by Leslie North
MADISON: Fine. Have you heard of this new place called Paint and Pint? It's getting rave reviews online.
SAVANNAH: It's underrated. Trust me. I'll call you later.
Savannah clicked out of her messenger client, severing her connection with the only person on earth who stood a chance of understanding what she was going through. Not only was Madison expecting a child with Maxim's brother, Vlad—something Savannah had yet to reveal to Maxim—but Maddie was also the only person close to her that Savannah trusted implicitly. Generally, she refrained from relating the details of any of her cases to Maddie, but she had already checked all remaining professionalism at the door when she’d had sex with Maxim.
She was going to have to break it off with him, she knew. Maybe have herself transferred to another part of the task force. She had fought tooth and nail to go undercover, but she had never expected to get so tangled up with the dangerous man she had trusted to watch her back. It was time to end it.
She just wished it didn't feel so much like the decision threw a kill switch on her heart.
"I just ran into the director in the hallway."
Savannah raised her eyes, startled to find Tom had returned without her noticing. He was wearing a suit and sunglasses, leaning with one shoulder propped in the doorway to their shared office. "An anonymous source claiming to be an eyewitness called it in last night. Says they saw someone fitting your boyfriend's description entering the victim's apartment building."
Savannah took a moment to process what he was saying. "Really? And that's all they reported?" she asked him. "No argument, no gunshot, or…"
Or mention of a second suspect arriving on the scene?
"Apparently, they cut the call before we could get anything more out of them," Tom replied.
Strange. There should have been more to it, and Savannah felt certain of the fact. It had also been dark outside the apartment building when she arrived, owing to the main street light being out. She could recall that eerie detail very vividly.
Whoever had called in and described Maxim as the suspect, she was certain, was lying. What's more, it was possible that the person the director had on the phone was the real killer.
"I'm going to bring Karev in this afternoon," Tom interrupted her thoughts. "On suspicion of murder. Two counts." He forked two of his fingers and presented them to her, wiggling them smugly, as if he was the older kid in grade school boasting about how high he could count. It was this kind of casual condescension that normally drove Savannah up a wall, but she was too busy.
"You want to bring him in for Sergey, too," she guessed. "The director thinks he has enough on him… or at least, suspects he'll find more evidence."
"Don't always have to locate the proof, if you know what I mean." Tom's pale eyes glimmered. Savannah had a feeling he was trying to convey a message to her telepathically—a message she wasn't certain she wanted to receive. "We both know this guy's our only bead on closing this murder investigation down and focusing our attention elsewhere. We're the Blood Diamond Task Force, remember? You ask me, the sooner we nail every last one of the Karevs, the sooner we can get back to doing our jobs. What's a little planted evidence between friends, I ask you?"
So, that's what he was thinking. You make me sick, Andrews, she wanted to say. Scratch that—she wanted to pluck her pen off her desk, uncap it, and hurl it with ninja-like precision right at his hairless, arrogant face. Whatever side of the law they happened to be born on, human lives weren't to be trifled with like this. She wore a badge for a reason, and so did he, God damn it. Maybe she wasn't the one who had lost sight of what that meant after all.
"Any idea where I might find my man? Sorry—your man?" he asked her.
"More than an idea." Savannah rose and snatched up her navy-blue field coat. No way in hell she was letting a shark like Tom Andrews bring Maxim in without her. She was going to oversee every single detail of the arrest and ensure that nothing suspicious occurred on their end.
Never thought I would be watching my own people this closely, she reflected as they exited for the garage and piled into the squad car. She could only hope Maxim would forgive her for whatever she was about to do.
The only right way to get out from underneath a woman was to get under a bike, so far as Maxim was concerned.
At least, that was how it used to work. He might not have believed it a year ago, but his pre-Savannah world had been much simpler. Now it wasn't just his own family out to get him, but the woman he cared for the most. She had snuck him out of a crime scene, sure, but he knew it was only a matter of time before her sense of justice got the better of her and she came for him. What else was there for her to do but bring him in?
