Читать книгу Secured By The Seal - Carol Ericson - Страница 11
ОглавлениеA chill raced through her body, leaving a pebbling of goose bumps across her flesh. She swallowed hard and met the unflinching gaze across from her, as Alexei’s blue eyes darkened to midnight.
She started to speak, her voice raspy. She cleared her throat and tried again. “What does the note say? Who wrote it?”
“A woman named Tatyana. She’s a victim of...rape, of slavery.”
“Slavery?” Britt wrapped her hands around her coffee cup, trying to warm them, but little heat remained in the lukewarm liquid. “Who? Does she name her rapist?”
Alexei released the crumpled napkin, and it fell to the table in a ball. “She doesn’t name names, but I think it’s clear who’s behind the human trafficking.”
Britt smoothed out the napkin on the table and read the black-and-red lettering of the club’s logo in the corner. “The Tattle-Tale Club? Sergei?”
“A good assumption.”
“Why would my sister be in danger?” She flattened her hands against her belly to soothe the butterflies swirling inside. “D-do you think they tried something on her?”
“I think they’re too smart to try to enslave an American with a family, but your sister must’ve known Tatyana. Maybe Tatyana was reaching out to her for help. If Sergei knew about the note, that would be enough to put Leanna in danger.”
Britt chewed on her bottom lip. She and Leanna didn’t have much family to speak of—just each other, and they’d done a poor job of having each other’s backs up to now. She’d done a poor job.
“I don’t understand.” The strange characters of the note blurred before Britt’s eyes, which were puddling with tears. “I work at the club of my own free will. I witnessed a bunch of women coming into work—some waitresses, some dancers—nobody forcing them.”
Alexei drove his finger into the napkin on the table. “Maybe this Tatyana worked at a different place. They have more than one.”
“They?”
“Sergei’s family. They own a restaurant and banquet hall in Van Nuys. There could be other activity going on there.”
“One of the other waitresses mentioned a banquet hall tonight.”
Alexei’s lean jaw tightened, and Britt could almost imagine smoke coming out of his ears from the anger that kindled in his eyes. He’d done his research. He knew these people. Maybe he could help her find Leanna.
“Is that why you were in the club? You’re investigating human trafficking?”
He blinked once, his heavy lids shuttering the blue depths of his eyes. “No.”
“But now that you know about this—” she poked at the napkin on the table between them “—you can bring charges against them. You can tell the police about my sister.”
“Now that I know about this aspect of their operation, I can use it to further my own investigation. It’s not a good idea to involve the police at this stage. That will just alert Sergei and his family and drive them further underground. We don’t even know who or where Tatyana is.”
Since she’d hit her own brick wall with the police, she wasn’t anxious to return to them for help. She’d rather put her money on this blue-eyed stranger who seemed to understand the seriousness of her sister’s predicament.
Drawing in a breath, she folded her hands on the table in front of her. “If you help me find my sister, because I refuse to believe she’s dead, I’ll help you.”
He raised one eyebrow. “You’ll help me?”
Her gaze dropped to his mouth—no twitching or smirking. At least he hadn’t laughed at her. As she took in the soft sensuousness of his lips, at odds with the intensity of his face, she had a hard time dragging her gaze away from them.
“That’s right.” She blinked and swept her hair back from her face. “I’m inside the club, and I plan to stay there. I can find out who Tatyana is and how my sister knew her. I’ll give you everything I have...and you’ll return the favor by using your resources to look for Leanna.”
Steepling his long fingers, he said, “You’re putting yourself in danger by working at the Tattle-Tale. How do you know Sergei and Irina haven’t already discovered your identity?”
“You have done your research. You know about Irina, too?”
He waved one hand. “Answer my question, Britt.”
Alexei didn’t have a detectable accent—after all, he was a born-and-bred American—but he pronounced her name with a long e sound, like Breet. She liked it. She liked everything about him.
“For one thing, Irina doesn’t know me as Britt Jansen. Like I told you before, I’m Barbie Jones from New York, nice and anonymous.”
“And if they do a search for Leanna Jansen, are they going to find her sister, Britt, who looks a lot like their new waitress Barbie?”
“Leanna went by Lee, and we have different last names. She’s Leanna Low.”
“She’s Chinese?”
“Half. After my mother split from my father, she...ah...played the field. Let’s just say that the only reason she knew Leanna’s father was Mr. Low was because of Leanna’s features.” Britt flicked her fingers in the air. “But that’s another story.”
“So the two of you don’t look much alike?”
