Taking Sides (ARC Operatives Book 2) (3 page)

Russi had definitely landed on someone’s shit-list, since he was about ten years older than her and in no way was a junior enough agent to be doing all the recon and monitoring. That didn’t exactly bode well for him working well with her, given that he’d be pissed off to be paired with her and annoyed about the crap work they’d both be doing.

At least the cabin had two bedrooms… ish. Balfour had said something about a loft and a pull out couch down below. The loft she’d take, since it was more of a glorified 4’ tall crawl space, and Russi could have the couch. No need for awkward bed sharing… something that Balfour had said loudly enough for Nico to hear before they’d all parted ways. Once again she was grateful for the older agent and how he was looking out for her, even if it wasn’t specifically work-related.

“Alright kid, c’mon let’s pack our stuff in and get set up,” Russi groused from the other side of the SUV. “You can go chasing squirrels afterwards.” He strode towards the front door, walking up the few short steps and onto the porch with three bags of gear in his arms. Daria wrinkled her nose at being called
kid
, and Russi caught her eye and smirked at her dismay over the nickname. She decided right then she wasn’t going to give into his barbs. She knew his type, had known his type her whole life, had been ignored by his type: a macho asshole who was only interested in tall blondes.

Daria flipped open her phone to send Nico a quick text, letting him know they’ve arrived at the base camp and sends him a few heart emojis along with it. They never did get to have their chat after the meeting, things were too rushed, and she felt a pang of leaving things on a sour note between them. Every mission was a risk, although she trusted in his augmentation to keep him safe, his super-speed enabling him to sometimes dodge bullets even. She stashed her phone in her wallet and began helping Russi move their equipment inside.

The interior of the cabin was cool and dark, a chubby black wood stove in one corner for heat.

“I’ll bring in some wood,” Russi said, suddenly behind her and nearly making her jump. He moved quietly for such a large man. “You get the equipment set up,” he said with a jerk of his head to the kitchen table in the corner. Balfour had mentioned the place was off the grid, run on solar power. They had their satellite uplink for internet and surveillance connections. She sat down at the table with a sigh and popped open her laptop.

Russi had dragged in all the gear in the black moulded plastic boxes and all she had to do was unpack and set it all up. She set about her work, humming tunelessly under her breath as Russi stacked logs of firewood next to the stove and got a small burn going.

The uplink was painfully slow at first, and she grumbled to herself as she worked. She felt Russi’s eyes on her a few times, but every time she looked up he was busy doing something, either unpacking gear or stowing more wood.

“What, you think we’ll be here for more than a week?” she asked as she gazed at the fair pile beside the stove.

“I don’t like the cold,” he answered with a shrug before he hauled open the couch’s pull out bed and made it up. “You’ve got linens up on your mattress in the loft.” He pointed at the ladder, a slim set of wood slats nailed to the wall for her to climb up to where she’d sleep. “You might want to make it up before it gets dark, there’s no light up there.”

“Height of civilization,” she muttered and then she felt his gaze land on her, hot and searing.

“This isn’t training, kid,” he said, walking over and planting his hands heavily on the kitchen table. The wood shifted and groaned under his weight and she looked up at him.

“Sorry,” she replied, not feeling very apologetic. She was definitely missing Nico. She checked her phone, no response yet, not that she expected one sine he was probably busy with getting things organized at the other end. The three doing recon were hunkered down in the woods, waiting for nightfall when they could move in under the cover of darkness and not worry so much about being spotted.

“Just get the feeds going and then we can worry about dinner. You heard anything from the team?”

She shook her head in answer to his question and he sighed, scratching the back of one arm before wandering over to the stove again.

“What do you know about Novik anyway?” he asked after long minutes of silence stretched between them.

“Huh?” Daria lifted her head from her screen to look at him. He was leaning over the stove, shifting the logs with a poker every so often to get more air under them. They crackled, sending off puffs of red-white sparks every time he moved them.

