Inside the hangar, the California sun had heated the stagnant air all day, and the fetid warmth permeated Tristan’s wet clothes until he felt balls-deep in a steaming swamp.
Jian was leaning against the car they’d rented, a silver high-end BMW that Tristan hadn’t even gotten to drive, and he waved. “Your luggage is on the plane, including Ms. Frost’s laptop. I take it we’re leaving?”
“We are definitely leaving,” Tristan told him.
“Have you filed a flight plan yet?”
“No.”
“Do you have a destination in mind?”
“No.”
“Right. We’ll need to decide on those and soon. What are your options?”
Tristan’s shoulders cramped. “Chicago, I guess? I have a meeting there with some other business associates in two days, ones who probably won’t sell me out to an international crime syndicate.”
Colleen, ahead of him, turned back. “That’s where they’ll expect you to go.”
Tristan ran his hand through his wet hair. “What options do you recommend?”
“Back to Phoenix. It’s unexpected.”
“Last time we were there, we were shot at.”
“But those guys will have cleared out. They wouldn’t have left people there after you left the state. So it’ll take them a while to figure it out, and then they’ll have to ship new people in.”
Tristan turned back to Jian. “We’re going to Phoenix.”
Jian nodded. “Excellent. I’ll take care of it.”
Air rushed out of him. “Thanks, Jian.”
Jian bent a fraction from his hips. “My pleasure, Mr. King. Might I also recommend that this time, we hire a car service, and we book the hotel and car discreetly under pseudonyms because perhaps we do need it?”
They might have been standing in a dark, sweltering airplane hangar, but Jian Laio was throwing some serious shade. “Yes, Jian. Point noted. Perhaps I’m not quite as anonymous and inconsequential as I’d thought. For this week, anyway.”
“Yes, sir.” He strolled toward a small office door set into the aluminum wall in the rear of the hangar.
Colleen climbed the small staircase to the door of the private jet, and Tristan followed her up. The still-wet gold silk was practically painted on her form, and he took a second to admire the pert globes of her ass with absolutely no panty lines in the clinging fabric after he’d ripped that flimsy scrap of lace right off her before they’d gone to supper.
Her shapely body under that yellow fabric made him want to flip her upside down and peel her like a banana.
From behind him, Tristan heard a man’s voice shout, “Oy!”
Oops, Micah. Yeah. He turned around and trotted down the echoing stairs and over to where Micah was standing. “Mate, sorry about that. Thank you so damn much for the rescue.”
Micah winced, squeezing his opalescent eyes and then looking away. “I don’t like that you’re in trouble with the goddamn Butorins, Twist. We’re the same blood type, and I might need a kidney someday or something.”
“It’s just a misunderstanding. I’ll get it cleared up in a few days.”
“But it doesn’t seem like just a misunderstanding, Twist. The Butorins don’t kidnap people over misunderstandings. And you even said on the helicopter that you had something they wanted, a computer virus.”
“I’ll get it handled. I always get it handled. Whenever I’m in a scrape, I always handle it.”
“Yeah, and it’s just the Butorin bratva. These days, they’re small change after they turned on each other and split into factions. It’s not like you’re in trouble with the White Russian organized crime syndicate.”
When Micah said that, his steady gaze did not seem casual, which made his comment ominous.
Tristan kept his voice light and rocked on his toes a little bit, fidgeting as if nothing in the world could be wrong. “I haven’t heard of them. Sounds historical.”
“From what I’ve heard, they see themselves as the descendants of the Russian czar and aristocracy, as opposed to the Red Russians who became the Communists during their Revolution.”
He cracked a smile. “Has anyone mentioned to them how the other White Russians ended up?”
Micah rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but anyone who was on the losing side of history thinks they were right, and this time it will turn out differently.”
“Right. Is this a new name of Putin’s people?”
Micah winced and bobbled his head. “They’re allied with Putin, or else they wouldn’t be in business. They had a different starting point, though. They’re new, so their kids weren’t at Le Rosey with us. They came out of the gun runners supplying the Chechen rebels and other insurgencies. Their only motive was profit, not ideology, so they fit right in with Putin’s people. But I’ve heard their influence has grown exponentially over the past couple of years.” Micah paused like he was searching for the right words. “You haven’t had any dealings with them, have you?”
6
On the Plane
Tristan
That serious look had returned to Micah’s shimmering eyes, and the tightness around his mouth was a hard line.
Yeah, this was important. Tristan said, “I don’t think so. Should I have heard of them?”
Micah paused, then said, “The White Russian syndicate loaned liquid cash to American old-money families when those very wealthy families were running short in the last recession. They’re bankrolling a lot of those high-society families now. One of the ways those wealthy families have gotten around paying their taxes is to take out loans on real estate and use that money to pay their daily expenses like food and servants’ salaries. Americans don’t pay income tax on money from a loan. Then they have one of their businesses pay back the loan using pre-tax dollars, and they write it off as a business expense. And thus, rich people don’t pay income taxes. They pay one or two percent interest to a bank instead of forty percent to the government. But the White Russian syndicate has been bankrolling these rollover loans, using them to launder money from gun-running, drug deals, and human trafficking.”
Tristan didn’t understand. “Okay, do we know some of the people who are in debt to them from Le Rosey or something? I don’t get what I’m supposed to be taking away here.”
Micah looked out the end of the hangar. The lights of Los Angeles twinkled in the night, and airplanes screamed from the airport runways beyond the heliport. “The White Russian syndicate is taking over some of the territory held by the old bratvas. If they contact you, be careful. They’re goddamn ruthless. Murder now and talk later kind of people.”
“Micah, did they contact you?” Tristan asked, trying to make it sound non-judgmental.
He turned toward the night sky outside the gaping end of the hangar. “No.”
“But they’re contacting people.” Like, by letter?
No, the people who’d taken over Logan Bell’s grandfather’s trust had sent Tristan that letter, calling in the promissory note he’d signed when he was twenty-two. A Mary Varvara Bell had signed it, and it hadn’t mentioned anything like White Russians.