don’t look guilty.

Theresa is going to have to find out who else Lyndsey has spoken to. Without conscious thought, her feet have brought her to Kyle Kincaid’s office. To this domain of former military with their telltale clipped haircuts and their self-consciously unfashionable manner of dress, as though they’re not quite used to picking out shirts and ties. Wrong colors, cheapish synthetic fabrics. They joke with each other loudly, and their desks are messier than over in Russia Division, as though there is no one to tell them that appearances matter.

Kyle Kincaid sits at his desk with his back to her, unaware of her approach, even though the boyish chatter dies down as she walks into the bullpen, as the men stop and stare at her. They don’t know she’s The Widow; they only see an attractive woman.

She hasn’t thought of what to say to Kincaid but she’s not worried; it will come to her. It always does. She’s a cat who always lands on her velvet paws. He looks up when she stands beside him, and his face lights up. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by,” she says. She hopes her smile looks genuine.

They leave the vault and meander to the end of the hall, walls of glass with a view of the parking lots. It is dead space where no one ventures unless they have come for the vending machines. They have privacy.

He seems at a loss. He sneaks glances in her direction like a schoolboy afraid to ask her to the dance. Like all popular girls, cheerleaders and prom queens, it will be Theresa who will have to do the leading, carefully shepherding him along to get him to say what she wants him to say.

“You heard what happened to the other missing asset?” she asks in a low voice. There are few secrets in the Agency. “I wasn’t sure if the news got out of Russia Division yet.”

“What? No,” he answers, quickly masking his surprise. He doesn’t want to look out of touch. She tells him about Kulakov’s messy end while at the same time tamping down her guilt. She’s almost managed to erase the pictures from her mind. It’s amazing how well she’s learned to compartmentalize. It’s survival: concentrate on putting one step after the other. “And your asset—any word on him yet?”

He shakes his head.

She wants to ask about Lyndsey. She wants to know if Kincaid has spoken to her yet, what Lyndsey may have told him, how much she knows. If she mentioned Theresa’s name. The problem is she can’t think how to do this without making Kincaid suspicious.

Before she can think of a way, however, Kincaid surprises her. He steps in closer than is proper in the workplace, so close that he can practically see down her cleavage. She can smell the dying scent of his deodorant and faint traces of the last thing he ate. Too intimate too fast.

“Would you like to go out to dinner with me? It’s hard to talk here at work, don’t you think? Someone always listening. It would be easier to speak freely out of the building.” This is a funny thing to say under the circumstances. There’s something about his tone and the hard glint in his frankly untrustworthy eyes that make her think there’s something he hasn’t told her.

She’s losing control. Like with Tarasenko and Morozov. Someone she thought was a pussycat might turn out to be a tiger.

She feels the knife edge of panic, but it’s not enough to keep her from accepting. After all, she has to know what he may have said to Lyndsey and he’s right, it will be easier to talk outside of work. She doesn’t want to have anything to do with Kyle Kincaid, socially or otherwise—but she has no choice. It’s a risk she has to take.

“Why Kyle, I thought you’d never ask.”

—

Theresa pulls into the parking lot of the restaurant and turns off her Volvo’s engine. She sits behind the wheel, not looking to see if she is being watched. A voice in her head tells her to turn around, that it’s not too late. She can send the sitter home early, wipe the makeup off her face, curl up on the couch to watch a Disney movie with Brian, and leave Kyle Kincaid sitting at his table alone, wondering what happened to her.

Her hands rest on the steering wheel, seemingly too heavy to lift. She didn’t want Kincaid to come to her house, for Brian to see her leave with a strange man. On this point, she is adamant: Brian will not know of Kyle Kincaid. Their lives will never intersect, not at any point.

Kincaid has chosen a nondescript restaurant a few towns over, one—she senses—that isn’t frequented by