Resurrection

by Wendy Million

  “Jay? Ricardo?” I ask when he eases away.

  “Jay is fine. Ricardo is dead.”

  “Dead? How?”

  “We got lucky. Ricardo was a direct hit through a window.”

  “Oh.” I smooth my hair at the top of my head. “Right. This is...I mean, I know we deal with weapons, but they aren’t often used on us.” I lean against the counter while Finn opens kitchen cabinets. “What are you looking for?”

  “First aid kit. I can patch that up, no problem.” He nods toward my shoulder.

  “There’ll be a kit in the car's trunk.” The graze is still trickling blood, but the pain isn’t the same as before. “What’s Jay doing?”

  “Calling the Russian police and figuring out how we can pay them off to keep us out of this.” He winks at me. “Money can solve almost anything if you get the right people.”

  “Except you hate disloyal people.”

  He chuckles. “Only when it doesn’t go my way.” He reaches for me and then he thinks better of it, sliding his hand into his front pocket. “Let’s get you to the car. We can wait there for Jay to finish, and I’ll patch you up.”

  “Thank you,” I whisper. “If you hadn’t—”

  His jaw tightens, and he won’t meet my gaze. “But I did. The lesson here is that you are never to be the first person in or out of anywhere, not a car, not a house, not a boat, nowhere.” He stares at me. “You got me?”

  “I don’t want you or Jay hurt or killed either.”

  With a shake of his head, Finn purses his lips. “Jay’s paid to do this. It’s his job. He doesn’t want it; he can go work somewhere else. And me? I’m disposable. I got nothing going on right now except for helping you. What’s another bullet wound?”

  “You’re not disposable to me.”

  He doesn’t miss a beat, gliding over my comment as though my husky voice filled with need sounded matter-of-fact instead of desperate. “For the purposes of entering and exiting places, we’ll pretend I am. Also, I could use my own fucking gun.”

  I keep an arm crossed over my middle as though it can shield me. “Okay.”

  He leads the way out of the house. We pass Jay on the phone in the living room. He has my gun in his hand as we walk to the vehicle, ready to aim and fire at any moment.

  “Maybe they were after Ricardo?” I say.

  “Maybe.” But Finn doesn’t sound convinced.

  I get into the backseat, and he grabs the first aid kit from the trunk. He opens the door and settles beside me. For a moment, he sits with the red bag wedged between his hands. His gaze trails over me, assessing. As he unzips it, he says, “Take off your shirt.”

  “You can put a bandage over it if I slip my shirt off my shoulder.”

  His fingers skim my shoulder, and he shakes his head. “’Fraid not. I’ll do a shitty job.” When he shifts in the seat to bandage my shoulder, a wince escapes him.

  “What about you?” My brow furrows, remembering his injuries and the way he moved in the house. “You could have torn stitches.”

  “Oh, I’m sure something is torn.”

  “Let me see.”

  He smirks. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

  “Not the best line I’ve heard.”

  He eyes me with amusement. “Well, you’re sober now. I suppose I should have known I’d have to up my game.”

  I find the hem of my shirt and hesitate. Should I take it off? “And you think I’m confusing.”

  He eases away from me, giving me space. When he ruffles the hair at the back of his head, he winces. “I won’t touch anything but your wound. I swear.”

  His promise is both what I’m hoping for and what I’m afraid of. His hands on my body are enough to send other parts of me into overdrive. Steeling myself, I remove my shirt in one swift motion. True to his word, he homes in on the gouge in my shoulder. He works in silence for a few moments, cleaning the wound and then finding the right dressing for it. As his fingers dance across my skin, my body heats, minimizing the sting from my injury.

  “Might scar,” he says.

  “I have people who can fix it if it does.”

  He indicates the scar on my chest as he packs up. “Why didn’t you fix that?”

  The knife that pierced my heart.

  I brush my fingers against it. “Feels like an old friend now.”

  He squints and then frowns. “What the fuck kinda friend is that?”

