Ziggy sat down next to Roy. “Even if it doesn’t end the way you want it to?”

“For Pete’s sake.”

Roy laughed, then winced.

“Are you hurt?” RJ said.

“I think I might have bruised a couple ribs bailing out of the car.”

What? “What do you mean, bailing out of the car?”

Roy stilled, look at Ziggy, back to RJ. “Um…didn’t York tell you about the accident?”

“Yes. He said that some guy forced you off the road…”

“With a grenade!” Ziggy said.

Everything inside RJ went cold. “A…what?”

Roy sighed. “It wasn’t an accident, RJ. It was an assassination attempt. The guy followed us from the airport—actually, from Berlin, but the point is, he didn’t succeed —“

“The point is that I know nothing of this!” RJ clasped the book to her chest. “Start at the beginning.”

Roy swallowed, drew in a breath. “Maybe York doesn’t want —“

“I don’t care what York wants. Stop protecting me.”

Roy drew in a breath. “York met with an old Bratva contact in Berlin. He told him that there’s a bounty on his head, and now that we’re poking around Europe, people—mercenaries, probably—are trying to collect.”

She just stood there, hollow, staring at Roy.

A bounty? “Who puts a bounty on someone?”

“We called Logan yesterday, and Coco is trying to find out.”

RJ sank back into the hammock. “So, York is being hunted.”

“You’re safe here, RJ. No one will find him.”

She stared at Ziggy. “You don’t know that.”

“The man who followed us is dead,” Roy said, no emotion. “And no one knows where we went.”

RJ looked away, her eyes burning. “Did York kill him?”

Roy said nothing.

Oh.

The sun hung high, barely a shadow cast into the garden. Her skin baked, her bones tired.

“I can’t believe he didn’t tell me.”

A beat, then, “He probably didn’t want to worry you,” Ziggy offered.

RJ looked away. “He’s reverting back to the spy I met in Russia.”

“He’ll always be the spy you met in Russia,” Roy said. “The man you fell in love with. It’s in his bones.”

Yes. And that man thrilled her, sparked the person in her that wanted to be more. But recently… “I just thought he wanted a different life.”

“Is there a different life?”

“One without people trying to kill you? I think so.”

“Regardless of what we do, we all die,” Roy said. “The best you can do is make something of your life while you’re here. That’s what York is doing. What I’m trying to do.” He looked at Ziggy then. “Do the job put before us, whatever that is.”

Ziggy nodded.

RJ ran her hand over the book in her lap. “And what is my job?”