Chapter Two
June, Berlin
"Let me look at it." Irina stood in the doorway to the bathroom, watching Jack as he tried to examine the wound on his shoulder. He paused to glare at her.
"I've got it."
Biting back a sigh of irritation, she stepped into the bathroom and plucked the bloodied towel from Jack's hand.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"Helping you, you idiot. What does it look like?" She finished cleaning the wound, relieved the bullet had just nicked him. A few inches to the left and it would have been a much more serious injury. She let her touch linger longer than was necessary, partly to reassure herself that Jack was really okay, and partly for reasons she wasn't ready to think about yet. Seeing him injured never failed to shake her.
"Will I live?" His tone was sarcastic.
"Barring any further stupidity on your part, maybe."
"Stupidity?" He grabbed her wrist, holding tighter than was comfortable.
"You're no good to me dead, Jack." Wrenching her wrist free, she turned and stalked into the bedroom. Honestly. Sometimes that man infuriated her. What was supposed to have been a simple recon mission turned into a disaster. At least they'd got the information they were looking for, she thought, glancing at the computer chip on the dresser. Despite Jack's misguided wish to play hero.
"Next time," Jack said as he entered the room, "I'll just let them shoot you."
He sat down on the edge of the bed; their cover had necessitated a single room, but right now Irina wished for her own space. Maybe she should make Jack sleep on the floor, she thought maliciously. It would serve him right for making her worry.
"Your intel was wrong," he said, sounding like a pouty adolescent.
Irina wasn't in the mood. "Fuck you."
"You've already done that, sweetheart."
She glared at him; most men would have already left the room when faced with that look. Of course, Jack wasn't most men. He was her husband.
But the only reason he was with her tonight was because their daughter was dead.
Suddenly too tired to fight, she sank into one of the chairs and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. "Tell me, Jack, if our roles were reversed, wouldn't you have done the same thing for your country?"
He was silent for a while. Then, "I don't hate you for being KGB. I can understand that. I can accept that."
"What then?" She looked up in surprise.
"You didn't trust me enough to tell me."
"What would you have done, Jack? You were so patriotic then. Your country first—"
"My family first. I would have left the CIA. I was planning to leave anyway, remember?"
She said nothing, but kept looking at him, and could see the change in his expression as he realized.
"That's why you left, isn't it?"
Truth time. "I had to. But I thought, as long as you had Sydney, you'd be fine without me."
"Then you never understood that I wasn't alive until I met you." He stood. "You should have trusted me."
He returned to the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. She heard the lock click, and the tears welling in her eyes spilled down her cheeks.
He would never understand those last few weeks, she thought bitterly. He would never know how close she had come to telling him everything, and how only fear for his life, Sydney's life, had stopped her. He would never know that she cried all the way to the river. He would never know about Kashmir.
There were more things she could tell him, but as she stared at the closed door, she knew it was too late.
He would never believe her.
As soon as they found who was responsible for Sydney's death, their fragile alliance would be over, and they would part ways. She might as well start getting used to that now.
As she crawled into the bed, she knew he'd break her heart again.
Something else he would never know.