“Not to the casual observer. Believe me, Irina has made no connection between me and Lee-Low.”
This time Alexei’s lips did twitch. “Is that why your sister uses the nickname of Lee?”
“Yes.” She tapped her phone and skimmed through several pictures with the tip of her finger. “Leanna has a quirky sense of humor and lives kind of a Bohemian lifestyle.”
She spun her phone around on the table to face Alexei. “That’s my sister. That’s Lee-Low.”
“They’ll never guess you two are sisters, not by appearance, anyway.” He studied Leanna’s picture for a few seconds, running his finger down her sister’s tattooed arm. Then he smacked the table next to the phone. “Delete this photo from your phone and any others you have of your sister.”
Gasping, she scooped up her phone and held it to her heart. “I can’t do that. I have so few pictures of her.”
“Download them to your computer and then delete them. If someone at the club finds your phone, or snoops through it or even if you’re showing them something else and they see any pictures of Lee, you’ve blown your cover.”
“My cover?” She grabbed his hand. “You’re going to take me up on my offer?”
He shrugged quickly. “I figure you’re not going to leave that club just because I tell you to, so we might as well make this deal. I don’t want you putting yourself in harm’s way—no more skulking around. The cameras are going to catch you anyway. Don’t ask any questions about Tatyana or Lee, but keep your eyes and ears open.”
She was still in possession of his hand, so she squeezed it. “I can do that. And you’ll help me find my sister?”
“I will, and I’m going to start by searching through her belongings. Do you have them, or are they still in her apartment?” He drove the heel of his hand against his forehead. “Don’t tell me you’re staying in Lee’s apartment.”
“I’m not that stupid. I did pay her past-due rent and a few months in the future...just in case she comes back, but I rented myself a little bachelor in West Hollywood. I left Leanna’s apartment as I found it, except for this.” She pinched the Tattle-Tale napkin between two fingers and then stuffed it into her purse. “Like I said, it was with her bills that I took with me.”
“Have you been back to her place since?”
“No.”
“Anything else?” Their waitress had returned with a coffeepot and their check.
Alexei glanced at Britt, and she shook her head. “We’re good, thanks.”
As Britt ducked beneath the strap of her purse, she watched Alexei peel off a few bills from the same wad he’d used to tip the Russian dancer. His strong fingers moved with deftness and confidence, and for the first time since coming to LA to look for Leanna, Britt was good.
While Alexei had confirmed her worst fears about her sister, Britt now had someone on her side—a mysterious Russian American with acute knowledge and vast resources.
“Let’s go, moya solnishka.”
That was the second time he’d called her that. She had no idea what it meant and didn’t want to know, but Alexei Ivanov could call her anything and she’d follow him anywhere.
* * *
AS BRITT DROVE through her sister’s seedy neighborhood looking for a parking spot, she continued to keep one eye on her rearview mirror. Nobody at the Tattle-Tale had any reason to follow her, but she didn’t want to tempt fate. With that in mind, she drove around the block from her sister’s place and parked in front of a different, although just as crummy, apartment building.
She exited her car and scanned the block, her gaze sweeping past an older couple walking a dog and a young Latino waiting for someone at the curb, his car idling and his music thumping through the open window.
She didn’t even know what Alexei was driving. He’d walked her to her car in the diner’s parking lot and watched as she drove away. Maybe he had a gadget to materialize and then disappear. She wouldn’t put it past him after watching how he’d altered Sergei’s security footage from his phone.
Hunching into her sweater against the gloomy late-June marine layer that had spread inland, Britt loped down the sidewalk. She turned the corner and made a beeline for Leanna’s pink stucco apartment building.
She jogged up the steps to Leanna’s place on the second floor and held her breath as she peered down the row of doors leading to about six apartments. She stopped midway at Leanna’s door and inserted the key into the dead bolt first and then the door-handle lock.
Her heart skipped a beat at the whisper of movement behind her, and she spun around, her nose meeting Alexei’s chest.
“Hurry, before someone sees us.” He reached past her and pushed open the door, crowding her inside from behind.
She closed it and locked the dead bolt. Turning to face the room, she slipped the key into the pocket of her sweater.
“Is this how you left it?” Alexei took a turn around the small living room.
“Yes.” Britt’s gaze darted among Leanna’s sparse furnishings, lingering on a row of oil paintings propped up against the wall. A dark piece with red swirls was still clipped to the easel in front of the window.
Alexei pointed to the painting. “Your sister was an artist?”
“Yes, and I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have left her work behind.”
