by Bella Rose
“Hello, Agent Polzin,” Vitaly said in a voice loud enough to be heard over Alexandra and Dimitri’s arguing.
It was as if someone had pushed pause on the scene before him. Both Alexandra and Dimitri stopped talking mid-sentence. Dimitri’s hand was still raised, his finger pointing toward the street. He’d obviously been telling her to take a hike.
“Dimitri, Anton,” Vitaly said reasonably. “Please allow me to handle Agent Polzin.”
“Boss?” Dimitri raised an eyebrow, and then he switched to Russian. “You can’t expect us to let her in the house. You might as well be granting her a blank check on search warrants.”
“Trust me,” he said to Dimitri, also in Russian. “I want to know what she knows. This is the best way to accomplish that.”
Dimitri immediately backed down. He bowed his head to show his respect and then he and Anton retreated into the house. Vitaly turned his attention to his guest. He tried not to be distracted by the way her hair moved in the light breeze, or by the scent of her perfume.
“Please,” Vitaly said solicitously, “do come inside.”
“Thank you.”
She looked calm, but something told him that she was incredibly uncomfortable. That gave him a shot of confidence. And he needed some of that desperately, because he had apparently forgotten just how enticing Agent Polzin could be.
He led her down the same path they had followed before. This time he didn’t speak. He was utterly aware of her presence behind him. He could smell her, sense the heat of her skin, and he was utterly consumed by the need to clear the air between them.
He opened the study door and stood back to let her pass. He felt the brush of air against his chest when she walked by. Every nerve on the surface of his skin was alive with sensation. It was as though she had touched him. Perhaps that was when he knew it did not matter that she had lied. It did not matter that she was a federal agent, and the only thing he cared about was making this work. Even if it meant breaking a few more rules to get what he wanted.
***
Alexandra swallowed back the sour taste of dread in her mouth. She had expected Vitaly to let her in. He would have wanted to do that much simply because she’d warned him about the warrant the night before. Now, though, she simply didn’t know what to expect.
The study door closed with an ominous thud. Then Vitaly turned around and stared at her until she was fidgeting beneath his regard. She gathered her confidence. The cat was out of the bag, so to speak. There was no point in being apologetic about it now. She had nothing left to lose—except everything.
“So,” Vitaly began. “I do not know why I never put two and two together. Jacob spoke of an FBI agent named Alex. And here you are, Alexandra. I truly have no one else to blame.”
“Jacob has called me that since we were in school.”
“School. Which is where you, Jacob, and that bastard Ivan Popov who launders money for me through his arcades first met.” Vitaly paced a circle at one end of the room, looking very agitated. “I cannot believe I didn’t see it.”
“What? That I’m the one who sent your boss to jail?” She couldn’t tell how angry he was and that was making her twitchy. Was she in danger? She had taken if for granted that the physical connection they had forged would somehow protect her.
“I used to dream of retaliation,” he told her quietly. “I used to think of how I would make that agent squirm when I found out who it was. Yet here I am with the information in front of me and I cannot do what I should.”
Alexandra lifted her chin and refused to be intimidated by her circumstances. “Why did you tell Jacob to let Joe and the team pick him up?”
“Perhaps there is certain information that I thought your superiors should know.” He smiled and her belly did an unwelcome flip-flop. “Didn’t you used to do the same thing? You would look around at all of the activities going on in Ivan’s branch of the mafia, or maybe someone else’s. Then you would decide what information to release and conduct your investigations and subsequent arrests based on what Ivan wanted. You were a bit like his own personal legal hit squad.”
She hated that comparison, mostly because there was some truth to it. “I was just doing my job!” she argued.
“As I’m doing mine,” he pointed out. “So there should be no complaining or accusations here.” He heaved a sigh. “And you should know that Jacob is incredibly loyal to you. He wouldn’t give evidence against you if they paid him millions.”