  “One who reminds you of the places you don’t want to go again.” An asshole thing to say when he’s been so kind. Instinct drives me to draw him to me, but also to repel him as far away as possible. I open my mouth to apologize when his jaw tightens. I may not know what I want, but I know what I need. The responsible choice. Distance. The closer we inch together, the closer sober Carys is to saying fuck me, please. There’s still enough of me that cares about the consequences.

  He forces the zipper on the kit. The metallic sound of the teeth clicking together is loud in the tense silence.

  “You should let me look at you.” I try to take the bag and our fingers brush.

  The driver’s door pops open, and I yank my shirt back over my head in a fluid, frantic motion. Finn chuckles beside me.

  Jay’s gaze connects with mine in the rearview mirror, and he raises his eyebrows. His eyes flick between me and Finn but he says nothing about the blush raging across my cheeks. “You hurt?”

  “A graze.” Finn settles deeper into the seat near the door, far from me. “A brush with danger.”

  Satisfied, Jay shifts the vehicle into drive. A brush with danger. If only that was it. But his flames lick at me from across the car, enticing me, biding their time until they can burst into an inferno, consuming me whole.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Finn

  Cary insisted on going to a Russian doctor she has on-call to get me patched up before venturing to Valeriya’s again. I let him check me over while Carys and Jay are out in the waiting room.

  “All clear?” I ease my shirt back over my head.

  “Minor issues,” the doctor says. “Be more careful. You’re not healed yet.”

  I grunt as I slide off his examination table. “You service the Van de Berg employees?”

  The doctor scribbles a prescription for pain on his notepad, rips it off, and holds it out. “Yes. Why?”

  “Valeriya? I hear her father is some kinda mafia kingpin.” I don’t take my eyes off him, trying to assess his level of knowledge.

  The doctor’s face is granite. “I cannot discuss her with you.”

  “So she is a client?”

  “Enough that I cannot discuss.”

  I fold the prescription and tuck it into my back pocket. For a moment I stare at him, wondering if I can get him to say more. My instincts tell me she’s making dirty deals. She’s been working an angle or more than one behind the scenes. Whoever she’s working with, Valeriya thinks they have more clout than Carys. Who?

  The last time I was blindsided by something I should have known is still fresh in my mind. I’m not keen to start a pattern. Poke, prod, dive to the bottom of any person who might have information. The doc isn’t budging, but at least Valeriya has been here. Routine appointments? Or more than that?

  The doctor opens the examination room and ushers me out with his hand.

  Carys and Jay rise from their plush seats when I amble toward them, my hands shoved into my pockets.

  Her worried gaze meets mine. “Everything okay?”

  “Fine.” I shrug. “More drugs.”

  We get into the car, and Jay navigates the streets to Valeriya’s place with ease.

  “What if she doesn’t talk?” I focus on the scenery while we cruise into a more upscale section of the city. Blackmail—maybe the doc has something we can blackmail her with. Access will be key.

  “She will,” Carys says.

  I run my knuckles across my cheek. “I don’t like it. Half the money to Ricardo goes missing. You’ve got an empty warehous
e that should be full. Your showrunner here is a mafia princess with a chip on her shoulder. The situation is a fucking mess.”

  “Thanks for the summary.” Carys removes her lip gloss from her purse and presses it against her lips. As she screws the gloss down and caps it, she looks at me. “Valeriya has been with me a few years. I’ve never had an issue with her.”

  “This doesn’t seem like an issue to you? Seems like a big fucking problem to me.”

  “She’ll be back in line today. I’m telling you, nobody in Russia wants to be poor.”

  “Someone is backing whatever she’s doing. You’ll need to be tougher on her.”

  She sits straighter in her seat. “You don’t have a clue how I run my business.”

  “You’re right. But I understand when someone is getting fucked over. Unless you locked her accounts, she’ll have moved her money. Will you be able to find it again? Who knows?”

  She crosses her arms. “I don’t need a Plan B. She’ll fall in line.”

