She wasn't.
Now I was standing in the service alcove at The Silver Table, watching Viktor through the kitchen window. He was on the phone. Whoever he was talking to, the conversation wasn't going well. His face was red and his free hand kept clenching and unclenching.
Then he hung up, and looked directly at me through the glass.
He smiled, and my blood went cold.
Stepping out of the kitchen, he joined me, lighting a cigarette.
"Milo." He exhaled smoke. "Tomorrow is day seven."
"I know."
"Have you found proof that she is clean?"
"No. But I've also found no proof that she isn't. She's not talking to anyone. No cops. No Feds. No journalists. I've been on her constantly?—"
"I know you have." His smile widened. "That is part of the problem. You cannot be objective about woman you are fucking."
"Viktor—"
He held up a hand. The cigarette trailed smoke between his fingers like a burning fuse.
"One more day, Milo. That is what I gave you, and that is what you have." He took a slow drag. "Use it wisely. Because when the sun comes up the day after tomorrow, I will need an answer. And if you do not give me one..." He stepped closer. Lowered his voice. "I will find my own."
He didn't need to finish the sentence. I'd seen how Viktor found his own answers. Usually with pliers and a plastic tarp.
"And Milo?" He clapped a hand onto my shoulder hard enough to make the point. "If I find out you have been protecting her instead of investigating her, it won't just be the girl who disappears." He squeezed once. "You understand?"
"Yeah, Vik. I understand."
He studied my face for a long moment. Looking for the crack. The tell. The thing that would confirm what he already suspected.
I gave him the surfer-boy grin. Easy. Empty. The same mask I'd been wearing since I was old enough to understand that showing people what you really felt was the fastest way to get hurt.
He grunted and walked away.
I stood there with the lingering scent of his cigarette in my nose and a countdown running in my skull.
Twenty-four hours.
I had twenty-four hours to produce evidence that didn't exist to clear a woman who might actually be guilty of exactly whatViktor suspected—not feeding the Feds, but something almost as dangerous. Hoarding their secrets. Cataloging their crimes. Building a weapon she swore she'd never use but couldn't bring herself to put down.
And if I couldn't?
I looked up through the kitchen pass-through. I could see the edge of the dining room from here. The glow of candlelight on white linen. And beyond it, Raven at the piano. Her head tilted, chin up, dark hair spilling over bare shoulders. She was playing something I couldn't hear with all the clanging of pots and pans behind me, but I could see the way her body moved with it, swaying like a reed in a current.
She was playing for me. She always played for me now. Even when she didn't know if I was listening.
That thing that had been building since the night she'd pressed her fingers to my face in a dark alley tore through me with a violence that made my vision blur.
Tomorrow, Viktor would come for his answer. And when I couldn't give him one, he'd come for her. He'd give her to Konstantin. And he'd make me watch.
Unless I found another way to protect her.
I pulled out my phone and made a call to a contact I hadn't spoken to in five years. Someone who owed me. Someone who had connections I needed.
"It's Milo," I said when he answered. "I need to disappear."