“You and him are a thing, right?” Russi looked over his shoulder at her and she bit her lip.

“Officially? No. Unofficially, we started dating a month ago.”

“Fraternization isn’t encouraged,” Russi commented to the fire.

“I dunno, Rykov and Balfour seem to get along just fine,” Daria shot back, a tumble of irritation rolling over in her stomach. Who was he, exactly, to comment on her relationship? He wasn’t her boss.

“Look, kid, I don’t want to upset you, but I’m your partner for this mission and also probably the foreseeable future.” He’d turned towards her and moved, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Can you get to the point?” she asked, discomfort and outright anger making her snappish. “I’ve known you for a day.”

“And you’ve been working with Novik for a month. Take my advice, if you don’t wanna get hurt or end up dead, don’t date in the agent pool until you’ve known them for at least a few years. Your partner should have your back, and that doesn’t mean spooning you at night.” His own eyes were shadowed, like he was remembering something, or seeing something she couldn’t. She raised an eyebrow at him. Maybe he had no idea that she and Nico had actually been in training for almost over a year together before they’d hooked up in the heat of the moment on their first mission. A year was lots of time to get to know someone, and she didn’t like the implication that Nico was somehow… not what he said he was. The background checks on those who got augmented by ARC were incredibly deep. She hadn’t wanted them looking that far back into her history, not that there was anything to find. A few protests for animal welfare in college, that was about it.

“Thanks, advice noted. Can we skip talking about my personal affairs now? I need you to go up on the roof and adjust the satellite so I can get a better connection. I’m not picking up their video feed.”

Russi heaved himself off the couch with a shake of his head, like her dismissal had confirmed something for him. That burnt, he barely knew her, and already he was passing judgment ton her. Maybe after the mission was done she could put in for another partner.

Hours later they finally had a good link and she heard back from the recon team. They’d set up their video and audio feed, and everything was in place. It had fallen into darkness and they’d run their first survey mission onto the site to count heads, and see if the people there matched with the profiles they’d been given.

Russi was on duty for monitoring the first eight hours, and Daria would take the next eight while he went to bed. In the cabin’s small bathroom, she changed into sweats and a t-shirt to grab a cat-nap before her shift. When she emerged Russi was sat at the table, headphones on and direct gaze locked on the computer screen. He was frowning, his fingers tapping on the tabletop as he watched. The team would already be in the woods.

Daria checked her phone again, no response from Nico yet. She tried not to let it bother her because they were working and it wasn’t his job to babysit her emotions when they were both on the job. Still, she couldn’t help feeling lonely when she crawled into the loft bed, just a single mattress with plain sheets and a quilt to comfort her.

Miss you
,
she texted Nico’s phone, knowing he wouldn’t be checking it if he was out in the woods, but still needing him to know she was thinking about him. Down below she could hear Russi still tapping away at the wood table, apparently a bored or nervous tic of his. Normally the sound would irritate her, but she was feeling so lonesome that it just made her feel comforted, that someone else was nearby.

She closed her eyes and breathed out slowly, tried to calm her storming emotions. Rykov and Balfour would keep Nico safe. He was a force to be reckoned with all on his own. Soon they’d be back together, just a week apart, and she’d be able to clear the air with him.

Daria felt herself drifting in and out of sleep over the next few hours. Every so often Russi would shift, or make a noise that would bring her swimming up from her blacked out dreams. The night seemed to last forever. Finally just before daybreak, she checked her phone as she stumbled into wakefulness again. There was one text message, from Nico, and her heart surged in her chest.

Everything is fine here. Miss you too, Mila. Hope you are sleeping well. We are back at our base now, the camp seemed quiet and we were not spotted. I was too fast for their alarm system to catch me.

She breathed a sigh of relief then peeked over the edge of the loft. Russi was peering out the window, pulling the curtain back. The grey haze of morning was flooding in. She’d have to get up in an hour or so, take over for him, although there wouldn’t be much to survey so early in the day.