  My lips quirk up in a half-smile. “Care to wager?”

  “Wager?”

  “If I’m right.” I don’t give myself time to consider the wisdom of this bet, spurred on by the desire to prove to her I’m more than a physical asset. “You and me, dinner tonight—no alcohol.”

  She narrows her eyes. “And if I’m right?”

  “Whatever you want.”

  Her cheek caves as though she’s biting the inside of it. “I don’t know what I want.”

  “Yeah, that’s clear.” I lean across the seat with my hand outstretched. “I don’t mind living on the edge. You win? You can decide your prize after. There’s nothing you could ask for that I wouldn’t give you.”

  Her eyes always remind me of whiskey, and they’re filled with uncertainty even as she grasps my hand. “Seems too good to pass up.”

  I wink at her. “That’s ’cause you aren’t going to win, anyway.”

  “On your right,” Jay calls out, as we glide up to Valeriya’s building.

  The concierge comes out with a valet to park our vehicle.

  We climb out and take the elevator up to her fancy apartment. As the doors to her floor open, a tingle of unease skitters up my spine. On instinct I draw the gun Jay slipped me earlier from its spot on my lower back. Carys has her gun in her purse. At my movement, and perhaps sensing the same thing I do, Jay removes his gun before we step out of the elevator. Down the hall on our right, two burly guards stand outside Valeriya’s door.

  “Those are her father’s men,” Carys says, from behind us.

  We slow our approach when the guards see us and draw their own weapons. Carys or Jay need to take the lead, or I’ll shoot first and worry about the consequences after.

  “We’re here to see Valeriya,” Carys says.

  “With guns?” The taller of the two men raises his eyebrows. “Why guns?”

  “Jay and Finn didn’t recognize you.” She slips past me and leads the way.

  Jay holsters his gun, and I dam up a flood of annoyance because she’s out front again. Reluctantly, I slip my gun into the waistband of my jeans.

  “What’s going on?” Another voice emerges from inside the apartment.

  “Demid.” Carys rushes toward him. “We were here to see Valeriya.”

  A tall, broad man with blond hair and light blue eyes similar to his daughter appears in the doorway just as we arrive. “She’s not here. I have not heard from her in a few days, so I came to check on her. She’s not answering her phone.” He leaves the entrance to let us in.

  Carys goes in first, and the tide of my annoyance rises.

  “I don’t know. The door was locked, but her keys are here.” With his fingertips, he lifts them off the side table. “Her phone is gone but her purse is in her room.”

  She frowns and glances at me. I’ve been so busy cataloging the security mistakes she’s made, I haven’t been listening.

  “She’s missing?” She scans the room.

  “Yes.” Demid gestures to the immaculate apartment.

  “Where’s her phone? Did you find it?” I search the main room, checking the logical places it might have been left. Without waiting for an answer, I go through the main bedroom, too.

  “I did not see it,” Demid calls.

  “Has she been acting oddly lately?” Carys says, from the other room.

  “No more than normal. Why? What do you know?”

  The defensive pitch of his voice isn’t a good sign, and I come out of the bedroom to stand at the entrance of the living room.

  “Nothing. Just trying to help.” She seeks me out over Demid’s head. Is she thinking about how we threatened Valeriya yesterday?

  “One of my men is getting the security footage for the last twenty-four hours,” Demid says.

  “She seemed fine yesterday when we saw her.” I lean against the doorframe. “Visiting a boyfriend? A friend out of town?” That’s not what I think, though. She took her money and got the hell out of town, maybe out of Russia. But where did she go? Who did she go to?

  “You were here yesterday?” His voice is sharp, and he glares at Carys.

  “We’ve been having problems at our warehouse,” she says.

  Demid’s gaze rakes over her and then shifts to me. “I recognize him.” He points to Jay. “You. You look familiar but not from here.”

  I nod. “I’m not from here.” Unlike the situation with his daughter, my killer reputation won’t be a useful piece of information now. The last thing I want to do is drop Carys any deeper into this shit.

