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She tilted her head questioningly. “Then why haven’t you already destroyed it? I think part of you does want to hand it over to the Americans. I think you do want to prove to the CIA that they can trust you and that you’ll be a good operative for them.”

“Bah!” he scoffed.

“You accuse me of lying to you, but don’t lie to yourself, Alex. Iknowyou.”

Damn her, she did.

She pressed her own point home. “If you truly were the rogue agent you claim to be, you would’ve let me bleed to death on that sidewalk. Even if you did have feelings for me, and even if you are first and foremost a doctor, you would’ve looked out for yourself, first. But you didn’t. You’re not a bad person, no matter what you try to tell yourself.”

“Lord, you’re such a goody-two-shoes.”

“Yup, and I wear rose-colored glasses, too,” she replied cheerfully. “I’m not apologetic for having a positive outlook on life. You could use a little more of that, by the way.”

He rolled his eyes and didn’t deign to answer. She seemed to think she’d gotten the last word and buried her nose in her book, once more.

Irritated, he stared down at his computer screen. Thanks to Blondie, who’d given her life to get this algorithm to him, he had the means to get into the CIA’s mainframe. And thanks to Katie and whatever political games her uncle was playing, he now he had both a name and an operation to investigate. His father said Claudia Kane was running Operation Cold Intent. What in the hell was she doing with it?

Did he dare break into the CIA’s secure servers to search for an answer? Was it worth risking his life—and Katie’s, he conceded reluctantly—to learn more about his mother? Maybe he ought to wait until Roman and the FSB finished poking around to see what they found. Although, if the information were that easy to access, Roman would have already had it.

Alex put his hands on the keyboard. He would have to move fast. He might have two, maybe three minutes once he got in. Better to stick with a two-minute time limit. He set up a stopwatch on his cell phone and started typing.

Blondie’s algorithm was subtle. It didn’t take a sledgehammer approach to getting past the CIA’s firewalls. Rather it wormed its way in through tiny code gaps and by taking a massively circuitous, randomized route into the mainframe. Each time the hacking program was used, it would take a different route to its target, which meant it would be nearly impossible to create countermeasures to stop it. This was a re-usable algorithm, in other words.

Brilliant, Blondie.

The algorithm ran for nearly a half-hour, but his patience was rewarded when a CIA search screen popped up. He started the timer and typed in his mother’s name and the Cold Intent name.

A minute passed.

A minute-and-a-half. Crap. The information was buried too deep. He would never find it in the limited amount of time he could afford to stick around waiting.

All of a sudden, his screen lit up. A list of file names associated with the search parameters, “Cold Intent and Claudia Kane,” scrolled down his screen.

Startled, he typed as fast as he could, attempting to download them, wholesale. No go. They were write-protected. It would take a whole other decryption algorithm to bust the protections preventing them from being copied.

In desperation, he clicked on the most recently dated file.

It opened to reveal an innocuous-looking document. He scanned it fast. An intel report on…his jaw dropped.

…On Roman Koronov and his father’s odds of becoming the next Director of the FSB. The analysis deemed Roman far too effective a spy and charismatic a leader to be allowed into the position. The report speculated that, under his capable direction, the FSB could be rejuvenated into a formidable intelligence apparatus.

His phone beeped that his two minutes were up. He swore and clicked to the end of the report quickly. The conclusion was too damned wordy to read in its entirety, but he scanned it fast. The report concluded with verbiage having to do with agreeing with the director on the optimal plan for taking Koronov out of the running for the post of FSB chief.

His computer beeped an incoming query warning, and he slammed the escape key. He powered the computer completely off and unplugged it from the wall.

Operation Cold Intent was an op to take down his father? He could see his mother being involved with that. It certainly answered the question of how Mommie Dearest had felt about his father.

Why would a working group with that goal go after Katie, then? What key piece to the puzzle was he missing? How did Katie fit into all of this? He’d seen her reflex reactions in life-threatening situations before; he knew without a shadow of a doubt that Katie wasnota trained field operative. A sparrow, maybe. But not a spy.

He turned over possibilities in his head for some time. He eventually noticed her nodding off in her chair and muttered, “Go to bed.”

She jolted upright. “That’s okay. I’ll stay up.”

It hit him suddenly what she was doing. Terrified he was going to sneak out and leave her again, was she? Katie was trying to stay awake and keep an eagle eye on him. It would be cute if he could trust her even a little.

“I’m not going to leave until I figure out why the Cold Intent team is trying to kill you, Katie.”

She stared at him long and hard. “Promise?”