“Hello?” she answered, as she stepped out into the hall – and then kept going, walking silently up on her toes until she reached the window that overlooked the moon-silvered goat pasture.
Background noise came through the connection: overlapping voices, hum and chug of office equipment. A squeak, and then quiet. When Melissa spoke, her voice had that echoey quality Raven associated with public restrooms. “Are you alone?” she asked, voice tense – excited, maybe. Dripping adrenaline.
The sound of it alone had Raven’s pulse picking up. “Close enough. You can talk, I can talk a little less.”
“I’m about to jump in the back of a van,” Melissa said. “Kat dropped some intel into our laps that we were able to pretend came from one of Rob’s undercover contacts. It pointed to suspicious, potentially-trafficking activity at the house where Toly went to meet Mikhail Morozov. It’s gonna be a joint raid: Sex Crimes and Organized Crime. If we find what I think we will, Homicide will join the party in a few hours.”
Raven felt like she’d been sucker-punched. Dizzy with it. “Jesus. What–”
“There’s nothing for you to do,” Melissa rushed to assure. “Stay put, stay safe. We’ve got all the legwork and paperwork handled. This is totally above board, and your name hasn’t come up once. We got him,” she said, already triumphant. “Just keep all the guys up there, out of trouble, and I’ll call you in a bit when I’ve got the asshole in bracelets, okay?”
“Okay,” Raven echoed, automatically. Then managed to draw a deep breath. “God. Thank you, Melissa.Thank you.”
“You bet.” The call disconnected.
Raven pressed her phone to her chest and gazed out the window, breath fogging the glass. Almost over, she thought. They’d find evidence of something horrible, arrest Morozov, and then Toly would be free without ever firing a shot.
~*~
It was a relief when she left the room. Toly’s face felt on fire from his admission. He’d thought telling her he loved her last night would be the most difficult confession of his life – but it turned out, confessing that same thing, in so many words, to her father and most annoying brother was equally stressful. He’d gone from never expressing an emotion to expressing the most acute emotion to three people in less than twenty-four hours.
The urge to go back downstairs for another drink was only snuffed by the prospect of walking past Devin and Tenny again, but without Raven as a shield this time. Reese could murmur Tenny’s name all he liked, but it didn’t actually ever stem the abuse. He lit a cigarette instead – and then his phone rang.
His hackles lifted right away. His president was ensconced in his study downstairs, and wouldn’t have bothered calling. This was news, then.
When he checked the screen, it read, simply,M. Misha.
He nearly bit his cig in half in anticipation; took a fast drag, exhaled, and answered with a terse, “Yeah?”
“He called.” Misha’s voice was its usual, calming baritone, but undercut with a fine vibration of satisfaction. “The Butcher’s son. He called asking about his morphine. I set up a meeting.”
Toly took another drag before he tried to speak, willing the nicotine to slow his spiking heartrate. “Does he know who you are?”
“Yes. I told him – and I told him about you, too.”
Shit. “What did he say?”
“That he wants to work things out like men. See us face to face. He wants his morphine – I think it’s how he sedates his victims.”
Toly’s thoughts were spinning. A face to face meeting meant only one thing: someone wasn’t walking back out under his own power afterward. And for his own part, things had changed –everythinghad changed. He’d told Raven he loved her. He’d told her about meeting with Misha, about working with him again, and even if he hadn’t spoken of the hard pull of nostalgia, the quiet devastation on her face had told him she understood without being told.
He'd not promised to cut ties with Misha in so many words…but he owed it to her to share what he learned. To be honest and upfront, and exercise caution when it came to the bratva.
“We didn’t find other victims,” he said, after too long a pause. “Only the maid, and his father, who wasmyvictim.”
Misha paused, too, and his tone had hardened when he spoke again. “The club’s pet cop couldn’t find them for you, but thereareother victims. Men like this don’t stop at one. He has a fetish, just like his father did, and he has to feed it. Do you think he’ll stop wanting you dead just because you leave town?”
Misha knew about that, then. Of course he did.
Toly took a short, hard drag, and didn’t try to disguise his exhale. “What does meeting him accomplish? Do we get the drop on him? Shoot first? We don’t know that he’s working alone. We won’t have eyes on him, ‘cause the bratva doesn’t know you’re doing this, working with me. But he could have friends; he could have the meeting place watched from afar.”
“Of course I thought of that,” Misha said, dismissively. “He’ll meet. He’ll let us talk. I made him an offer.”
A hard chill gripped Toly’s spine and shook it, like a dog breaking a rat’s neck. “What sort of offer?”
An offer, it turned out, that Toly didn’t like at all…but one that, if it worked, seemed primed to get them in the door unharmed.
“You’ve got to trust me, Toly,” Misha pressed. “I want him gone just as bad as you. And we have to handle it just the two of us, without our people knowing. I can’t have Andrei learning about it, and I can’t do it alone. I need you.”