  He grunts and then examines Carys again. “She’s valuable to you, no?”

  She takes a beat. “She is.”

  “So you will find her?”

  “We will,” I chime in from across the room. We make eye contact, and the unspoken communication is so loaded I wonder if Demid can sense the weight. Does she want me to help her? Now, she doesn’t have a choice.

  “No stone will be left unturned. You have my word.” I cross the room and offer Demid my hand. He takes it in a firm shake, straightening his shoulders.

  “You have kids?” he says. “You understand?”

  I release my grip. Carys tenses beside me. When we were together, she wanted it all. The kids. The husband. The home her parents hadn’t provided for her. I’d never been sure what I wanted, what I could give someone, and so I’d said nothing in return. Life hadn’t worked out as she’d expected. Sometimes I want to ask her what happened, but the timing is always off, and her answer probably won’t satisfy me.

  “No kids.” I rock onto my heels. “But I understand what it means to love a person beyond reason. To do anything to keep someone safe.”

  From the corner of my eye, she turns her head away, her fingers pushing a strand of her hair back in place.

  “I’ll give you a week to find her. If you don’t,” he eyes Carys who is focused on her feet, “I will send out my more aggressive people.”

  If we haven’t managed to track her or narrow her potential locations in the next forty-eight hours, the search is a lost cause. Anyone who has ever hunted someone knows the first forty-eight hours are gold. Everything after is a crap shoot.

  “That’s fair.” I lead him to the door.

  Carys has been oddly silent, and Jay took up the search of the apartment I abandoned. He’s banging around the bathroom even as I get Demid to the exit.

  “We’ll check here more for clues,” I say. “Trash, diary entries, whatever we can find. She has her phone. Keep trying to call her. She might pick up.”

  When I shake Demid’s hand in the doorway again, his man approaches from the hallway. When the guard gets to us, Carys hovers by my shoulder.

  “Security footage?” I say.

  It’ll be one less thing we’ll have to mine.

  The man checks for his boss’s consent before speaking. “She left alone, phone in hand, about three hours after you came here yesterday.”

  “Bags?” she asks.

  “Nothi
ng. Just the phone.”

  “Can you send the video to Carys?” Hopefully their technology is good enough we don’t have to go looking again ourselves. Sometimes there are clues to a location or direction nobody sees at first.

  The guard takes the outstretched phone from Carys to copy her email address.

  Demid is lost in thought for a moment. Then he half-turns back to Carys. “Was she in trouble with you?”

  “We don’t know,” she says, her voice steady. “We came to see whether she could help us track our missing product from the warehouse. She was...evasive.”

  He grunts. “You don’t fucking touch her when you find her. If she did something wrong, I’ll deal with her. She’s screwing with my business, too.”

  “I appreciate how these things work.” Her voice is firm. “I didn’t think you realized what was going on.”

  Promises are dangerous, so I’m not making any. His daughter is on the run. Who knows what’ll happen when we track her?

  Demid gives me a last appraisal, as though he’s assessing my trustworthiness. I don’t blink. The only person I owe any loyalty to is Carys, and if someone is threatening her, that trumps everything else.

  He wanders along the hall with his men, his back hunched. A brief surge of longing for my father zips through me. The man I’m mourning isn’t my father though, it’s some idealized version of him I let live in me for a while. He was never the man I needed, and I wasn’t the son he wanted. I take a deep breath and roll my shoulders, trying to keep the past buried.

  After securing the door, I turn on my heel, a smirk on my face. “What was it I said earlier? Something about Valeriya fucking you over, wasn’t it?” I grin. “A bit of a pump and dump, but definitely feels like she fucked you.”

  Carys lets out a frustrated huff. “You don’t want to eat dinner with me when I’m sober. I’ll bore you to death. I’m a lot more fun when I’m drunk.”

  I brush past her, and I chuckle. “Guess we’ll find out.”