Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 107079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
She stared at me, challenging me to say more. I stared back at her, stony-faced.
She dropped her eyes. “Okay,” she said. Wait, was that pain in her voice? Should I have said something? “How?”
“There’s a container arriving on a ship in two days’ time,” I told her. “Refrigerators. Except, inside the casing of one of the refrigerators is a small package of radioactive cesium. You can tell your boss and catch some terrorists. You’ll be a hero.”
“How do you—”
“I have a friend at the docks.”
She nodded. “Yakov Beletski.”
I forgot, sometimes, just how well she knew my life. “Yes. He knows everything that passes through. Terrorism...that isn’t good for us, for you, for anyone. So when he hears of something like this, he passes word to the authorities. That’s why they leave him alone.”
“So why doesn’t he just tell the authorities himself this time, too?”
Chyort, she was like a dog with a bone. I looked away and ran a hand over my stubble. “I...requested that he let you tell the FBI instead.”
I could feel her staring at me. “What did you have to do in return?”
The price had been admitting to my best friend why I wanted to help her. I’d stood there scowling and red-faced while Yakov laughed so hard he could barely breathe. “That’s not important,” I told her stiffly. “Here.” I held out a slip of paper with all the details on it.
She stared at it for a moment, then took it. Her fingertips brushed my palm, and the sensation jolted through my body, right down to my toes. “Thank you,” she mumbled.
I dug in my pocket. “And take this.” I held out a brand-new burner phone. “It’s got a number programmed into it. One of my burners. Just in case you need to reach me.”
She took it and frowned at it. “What happens if you throw away that phone before I call you?”
I smiled tightly and pulled another phone out of my pocket. “I won’t. I’m keeping this one just for you.”
She looked up at me doubtfully. Then she stared at the piece of paper for a moment. “All this does is make us even,” she said at last.
I nodded silently.
She stepped closer, close enough that I could smell her perfume, and looked up at me, worried. “You realize that if this works, if they put me back on the case...I’m coming right after you. I’m going to take you down.”
I cocked my head to the side and lifted one brow. “You mean you’re going to try.” I stared at her lower lip, soft and pouting, oh-so stubbornly. And for a second, I thought I saw her eyes flick down…
Then she was turning and running back to her bike, and a second later she roared off into the distance. My chest ached with this kind of...loss. “Yebat’!” I muttered under my breath. “What have you done to me, woman?”
18
ALISON
One week later
“Okay,” said Caroline, grabbing her purse. “I’m outta here. Now remember, you’re meeting Edgar at eight. Don’t be late. And wear something...you know…nice.” She looked at my gray trouser suit. “Maybe a skirt?” she said hopefully.
Not her fault. She didn’t know about my leg. “I’ll think about it,” I lied. Edgar would get jeans and like them. “Go!”
She finally left, and I sighed in relief. It had been a week since Gennadiy had given me the tip about the cesium. I’d taken it to Halifax, claiming it came from a confidential informant, and it had paid off. The counter-terrorist unit had arrested three guys, and it had been a big win for the bureau and for our office. Halifax was delighted and had put me back in charge of the case.
All was good...other than I now only had three days to catch Gennadiy...and Caroline had decided to set me up on a blind date with a single dad she knew from her kids’ school. I’d told Caroline, firmly, no. But then she’d given me big, pleading eyes: she just wanted me to be happy, and she’d gone to so much trouble to set it up...I’d caved and said I’d go. I scowled at the Post-it note she’d stuck to my computer monitor: Edgar, 8pm.
Then my eyes tracked down to the rubber duck Gennadiy had sent me.
I’d been going over and over why he gave me the tip-off. Because he wanted me back on the case: better the devil you know. Because I saved his life and he has some weird Bratva sense of honor.
Because he cared about me?
I glared at the duck. Everything had been a lot easier when I’d just hated him.
I thought of the bodies we’d found. I thought of my parents. All the innocent lives lost to the fighting between families like the Aristovs. He’s still the enemy.
But he was seeming more and more human...and more and more like me. He’d had a shitty start in life, too. And it had turned him into an obsessive workaholic, too. If my life had been just a little different, if Master Sun had turned me away that night instead of helping me, could I have wound up on a very similar path?