“Is it worth anything?” Alexei cocked his head to the side as if trying to make sense of the chaos on the canvas.
“They could be. She told me she sold a few pieces on the street at an art fair.”
“Where did you find the bills with that note on the napkin?”
Britt crossed the room and rapped on the kitchen counter that doubled as a table. “Right here. There were three bills, and the napkin was stuffed inside one of the envelopes.”
Alexei squeezed past her into the kitchen, his leather jacket brushing her arm. While the hot summer weather hadn’t yet descended on Southern California, the jacket and his motorcycle boots seemed like overkill—unless he rode a motorcycle.
He pulled open drawers and cabinets. “Looks like she took most of her kitchen stuff.”
Britt snorted. “That’s what the cops said even though I tried to tell them my sister wouldn’t have had much of that stuff to take. It’s not like she had a set of matching china to pack. Besides, I thought you believed my theory after finding Tatyana’s note.”
“Maybe she knew she was in danger and got out.”
“That’s what I’ve been hoping ever since you translated that note, but why wouldn’t she contact me?”
“Fear? Doesn’t want to involve you?”
“That would’ve been the old Leanna, but I made her promise me at the beginning of this year to call me if she needed anything.”
Crossing his arms, he wedged his hip against the counter. “Why weren’t you two close? Is it because you’re half sisters?”
“We didn’t grow up together.” Britt traced the dingy grout lines on the tiled countertop. “My mother was a drug addict and lost custody of us when we were little. My father’s family took me in, but they didn’t want Leanna. She went to foster care.”
“Your father?”
She shrugged her shoulders, hoping to convey everything, knowing it conveyed nothing at all. “Do you want to search the rest of the place?”
He pushed off the counter and returned to the living room in a few steps. He pulled the cushions off the couch and held up a quarter. “Payback for taking care of her bills and rent.”
He tossed it to her, and she caught it in one hand. “My sister doesn’t have to reimburse me. I just want her back.”
He continued to go through Leanna’s belongings in the living room, flipping through her pieces of modern art. “These aren’t half-bad. They convey a range of deep emotions—rage, terror, hopelessness.”
“You see all that in those swishes of dark, heavy strokes of paint?”
“Must be my Russian heritage.” He twisted his mouth into a smile—of sorts. “Anything else you can tell me about this room? Nothing missing from the last time you were here?”
“Not that I can tell. You think someone searched her place?”
“They may have done that before you or the police got here. It’s a good thing she hid that note in her bills. I guess she was pretty sure nobody would want to look through those.”
“Nobody but me.” Britt caught her breath. “Maybe that’s why she put the napkin with her gas bill. Leanna knew I’d grab all that stuff and take care of it for her. She put it someplace where she could be sure I’d find it.”
“If Sergei’s people never saw Tatyana’s note, maybe they don’t know anything about it. Although you can bet if Tatyana and Lee were close, they noticed.”
Britt clasped her hands together. “Oh, God. I hope Leanna got out of Dodge on her own, sensing danger. But why won’t she call me?”
“Did the police ever ping her phone?”
“Turned off. My sister used cheap burner phones anyway. She was always calling me from a different number.”
Alexei gave the living room a last look before heading to the back of the apartment. He poked his head into the empty bathroom, where a lone towel was hanging unevenly on a rack. “Anything in here?”
“No, and the police clung to that fact.” She nudged him out of the way, liking the feel of his solid shoulder beneath her hands. She yanked open the medicine cabinet above the sink. “All cleared out. Nothing in the shower. As if some...kidnapper couldn’t have swept all her toiletries into a plastic bag and hauled them out of here.”
“Same story in the bedroom?” Alexei jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the final room in the dinky apartment, already making his way toward it.
“There are no suitcases.” She followed him into Leanna’s bedroom. “But honestly, I don’t even know if Leanna had any suitcases.”
He flung open the slatted closet doors, and the empty hangers swayed on the wooden rod. Grabbing a handful of clothing on the other side, he pulled them forward for a closer look.
“These aren’t all the clothes she had, right? I mean, most women—” he released the clothes and they rustled and whispered back into place “—have a lot more than this in their closets.”
As she stood beside Alexei, relishing his shoulder wedged against hers, drinking in the way his dark stubble outlined his lean jaw, a horrible thought hit her right between the eyes. What if he had someone in his life? A wife? A girlfriend with a bunch of clothes?
“Sh-she wore a lot of different outfits with quirky accessories—hats, scarves.” Britt tipped back her head and squinted at the shelf above the hangers. “I don’t see any of that stuff here.”
