Page 13 of Scarlet Promise

I’m now soaked through, and it’s cold. It’s early fall, but wherever we are is cold. I shiver in my wet, thin T-shirt.

He tosses the bottle, ignoring me as he pulls out his beeping phone.

“Please,” I say, “can I have a blanket?—”

“Shut the fuck up,” he mutters. “Keep quiet, and don’t go anywhere.”

He grins nastily at me as he leaves.

And I’m alone.

Once again.

“Ilya,” I whisper. “Where are you?”

No one answers.

Chapter Four

ILYA

Time movesboth fast and slow as we work.

Demyan’s on the phone, making calls and pulling favors, just as I am. If we can get the locations where Simonov may go to ground or places he favors for more clandestine operations, then we’ll be closer to finding Alina.

Albert finally left with Svetlana and Erin. It seems he likes children, but he occasionally pokes his nose in, like he’s trying to find out if we have his mistress back yet. He makes my heart ache harder when I need it to be fucking stone.

I’m not Demyan, and I know his heart isn’t that, but in most circumstances, he can shut down and put up shields.

Unless it involves Erin and his kids.

That’s what I’m struggling with, keeping the hardness, the ice, the stone, the coldest anger in place so I can do what needs to be done to get her back, when all I want to do is panic.

Any other situation, I’d quietly ask him if this is what he went through with Erin and Sasha when they were taken.

But I can’t.

Because Alina’s his fucking baby sister.

I hang up the phone, staring at the device on my desk.

“Any luck?” I ask Demyan in Russian as he disconnects his call.

“I’m not sure. There are a number of businesses that would be closed right now where he could hide her around Chicago.” A muscle tics in his jaw. “Including some under layers of names in other territories.”

“I can’t see him going into other people’s territories and hiding out, even if he owned the place incognito. It’s just…risky.”

“And?” The belligerence brews just below the surface of my best friend.

I think about what my PI told me seconds ago. He doesn’t have much—a possible sighting of a car in Melor’s name along with a van that is registered to Simonov’s cousin’s wife.

I tell Demyan what I told the PI—to follow, report in, get the fuck out of Dodge if he thinks he’s compromised, and don’t get too close.

“The van’s interesting,” I say. “It’s a good way to transport a kidnapped girl around.”

“We find them, crush them that way.”

“It’s not that easy, Demyan and you know it.” I shake my head. “Besides, the PI’s team lost sight of them. They’d have switched by now.”