After shooting back a quick message to Nico for him to have sweet dreams, she slept properly for the first time all night, and didn’t wake again until Russi knocked hard on the loft’s ladder two hours later.

CHAPTER FOUR

Monitoring work was a hell of a lot more boring than actively being in the field. Daria had known that since she’d been on more than a few monitor jobs during training when she’d shadowed more senior agents. Still, at least then she’d had the nervous energy of a trainee to keep her on her toes. On top of that, she hadn’t been able to have more than a short conversation with Nico two days after they’d gotten to the cabin. They’d been texting back and forth over the course of the week, but it wasn’t enough to make her feel better.

He still hadn’t apologized for what had happened in his apartment, for bailing on her and lashing out at her. They’d talked about it briefly, but he refused to even see it from her perspective, had told her instead that she was being too sensitive.

Daria mulled on that as she sat outside the cabin while Russi was inside watching the monitoring station. She needed the fresh air, and the sunlight that was pounding down on her through the pine trees and other conifers that surrounded their remote hideout. It was a relief to turn her face up to the warm rays, and they were so strong that the heat sunk right through her oversized grey sweater and right through her black leggings. She pulled the sleeves down her arms to hang over her fingers. The one thing she’d forgotten to pack had been sunscreen.

The only good thing about their mission was that she’d been slowly warming up to Russi. His initial better-than-you attitude had faded when he saw she took her shifts without complaining, and she did most of the cooking as he hauled all the firewood and did the perimeter sweeps. He’d even gone so far as to compliment the dinner she’d made the night before. Underneath his gruff attitude, there was an odd sort of kindness in him that she’d discovered. It was the little things, like the wild blackberries he’d picked for her on his last perimeter sweep. He hadn’t brought back more than a couple of handfuls carried in a makeshift basket of his white shirt that now bore purple stains, but it had been a sweetness she hadn’t expected especially given that his hands were probably more used to snapping necks than plucking berries.

Then there had been the political debates. They’d really gotten into it, being an election year. His arguments had all been whichever candidate was most likely to continue awarding ARC military contracts, while she’d been all for whichever candidate was more likely to benefit the social programs she believed in. They’d agreed to disagree and had fallen into a companionable silence over dinner, and he had just grinned when she’d ended it with a parting shot about the absolute ridiculousness of a party that thought a wall between the US and Canada could be built. He was, surprisingly, gracious in his defeat.

Behind her she heard the screen-door open and she looked up. Russi was stepping out, stretching in the shade of the porch’s overhang. His blue shirt slipped up over his stomach, taut across the abdominal muscles there, and she noticed a long vertical scar running up from under his belt almost to his ribs. It looked painful, and somewhat recent, still pink.

“They’re back at basecamp, done for the day. Not much is happening over at the surveillance site… just some pot smoking hippies,” he said as his boots hit the porch boards hard. He sat down next to her with a long sigh and she watched the dust motes float in the sunlight in front of them. “You wanna talk about it?” he finally asked after a few minutes of quiet. She shrugged her shoulders.

“Talk about what?” She met his eyes solidly; they were a chocolate brown, warmth in them that hadn’t been there when they’d first arrived. He held her gaze until she looked away. “Not really? It’s not affecting the mission-“

“But it’s affecting you,
partner
,” he said, heavy emphasis on the last word. “And no, you both are being professional as fuck, doing your jobs as you should be. At least I’ve heard no bitching from Rykov or Balfour about him, and he sounds civil when he reports in. It’s almost like you two aren’t fighting over text message every day.”

“We’re not fighting,” Daria said and then felt her shoulders slump with the weight of her lie. They weren’t fighting, not exactly, but they weren’t warm like they normally were, and he wasn’t sending her the little heart emojis like he usually did. Not that she wasn’t strong and independent, but a girl damn well liked to receive a few heart emojis from her sweetheart every day. It was a small thing, but an important thing, at least to her.