Page 32

The wide sky above me is blue and clear, like a doorway opening.

One I know it’s time to step through. “Working beneath you has never bothered me,” I say slowly, “or not enough to make a fuss about. But let’s be very clear about something.

I never took an oath to you, Roman. Never crossed my palm with fucking blood, or whatever the Cosa Nostra boys do.

I never even signed a goddamn contract.” I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with the clean Australian air.

“It’s always been my choice to stand beside you.

Maybe, when this is done, it still will be.

But I’m not asking your permission to search for Abby.

I’m telling you that is what I’m going to do.

What you do with that, with me , is entirely up to you. Are we clear?”

No response.

I start walking toward Luke’s car. “I said, are we clear ?”

I’m pulling the car door open when he finally answers. “Fucking crystal. ”

“Good.” I throw my bag in the back, climb in, and close the door. “Then I’ll call when I have an update.”

“The first thing we need to do is get you some new clothes.” Luke eyes my chinos and shirt critically. “No offense, mate, but you stand out like dog’s balls dressed like that.”

I give his board shorts, loose T-shirt, and flip-flops a skeptical look. “If new clothes means looking like you, I’ll pass, thanks.”

He grins. “We’re headed north to cattle country, brother. That means jeans, boots, hat, and lots of dirt. I’ll take you shopping on the way out of the city. You can get your head down for a bit on the drive up to Leetham.”

“Thanks.” I settle back in the seat, grateful that Luke is the kind of man to whom I don’t need to explain urgency.

He might be of Australian origin, but he spent over a decade in the British SAS, the most deadly operational special services regiment in the world, acknowledged as such even by the Navy SEALs and Delta Force servicemen in the US Army.

Luke has seen enough active war zones to last most men a lifetime.

Instead of retiring, however, and talking about his exploits on some bro-heroes podcast, he went straight from the SAS into private contracting for Mak and just carried on being a warrior—only for a much bigger paycheck.

I’ve fought beside a lot of hard men, from Miami to Spain and back again.

When Roman first became pakhan of the Stevanovsky clan, we were in the middle of a war.

It was nothing but bullets and bombs for years.

But even the hardest men I met during that time have nothing on Luke Macarthur, not something I’d say for many men, and even less for those outside the bratva.

Except now you’re out of the bratva too, Dimitry .

Oddly, that doesn’t bother me. Not even after the hellishly long flight and the hard phone call with Roman.

All I can think about is finding Abby.

There just isn’t any room in my soul for anything else.

An hour later we’ve left the city behind and are on the highway heading northeast, away from the sparkling jewel-green sea and stark white sand of the coast and inland across flat scrubby plains.

My newly acquired clothes are soaking in a tub in the back of the Land Cruiser, absorbing an ugly mixture of seawater and red dirt, which Luke assures me will give my new clothes the right character.

“Tell me again what the plan is,” I say as we drive. “You’ve got a contact up north who might know something, you said?”

“Of sorts.” Luke drives barefoot, with one hand looped loosely over the wheel. He still has a surfboard tied to the damned roof, and I strongly suspect he’s planning to catch a wave or two if we head back to the coast. I’m not sure whether I’m more amused or annoyed by that.

“My stepfather was a violent prick of a man.” He says it without any visible anger.

“He was also a member of a bikie gang called the Banderos, which is now the biggest motorcycle gang in Western Australia. Given that the state is three and a half times the size of Texas, with less than a tenth of the population, that might not seem very important. But the Banderos see parts of it most people never do. And fortunately, although my stepfather was a prick, not all of his bikie mates were the same. The Banderos originated on the east coast, where I was born. They had a split in the ranks a decade or so ago, which is when the Western Australian chapter was started. One of the men who started it is a bloke called Turbo—yeah, I know,” he says, seeing my raised eyebrows.

“But you’re in Australia. Everyone here has a nickname. ”

“Everyone?” I give him a sideways look. “What’s yours, then? ”

Luke tilts his chin, grinning. “You’ll never fucking know, asshole.

Anyway. Turbo was always good to my sister and me, when we were younger.

I ran into him in a Perth pub a few years back, and we exchanged numbers.

He’s still pretty high up in the Banderos hierarchy, which means that whatever they’re into, he knows about.

He’s got a small place up in the scrub. I suppose you’d call it the outback,” he says when I look confused.

“But don’t go calling it that out here. The outback is right out in the middle of nowhere, in the desert.

The scrub, where Turbo has his place, is just a small place on a large block, fifty kilometers or so from the nearest town. ”

I give him a skeptical look. “And that isn’t the middle of nowhere?”

He laughs. “Fuck no, not out here. In country Australia, if you can get to a shop within an hour, it barely even qualifies as rural living. Anyway, I called Turbo not long after I sent you that article, asked if I could come up and see him, so that’s where we’re headed.”

It might be the jet lag, but I’m still not following. “And we want to meet this Turbo guy why, exactly?”

“Remember that night we got drunk in Miami, just after Abby first went back to Australia?”

I wince. “Barely. Fucking tequila shots. Ridiculous idea.”

“Yup. Well, you mentioned that night that Abby had a bit of a... history with some Colombians.”

My eyebrows nearly shoot up to the roof. “I did?”

Fuck, I must have been plastered if I was talking about that.

“Yeah.” Luke gives me a sideways glance.

“Some Colombians walked into that last bar we were in, around four in the morning, and one of them looked at you the wrong way. Given the mood you were in, it looked like it might turn nasty, so I got you the fuck out of there. Afterward you said you didn’t have a lot of tolerance for Colombians, because Abby had some trouble with them in the past. ”

I rub a hand over my face and stare out of the window. “Feel free to remind me of this moment if I ever look like opening a tequila bottle again.”

He grins. “To be fair, Abby had just left, and you were jet-lagged because you’d flown over from Spain, so you get a leave pass.

Anyway, my point is that if Abby’s had trouble with Colombians in the past, I thought they might be the root of her troubles now.

And the reason the Banderos bikie gang succeeded in making a big name for themselves is because they just happen to be Western Australia’s chief distributors of Colombia’s primary export: cocaine. ”

“Ah.” The pieces are falling into place. “So you figure this Turbo guy might have heard something?”

“Let’s put it this way,” Luke says, stretching in his seat.

“There’s very little that happens in this state that Turbo doesn’t hear about.

The only problem is that bikies have the same kind of honor code as you bratva boys do.

Along with the same disregard for the law.

Not to mention a thirst for rabid violence when the situation calls for it.

In short, Dimitry, the Banderos are not to be fucked with.

So we’re going to need to tread carefully.

And that means that when we get there, I talk and you listen. Copy?”

“Copy that.”

“Good. Now close your eyes and catch some Z’s. I’ll hang your clothes out the window to dry and wake you up when we’re getting close.”

I close my eyes obediently, but I already know sleep won’t come.

Colombians.

Even the word makes me uneasy.

It has ever since that night on the beach when Abby told me what little she felt able to about her past. I knew better than to push her.

We may not have spoken directly about it again, not after that first fight, but it was always there between us, just as my allegiance to Roman always was.

What did you expect, Dimitry? That if you just ignored it for long enough, eventually her fears would go away?

It seems so fucking stupid, in retrospect.

But that’s the thing about happiness. When you’re holding it in your hands, the only thing you can think about is how good it feels. Planning to keep it seems like a waste of that good feeling.

Until it’s gone.

I hunch into the door, willing myself to sleep.

Because after happiness is gone, all you can think is that you were the fucking idiot who let it go.