He could see the moment she relaxed. Apparently the possibility of Jacob tattling on her was a big deal. Vitaly couldn’t help but wonder if it was because she didn’t want to lose the loyalty of a friend she’d had for so many years, or if Jacob really knew some damning evidence that could destroy her personally. Either way, Vitaly found he wanted to know the answer.
“Where is Jacob?” she asked suddenly. “I’ve been waiting to hear from him for days. Surely he checked in with you.”
“Actually, he hasn’t. I figured he’s going to ground and he’ll turn up eventually. What does Jacob know that you don’t want told?” he asked her, trying to read her expression without having any luck in doing so.
“He’s Jacob,” she said flatly. “By now I’m sure you have noticed that he pretty much knows everything. So while I don’t exactly know what it is he could use to hurt me, I’m fairly certain there is something.”
“Well I don’t suppose I can argue with that,” he mused. “The man is like a cockroach.”
“I know!” She chuckled, pausing for a moment and then seeming to decide something inside her mind. “If I tell you something, will you give me something in return?”
The offer was intriguing, mostly because it was so damn blunt. Vitaly couldn’t resist. “Yes.” He held out his hand. “Shall we shake on it?”
“Of course.” She placed her fingers in his grip and he felt a jolt very reminiscent of the chemistry that constantly seemed to explode between them.
She let go of his hand as though she’d been burned. He could see her struggle for her composure and felt rather smug until he realized that the blood was rushing to his groin. He couldn’t even pretend to be unaffected. Not when his body was so ready to react.
“So?” he prodded in order to downplay both of their reactions. “What did you want to say?”
“The guy in charge of interrogating Jacob is a man named Joe. He’s desperate to take my job and he’s hungry. He’s completely willing to break all the rules to do it.”
“I see.” Vitaly processed that for a moment before deciding what to say. “This Joe person might be discovering plenty of information from Jacob,” Vitaly admitted. “But none of it has a damn thing to do with me or my organization.”
For about two seconds she looked startled, and then Alexandra started laughing. The sound was so merry and inviting that Vitaly couldn’t help but smile. Then she shook her head. “Okay, I have to appreciate the irony of that, but I was actually thinking about Joe’s role in all of this from another angle.”
“How so?” He could not help but admire the way her brain worked.
“You and your guys keep talking about a DEA agent or a mole, or someone who is spilling information. What if Joe is that guy?” She had relaxed a bit, not even seeming to realize how close she had moved to him. He liked having her near, but that wasn’t what he was supposed to be focusing on right now.
Vitaly needed to share some information if the two of them were ever going to muddle this through. “Donovan O’Leary was heard saying that if the O’Learys gave the DEA some information on us, the DEA would, in turn, stop pressing so hard on O’Leary territory.”
“Donovan O’Leary is a conniving little shit,” she said irritably. Then her expression settled into something quite thoughtful. “You know, the other night when Joe’s bust went bad, no O’Learys were arrested.”
“I wondered about that,” Vitaly mused. “There seemed to be no effect on them at all.”
“I need to see the repor
t from that bust,” she said decidedly.
A sudden wave of anxiety took Vitaly by surprise. “If he’s really doing something wrong and he thinks you’re onto him, he’s going to be dangerous as a cornered animal.”
“Are you worried about me?” she asked, her brows lifted in surprise.
Vitaly shrugged. “If anyone is going to kill you, it’s going to be me.”
Chapter Fourteen
Alexandra crept through the dim hallway at the FBI field office. Most of the floor was monitored by a closed circuit camera system. The hallway housing the personnel offices was not. For once, Alexandra was very glad. It was after five o’clock on a Friday night. Anyone who was still at work would be down in the operations suite.
The hallway was dead quiet. She passed her own office and kept going three more doors down. Joe’s office was on the same side of the hallway, although she noted with satisfaction that it was even more of a shoebox than hers.
