“Misty thinks Aldaran was only brought in to do the rough work on the tower, elevators, and control room,” Brielle murmured softly, never taking her eyes off the office across the street. “They probably ran all those power cables and lights thinking they were building some kind of military facility.”
“Maybe.” Caleb shrugged. “I only wish we had more to go on than a word Misty caught a glimpse of as you were dragging her out of that computer. At this point, it seems like we’re wandering around Eurasia, hoping to get lucky. Are you sure you didn’t see anything while you were in there with her?”
Brielle shook her head. “I was a little too busy trying to get the both of us out of there to be doing any sightseeing. Not that I would have noticed anything as generic as the name of a construction firm, even if I’d had the time to look.”
Caleb couldn’t argue with any of that. He remembered how freaked out he and the rest of the team had been as they’d stood around while the clock counted down, praying Brielle and Misty would find their way out of the computer. Considering how much worse it must have been for Brielle and Misty trapped inside a computer with no idea how much time was left on that damn clock, it was amazing Misty had found anything useful at all.
The name of the construction firm had led them to Moscow and Aldaran’s corporate headquarters. They hoped there was something in those offices that would tell them who was behind all of this, but Caleb had his doubts. If Misty was right and Aldaran wasn’t even aware of what they’d been building under all that Siberian snow, then what were the chances of them finding anything in there?
“Everybody sit tight,” Jake said over the radio in Caleb’s earpiece. “We can’t go in until those offices clear out, so everyone might as well get comfortable.”
He heard murmurs of agreement from the rest of the team, as they responded from their various hiding places in and around the Barclay building. Caleb tuned out as Jake went over the evening’s game plan again. Not that there was much to talk about. Misty, Forrest, and Genevieve would go in and sniff around the company’s hard files and computer servers while everyone else hung back and made sure there weren’t any problems. None of them expected any. This was an office complex for a construction firm. It wasn’t like the place was filled with military secrets.
Taking Jake’s advice to heart, Caleb dragged one of the heavy office desks closer to the window, then took a seat atop it, making sure he had a good view of the Barclay building and most of the street below. Leaning over, he reached down for his backpack, dragging it up into his lap and unzipping the main compartment. He took out his beloved .45 Colt, which was sitting right on top, and set it down beside him. The large caliber weapon wasn’t what he was most interested in at the moment.
“What’s in the bag?” Brielle asked as she hopped onto the desk beside him and leaned in to take a peek into his backpack. This close, her scent hit him full in the face, and Caleb had to work hard to resist the temptation to shove his nose into her hair and take a deep, long sniff.
“Food,” he said, pulling out the packages and boxes of snacks he’d picked up at the store earlier until there was a pile of them on the desk between them. “I thought we might get hungry while we wait.”
She stared at him, stunned. “We ate dinner an hour ago. That steak you had must have weighed two pounds, and you had three baked potatoes with it. If I ate that much—and I never could—I wouldn’t be hungry for weeks.”
“I’m a werewolf. We eat a lot.” Caleb took two bottles of soda out of the bag and held them up. “You want the cucumber-flavored Sprite or this Baikal stuff? The guy in the store said it tastes like a cross between Coke and Pepsi.”
Brielle regarded the bottles for a moment before taking the cucumber Sprite. Caleb was silently thrilled. He wasn’t a fan of cucumbers—in soda or otherwise.
There was a rustling sound beside him as he set his backpack on the floor, and he looked over to see her holding up two big bags of potato chips. While it had been nice to see a recognizable brand name like those sitting on a convenience store shelf in Russia, he wasn’t so sure what he was getting himself into when it came to flavor. One bag had a big dill pickle on the front while the other had a bowl of soup on it filled with what looked like mushrooms. He obviously couldn’t read the writing, since it was Russian, but something told him that neither of these bags was gonna be BBQ flavored.
Brielle opened the bag with the pickle on it and reached in to grab a chip, nibbling on it thoughtfully. Was it sad that he thought the way she ate was cute? Probably. But he couldn’t help it. He was so used to inhaling his food that the sight of a beautiful woman taking dainty bites did something for him.
“These are definitely dill pickle,” she said. “Emphasis on the dill.”
He was so transfixed watching her eat that he didn’t realized she’d opened the other bag of chips to taste them.
“I’m pretty sure this one is mushroom and sour cream,” she said. “They’re kind of good, actually.”
He leaned over and grabbed a few chips from the pickle bag, shoving them in his mouth, then washed them down with the Baikal drink and tried the mushroom and sour cream. It didn’t take long to figure out he wasn’t a fan. They tasted sorta earthy but tangy at the same time. Definitely not his thing.
“That’s going to be a no on the mushroom flavor,” he said, shoving that bag toward Brielle.
She laughed, reaching over to help herself to some more dill pickle–flavored chips, agreeing they were better. “What else did you bring?”
They opened up the rest of the snacks, taste testing each and sharing their thoughts. He’d grabbed stuff at random from the little shop he’d stopped at outside their hotel, but he had to admit he’d done a pretty good job picking.
“This is good,” he said, taking a big bite of a chocolate bar that looked similar to a Hershey bar from back home, right down to the little scored lines so you could break off smaller pieces. “It’s not as sweet as the chocolate I’m used to, but it works. Not sure what I think of the design on the wrapper, though.” He studied one and then the other. “I’m not sure what it’s supposed to be, but it’s kind of scary in a Stephen King kind of way.”
Brielle laughed and took the bar from him, contemplating the wrapper while she nibbled on the chocolate. “I’ve never read his books. I’m guessing you have, though.”
“I’ve seen the movies at least,” he admitted. “Not a fan of horror movies?”
She shrugged.
As they sat there munching on other kinds of Russian snacks while talking about how different horror movies were in France compared to the U.S., he was surprised at how easy it was to talk to her. After the way things had been since that kiss, he thought any conversation between them would forever be tense and awkward. It was difficult to put into words how relieved he was to realize that wasn’t the case.