In the morning, I stood beside Viktor, who was cleaning his gun. His eye was black from last night’s fight, and he was pissed.
We had tried to intercept a known associate of Bunko’s with the goal of taking him alive to question him. Our element of surprise had failed to overwhelm, which had resulted in a knock-down, drag-out fist-and-knife fight behind some bar. There had been two of them and two of us, which should have made for a fair fight, but one of the guys was kicking our ass with his martial arts skills, and it almost took two of us to knock him down.
Things went from bad to worse when he threw a knife at me, which veered off to the side, missed me completely, and went through the chest of the guy we wanted to talk to.
Viktor had also been stabbed in the arm, a wound that had required stitches from the doctor. He hadn’t been happy about it.
“Last night wasn’t pretty,” I offered, sitting on a box beside him. “How are you doing?”
“Last night should never have happened the way it did,” he snarled.
“We should have brought more guys to the fight.”
“Our best lead also managed to die on us.”
“He was a long shot, anyway.”
He gave me a grim look. “Whatever we think we should bring to the Bunko fight, we should probably double it. I don’t have a good feeling about any of this.”
I hated that he was right. “Agreed.”
His phone rang. After his call, his expression was serious. “Police are at the gate.”
“Why?”
“They want to talk to you.”
Viktor and I walked to the gate, where two cop cars waited with flashing lights. Without a search warrant, they didn’t have grounds to come onto my property, but they didn’t seem to care about that.
“What kind of stupid bullshit is this?” Viktor grumbled.
When I walked through the gate, a plainclothes detective got out of one of the cruisers.
“Andrusha Sokolov?”
“What can I help you with?” I watched as another detective approached from the driver’s side.
“What happened to your face?”
“A bar fight.”
The guy glanced at Viktor. “Was he in the same fight?”
“He’s my wingman.”
He pressed his pockets as if he were looking for something. “We were wondering if you’ve talked to Detective Klaassen lately.”
“No, not recently.”
He located his pad of paper. “Can you tell me the last time you talked to her?”
“I met her a couple of weeks ago in a diner, for a late-night coffee.”
“Do you remember the exact day?”
It was the night we dropped Sasha off at Mica’s place. “No clue, sorry.”
The other cop stepped forward. “And what was the nature of your meal?”
I played dumb. “What do you mean?”
“What did you talk about?”
I shook my head. “Nothing in particular.”
They exchanged looks. “We find it interesting that a cop, lead on one of our biggest investigations, would have a late-night meeting with someone like you.”
“Was that a question?”
He snapped his notebook shut. “You know what I mean.”
I shoved my hands into my pockets. “How long has the detective been missing?”
“We didn’t say she was.”
“You kind of did.”
“She hasn’t reported to work in four days. She’s not answering her cell, and her apartment is empty.”
“Cleared out?”
He shook his head. “Just her wallet and phone gone. She left her cat.”
These two cops were in way over their heads. “She never talked about her job or her life with me.”
One of the detectives stepped forward. “Were you sleeping with her?”
“She made it clear that it was an option, but it wasn’t a good career choice for either of us.”
“What does that mean?”
I shrugged. “You know, a detective like her fucking someone like me.”
He scratched the back of his head. “The further we dive into her life, the more disturbing it gets.”
I looked between these two men. I wanted to warn them. To tell them not to dig too deep because their questions would uncover nothing good. They seemed like good cops, decent men, but they weren’t prepared for what they might find. Not if Bunko was involved.
“Take care, gentlemen.”
Five hours later, Viktor and I were doing a stakeout of our own barge. We wanted to see if Bunko was aware of this shipment. If he was, he would probably try to get a closer look.
Viktor stared down the scope of his sniper rifle. “Someone is here to take a look.”
“Where?”
“Third window on the right of that fishing vessel.”
I looked through my binoculars and saw the familiar flash of the scope of a rifle. “Someone has come to check out the party.”
Viktor was grumpy. He always got bitchy before a fight. “Can’t happen soon enough. Are we sure Bunko is going to hit the barge when we leave?”
“Nope, but the fact that someone is staking out our barge is a good sign.”
“How many men are Carl and Bastelli sending?”
“Not enough. And I’m not sure how trained they are.”
“Well, our guys are ready for war.”
