by Tessa Bailey
THIS TIME TOMORROW
TESSA BAILEY
Copyright © 2020 Tessa Bailey
Kindle Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
For Mackenzie
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Epilogue
About Tessa Bailey
CHAPTER ONE
Las Vegas 2017
Elias clearly needed to get out more.
Laughter came easy to everyone else gathered around the poker table, the fellow members of his S.W.A.T. team getting to know the strangers they’d been seated with. The sound of shuffling poker chips blended seamlessly with their conversations, cards spitting out of the dealer’s hands and landing with neat, two-card piles in front of them.
This wasn’t his first time in a casino, but he didn’t recall a state of suspense chafing between his shoulder blades those other times. They’d arrived an hour ago and he’d checked behind himself a dozen times, expecting…what? He had no clue. But the energy in Vegas was almost frenetic. Desperately hopeful. People on a deadline to have the time of their lives. And his law enforcement intuition was probably in overdrive, trying to put everyone and everything into two categories. Threat. Not a threat.
A balled up cocktail napkin hit him in the shoulder. “For the love of God, Perry, would you stop thinking so hard over there?”
Elias’s lips jumped. He didn’t need to look up from his cards to know his teammate Kenny had thrown the napkin. “You would say that when you’re trying to rob me blind.”
“Hey, look.” Across the table, Kenny leaned over the green felt. “We’ve all had our turns going home broke to the missuses.” The beers he’d knocked back at the pool were catching up with the former college linebacker. “It’s your weekend to pony up, Silent E.”
Elias showed no reaction to his name being shortened, but it was the first time any of his teammates had done so. He’d been working with the highly trained tactical unit for three years, and with their lives at continual risk, the brotherhood was fierce. Every damn body had a nickname. Except him. Until now, apparently. He tried not to let the meaningfulness of that show on his face as he folded his terrible hand.
“Kenny speaks the truth,” chimed in Darius, also known as “Latte,” thanks to that one time he had Postmates deliver a tray of lattes to a post-raid crime scene. “Give us all your money. Think of it as a long-overdue initiation.”
Kenny chuckled. “Still can’t believe we finally convinced you to come. We were starting to think you didn’t love us.”
“Calm down,” Elias said without missing a beat. “I’m still on the fence.”
Kenny and Latte laughed along with the strangers at the table, but Elias couldn’t join them because that odd rub was happening again between his shoulder blades. He accepted his next hand from the dealer, checked his turn, then cast another glance toward the casino floor. There was nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, everything was status quo. The poker section was populated with young men mostly, only a couple of women. The slots were swarmed with seniors, their hands smacking down on the buttons, the jackpot count ticking higher over their heads. A younger crowd crammed in around the roulette wheel. Pit bosses paced down the center of endless blackjack tables. Nothing was off but him.
Elias shook himself and turned his attention back to the table where Latte was in a tense hand with a man in a San Diego Padres hat. “Where did Jenks and the commander go?” he asked, referring to their other teammates. Five of them had driven up from Los Angeles together for a mandatory breather from the department. They’d yet to talk about why, but Elias suspected that’s what the beers were for. Liquid courage might make it easier to bring up the uncomfortable subject. “Don’t tell me those punks snuck off to another Cirque du Soleil show.”
“Yup. Mystère this time.” Kenny chuckled. “They’re going to meet us back at the Encore later. After they’ve located their dicks.”
Latte lost the hand with Padre man and leaned back in disgust. “Hey, man,” he said to Kenny after a moment of grief for his bank account. “I cried at O. That shit is emotional.”
Kenny gestured to table’s occupants. “You’re really going to humiliate the LAPD like this? Do you care nothing for our reputation?” Obviously enjoying the laughter from the other out of towners, he tipped his head at Elias. “Now Silent E over there has the right vibe. Lethal. Cynical. Mysterious.”
Elias shook his head, uncomfortable being the focus of attention at the table, but not wanting to lose the ground he’d gained with his teammates. He liked these guys. A lot. And hell, they were right. He’d never come to Vegas with them, despite repeated invitations. Only gone for a handful of happy hours, usually when it was someone’s birthday. Maybe it was time. To start making friends again. To loosen some of the mortar in the brick wall he surrounded himself with. “Mysterious?”
Kenny and Latte flicked a look at each other, visibly surprised he’d taken the bait. They were always casting out a line and reeling it back in empty. “Yeah, man,” Latte said, patting a hand over the tight twists of black hair on his head. “Been on the team with you for years and I still don’t know your Starbucks order.”
“Jesus,” Kenny muttered, scrubbing a hand over his eyes. “That’s the first thing you want to know about him? What is it with you and the fancy coffee?”
“Sprinkled cinnamon makes it taste good.” Latte kept a glare trained on his friend for several beats and this time, even the dealer laughed. He took a moment to place a bet and survey what everyone else was doing. “Fine, Silent E. I retract my earlier query. How come you never tell us about the dates our wives set you up on?”