Alexei stepped back, and she was able to think again without all that masculinity crowding her. She didn’t even know who or what Alexei Ivanov was. After her internet search for him this morning, she was pretty sure he wasn’t a photographer living in Algeria or a boxer. He was probably FBI, and she planned to ask to see his badge or credentials or whatever before she traveled much further down this rabbit hole with him.
He sat on the edge of the bed and yanked open the single nightstand drawer. He reached inside and held up his find, letting several connected foil packs of condoms unfold from his fingertips. “Would a woman take off with her boyfriend without these?”
“Exactly.” The sight of Alexei brandishing an accordion of condoms did funny things to her insides, so she charged forward to prove otherwise, hovering over his shoulder to peek into her sister’s drawer. She wished she hadn’t.
“And those?” She jabbed her finger at the sex toys stuffed in the drawer. “A woman wouldn’t take off with her boyfriend without packing those.”
“I guess not.” Alexei’s eyebrows formed a V over his nose as he tilted his head to the side.
Britt nudged the drawer shut with her knee and brushed her hands together. “I think we pretty much put to rest the boyfriend story, although I’m hoping she hightailed it out of here on her own. Of course, that brings me back to the question of why she hasn’t contacted me. She has to know I’d be worried.”
“Did worrying you bother her before?” Alexei pushed up from the bed and whipped back the covers.
“Not really. Why are you doing that? What are you looking for?”
He flicked the covers back into place. “Bloodstains.”
Britt sucked in a breath, and she plopped down on the edge of the bed. “If somebody did take Leanna, they grabbed her somewhere else. There was nothing out of place here when the manager let the police in. If there had been, the cops would’ve taken my concerns more seriously.”
“Or they snatched her from this apartment and cleaned up after themselves.” He dropped a heavy hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry about that bloodstains comment. I forget sometimes I’m talking to Leanna’s sister. I’m not used to working with...civilians.”
“Who are you used to working with?” She looked up and locked eyes with him.
His hand tightened on her shoulder when the dead bolt clicked from the living room. He leaned toward her, his warm breath stirring her hair as he whispered in her ear, “It’s someone with a key. Into the closet.”
She froze, and Alexei had to grab her arm and pull her off the bed. He hustled her in front of him to the closet and propelled her inside. He closed the door, drawing a gun from his jacket pocket.
He always had it with him—and right now she couldn’t be happier.
He gave her a gentle push to the back of the closet and arranged Leanna’s clothes around her. As Britt inhaled her sister’s signature musky perfume, she almost doubled over from the pain in her gut.
She must’ve emitted some scared-animal sound because Alexei put his finger to his lips. Then he crouched among the folds of Leanna’s clothing and widened the space between two of the slats with his thumb and forefinger.
The front door slammed, and she jerked. She nestled in closer to Alexei’s body, his warmth shoring her up. Her new position also gave her a view of Leanna’s bedroom.
She took shallow breaths as she listened to shuffling noises from the other room. Could it be the apartment manager checking on something?
Heavy footsteps trudged down the short hallway, and a man burst into the bedroom.
Britt’s fingers bit into the leather of Alexei’s jacket when she recognized Jerome.
He flung himself across the bed and heaved out one terrible sob. “Lee, I’m so sorry.”
* * *
ALEXEI DRILLED A knuckle into Britt’s hip as he watched the bartender from last night thrash and moan on the bed. Just because Britt knew Jerome, there was no reason for her to reveal herself to him—and no reason at all for her to out Alexei.
But Britt kept as still as one of those shoes on the closet floor.
Jerome dragged a pillow over his face, wrapping his arms around it. His body convulsed with his sobs, and then, apparently spent, he knocked the pillow aside and stared at the ceiling.
Alexei’s jaw ached from clenching his teeth, so he widened his mouth, shifting his lower jaw from side to side. He’d better relax. Who knew how long Jerome would gaze at the popcorn on the ceiling. He might even dissolve into another crying jag.
When Alexei realized he was still poking his knuckle into the curve of Britt’s hip, he stretched out his fingers and smoothed them over the spot. He had to be more careful with Britt. He wasn’t with his sniper teammates on this assignment. He kept making insensitive comments about Leanna and then would feel twenty shades of guilt as he watched the color drain from her face.
If he had to be stuck in a closet cheek to cheek with someone for hours, he preferred Britt to any one of his sniper teammates—even Slade, who smelled damned good most of the time.
