“Nothing you’d be interested in.” Which wasn’t exactly true since he had a knife strapped to his calf just above his ankle.
“What about her?” Dutch asked.
Edge’s gaze ran over Skye’s shapely curves outlined by the body-hugging, sleek bronze dress. He cocked an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
Dutch turned and rapped on the door, then reached for the knob and opened it. “Go on in.”
Edge walked past Dutch into the room, then stood back to allow Skye to enter. Petrov’s office, complete with wide mahogany desk, green-shaded lamps, ornate bookcases filled with gilt-trimmed, leather-bound volumes and tufted, red-leather chairs, might have belonged to an old-time cattle baron.
“Have a seat.” The big Russian looked exactly like his photo: linebacker shoulders, slicked-back black hair, a hard face that looked as if it had been pounded with a meat tenderizer.
Dutch shoved Edge down in one of the two, high-backed red-leather chairs in front of the desk, and Skye sat down beside him in the other one.
“You and your woman have caused me a great deal of trouble,” Petrov said calmly, though Edge didn’t miss the angry flush beneath his cheekbones.
“We did our best,” Edge agreed.
“You have some big stones coming here. You must know this place belongs to me.”
“We’re aware. That’s why we’re here. We wanted to talk to you.”
Petrov leaned back in his chair. “Is that right?”
“That’s right.” From the corner of his eye, Edge caught movement, a woman with platinum blond hair in a low-cut, long, white-satin dress.
“And what, exactly, is it you want from me?”
“We want to make you a business proposition. Enter into an employment contract, in a manner of speaking.”
Petrov scoffed. “You want to go to work for me—you and your woman?”
“That’s right. We’re a team. We’ll be happy to give you a little background information if you need it.”
“I know everything about you. I know you both work private. Hired help, so to speak. I know that you,Mr. Logan, were forced out of the army. No golden boy, are you?”
Irritation trickled through him, but he managed to tamp it down. In this case, the bogus charges worked in his favor. He wondered how Petrov knew. But Henson had said the man had contacts everywhere.
“You’re well-informed,” Edge said. “Considering the scope of your operation, I’m not surprised.”
“By now, you must have guessed Dutch doesn’t work for Henson. He never did. He works for me. The moment you showed up at the compound in Blancha Springs, I knew you were trouble. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do about it at the time.” Petrov leaned over and plucked a cigar out of the humidor on his desk but made no attempt to light it. “Chamaya is another story. You’re lucky you made it out of there alive.”
“It wasn’t luck,” Edge said.
“That’s the thing,” Skye added. “We’re obviously good at what we do. We zeroed in on Daniel Henson’s operation and shut him down, found him again and shut him down a second time.”
“Henson was a clown,” Edge added. “He thought with his dick instead of his brain. We’re both former military, both professionals. We can make sure your interests are secure. And if you have a problem with the competition, we can keep them out of your hair.”
Petrov fingered the cigar, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger. “You destroyed two of my operations. You cost me an absurd amount of money. Did you think shutting down my lab was going to keep some spoiled kid out there from buying drugs?”
“It wasn’t about the drugs,” Edge said. “We didn’t even know about the drugs. It was about the women. Skye’s sister and her friend were in that compound. We got Callie out of Blancha Springs, but Henson forced her best friend to go with him to Chamaya. Family comes first. We had no choice but to go after her.”
Petrov said nothing, but something moved across his features.
“Here’s the deal,” Edge continued. “If you hire us, we can help you get back everything you lost because of Henson’s incompetence.”
“You think so, do you?”
“We know it,” Skye said.