We studied each other, both of us thinking about the things that would be coming at us in the next few days.
“So what do you think about the detective going missing?”
He put his eye back on his scope. “I think she got what was coming to her.”
“What do you mean?”
“She was corrupt. Nothing good ever comes from those kinds of life decisions.”
I thought about that statement. “You think maybe she realized she was in over her head, and she cut and ran?”
He looked back at me. “She might have, but it’s doubtful.”
“Why?”
“She would have taken her cat.”
“You think Bunko took her?”
He looked at me. “What do you think?”
I shook my head. “I’m not even sure why she went rogue. I couldn’t tell if it was money or love.”
He snorted. “No one does anything that stupid for love.”
“I think she tried to walk a thin line and got caught. And Bunko’s long reach caught up to her.”
“Yup. Sounds about right.”
Viktor sounded so toneless, it made me ask. “You ever think about a different life?”
He looked down his gun scope and adjusted the dial by one point. “Every single fucking day.”
“Where would you go?”
He pulled his head back and looked at me. “You asking me about my backup plan?”
“You got one?”
“Don’t you?”
I thought about the property I had just bought in southern Alberta. I trusted Viktor. “I have a backup plan. Not sure if I will ever make it there.”
“Backup plans are put in place to make us feel better. I’ve got a cabin up north. If push came to shove, I’d just disappear into the bush.”
I wondered what kind of push or shove it would take to get Viktor to leave. “Why don’t you?”
He lifted his head to look at me. “Probably the same reason you don’t.”
We all had our reasons for living in this world. Most of those reasons weren’t good ones, and none of us liked to talk about them.
As I walked up to the loft, I realized that it was only eight o’clock. I had somehow managed to get home at a decent hour. I felt like time was so fleeting, and I seemed to waste most of it working.
Olivia was lying on the couch, watching a movie. Sasha lay on the floor near her. They both looked at me when I walked in.
I sat down on the couch. “What are you watching?”
“War of the Worlds.”
I lifted her feet so they were on my lap. “Alien invasions?”
The movie no longer held her attention. She snuggled her legs on my lap and clung to my gaze. “How was your day?”
“Surprisingly uneventful.”
“Did you eat?”
“I did.”
I studied her to see how she was holding up. Adding sex to the menu had complicated our situation exponentially. It didn’t help that this situation was volatile at best, and I needed to be working around the clock, leaving her here alone for hours at a time.
Was she handling everything okay emotionally?
She gave me a shy smile. “Want to cuddle?”
“Well, who can resist that invitation?” I stood up and took off all my weapons before lying on the couch behind her. She tucked herself up under my chin and then turned to the TV to finish watching her movie.
I was not a cuddly kind of guy. I didn’t usually spend time with women outside of the bedroom, but I couldn’t get enough of Olivia. Naked, clothed, awake, asleep, I felt like nothing was enough. She made me want things I didn’t think I could have. She tempted me with things I had no right to be tempted by.
I ducked my head over her neck and breathed in the scent of her hair. She smelled better than anything in the world.
Everything felt so precarious. Her safety. Bunko. Whom to trust. Whom to fight. No one seemed to know what was going on, but we could all feel the mounting pressure. The streets were savage right now, and we were all marching towards something bigger than most of us had ever seen. It would all come down to who was smarter, who had trusted the right people.
If I didn’t come out of this fight alive, Olivia would be at mortal risk.
She looked over her shoulder at me. “You’re tense.”
I nipped the corner of her lips with my mouth. “No, I’m not.”
She flipped over so she could study me, as if she were trying to read some secret on my face.
“What do you want to know?” I teased.
“You’re just so hard to read sometimes.”
“I’m an open book.”
“You’re elusive.”
Amelia used to call me that all the time.
“Your whole body tensed when I said that,” she added.
I rolled onto my back and took Olivia with me, so she ended up sprawled on my chest. “I’m waiting.”
“For?”
“For you to tell me one secret.”
She looked thoughtful. “What’s your family like?”
“That’s a question.”
“Answer it.”
I thought about the parents and the older sister I had left behind in Russia. My parents called me regularly to update me about the farm, how many sheep had been born, and the neighbor’s new tractor. They had no idea what I did. It was another layer of shame in my life.