And he wouldn't blame her, he decided as he wiped his hands clean on his jeans and rolled out from underneath the Ural's sidecar. Travis, perhaps sensing his best and only employee's distracted state of mind, had tasked him with a fairly simple attachment procedure today. Unfortunately for them both, Maxim had still managed to complete it in record time, and now had to look elsewhere for work. He stood up and wiped the oil rag down the door of the car. Out back, he could hear Rebecca's light-hearted laugh bubble up as she stole a moment away from the desk with Travis.
Maxim gazed at the Ural blandly. He moved away from it eventually to plumb the depths of the fridge and came away with a Budweiser; he sighed, popping it open beneath the work bench and leaning back to consider his work. He raised the bottle to his lips and took a tentative sip, before drawing it away again with a wince. The beer was flat and tasted about as terrible as it looked. He tried to distract himself from thoughts of the bloody room, the bent and broken body, with thoughts of Savannah, but it only made him feel a million times worse. He imagined her reaction to him suggesting she ride in the sidecar and they take the town together, and a ghost of a smile threatened to haunt the severe line of his lips. He wondered again what his father would think of his prodigal son's born-again choice in women. Savannah and Sergey would not have gotten along, he decided, as he turned back to the open front of the garage.
Savannah Casillero stood in the open mouth of the garage, looking more beautiful than she had a right to. Her multicolored hair was down, framing a naturally radiant face devoid of makeup. She was wearing a thick windbreaker several sizes too large, but it only served to make her look more petite than she already was.
Maxim blinked. He set his beer down. "Didn't expect to see you again any time soon," he admitted.
"Maxim." He disliked the way she said his name just then. Her voice sounded like it was strung too tight, like she was bypassing what she really wanted to say to him and keeping the truth lodged in her throat.
"You're not here to ask for another date," he guessed. Savannah's eyes shifted to the side, and Maxim craned to look past her shoulder out toward the lot. He saw a car idling behind her; he hadn't heard it pull up over the noise blaring from the stereo. He reached across the bench to dial it down as Savannah took a step further into the garage.
"It's Andrews. Someone called in a tip to the FBI, and he has orders to bring you in."
"His orders are your orders," Maxim said. Savannah winced at his words, and it almost looked like she would have pulled a face then, if the situation wasn't so serious.
"I... chose to ride along with him today. And I convinced him to let me have a word with you alone," she added. "I told him I'd be able to talk you into coming in peacefully. I didn't realize you'd be drinking, of course. You can finish your beer if you want." Savannah winced again. "You're drinking Budweiser. I take it back. Get on the ground, I'm taking you by excessive force."
"Don't be surprised if I use excessive force in kind." He hated how easy it was to regain a smile in her presence. The length of the garage stretched between them, and Maxim knew in his heart what that space meant: this intangible, unnamable thing between them was as good as over. She was giving him a moment to finish his drink, but all he really wanted was a moment to find closure. He was going with her
, and who knew when he would return again to Slick Cycles; to the Hammersmiths; to the life outside of the mob that he had fought for years to forge for himself. It was all about to end, and all he wanted was one more moment with the world-ender herself.
"And who's your other friend?" he asked. When Savannah's face registered confusion, Maxim nodded to the unmarked car pulling up alongside her vehicle. She turned just as the recent arrival rolled its back window down.
They realized what was about to happen the instant before it happened.
"Tom!" Savannah screamed. Maxim saw the figure behind the steering wheel duck in his seat as the second car opened fire. The driver's side window shattered in an eruption of jagged, fanged glass.
He had made every effort to leave his old life behind him; now, it seemed to all be coming back to haunt him with a nightmarish vengeance. He wasn't disappointed to find that now that imminent peril had returned, so had his reflexes.
Three bounding leaps carried him across the garage. He grabbed Savannah's arm, practically yanking her off her feet as another round began to pop off. He dragged her out of harm's way back beneath the workbench that lined the wall. "God dammit," he muttered. The Ural was all shot to shit. What's more, the panel to close the garage door was located outside the office and directly across the wall from them. They didn't have a lot of room to work with. He tried to tug Savannah closer so he could trade spots with her and force her behind him, closer to the wall, but she refused to budge. Typical.
