“What the hell?”
He hands my purse back to me along with a brightly wrapped gift, the size of a book.
My heart begins to pound. “What is this?”
“Open it.”
I tear off the paper and pull out a plane ticket and a key ring with a key on it. And a baggie of gas station English toffee. “Aleksio—”
“I’m getting you back home.”
“What?”
“Getting you back to your life, baby.”
I hold the stuff in my hands, blood racing. I thought we had more time.
“You’ll be safe. I rented you a new place that’s ultra-fortified. Tito flew down yesterday. He’s setting up your security detail. You won’t have actual bodyguards—don’t worry. But they’ll watch over you from afar. They’ll know if anybody’s watching you. We hired the best.”
I swallow past the lump in my throat. I know I have to go, but I thought he’d fight my going. I thought I’d wait.
He nods at the departure board. “Direct to La Guardia. It’s boarding in ten.”
“So…just like that?”
Aleksio kisses me—hard. Then he puts his forehead to mine, and I get the feeling he doesn’t want me to see his face. “I love you. I always will.”
My throat feels thick. I want to say I love you back. I want to say a world of things.
“You wanted to go, right?”
Standing there, I see a possible life with him flash before my eyes. I see a life with a man who sits on top of a violent machine. I see myself looking the other way from a zillion crimes.
And maybe I have my career, but what kind of mockery would that be, involved with a mafia boss? Of course he’s right. Of course I have to go. Right?
His dark eyes are deep with soul and sadness. “You need to go rebuild the sandcastles that jerks like me kick down.”
My voice trembles. “Right.” I kiss him again.
A droning voice over the loudspeaker announces that my flight is in preboarding. I pull out my ID, telling myself it has to be like this. “Let me know what happens with Kiro.”
“Of course,” he says hoarsely.
I want to say more, but he turns and walks away, dark and lethal in his suit, just the way he came back into my life. But so different.
The security line is short. Before I know it, I’m up at the front, untying my shoes.
Chapter Thirty
Aleksio
I’m halfway back to the hotel when my phone rings. Relief jolts through me because I have this idea it might be Mira, calling to say she’s not leaving.
But it’s my investigator.
At least I’ll have some good news, I think.
It’s not good news.
“I’m sorry, Aleksio,” he says. No greeting, just the apology.
“Let’s hear it.”
“I’ve been running every image through every motor vehicle database out there. I subcontracted it to my guy in D.C. to run it through the State Department database. I expanded it to my Canadian contact. We’re all coming up empty.”
“You said we could find him if he had a driver’s license or a passport.”
“Maybe he doesn’t have a driver’s license or a passport. Maybe he modified his appearance for those visits. Maybe the software doesn’t have enough data points.”
The road unfolds ahead of me, a bleak gray ribbon through tall pines. “Okay. What now?”
I don’t like the long silence that follows. “All we have is the man’s picture,” he says finally. “He’s a needle in a haystack the size of North America. Worse than a needle. A ghost in the haystack.”
“And?” I try not to sound impatient, but he didn’t answer my question. “What now?”
“I can keep looking, of course,” he says. “I can keep trying new things, but I’m not going to lie to you. We’re looking at months, probably years. We may never find this guy.”
“Keep looking,” I say. “He exists. He’s out there. Whatever it takes.”
Viktor and Yuri are in the pine-and-waterfall lobby when I get back.
Viktor has that haunted look on his face that he always does when he monitors the Valhalla feed. I take a seat.
His hand trembles as he puts away his phone. Is he that upset about those girls? Maybe he’s the wrong person to put on it. “You don’t look good, brother,” he says.
I could say the same for him. I don’t. I launch into the news about Kiro.
The trail is pretty much dead—that’s what the investigator said in so many words.
“No,” Viktor says. “He needs to look again.”
“Viktor…” I stare up at the shining blue sky beyond the glass ceiling, imagining Mira’s plane up there in the clouds. And Kiro…who knows where he could be?
A waitress comes over, and Yuri orders vodka—no, not three glasses; a bottle and three glasses.
“He gives up too easily on our brother. He needs incentive, I think.”
“It’s a computer search of image databases,” I say. “You can’t just make the computer give better results. And nobody’s giving up, it’s just…” I’m about to say “more impossible,” but I amend it to “harder.”
“We will never give up,” Viktor says, in a tone like he wants to kill somebody.
“Never,” I agree.
“And we will destroy Lazarus without Kiro. I will squeeze his skull until his eyes pop out, and then when we find Kiro, he’ll have a place in the world. We take it back for Kiro.”
Our vodka arrives. Yuri pours.
Viktor lifts a glass. “We get bloody. Nobody’s stopping us now.” With Mira gone, he means. “When we’re done with them, they’ll pray for death.” He drinks. Yuri drinks.
I stare into the clear liquid.
“What is it, brat?”
“I can’t drink to that. Getting bloody just to get bloody. Violence and vengeance.”
Viktor looks at me like I just announced I hate vodka and hundred-dollar bills.
“Don’t worry, I’m good for my word,” I say. “I’m committed to taking back what’s ours and destroying the vile parts of it. I’ll do what it takes to get Kiro back if we ever—when we get a lead. But violence and vengeance…”
I meet Viktor’s scowl.
“She thought I was worth saving,” I continue. “It did something. It changed something in me…” I’m just as surprised as Viktor appears to be. But it’s true. Things feel different.
“Changed something in you?” Viktor spits out. “More like ruined you.”
I think back to that moment in the hotel, staring into Lazarus’s eyes. I could’ve executed him right on the spot. My greatest enemy. “Ruined me for some things.”
He rolls his eyes. “Fine. To her, then.”
I eye him suspiciously. He shrugs.
“To her.” I drain the glass.
He pours another.
“To Kiro,” I say. “We’ll never give up. And Yuri. To brothers of all kinds.”
“Brothers with beat-up faces. The best kind. Skol.” We throw back the cool-burning alcohol. I hold my glass out for more. He pours.