“We’ve got to run,” David said. “Leave your bag.”

“Give me a second.” There was no way she could run anywhere in her high heels, not on the cobbled streets of Athens. She ripped open her bag and kicked off her heels, grabbing her sneakers and slipping them on.

David slapped her ass, not once but a few times. What the…? “This is not the time—”

“Your skirt has embers on it.” He slapped her a couple more times and rubbed his hands on his jeans. “Come on.”

She didn’t take the time to look at the state of her skirt, but grabbed the sundress that was on top of her clothes, and took his offered hand.

David took off with her half a step behind. They ran away from the debris, and the people who were shouting and pointing, and headed to the loading dock. Once they’d cleared the hotel block, David slowed, but still ran.

“Smile,” he said, as they passed late night shoppers. He grinned at her and she smiled back, wondering what the hell he was thinking.

They continued to run, laughing and smiling until they reached a residential neighborhood. David stopped. “I think we can stop here. Are you okay?”

“I think so. I’m not sure.” She was being honest. A poor man had just got blown up, and yet she was glad it wasn’t her and David. Which made her feel like an awful person. And someone was obviously trying to kill them.

David grimaced and rolled his shoulders.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Sure. A little blast shock, but I’m fine. I’ve seen worse.” He turned to look at a bus stop street map, and she saw his back.

“Jesus. Your shirt is shredded! Let me look”—she pulled up one of the ripped tails of his shirt and saw his back was red raw—“It looks like you have really bad sunburn.” She winced at the pain he must be in.

At that second his phone rang. He dug it out of his pocket and answered. “No. We’re both okay. They’ve what?” He nodded a few times. “Thanks, Mal.” He paused. “Just fuck off.”

He shoved the phone back in his pants and paced in front of the church they’d stopped in front of. “They’ve closed down the city. No one in and no one out. The police have road blocks on all the roads leaving the city.”

“So you don’t think we’d make it to the airport?” she asked, wondering what had happened to her life in the past two days.

He remained silent, obviously processing this new information. She didn’t press him. She sat on the small wall of the church and took a breath. That poor bellboy. Why would someone bomb their car? Was it because of Brandon’s note? Did she set off the chain of reactions that led to that poor man’s death?

David stopped pacing and crouched in front of her. She tried to keep her eyes on his face, but her imagination was working overtime. Did the man have family? Did they know yet? “Okay, this is the plan. We’re going to take the metro to Piraeus port, where all the tourist boats set sail to the Greek islands. You’re going to take out as much cash as you can at an ATM and then you’re going to use your credit card to buy one ticket to the farthest island we can find. That way they’ll think that you’ve left the city and we’ve split up.”

She recognized that he was detailing a plan, and she could hear the words, but she couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying. The car kept exploding in her mind. Ka-boom. And then that second of silence, followed by the clang of falling car parts. Over and over. She tried to visualize what the bellboy looked like, but she couldn’t remember if she’d ever seen him.

“We can’t go to the airport, and frankly the boats would be easily caught by a police launch, so the best thing we can do is hunker down somewhere anonymous and try to figure out what the hell is going on.” He pointed down the road to the metro station, and then looked back at her.

She nodded, because that’s what he was waiting for. She was sure it was an excellent plan. He took her hand and led her to the metro station, buying two tickets with some coins.

She was still carrying her sundress, which she understood looked strange, so she folded it up as small as she could and clasped it in one hand as they sat on the train. She played with the buttons of it. What had she done? Had she killed the bellboy?

Wordlessly she slipped her hand in her pocket and passed David the envelopes that Brandon Peterson had given her.

His back hurt like fuck. Like someone had taken a blowtorch to it. Throb, throb, throb, in time with the motion of the train. Molly slipped her hand into his, and he took a deep breath of relief that she was still alive, that they had escaped death by virtue of tipping a bellboy to bring the car around.

He looked down at their clasped hand and a coldness trickled down his spine. There was something else in there too. He met her eyes, which looked as though wariness and pain were weighing her down. Hooking his finger under the paper between their hands, he slowly dragged it into his lap.

It was one, no two small envelopes. One had been opened. They had her name on them, small enough to be a florist’s card. He opened the flap as she looked away. Inside was a small card.

Stamov extraction.

He was pretty sure Stamov was the Russian finance minister, and he suspected that his “extraction” wasn’t referring to a visit to the dentist. He flipped the card over. The other side was blank.

What was a State Department employee doing contacting a foreign minister through a civilian? And why was he leaking what would probably be classified information?

He opened the other note.

Andropov extraction.

He thought Andropov was the Russian prime minister—yeah, that rang a bell.

He gave them back to Molly and took her hand again. They’d talk later. Much later, when no one was listening.

So the Russians were telling everyone that they were under attack from the US. Someone in the US government was warning them that it was true, and now someone was after Molly and David. At least he knew why, now. Someone very definitely didn’t want Molly to give that note to someone in the Russian government. And that was either the CIA or…Fuck. He couldn’t get his head wrapped around it.

Not that he necessarily trusted the CIA to do what was right in any given situation. He’d met too many intelligence officers in Afghanistan who were downright sketchy most of the time. But take down a government by picking people off? Unlikely.

The train terminated at the port city of Piraeus, where Molly took out five hundred euros and then paid for a one-way ticket to Cyprus, which was the farthest island served by the ferries. The ferry would leave just about the time they got back on the metro to return to Athens. It was a good plan, if he said so himself. It would keep anyone from following them and getting them in a pickle. Another Mal-ism. It would keep from getting them in a shit-ton of trouble.

They caught the train back to Monastiraki, which was the main tourist area of Athens. Much easier to blend in there. When they emerged from the station, it was dusk, and the partiers had come out to play. Throngs of people ambled in the street, so he adopted their pace and walked with his arm wrapped around Molly’s shoulders like so many other couples.

He found a hotel in a graffitied backstreet, just a few doors down from a basement “adult” sex shop. The hotel lobby was clean and well furnished, looking more like a boutique hotel than the façade would have suggested. They checked in using cash and fake names, and eventually were given a key to a room on the third floor. The elevator took an age to come, and when it did they got in silently.

“What did…?” Molly started to say.

He placed his finger on her lips and then claimed them in a kiss. Just for appearances. Just in case there was an elevator security camera. Yeah right.