After another five minutes of contemplation, Jerome rolled off the bed. He wiped his face with the hem of his T-shirt. Then he smoothed out the covers and plumped up the pillow before placing it back at the head of the bed.
He took a look around the room, and Britt pressed against Alexei’s shoulder when Jerome’s gaze lit on the closet.
Alexei coiled his already-tense muscles. If Jerome approached their hiding place, Alexei would have to take him down before he could identify him or Britt. He had no clue what Jerome’s little performance meant, but Alexei wasn’t going to take any chances—not with Britt’s safety.
Jerome patted the sides of his short Afro and exited the room. A minute later the front door opened and closed, and the key scraped in the lock.
Still, Britt didn’t move a muscle.
Alexei shifted his position. “He’s gone.”
Britt collapsed against the clothes. “What the hell was that all about? Do you think Jerome killed Leanna? Is that what he’s sorry for?”
Pushing open the closet doors, Alexei took a deep breath. Even the stale air of the apartment trumped the cloying scent of perfume that overwhelmed him in the closet.
“I don’t know.” He waved a hand at the made-up bed. “Do you get the feeling this isn’t his first trip to this apartment?”
“Oh, yeah. This is some kind of ritual for him. The act seemed to calm him, as if it satisfied his need to expunge his guilt.”
Alexei’s eyebrows shot up. “Looked like he was crying on the bed to me.”
She shrugged as she ran her hands along her sister’s clothing, as if straightening out the folds for her return. “I’m a psychologist in the real world, a marriage-family-child counselor.”
“Which is why you were able to take off however much time you needed to do your sleuthing. And where do you practice? You never told me where you lived, although I’d assumed it wasn’t LA.”
“Charlotte, North Carolina—and you never told me a lot of things about yourself.” She snapped the closet door closed.
He moved away from her and his desire to run his fingers through the soft strands of her hair. “Do you think the guilt Jerome was...expunging is a result of murder?”
“I don’t know. Would a murderer want to be caught rolling around on his victim’s bed, spreading his DNA? And what would his motive be? Leanna mentioned a bartender once or twice as being a nice guy—nothing more.”
“Maybe that’s your motive.” Alexei moved into the living room and lifted the edge of the blind to survey the walkway in front of Leanna’s front door. “All clear.”
“You mean, he was hoping for something more than friendship and Leanna wanted to keep it platonic?”
“It happens.” Must happen to Britt all the time.
“Then Leanna’s disappearance didn’t have anything to do with Sergei’s family, the Tattle-Tale or Tatyana.”
“You sound...disappointed.”
“Disappointed that my sister was murdered by a love-struck bartender instead of Russian sex traffickers? I just want her home safe. I want to hear from her. I want to know she’s okay.” Britt’s voice hitched on the last word, and she covered her face with both hands, her blond hair spilling over her wrists.
“I know. I say stupid things sometimes. I have no tact. The typical blunt Russian.” Alexei rubbed a circle on her back. “But whatever happened to your sister, I’m going to help you figure it out.”
She peeked at him through her fingers. “Even if it has nothing to do with your investigation?”
“Even then. What’s Jerome’s last name? I can start by checking him out.”
“It’s Carter. Jerome Carter.” She swirled her finger in the air. “Are you going to look him up on your magic phone that will immediately spit out his name, rank and serial number?”
“Maybe.” He took a turn around the room. “Let’s get out of here before any more surprise visitors show up. Did we leave everything as we found it?”
“We didn’t disturb anything, but I don’t know if we can say the same about Jerome. What was he doing in here before he came into the bedroom? I heard some rustling noises like paper being shuffled around.”
“Paper.” His gaze darted around the room and stumbled over Leanna’s easel. The dark, tumultuous painting now had a white corner. “Looks like he disturbed the painting on the easel.”
In three steps he crossed the room to the window and lifted the corner of the heavy paper. “There’s another painting beneath this one.”
As he held the corners of the top painting, Britt reached over him and squeezed open the clips holding it to the easel. Alexei tugged the paper, and it peeled away from the easel, revealing another, much different piece of art beneath it.
A young woman from the waist up, nude, her arms crossed over her breasts, stared back at him with dark, fathomless eyes. Alexei’s eye twitched, and his left hand curled into a fist.
“Oh, that’s different from her usual.”
“Do you see that?” He traced his finger along a tattoo on the underside of the woman’s forearm. “A snake curled around the letter B.”
“Not your typical hearts and butterflies.”
“I know that tattoo.”
“You do? What is it?”
“It’s the sign of the Belkin crime family, and this woman is their slave. This is Tatyana.”