Pulling out her little lockpick, she set about jimmying the door open. She held her breath when it clicked. The sound was deafening in the silent hallway. She put her hand on the knob, but waited until she had counted slowly to three. Nobody seemed to be coming. She entered the office and shut the door behind her.
In one hand, she grasped a tiny memory stick. She tiptoed to Joe’s computer and signed in. This whole thing would have been much easier if Joe had filed the report the way he was supposed to. For whatever reason, the FBI’s database listed the report as pending. Yet there was nothing in the team files about it. The entire thing stank of subterfuge, as far as she was concerned. Joe was up to something and she was going to find out what.
She sat down at his computer and moved the mouse to wake it up. The arrogant prick hadn’t even password-locked the thing. What sort of idiot made it this easy to steal his files? She snorted in amusement and plugged in the flash drive. It began blinking. Then the blue light went solid. That meant it was transmitting via Wi-Fi to Vitaly’s car out on the street below.
A feeling of relief had just settled in when she heard footsteps in the hallway. “Hello, Alexandra. Fancy meeting you here,” Joe said with a twisted smile filled with malice. “I wondered when you were going to catch on and become a pain in my ass.”
***
Vitaly tried to focus on something other than the fact that Alexandra was up in that office stealing files. She was making herself a prime target for prosecution. If he thought about that for too long he would go stark-raving mad with worry.
“We’re connected, boss!” Anton called out from the front seat of the limo. “And, man, does this guy have some secrets to spill!”
“Like what?”
“Like he’s an O’Leary.” Anton chuckled. “Apparently on his mother’s side. Donovan is his cousin. They’ve been colluding for a while now.” Anton read a little further, his finger drifting down the screen of his laptop. “That crap Donovan told us about the DEA was a smokescreen. There is no DEA.”
“Uh, boss,” Dimitri said from the front seat. “We’ve got a problem.”
“What?” Vitaly’s belly cramped with anticipatory fear. “Why do you say that?
Dimitri gestured to the front doors of the building that housed the FBI field office. “Looks like Alexandra got herself caught.”
Vitaly cursed in three languages, feeling helpless and practically paralyzed with impotent rage. This could not be happening. Not when there was still so much to say. “Follow them. He has to be taking her to Donovan.”
***
Alexandra carefully did not look toward the limo parked around the corner with its nose barely sticking out from behind a building. If Joe was enough of an idiot to think she was alone, she certainly didn’t intend to correct his perception. Instead, she tried to keep him talking.
“Why are you doing this?” she prodded. “How come you’ve been lying to us all?”
“I haven’t really been lying.” Joe dragged her along behind him by her zip-tied hands. “I might have bluffed a few things on my polygraph test, but my mother completely cut herself off from her O’Leary relations as soon as she married my father at seventeen. And since her name wasn’t O’Leary, I didn’t even know about my good old cousin Donovan until a few years ago.”
“So it was after you’d been through the academy,” she mused. “And you’ve apparently never had to go through a reinvestigation for your clearance.”
“Not yet,” he agreed. “And by the time anyone figures this out, Donovan and I will have put together a nice little nest egg.”
“You really think that Irish prick is going to share with you?” Alexandra laughed. “You’re stupider than you look.”
“You better shut the hell up,” he growled.
They were walking toward a van. He stopped and opened the back. To Alexandra’s shock, she saw that Jacob was tied up in there as well. His head was drooping forward as though he were unconscious. Then he seemed to rouse himself enough to focus on them.
“Alex?” he asked, obviously confused.
“You stuck Jacob in here?” Alexandra asked incredulously. “You were supposed to release him!” It was now obvious why Jacob hadn’t texted her or reported to Vitaly.
“The guy figured out the connection between me and Donovan almost instantly. I had to shut him up.” Joe sounded defensive. “Now get in next to him before I pop you both and save myself a ton of hassle.”
***
Anton parked the limo on the curb around the corner from a warehouse just over the border of O’Leary territory that was known to house a good portion of their prescription drug supply. Then all three Maximov brothers swung around to stare at Vitaly.