Kenny threw up his hands. “Hallelujah. That’s what I wanted to know.”
Elias hedged. They couldn’t ask him his favorite movie or something?
A couple of times over the last few years, he’d gotten cornered by the S.W.A.T. wives, who frankly were a tactical unit of their own, and coerced into some blind dates. Nothing had ever come of them, to put it mildly. He’d found it impossible to be present or have a decent conversation with any of the women, whose names and faces he now couldn’t recall.
But he wouldn’t be telling Kenny and Latte that. First of all, those women were perfectly nice. The issue was his and his alone. And he definitely wouldn’t be telling his teammates that the older he got…the more going on dates made him feel as if he were doing something wrong.
Like he should be home. Waiting.
Waiting for what?
Elias cleared his throat. “I’m sure they gave the play-by-play to your wives.”
“It’s n
ot the same,” Kenny groaned.
“Yeah,” Latte agreed, calling with a toss of chips into the center of the felt. “We should be compensated, man. We took the blame over you never calling their friends back.”
“If you’re trying to guilt me into letting you win a hand, it’s not working,” Elias drawled, pushing a short stack toward the dealer. “Raise.”
Kenny shot forward in his seat. “You see that, everyone? Lethal.”
Latte did his best to look betrayed, but his cheek jerked with a smile. “How are you going to play me like that, Silent E?” He sniffed into his wrist. “Here I thought we were finally becoming confidants.”
Thing is, he had been trying to “open up,” so to speak. Then he’d gotten a good hand.
His teammates were a lot more curious about him than he’d realized, though, and he kind of got the sense they were hurt that he’d withheld so much. He didn’t like that. These men were constantly at his back in harrowing situations. They guarded each other’s lives. Despite Elias’s standoffishness, they tried to include him in everything and he needed to reciprocate.
“Beers on me later,” Elias muttered, keeping his attention on the cards. “You can ask me whatever you want…”
He trailed off, that scrape between his shoulder blades growing more pronounced, until he couldn’t concentrate enough to decipher the suits of his cards. What the hell was going on? Throat dry, he laid down his hand and turned in his chair—
Silence fell around him when he saw her.
She was golden. Radiant.
Miserable.
The long-legged blonde limped through the casino with a beautiful pout on her face, a pair of high heels shoved under one arm. There was a fine sheen of dew on her incredible face, telling Elias she’d just escaped the stifling Vegas heat. Simply by existing, she commanded fealty and the casino seemed to part around her like the Red Sea, creating a path for her to complete a wobbly strut toward Elias’s poker table—and the closer she came, the more his lungs compressed, as if he was running out of fucking oxygen.
Who is she?
No idea. But the discomfort between his shoulder blades was gone.
Like a balm had been applied.
The girl was beyond gorgeous. He’d never noticed cheekbones on anyone in his life, but he noticed her high ones. The indigo blue of her eyes. And Jesus, he definitely noticed the way her soft mutterings made his heart flop over. Who are you?
Vaguely, he heard Latte ribbing him. “Bet you’d call her back, huh, Silent E?”
“Forget what I said about him being mysterious,” Kenny quipped. “Everything he’s thinking is right there on his face.”
More laughter. But the buzzing in his skull was already drowning them out.
Elias watched the blonde’s high heel fall out of her arms and flop sideways on the casino floor. He was on his feet before it stopped moving, abandoning his hand at the table without a thought so he could scoop up the shoe and follow. He didn’t have a choice in the matter. Going after her was a requirement, searing him, compelling him.
And a moment later, when she looked up at him from her seat at a slot machine, his world righted itself with a grinding snap. He hadn’t even known it was off kilter.
The blonde crossed her impossibly sexy legs and his body reacted swiftly, hardening.
“Well?” she said in a husky Russian accent. “Make it good. I only have five minutes before I wreak the havoc.”
CHAPTER TWO
Five minutes earlier
Roksana squinted at her reflection in a passing taxi window to make sure the flashing lights of her LED light-up bra weren’t showing through her sweater.
It’s August and you’re in Sin City.
The multitude of passersby on the strip’s sidewalk were more likely to find her cardigan odd, rather than the flashing pink lights of her bra.
She dodged a couple of girls in minidresses, catching the attention of her childhood friend Kira across the street, who was in similar attire and visibly flagging in the stifling heat. They’d come up with this plan to make their best friend, Olga’s, bachelorette party memorable, but if they didn’t commence Project Rump Shaker soon, tomorrow morning’s front page headline on all the Vegas newspapers would read: Five Semi-Drunk Russian Girls Melt into Flesh-Colored Puddles.
