The asshole smirked at me as he opened the door and walked through. “Secure for private sector, maybe. Easy to override commercial camera surveillance. No one will see I was here.”
My whole life, I’d tried to avoid entanglements with either the bratvas or the Russian government.
Yet in two days, both had noticed me.
As the door closed, I yelled, “Why didn’t you just kill me?”
He shrugged. “Bad publicity. We would prefer not to. Don’t make us eliminate you.”
The door clicked shut.
I shuffled sideways across the room in case he kicked the door and opened fire, maintaining the shooting stance until I was certain he’d gone.
“Shit.” I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and activated the emergency routine by saying, “Code Blue. Ueli, Code Blue,” denoting a neutralized attack but an ongoing threat. Green meant all-clear.
My phone rang as I clicked the safety on and stuffed my new nine-millimeter SR-2 Udav handgun in my belt at my spine, being careful not to shoot myself in the ass. I whirled my suit jacket around myself and shoved my arms in to conceal it back there.
As I answered my phone, Ueli demanded, “What happened?”
“Secure Lexi and Clementineright now.”
A pause, a scuffle, a click. “Secured. Your cousin is not pleased with the delay. What is the situation?”
I reiterated what had happened as I shoved my bare feet into my shoes.
“And yet you didn’t activate the panic button on your watch,” Ueli grumbled.
“I was too busy keeping the sights on him.”
A huff. “We could have apprehended him.”
“I was out of the living room for literally one minute after you followed Lexi and Clemmy downstairs. He had to have been waiting in the hallway to enter the suite.”
“The hallway was clear.”
“Then he was already inside the suite, maybe waiting for hours, maybe since we were gone last night.”
“Impossible.” Ueli sounded much more confident than he should have.
“He didn’t seem impressed with the club’s security.”
“That makes two of us.”
I needed to confer with Ryan about the club’s precautions. I wasn’t the only one who needed enhanced security measures. “Did you see him come through the lobby?”
“Twelve people have passed us since you texted the Code Blue.”
“Were any of them middle-aged Russian ex-SVR officers?”
“Four possibles, but the club personnel were deferential, as if they recognized them. Come to the lobby. Nechtan and Delta Team will wait for you at the lifts.”
Yes, I needed to confer with Ryan about a lot of things, like just who the hell he was selling club memberships to if a Russian intelligence agent had infiltrated my room so easily.
Ueli swore in German with astonishingly creative compound words, and then, “Come back here!”
Fear turned hot, and I started to run.“What happened?”
CHAPTER 7