"The Blood Diamond Task Force can't afford to install fucking bulletproof glass in their cars?" Maxim shouted above the bedlam. On the subject of blood, he noticed that a tell-tale spray across the assaulted vehicle's windscreen was noticeably missing.
"I didn't even know they were following us. I didn't even see them!" Savannah gasped, drawing her firearm and peering out from around the side of the garage. Maxim grabbed her and hauled her back as another spray of bullets ripped apart the back wall of the garage.
"I think we need to start entertaining the notion that you weren't being followed—because maybe they weren't after you. Likely whoever called in your little tip didn't trust you to hold me to their satisfaction. Shit," Maxim cursed below his breath. Thank God Travis was out back, and thank God he was with Rebecca—Rebecca was born into the same world Maxim had been born into, and she would know the sound of gunfire when she heard it. She would take care of her own before she risked checking in on Maxim, but he knew the time would come when she would risk it. He probably had less than a minute to work out a solution.
Thankfully, it looked like he wouldn't have to do it alone.
"Tom!" Savannah exclaimed fiercely. She was peering around the corner again; this time, when Maxim attempted to drag her back, she shook him off her. "He survived! He's out there! Behind the car!"
Maxim finally gave up trying to get her to obey him and glanced over her head. "Obviously, he's not going to survive for long," he said. He needed Savannah to focus. The life of Agent Andrews was hardly as important to him as—
"We need to get him!" Savannah hissed. Maxim swore he could see the flames of war dancing in her eyes. "I know he wanted to frame you—"
"I sure as hell didn't know that—"
"But he's the closest thing I have to a partner, god dammit! I may not like him most days, but that doesn't mean I want to see him shot full of holes! Very often!" She amended her statement in the same wild tone of voice. "I have to go out there and get him!"
"Fine. We rescue Tom. On two conditions." Maxim grabbed her face and held her gaze. Savannah didn't bat an eye at this treatment, and didn't so much as look away from him when an answering hail of bullets sounded from Tom's side of the car. "You give me your gun, and you let me go out there. You can say I knocked you out and took it if you have to."
"Absolutely out of the question."
"Don't think I won't knock you out, Casillero," he warned.
Her eyes narrowed. She studied him intently, as if she wasn't sure which iteration of the Russian she was dealing with. Finally, she handed him her gun with an angry exhale. "What's your other condition, Karev? And it better not be as completely idiotic as your first."
"I'm the closest thing you have to a partner," he said, "because I am your partner. For however much time we have left."
"Don't die on me," she whispered. "And definitely don't tell anyone I said that."
Maxim cupped her chin, leaned in, and kissed her passionately. Then he pushed her down beneath him as he rose, gun cocked and ready. "No promises," he said. He bolted out into the open, levelling his arm to fire. Two shots, and he managed to take out both gunmen in the backseat as he slid into the space beside the stranded agent. He heard the tires of the unmarked car churn wildly. Whoever they were, they hadn't expected him to fight back. They were retreating, but they could run as far and as fast as they wanted—he would find them, and when he did…
"Keep your head down, asshole," Maxim growled.
Agent Andrews, to his one and only credit, did as he was told.
Savannah had had just about enough of unmarked black vehicles for one day.
That didn't appear to stop the bureau from sending out an inordinate number of cars, license plate-bearing and otherwise, to the scene of the day's shootout. She stood back, side by side with Maxim, scanning over the sea of exhaust fumes and swirling lights. Men and women clad in every uniform imaginable walked purposefully between cars, exchanging information and double-checking the stories of eyewitnesses. Tom Andrews was currently held up by the ambulance, but his uncleared status didn't prevent him from shooting frequent looks over his shoulder at Maxim and Savannah. She could practically hear the gears turning in his head as the agent tried to work out exactly how much credit he owed the man he still intended to arrest. She heard Maxim's quiet, amused snort beside her, and knew that he was noticing the same thing.
