Pavel’s sharp whisper snaps in my ear.
“What? What did he hand him?”
“A large manila envelope. Big enough for file printouts, pictures, and a flash drive.”
All the fake information we slipped to him, hoping he would do exactly this. My hands clench tightly, victory surging through my body.
“They just shook hands. The subject is standing. Heading to the door.”
A few breaths later, Mark Palmer emerges from the café, squinting and hunching against the wind as he starts back down the street. I watch his progress; my sights trained on my prey.
I have you, you fucking bastard.
He fell for the trap—a beautifully crafted trap—thanks to Clara. It is a poison that will spread to anyone it touches, and I will know.
“Can you see who the other one is?”
“Not yet. He looks like he’s waiting and doesn’t want to be seen with the target.”
Another half hour passes while I watch the tracker I had put on Mark Palmer. He makes his way back to the office, sometimes taking a side street, other times going the opposite direction, and then doubling back. It gives me a grim sense of satisfaction to know he’s freezing the entire time in his stupid little quilted vest, like he’s some sort of Wall Street finance exec and not a low-level paralegal at Smirnov Corp.
“It’s Dean.”
The words crackle over the connection with Pavel, echoing down to the deepest, darkest parts of me.
Got you, you fucking bastard.
Thirty seconds later, a figure emerges from the café, tall and bulky,and wearing a baseball cap low over his face. He looks both ways ,then pulls the sweatshirt’s hood over the ballcap before heading in the opposite direction from Mark. Even without seeing the detective’s face, there’s something about his brutish nature that gives him away immediately.
“We fucking got them,” I hiss as soon as Pavel appears at the café’s door. He doesn’t look my way, but he nods. “Follow Detective Johnson. I’ll take care of Mr. Palmer myself.”
Another subtle nod from my second-in-command before he slips into the crowd and disappears.
It isn’t until darkness falls that I pull up at Mark Palmer’s apartment building, where he lives in a fifth-story walk-up. I know all about Mr. Palmer now, everything, from where he livesto where he shops for groceries, to his favorite bar, and even where his parents live in theSt. Louis suburbson the Illinois side.
I park the SUV just down the block and cut the engine. Silence descends, broken only by the ticking of cooling metal as I watch Mark disappear into his building. Five minutes later, the light flicks on in his apartment. He doesn’t bother to close the window shades, so anyone passing by can see inside.
Idiot.
I watch as he moves around his tiny space, disappearing for a moment, then reappearing on the other side of the room. I ponder my next move.
For all intents and purposes, Mark Palmer’s utility to me is finished. With the information transfer complete, he has no further value to my company or to me; there are a thousand other paralegals to take his place. Keeping him employed and alive is a risk; he could panic, confess, or try to run before we’ve fully plugged up the hole. A clean end that won’t tip off Dean Johnson is the most efficient solution. It always has been.
The question now is whether Mark and Dean have some connection to Andrey, or Andrey simply has his own network of connections he’s been playing.
My dark side stirs, the thing prowling deep down in my soul that was forged in the cold, brutal shadows of St. Petersburg and honed on the streets ofNew York. It runs on instinct, a muscle memory that demands satisfaction. It craves the quick, precise use of force, the tying up oflooseends, the swift, brutal end to betrayal—a permanent solution.
But Clara is inside my head now, fighting for supremacy over the darkness in me. I think about her body pressed against mine, the feel of her skin, the fragile, precious life growing within her.
Can I be the man she needs me to be? Can the husband and father I learned to become with Lauren rise again, older, scarred, and experienced, but older and with more blood on his hands?
I want him to. He has to, if I want to keep Clara in my life. She knows who and what I am, but she also knows I can overcome the darkness.
My fingers trace the cold leather of the steering wheel, tapping out the desire to move, to act, to take revenge. The darkness pulls at me, that shadowed place inside, a deep, comfortable familiarity that whispers that Mark is a threat, and that threat must be eliminated.
I close my eyes, violence hovering at the edge of my control, demanding release. The need is a tight, aching tension in my chest; the time for a clean, easy kill is now.
But I promised Clara.
