Molly turned to face her. “Oh, my God, you’re in love with him,” she said. “Look, Sarah, I’m not pissed at him for wanting to use me as bait, but you need to understand that I know how he works. I psychoanalyzed him when we were kids, I’m the one who taught him to mimic the way other people act so that he wouldn’t end up in an institution somewhere. I’m not saying there isn’t some part of him that’s willing to do what it takes to keep me alive, but I know him. His mission—whether it’s a government mission or one that he sets for himself—is always going to be more important to him than I am, and right now, that mission is to kill Nicolaich Andropov. If I happen to be in the way, if Nicolaich threatened to kill me if Noah didn’t back down or surrender, Noah would simply consider my death to be collateral damage to the mission. You might as well wrap your head around that, because the same would be true for each of you. If he’s put in the position of having to choose between saving you or accomplishing his mission, the mission is going to win. He might feel some kind of regret that he lost you, but that Vulcan brain of his is hardwired to do whatever has to be done.”
“They know that,” Noah said. “You’re absolutely right, my original plan was to simply tail you until Nicolaich made his move, then try to take the bastard out. I would have done what I could to keep you out of the line of fire, for whatever that’s worth.”
“Of course you would've, because that would be logical. Avoid collateral damage if possible, right? Noah, I understand. The thing is, I get paid a ridiculously high salary because some of my professors figured out that I have an extremely analytical mind. I seem to have developed the ability to combine lots of random bits of information and come up with a pretty good prediction of what’s going to happen. Looking back, I probably owe a lot of that to you. Trying to keep you out of trouble meant always being one step ahead of everybody else. I had to watch everything so that I could predict where the next problem would come from.”
Noah nodded. “I remember,” he said. “You kept everybody else from figuring out what a mess I really was.”
Molly made a sad smile and looked at Sarah. “See what I mean? He acknowledged what I said, but it never even occurred to him to feel any gratitude. He just doesn’t have that part of the normal human programming.” She turned back to Noah. “The thing is, when I apply that analytical mind of mine to the things you’ve told me, I get a picture of what is likely to happen. You showed up here, just like Nicolaich thought you would. His people have reported back to him that you have arrived, so he’ll be looking at putting his next phase into operation. The first thing he’ll want to do is make sure you understand that he isn’t playing any games, this time.”
Noah cocked his head to the side and looked at her. “Then he’s going to try to kill you. You weren’t in any actual danger until I got here, but now that I am, he’ll try to kill you as a way of sending me that message.”
“No doubt about it,” Molly said. “He’s probably already got it in motion, and it’s not likely I’ll be able to spot it in time to duck.”
Noah looked at her for a moment. “I’ve got four DEA agents on loan, so I’m going to put them on you as personal security, two at a time.” He took out his phone and called two of the agents immediately, telling them to come directly to the Dexter Reedy office building. “First shift will be a man and a woman, Bill Lassiter and Carmen Sanchez. Both of them will be armed and Ms. Sanchez will be staying with you even if you go to the bathroom. Combined with your own security, they should be able to keep you alive. We’ll be taking another tack on this, to see if we can get to Nicolaich before he gets to you.”
Molly grinned. “Well, I certainly hope you can,” she said. “You owe me, Noah, for all the crap I had to put up with when we were kids. You keep this guy from killing me and I’ll be happy to call it even.” She turned her eyes to Sarah. “As for you, I don’t know whether to cheer you on or warn you off. Knowing Noah and his habit of being ridiculously honest, I’m sure you’re fully aware that I was the first girlfriend he ever had, so I know exactly what you go through.”
Sarah looked startled. “He told me, but the way he said it was that it wasn’t a real relationship, just a way to keep people from wondering about the two of you.”
Still grinning, Molly said, “Of course that’s what he told you, because that’s what I told him at the time. We were in our early teens, if I had told him that I was in love with him he would’ve wanted me to explain those feelings, and I didn’t have a clue how to do that. It was easier just to tell him it was all a pretense. I got what I wanted, which was him doing everything he could to act like my boyfriend, and he didn’t have to worry about trying to fit into the teenage romance scene. I was crazy about him, of course, but I don’t think he ever knew that.”
Sarah was looking from Molly to Noah and back. “Are you still...”