“They are surprisingly normal. Tell me a secret.”
She sighed and laid her head on my chest. “You know all my secrets.”
I put my hands on her narrow back. “I don’t think I do.”
She lifted her head and gave me a cheeky smile. “I will tell you a secret if you tell me a secret.”
I felt my cock stir at the sight of that smile. I reached my mouth up to capture hers. And then my fucking phone rang.
The police were at the gate again.
I lifted her off me and gave her another hard kiss. “I have to go take care of something. And you owe me a secret.”
Her mouth followed mine as I ended the kiss. “Come back soon.”
Viktor and I stood at the gate in the dark. It was piss-pouring rain. The two detectives from earlier today stood at the gate, beneath black umbrellas.
“Gentleman, twice in one day,” I said.
“We’d like to take you down to the station for questioning.”
“For what purpose?”
“Just some routine questions to clear something up.”
They put me in the back of their car but didn’t cuff me. My three SUVs, including one driven by Viktor, followed close behind.
“Not sure what your friends think they are doing,” the driving cop complained.
I tried to keep the impatience out of my voice. “They are keeping us safe.”
They looked at each other and started to laugh. “Yeah, sure.”
“You still have no idea what steaming pile of shit you just stepped into.”
“Is that a question?” one of the detectives retorted.
“Just an observation.”
They brought me down to the station, stuck me in one of their little rooms, and grilled me, focusing a lot of their questions on the missing Somalian gang.
“Why are you asking me about them?”
“We’re just covering our bases.”
“Everything I know about them is secondhand knowledge. Chatter on the street.”
“What exactly did you hear?”
“That they all went missing without a trace.”
The two detectives exchanged looks.
I looked between them. “What did you find?”
“We think this case might be tied to what Detective Klaassen was working on. Do you know anything about that?”
I worked to keep the frustration off my face. Of course, the missing Somalian gang was related to Bunko’s invasion. The fact that it was taking these detectives this long to get the lay of the land showed me that the police would offer zero help with Bunko. Not that they had been helping that much before, but at least Detective Klaassen had fed me some useful information.
“Did you call me down here to be your sounding board as you work through your theories?” I scoffed.
“We need to know what you know.”
If I told them anything, they would just get in the way. “If something happens, I’ll call you.”
They left me in that room for hours, doing their stupid cop routine: trying to break me without letting me talk to anyone or take a piss, and then firing questions at me.
At seven in the morning, when they were starting to realize I would tell them nothing, they let me walk.
I got into the car next to Viktor.
He started it. “Well, that was a bullshit waste of time. Back to the warehouse?”
God, I wish. “I have one stop to make first.”
The runner came under the bridge fast, his legs pumping hard, showing strength and speed as he ran. He passed me, and then his footsteps slowed.
I stepped out of the shadows.
Mica was breathing hard. “I can always sense you lurking.”
I handed him a bottle of water, pretending my cloak-and-dagger routine was no big deal. “I thought you might be thirsty.”
He opened the bottle and chugged half of it. “What’s going on?”
Sometimes friends don’t come home from gunfights. “Business is intense lately.”
He stared straight ahead as he sipped his water. Then he asked me a question he had never asked me before. “You ever think about getting out?”
Every fucking day. “I’ve thought about it. It’s not as easy as it looks.”
“Tell me about Olivia.”
His question made me realize why I had come down here to talk to him. He was the only one with whom I could be honest. “I’m screwing that one up.”
His eyes met mine. “She seemed pretty invested when I talked with her.”
“I want what’s best for her.” Unfortunately, that’s not me.
He eyed me speculatively. “You’re into her.”
I shrugged. “Whatever that means.”
He gave me a huge smile. “I never thought I’d see the day when you’d be in knots over a woman.”
I thought about how fucking sweet and perfect she was. She was too good for me or this life. “It’s distracting as fuck.”
He grinned. “Women have that effect.”
I felt a bit desperate. “How can one person change everything?”
“That’s usually a sign.”
“What kind of sign?”
“That you should probably marry her.”
“That’s such bullshit.”
He smiled harder. “Fighting it only makes it worse.”
I punched him lightly in the arm. “Why did I ever think talking to you would make me feel better?”
He put his arm around me. “Because it did.”