They’d come up with this plan on her apartment floor in Moscow, blissfully unaware that this level of heat even existed. Upon boarding the plane two days ago, they’d checked the weather and decided the three-digit temperatures probably had something to do with the conversion of Fahrenheit to Celsius and would probably be fine.
This was not fine.
Roksana waved her limp arms at Kira and pointed to her wrist.
How much longer?
Kira looked at the screen of her cell phone, cradled it between her chin and shoulder, holding up both hands with her fingers splayed.
“Ti cho ebanuti?” Roksana shouted across the noisy strip, safe in the knowledge that none of the Americans crowding the sidewalk were aware that she’d just yelled are you fucking crazy at her best friend.
Seriously, though. Ten more minutes of waiting to kick off the plan?
She wouldn’t make it that long without getting heat stroke. The champagne they’d drunk for breakfast, lunch and continuously in between was gurgling ominously in her stomach. Any ounce of bounce had been sucked out of her blonde hair, leaving the jagged edges of her bangs in her eyes. And she could almost hear her skin sizzling under the force of the great Western sun. Time to take cover.
Cringing over the charges likely piling up with the international texts, she shot her friend a quick message. Going to cool down. Be back in ten.
Roksana toed off her metallic gold high heels, cradling them to her chest, and kicked into a jog on the sidewalk, the promise of sweet air conditioning beckoning her toward the entrance of the closest casino, Circus Circus.
Thanks to the expensive airfare from Moscow and the cost of being a bridesmaid—all on student budgets—they were staying on the lower rent end of the Vegas strip. Considering the hijinks Roksana and four of her best friends planned to pull off in ten minutes, being a little removed from the more concentrated crowds was probably a good thing.
Hopefully it meant the police would take longer to arrive.
Did Roksana and her friends celebrate their early twenties boisterously, as if consequences were naught but some distant possibility? Yes. And she reveled in it—maybe the most out of all of them. She and her girlfriends had met as children in Moscow, though Roksana was never free to play in the park or cheer at local hockey games, her mother forcing her to keep close, to learn the family business after nightfall. It wasn’t until Roksana turned eighteen and started making her own decisions that she and her friends became inseparable. And she’d made up for a lot of lost time since embarking on adulthood, spending her nights laughing and her days being taught normal subjects at university.
History and geography as opposed to moving without a sound and concealing weapons.
Now, on her way into Circus Circus, a security guard eyed her bare feet pointedly, but she gave him her best smile and he waved her inside.
The ice-cold air wrapped around her bare calves, her damp neck, and she moaned, unconcerned about the gawkers. The brightly colored carpet of the casino floor felt smooth and soft on the bottoms of the infernos she used to call feet, the leather of a nickel slot seat welcoming her overheated body as she dropped into it sideways.
Eyes closed, she tipped back her head and absorbed the cool.
Heaven.
She was in heaven.
Until…there. A tingle caught Roksana in the back of the neck, a product of the one and only trait she’d inherited from her legendary mother. Prickly intuition when something interesting was in the air—but interesting could mean so many things, couldn’t it? A Molotov cocktail being thrown through a window was interesting with its iridescent blue trail, the shards of glass whipping around it and form
ing a hazardous picture frame. Given her mother’s profession, Roksana was afforded plenty of time to study those deadly cocktails and their results.
Tonight, however, she was nearly six thousand miles from home and there was no break in the excited hum of gambling and conversation. This was not her mother’s brand of interesting, thank God. For some reason, Roksana was hesitant to open her eyes and discover the reason for her neck prickle. There was a fizzing sound in her ears and it was coming to a crescendo, whipping faster and faster—
She dropped her head forward and opened her eyes.
All the sound was sucked from the room, leaving behind nothing. Well, not nothing, there was a faint, tinny, continuous beep, almost like a patient had flatlined.
Who was the man standing in front of her?
He did not belong. He did not make sense in this place.
Buzzers buzzed and music dinged. People called out to one another. Cigarette smoke curled. But he didn’t move a muscle. Everything but him was blurry. Suddenly secondary.
Yes, he was attractive. In a way that must scare some women. If a female wanted this man, they would have to hold on for dear life and she’d probably still get left in the dust. No doubt they would try to catch up with him, begging for the same treatment again.
He was dark-haired, whiskey-eyed, tall and unshaven.
Strong.
Observant.
He was watching Roksana now with a slight crease between his black eyebrows, as if trying to place her. Please. Don’t ask me if we’ve met before. That would be such a predictable opening line and weirdly, she wanted his personality to match the rest of him.
Why?
She certainly didn’t want a scary man like this one.
Easy, carefree and far as possible from the dark she’d grown up in. That’s what she gravitated toward, much to the disgust of her mother, the Queen of Shadows.
Annoyed at the reminder of the familial tension back in Russia, Roksana crossed her legs with a sniff, noting the muscle that jumped in his cheek. “Well? Make it good. I only have five minutes before I wreak the havoc.”
