She stared at it for a moment, then took it. Her fingertips brushed my palm, and the sensation jolted through my body, right down to my toes. “Thank you,” she mumbled.
I dug in my pocket. “And take this.” I held out a brand-new burner phone. “It’s got a number programmed into it. One ofmyburners. Just in case you need to reach me.”
She took it and frowned at it. “What happens if you throw away that phone before I call you?”
I smiled tightly and pulled another phone out of my pocket. “I won’t. I’m keeping this one just for you.”
She looked up at me doubtfully. Then she stared at the piece of paper for a moment. “All this does is make us even,” she said at last.
I nodded silently.
She stepped closer, close enough that I could smell her perfume, and looked up at me, worried. “You realize that if this works, if they put me back on the case...I’m coming right after you. I’m going to take you down.”
I cocked my head to the side and lifted one brow. “You mean you’re going to try.” I stared at her lower lip, soft and pouting, oh-so stubbornly. And for a second, I thought I sawhereyes flick down…
Then she was turning and running back to her bike, and a second later she roared off into the distance. My chest ached with this kind of...loss.“Yebat’!” I muttered under my breath. “What have you done to me, woman?”
18
ALISON
One week later
“Okay,”said Caroline, grabbing her purse. “I’m outta here. Now remember, you’re meeting Edgar at eight. Don’t be late. And wear something...you know…nice.” She looked at my gray trouser suit. “Maybe a skirt?” she said hopefully.
Not her fault.She didn’t know about my leg. “I’ll think about it,” I lied. Edgar would get jeans and like them. “Go!”
She finally left, and I sighed in relief. It had been a week since Gennadiy had given me the tip about the cesium. I’d taken it to Halifax, claiming it came from a confidential informant, and it had paid off. The counter-terrorist unit had arrested three guys, and it had been a big win for the bureau and for our office. Halifax was delighted and had put me back in charge of the case.
All was good...other than I now only had three days to catch Gennadiy...and Caroline had decided to set me up on a blind date with a single dad she knew from her kids’ school. I’d told Caroline, firmly,no.But then she’d given me big, pleading eyes: she just wanted me to be happy, and she’d gone to so much trouble to set it up...I’dcaved and said I’d go. I scowled at the Post-it note she’d stuck to my computer monitor:Edgar, 8pm.
Then my eyes tracked down to the rubber duck Gennadiy had sent me.
I’d been going over and over why he gave me the tip-off.Because he wanted me back on the case: better the devil you know. Because I saved his life and he has some weird Bratva sense of honor.
Because he cared about me?
I glared at the duck. Everything had been a lot easier when I’d just hated him.
I thought of the bodies we’d found. I thought of my parents. All the innocent lives lost to the fighting between families like the Aristovs.He’s still the enemy.
But he was seeming more and more human...and more and more like me. He’d had a shitty start in life, too. And it had turned him into an obsessive workaholic, too. If my life had been just a little different, if Master Sun had turned me away that night instead of helping me, could I have wound up on a very similar path?
It was getting harder and harder to hate him. And without the hate, there was nothing to hold back the attraction that had been there from the start. Now, every time I saw him, it was like my whole body woke and came to breathless attention, as if the time in between was just a waste. And then it would start: my eyes darting everywhere, racing over his suit, his shirt, sneaking looks at the triangle of tattooed, tan flesh at his shirt collar. I’d catch his scent and have to dig my fingernails into my palms because I was imagining sliding my hands around his waist, feeling the hard, warm ridges of his abs through the soft cotton of his shirt.
Then he’d speak, and I’d have to force myself to focus on what he was saying because each low growl resonated right to my core, each word a little bomb that exploded there and sent liquid silver racing straight down to my groin. And it was more than just lust. Whenever I was close to him, my right cheek—always myrightcheek—would prickle with the memory of how his pec had felt when he’d hugged me against his chest at the graveyard. I’d been bawling my eyes out,but the warmth of him, the solidwallof him, protecting me, had been the best thing I’d ever felt.
I put my head in my hands. “What are you doing, Brooks?” I muttered. Was I really so lonely and fucked up that I was starting to feel things for a gangster?
Yes.Yes, I just might be.
I screwed my eyes closed and gave a silent scream of frustration, then sat up straight in my chair.Focus!I’d printed out a photo of Viktor Grushin, my Russian counterpart, and stuck it beside my monitor, for moments like these.Hewouldn’t let himself get...distractedlike this. He would have had Gennadiy locked in a cell by now.God, I wish you were alive.
Maybe it was because I wanted to shut out the thought of my blind date, but I brought up Viktor’s file and idly flicked through it, wondering howhe’d died.Heart attack.He’d only been in his early sixties but he’d been a smoker, so that made sense…
Then I saw something that made me lean forward in my chair.
I’d been looking at the scan of the autopsy report, which was in Russian. My computer was helpfully translating the text into English, overlaying it on the Cyrillic. But there was one line right at the bottom that stood out because it wasn’t translated. It was just a filename, a string of numbers and letters. And part of it was the date and time the autopsy report had been created.