“I suppose we need to go have a look,” he muttered.
Anton frowned. “What is this woman to you that you’re willing to risk your neck—”
“And ours,” Dimitri added.
“Yes,” Anton continued. “And ours. All for the sake of her safety.”
“She’s everything,” Vitaly said slowly. “I love her. I know she’s FBI and she’s probably sworn to string me up by my balls, but she’s one hell of a woman, and if I’m going to either die or get arrested, I’d rather it be for her or by her.”
Uday snorted. “And the rest of us?”
“I’ll pay you,” Vitaly said with a chuckle.
Dimitri pulled out his gun and checked the chamber. “All right then. You’re speaking my language. Let’s go.”
Anton and Uday were still muttering when the four of them exited the limo and began hugging the walls of the buildings in an effort to remain in shadow. They moved in spurts, Dimitri taking point and ghosting his way from cover to cover. The rest of them would follow one at a time until they were standing beside a stack of crates next to the warehouse.
“Up is our best bet,” Dimitri decided. “Go in through the windows.”
“You three go in up there,” Vitaly decided. “I’ll go in through the front and create a distraction.”
“Got it,” Dimitri agreed. He motioned to his brothers and the three of them disappeared like rats up the stack of crates.
Vitaly headed for the main entrance of the warehouse. He tucked his gun into place in the small of his back. Taking a deep breath, he shoved the door open and walked inside as though he owned the place. It was good that he had his game face on, because what he saw immediately pissed him off.
Donovan O’Leary and Joe stood in the center of an open space between stacks of crates. There were two hooks suspended from the ceiling. Alexandra and Jacob hung by their bound hands from the hooks, their toes barely brushing the floor. Vitaly had the odd thought that he owed Jacob an apology for just assuming the man had gone to ground.
Clearing his throat to gain everyone’s attention, Vitaly clapped his hands together. “Did I miss the party?”
***
Alexandra could not decide if she was relieved or horrified to see Vitaly. What was he thinking? Donovan and Joe would shoot him and throw his body into the harbor wit
hout batting an eyelash. It struck her then just how much it mattered to her that Vitaly got out of this alive. She had been such an idiot!
“Vitaly Volkov!” Donovan said eagerly. He pointed his pistol at Vitaly and waved him closer. “So good of you to join us. Let me get some ties and we’ll truss you up the same way we did your rat and your girlfriend.”
Vitaly chuckled. “Seriously, Donovan, you need to get some better intel. That’s not my girlfriend. She’s FBI. You think I’m going to date a fed? Sleep with her to get some info, sure. Anything more? That’s asking for trouble, don’t you think?”
Alexandra’s heart seized at his words. His expression was utterly deadpan. Was he telling the truth? Her heart was still insisting that she and Vitaly had something special.
Donovan turned to Joe. “You told me they were a done deal!”
“Does it matter?” Joe snarled back. “She was fucking her last CI too. So the woman can’t keep her legs closed. That’s not my problem!”
Alexandra decided to ignore this slander against her character. She tried to seem completely spaced out. Not really a stretch since her back and arms were killing her. Next to her, Jacob seemed oblivious. Of course, he was also staring at the ceiling. Or was it the ceiling? No. He was watching a balcony.
The Maximov brothers!
A burst of relief mingled with the pride she felt in knowing that Vitaly had marched in here and put himself in danger just for her! Her heart swelled so big she thought it might bust wide open.
Joe and Donovan were still squabbling. Joe shoved Donovan. “You’re an asshole. You know that? You always think I’m lying, but I’m not. I told you the truth. She’s the fucking liar!”
“You were never much use anyway.” Donovan turned the gun away from Vitaly and trained the barrel on Joe. “You’re pushy and you want me to spoon-feed you information for nothing! That’s not how it works, dumbass!”
“I get promoted, you get a get-out-of-jail-free pass,” Joe insisted.
