“I’m not supposed to be here. You should have never seen me.” Sevastyan crouched down, making eye contact. Gang Junseo was injured, but how severely needed to be determined. “The police chief should have arranged to send you back in deniable fashion after I ordered him to. Perhaps even staged a police rescue, claiming that you were snatched by a rich, overzealous fan other than himself. But he left his meeting early just to get here, and I got here late. What you don’t have yet is any kind of evidence other than your own word.” Sevastyan reached into his pocket. “You should move.”
“What?”
Sevastyan waved his lighter. “I really don’t want to kill you, especially as I do think your champion will burn down the world for you . . .”And Rei would be gutted. “But there’s way too much going on here.” He flicked on the lighter.
The young man scrambled to his feet. The outer hanbok robe slipped down over his shoulders, dragged back by the weight of the liquid it had absorbed. He pulled it off, letting it fall. Sevastyan dropped the lighter into the fabric. Cotton and alcohol. Perfect starter fuel.
Flames shot up almost at once, hungry and hot. “Vodka burns so well.”
“It was soju.”
“And vodka,” Sevastyan said stubbornly. There was a bottle of vodka broken open on the floor. “The fire alarm will ring any moment. I suppose the foot soldiers will save them.”
If they were alive. Which he would have to determine later.
He got Gang Junseo outside, despite his bare feet. There was a set of keys lying on a desk on the way, and the logo matched one of the vehicles outside—perfect, a second vehicle. He swiped the keys. Behind him, Gang Junseo grabbed a blanket from the bed to wrap around his shoulders. In the parking area, Sevastyan offered Gang Junseo the keys.
The young man was starting to shake. “I don’t know how to drive.”
Sevastyan cursed in three languages in his head. It was one of the useful aspects of knowing so many. “Ah, well, that rather puts a wrench in things.”
He was going to have to drive Gang somewhere without being seen himself. The clock was running out. He checked his watch. “We have forty-five more minutes to get you to Damian Sathers, and we are over two and a half hours away. Any ideas?”
“Let me call him? Video call him?”
“He’d be a fool to completely believe you.”
“I have ways,” Junseo said.
“And yet we don’t have a phone.” At least not one he was willing to link to this incident. He hadn’t gone undetected as a criminal actor in over thirty countries by being careless.
“Steal one from the house?” Junseo suggested.
They both looked back. Someone inside was running toward the fire, their movements casting shadows against the opaque screens of the windows. There was a fire alarm after all, if nearly silent. Sevastyan bit back another curse and jerked his head toward his own car.
If he dumped Gang Junseo at the nearest sign of civilization, Gang could contact his lover himself and Sevastyan might get far enough away to not be linked to the fire.
“You’re going to get me killed,” he told Junseo. The engine of the four-wheeler was still warm. It turned over immediately. He rolled out of the driveway until they were around the turn and then stepped on the gas as much as he dared.
It was a dangerous drive and there was no time for caution. The weather was both a cover from being observed and a hazard. It was hard to even see around each turn. They slid more than once.
Just under twenty minutes later, he pulled the four-wheeler into the closest driveway with human habitation that he remembered.
“I’m told you’re a good man,” he said to Gang Junseo, glancing between his passenger and the driveway as they bounced over potholes in the gravel. “So I’m going to trust you to do whatever you can to contact your dog and call him off in the next . . .” He checked his watch. “Twenty-seven minutes.
“I will.” Gang Junseo looked confused.
“Good.” Sevastyan paused. Prior claim. Prior claim. Fuck it all. “And tell Collin his dad says good job.”
Anton was going to kill him, even if he had said that. Sevastyan grimaced. “Don’t ask questions, just go.”
Gang Junseo jumped out of the four-wheeler and hobbled toward the house. Sevastyan put the vehicle in reverse. It was going to take a minor miracle to get off this mountain and back to his safe house. The Yadro wouldn’t want him to fly back to Russia until they knew Damian Sathers wasn’t going to crash the local economy over a missing lover.
Who said romance was dead?
All his sympathy was with Damian Sathers, whoever he was. If Sevastyan could have crashed a local economy and saved his beloved, he would have—twice.
Sevastyan
