“What—” She rubbed her eyes. “How long was I asleep?”

“Not more than an hour. Did you hear that?” He tried to see the city from their vantage point in the temple, but couldn’t. “That was an explosion. Not fireworks or anything.” He looked out from between the pillars but could see nothing. “Where can I go to get a better view of the city?”

“Basically the highest point at this end of Athens is where we came from—the Acropolis.

“We’ve got to go. That sounded big. Like level-a-building big.” Or worse. He motioned to the way they had entered.

“Shouldn’t we stay here? This has got to be the safest place, don’t you think?” she said, looking around the interior as if he’d asked her to abandon her home.

“Physically maybe,” he conceded. “But also we have no alibi for…whatever just happened. And we’re already wanted by…well, probably everyone by now. The police, the Russians, the US embassy, FBI…” Not to mention his boss. He wondered if he even had a boss now. He was totally off the books here, and it didn’t feel good to him. Mal would be totally in his element here, but David, after the last year, was not.

“That never occurred to me. Maybe we should have stayed in a hotel.” She bit her lip as he hurried her out.

“I don’t think so,” he said remembering the fully armored and weaponized police who had stormed the hotel. “This was the best option out of the two.” But he really wasn’t that sure anymore if he was making any right decisions for any of the right reasons. What kind of operative let a civilian decide where they would stay the night?

He led them back the way they’d come a couple of short hours earlier, back across the agora and over the brick pillar. Then he followed the path up the Acropolis. The gates to the Parthenon—the famous temple everyone associated with Greece—were locked. Nothing he couldn’t scale if he wanted too, but opposite the gate was an unguarded hill. He started to climb.

“Good idea. The Areopagus,” Molly said.

He turned back to take her hand. “The what?”

“This is where Saint Paul preached to the ancient Greeks, started their conversion to Christianity. You can also see a whole chunk of the city from there.”

Even before they got close to the top he could see a huge plume of smoke pushing into the night sky. An orange glow told him that whatever had blown was still on fire. He could see the Temple of Olympian Zeus from where they were, and he was able to figure out where the explosion had been. As they got higher, faint sirens floated on the air. Constant and worrying.

“Where is that?” Molly asked.

“It looks to be in the vicinity of the embassies, close to the hotel we were in.” He was wondering how many people were likely to have been hurt. If it was an embassy, hopefully none, since it was nighttime. If it was the hotel, or any of the other hotels that were packed with G20 attendees, the casualty rate would be catastrophic.

“Listen, do you mind if I…” Molly began.

David couldn’t take his eyes off the scene laid out in front of him. In terms of national embarrassment, this took the cake. Having such huge security issues a few weeks before the presidents and prime ministers arrived was the worst thing a struggling country could experience, not to mention the first time in G20 history that there’d been such threats.

“Mind if you what?” he asked, still wondering what sort of device it had been and what kind of carnage it had wrought.

“I need to pee,” she said anxiously.

“It’s okay, I won’t look.” Really, he’d seen every inch of this woman, he couldn’t imagine why she would be worried about peeing.

“Okay, thank you. I won’t be a minute,” she said.

In the silence came an epiphany. He was spectating up here. This wasn’t who he was. He needed to act. To do something positive. How had Molly distracted him? Made him run and hide? He had to figure out how to keep her away from harm, but until he took the fight to the Russians, he would be sitting atop this hill forever. Well, metaphorically anyway.

Molly had to know someone in Athens, or even Greece, who could pick her up, shove her in the trunk, and get through the roadblocks and out to the countryside somewhere. When she was safe, he and Brandon Peterson needed to talk. Screw his Russian girlfriend. This was beyond that. Peterson needed to come clean, so the blame for these explosions, and the assassination wouldn’t land at the USA’s feet. Because a new world war, or even just a cold war with the constant threat of nuclear action would taint this whole generation.

This was bigger than him, bigger than Molly even, and dammit, he was going full-steam to the source. He half wished Mal were there. The annoying bastard would be useful right about now. Scared of nothing, and caring about nothing is the ideal state of mind for a soldier, something he suspected Mal knew only too well, if the rumors about him were true. That was the main difference between them. David had been trained to care about his country and his brothers in arms. Mal was mission-focused. Nothing got in the way of the mission. Which was an attitude he could have used right about then.

As soon as Molly got back, he’d make her figure out who she could call to keep her safe while he waded back into the thick of it. Back to his comfort zone. No wonder he’d felt off his game, running from hiding place to hiding place. But he hadn’t really had a choice with Molly with him. He didn’t fancy her chances with the SVR, that was for sure.

Where was she? She must have needed to pee really badly. And then his thoughts sped up and skidded to a halt when he remembered her face as she took the remnants of their meal to the trash can. He’d been almost certain that she’d been considering doing a runner. Surely she couldn’t be that crazy? A slow dawn of reality hit him. She didn’t trust him to keep her safe. To give good advice. He couldn’t really blame her. He’d broken his promise to her last year, and all he seemed to have done this year was to keep leading her into trouble. The bad guys had turned up everywhere they’d escaped to. She was right. She was dead right. He was useless. Even his company-mandated therapist had told him that he shouldn’t trust his instincts until he’d fully recovered. And that’s all he’d been doing—using his instinct. His shoulders slumped as he turned, hoping against hope that he was wrong. That she trusted him, that she’d stay with him.

He watched the path she had taken, his heart racing, almost making him light-headed. Come on, Molly, he urged. Please trust that I can keep you safe. Please don’t leave. He paused, the weight of his past rolling in waves through his body. He took a breath and tried to shake it off. He was still in the middle of a mission, and he couldn’t break down now. He clenched his fists. He didn’t care what she thought. He would save her. And then he would have to let her go.

He tried to shake off the lingering doubt he had in his own abilities as he ran back the way they’d come, making controlled slips down the scree on the hill. “Molly,” he hissed. He got to the base of the hill, opposite the gates to the Parthenon, and found no one. The path went two ways, broad and flat, and easy for her to run down in sneakers. He took a fifty-fifty chance and went back the way they’d come.

After about five minutes of running, he knew he’d chosen the wrong path.

Maybe the universe was telling him something.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Molly had figured he’d choose the path they’d been on before, so she’d chosen the other one. It had been a longer way down, but also more familiar to her. They’d been able to drive up that path with their equipment on a dig a few years past.

She was proud of herself. She’d done something to save David from getting in trouble and losing everything again. She didn’t want him to have to worry about her.