Blaze doubted she would go full Bond Villian and strap them to an unnecessarily complicated but ultimately escapable death-machine, but he could hope.
If she kept making mistakes based on arrogance, Blaze might get them out of there.
The shaved-head Koch Group mercenary jammed his hand on Blaze’s shoulder, pushing him into a white chair.
He landed heavily because his hands were still tied behind his back.
Sarah was likewise dropped in a chair and glared up at the guy who’d manhandled her.
Later. Not now. Later.
Revenge was a dish best served cold.
And with a plan.
The bitchy mercenary said, “Wait. She here soon.”
He stomped off, but his boot steps didn’t leave the room. He lingered like onion smell by the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Manhattan, leaving Blaze to stare at Mary Varvara Bell’s white enamel and glass desk.
Sarah whispered to Blaze, “We need to talk.”
“Not here,” he answered, though he didn’t look at her. If she looked like she’d been hurt, he might kick this whole office to rubble, and he couldn’t do that right now.
“But something was said, and there might not be a later.”
“If there isn’t a later, it won’t matter, but wewillleave here alive. Give me an hour. I know what she wants.”
“You can’t give them the—the things.There’s areason,”she hissed.
His teeth gritted against each other, and his fists tightened in the zip ties. “I will ensure you survive, no matter what I have to do.”
“But—”
“No more talking, kitten. I promise you’ll be safe.”
He couldn’t fight his way out, not with the bullet wound in his leg that was still seeping blood that stiffened his pants leg.
There had to be a better opportunity. He just had to wait for it.
The white ceiling reflected on the polished top, a ghostly sheen floating on the transparent surface.
The bloodless office looked like the monochromatic decor in Logan’s apartment overlooking Central Park.
The same bleached-bone esthetic.
Damn, Blaze should have known that Logan didn’t have shit for fashion sense and someone else had decorated his apartment. He just hadn’t thought a Russian mob boss would be the type to hang flat-white art and toss bleached-out throw pillows.
Blaze hadn’t calculated just how giant Logan’s mother-wound was, that he’d literally surrounded himself with Mary Varvara Bell like he was enclosed in her hollowed-out skull.
Or inside her frost-rimed uterus.
Creepy.
Then again, Mary Varvara Bell had swooped as soon as Sarah’s mother had died, trying to fill that vacancy in Sarah’s life with intentions to recruit her into the White Russians, too.
Insecure dictators installed family members in key positions because they thought they could control them. Family members in powerful positions was one of the warning signs of a tyrant.
Dr. Bell had one hell of an M.O.