"You know what happens next," she said in a low voice.
"You find a way to put all the blame for this on me and give me a pair of pretty bracelets to wear," Maxim guessed. "You know, I'm almost getting used to being your patsy. Still not used to driving with a taillight out, though."
"I'll look into it," Savannah promised. "Who knows? By the time you get out of jail, you might just find one magically installed."
"Don't know if I'll be getting out this time," Maxim admitted. Savannah cut an abrupt look his way, trying to read his expression, to no avail. Was that resignation she detected in his tone? No way. It was unacceptable to give up now, especially when the department owed him a rare debt. Didn't he see that?
"You're not taking the fall for this. I won't let you," she said. "And I promise that doesn't mean either of your brothers will get picked up as a result. Maxim, look at me."
He did, turned to gaze down his strong, handsome nose at her. Savannah was a woman who prided herself in her steel, her resolve, but seeing Maxim offer her a glimpse now into his private turmoil was almost enough to undo her. "You believe me, don't you?" she stressed.
"Da." The handsome lines of his face flexed in a weak grin. It was something she could work with, at least. "But if this is how the day ends, I'd rather you be the one to do it."
She thought she knew what he meant. Tom was shooting another fervent look their way, and it looked as if the paramedics were getting annoyed enough with his uncooperative attitude to dismiss him. Savannah reached into her back pocket and unhooked her handcuffs. Maxim turned away from her, offering up his wrists without a word. She clapped the cuffs on him and secured them, running the pad of her thumb along one of the pronounced veins in his wrist to let him know how close she was.
"I'm not going anywhere," she promised. "I'm your woman on the inside now. Your fight is mine. We do this together, all right? No more flying solo, and definitely no more risking your life for me. We're partners now."
"I'm in love with you, Savannah.”
Savannah felt her throat clench and her eyes flutter at his admission. Any potential response
she had been busy concocting flew from her mind as she gazed into Maxim's dark, earnest eyes. She wanted to fall into them as much as she wanted to fall into his arms. She wanted to wrap herself in the words she had heard before, but never once allowed herself to believe. Lovers had breezed in and out of her life, but none had ever made her soar the way Maxim did now as he held her with a single, enduring look. She didn't need to pretend she hadn't heard him correctly; she didn't need to ask him to repeat what he had just said. It was the only confession that mattered to her.
And she was determined that it would be enough to set him free.
"I'm going to get you out of this, Karev."
"I know," he murmured. "I trust you."
In the distance, Savannah could see Travis and Rebecca Hammersmith hovering in the doorway to Slick Cycles and clutching one another. Thankfully, neither appeared to be hurt. As Travis spoke to one of the medics, Rebecca's eyes sought them out in the crowded parking lot and fixated on them. She frowned in confusion, arching an eyebrow at Savannah's FBI getup, but before anything could be conveyed between them, Agent Andrews stepped back into view.
"All right." He both looked and sounded shaken, but the skin around his eyes clenched as he summoned his resolve. "I've still got a job to do, and I'm still taking you in. Move it, Karev," he ordered.
Savannah moved first. Before Tom could say or do anything else to spoil the moment, she rocked forward on her toes and grasped Maxim's face between her hands. She smoothed her fingers through the overgrowth of stubble that shadowed his chiseled jaw, relishing a last, stolen moment together—then, in full view of everyone watching, she raised herself up to meet him. Maxim leaned forward, bowing his head in submission.
Their lips met, soft and warm and wonderfully alive.
Savannah smiled into the kiss, and thought she could hear Rebecca let out a cheer in the distance. Closer to home, she heard Tom Andrews mutter an oath of disbelief, but he did nothing immediate to break them apart. Only when she allowed her lips to linger longer than was strictly necessary, and ran her hand suggestively along the angle of Maxim's jaw—only when the Russian shifted his body close enough to brush against the front of hers—only then did Agent Andrews grab for the arm of his suspect and pull him back.
