Point of No Return by Susan May Warren Read Free Book Online Page B

veils in the alcove of a Soviet-era building peering at him with huge brown eyes.
    Carissa.
    He inhaled so sharply that Mae glanced at him.
    Of course it wasn’t Carissa. Couldn’t be. But memory had sharp claws and it knew how to make him bleed.
    If not cost him his life, this time around.
    Maybe he should have called Wick and the rest of Stryker International instead of packing his duffel and hopping on a transport without so much as a check-in. His team would show up at the office and read the hastily scrawled, “Off on a private trip. Be back soon.” Andsince he hadn’t taken a day off since he’d started Stryker International, those cryptic words would have the opposite of the intended effect, igniting speculation, if not an all-out manhunt. Starting with a phone call to his partner, Vicktor Shubnikov.
    With some more rotten luck, Vicktor would mention it to his wife, Gracie, who would immediately think of her former roomie, Mae, and probably follow up with a phone call to Seattle. To which she’d get no answer.
    How long, really, would it take his team to figure out he’d headed to Georgia, scrounge up a plane and stir an already-simmering mess to full boil?
    Clearly, Chet had needed more coffee and a few moments to think before running off after trouble.
    Trouble who seemed to be outdistancing him de spite his near run. Sheesh, Mae had long legs. “Slow down.”
    â€œKeep up.”
    She cut through the crowd and down the stairs of a metro entrance. He nearly tripped over yet another woman wrapped in a blanket selling walnuts, then followed Mae through the glass doors into the station. Political posters or advertisements for upcoming events, concerts and theater productions, even an ad for cigarettes papered the walls, their tattered edges ruffling against the rush of outside air. The subway rumbled beneath their feet, its hum muted.
    She stopped, just for a moment, reading a sign, then consulted a map she had wadded in her hand.
    â€œThe market is located on—”
    â€œI know where it is,” she snapped.
    Good grief. He brushed past her, headed toward the red line.
    He heard her following and smiled.
    She said nothing as they took the escalator down, boarded the metro and rode it to their stop. He recognized it now—the smells, the familiar fatigued, gray-eyed expressions of the passengers, the rattle of the metro as it snaked beneath the crust of Tbilisi. He’d met Carissa on a subway, had planned it that way—a “chance” meeting. Remembering made him tighten his grip on the steel overhead bar. Mae looked out the window, away from him.
    He couldn’t remember how much of his past he’d shared with Mae. Enough, clearly, for her to know he had contacts here. Maybe not enough to tell her how much he regretted them.
    At the time, email had seemed a much safer way to reveal his heart without giving too much of it away.
    He startled when a hand gripped his arm. Mae gazed up at him, a strange look in her eyes. Something not unlike…pity?
    â€œNothing is going to happen to me. We’ll get Josh and get out. It’ll be fine, I promise.”
    So maybe he had told her—at least parts of it.
    But he couldn’t reply. Because he knew better than anyone that it was a promise she couldn’t keep.
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    It was something about the look in his eyes, the way he gripped the overhead bar, his knuckles nearly white. The way he’d gasped seeing the homeless woman. Being back in Georgia seemed to cause Chet actual pain.
    Mae let his arm go, but the answer to the question she’d asked him so long ago now flashed in his eyes.
    â€œHave you ever lost someone you cared about?”
    The question probably had come too quickly for both of them, but his leave had flown by and he’d been heading back to D.C. within days. They’d crammedeverything they could into one short week of vacation. It had felt like a wartime romance, and