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Oh, fuck.

“He’ll keep chatting like a normal scam client.” His voice is as relaxed as if he were planning a picnic, not a raid on a fortified compound. “But there’ll be no more information passed through the messages.”

I keep my head down. “How will I know what to do?” I try to match his low, even tone.

“The auction is this weekend. We’ll get you and your friends out of here, Abs.” For all of Luke’s reassurance, it doesn’t escape me that he avoids the question.

The guard tower is coming closer. I slow my pace again, knowing I’m tempting trouble. “Dimitry?”

His teeth flash white in the darkness. “He’ll see you soon.”

I nod again, not trusting myself to speak.

“Hey!” A guard runs up behind me, his rifle catching me a glancing blow over the head. “You! Run faster!”

I pick up my pace.

When I look at the fence again, Luke is gone.

34

Dimitry

Andaman Sea

“It’s very kind of your friend to let us use his yacht.” I give Leon a quizzical look. “Have you filled him in on what, exactly, we’re using it for? There’s a more than even chance it might end up blown sky-high, if our friends in the compound work out it’s our base of operations.”

“He’s aware.” He smiles cryptically. “Let’s just say he has stakes of his own in this particular game. And more than enough money to buy another yacht, if necessary.”

We’re talking in the pilot cabin of the yacht from which Abby flew back to SK several days ago and which is now currently moored in a secluded bay within easy distance of the compound.

“He’s also elusive, this friend of yours.” Roman gives Leon a rather narrow look. Pavel and Mickey’s combined skills have yet to uncover the owner of the yacht, which has made him understandably twitchy.

“Elusive is a good thing,” Mak intervenes smoothly, shooting me the ghost of a wink. “If Pavel and Mickey can’t work out who owns it, then nobody else can either.”

Roman scowls, but at least he shuts up.

I suppress a grin as I open up the schematics on the chart table. Mak is possibly the only person to whom Roman will actually listen without argument. And given that he’s just arrived with three teams of highly trained private mercenaries, I’m extremely relieved he’s here.

Although I am surprised to discover he and Leon know one another. And not just in passing either.

“You know what this reminds me of?” Mak is saying as he pours Leon a coffee from an Italian moka pot. His eyes crinkle at the edges, darkness swimming beneath the mercurial blue. Despite being on a yacht in the Andaman sea, his tall figure is impeccably clad as ever, in a three piece suit no doubt crafted by some Savile Row tailor. He and Leon seem roughly the same age and height, though where Leon’s bulk rivals my own, Mak is less obtrusive. His figure has a louche, rakish quality that I know from experience disguises utterly lethal abilities.

“Chechnya, the first time?” Leon nods, grinning as he takes the short glass of thick black brew. “We were stuck on that damned boat in the Caspian Sea for months. Your coffee was the only thing that saved me from complete despair.”

“Well, that and the vodka.” Mak clinks his glass to Leon’s.

“Oh, the vodka.” Leon tilts his chin. “Yes, that was certainly memorable.”

“You two really do know each other,” Roman says, looking between them.

Mak glances at me. “A story for another time, I think. Dimitry.” He crosses to the chart table and puts his hand on my shoulder. “Talk us through it.” He nods at a box on the table. “Luke and Paddy are already on site. They’re on the line now.”

“Hey” comes Luke’s low, steady tone through the box. “I can smell that coffee from here, Mak, you sadistic prick.”

I grin. “Good to hear you, Luke. Right. Let’s do this.”

Mickey, Pavel, Alexei, and Bryce move away from the screens they’ve been watching and join us around the collection of maps on the table.