Page 81 of Radar

“Did you have sex with me as part of an operation? Like,” she snapped her fingers, “what do they call it?”

“I don’t know what they call it. But I had sex with you because I very much wanted to. My target, Orest Kalinsky, was asleep, so I was on my own time. I discovered that you were associated with him later.” He let her have the smallest taste of what was coming, and he watched her reaction.

“Yourtarget? You’re going to explain that to me? You must be kidding if you think my Uncle Orest is someone a spy should watch. That’s absurd.”

“I’ll have more information for you after my team brings me up to speed.” He didn’t like being called a spy. It sounded like someone without ethics who lurked in the shadows.

“But you knew I was his great-niece,” she insisted.

“Not until after we were together.”

“When they tried to break into my room?”

“Earlier.”

“I had put my information into your contacts on your phone. Then, I went to the bathroom.” She looked at her lap. “Well, that explains your shitty moodiness when I got back in bed, doesn’t it?” Elyssa looked up. “Is this about drugs?”

“I wish it were,” Xander said gently.

“That sounded ominous.”

“I don’t want you hurt.” And Xander had never said a truer sentence in his life.

“Me neither. You think I might be?” Elyssa jumped up. “Whew.”

Xander reached out to guide her back to her seat. “No sudden shifts, please. I know all of this is startling. For your safety, we have a paramedic right outside if you think you need someone.”

Elyssa stared at the door, so Xander got up and opened it. “Ma’am?”

The uniformed woman lifted from the wall and took a step forward.

After he was sure that Elyssa had seen her support, Xander said, “Just making sure you were here.”

“Yes, sir.”

He closed the door and turned to Elyssa. “I need to get caught up on the case. I’ll be right back.”

“Before you go.” Elyssa waited until Xander sat back down. “I hate being lied to, and you have to be lying. You slept with me because you wanted to manipulate me. It has to be that.”

Xander placed a hand over his heart. “I would never do that, Elyssa.”

“You knew who I was last nightbeforeyou slept with me,” she insisted.

Xander shook his head.

“You did. You must have. You must have done some research on me, too. You saw I was shaking and ordered nachos, and you placed the saltshaker directly in front of me that way. I didn’t put it together because I don’t live in a spy thriller. I’m a plant engineer. A plant plant engineer. I mean, I design plants for growing plants.” She waved her hand in the air. “Never mind. If you knew about the salt, you already knew what I did for a living and had researched me enough to know I had POTS despite HIPAA.”

“I didn’t, Elyssa. Radar told me about the POTS. Listen, Radar was at a training facility in Oklahoma, and I was able to adopt him as my dog because he had been released from their service dog program. Radar is a great working dog, just not a good fit for a medical alert lifestyle. Now, how they train the service dogs is to start their puppy training in a family that does that as their good works in this world.” He pointed to her wrist. “It’s their little bit. Okay? Following?”

“So far. But you seem to want that to explain the salt.”

“Though Radar was trained as a seizure alert K9, the family where Radar was puppy training had a friend who had POTS. That friend had a POTS service dog who would boop her on the leg when there was a change in the woman’s blood chemistry. This service dog would assume a particular posture of concentration as she paid close attention to her handler. Radar learned that behavior when he lived in his puppy trainer’s house.”

Elyssa pressed her lips together like she wasn’t buying this. And Xander needed Elyssa to trust him.

“The salt was pre-boop,” she said.

“Yes, like I said, before the boop, which is the alert, the service dog’s posture would change as she focused on her person. I recognized Radar’s attention and posture when you were at the bar. This was when you were dealing with Gaston.”