Page 53 of Scorned Beauty

My head whipped forward, my heart lurching in my chest with the most feeling it had in weeks. A blacked-out SUV screeched to a stop in front of us.

“Oh my God.” My foot slammed on the brakes, but instincts had me reversing only to be blocked in by a police cruiser.

“Shit,” Billy muttered in a way that told me he screwed up.

Dread slithered up my spine. “What’s going on?”

“Stay here,” my brother said. He got out of the van and jogged over to the driver’s side of the black Chevy Tahoe.

He was arguing with the driver. My gaze shifted to the rearview mirror to see cops redirecting traffic.

Billy returned and said, “Follow the Chevy.”

“What the hell is happening?”

“Sis, for fuck’s sake, listen to me. Follow that Chevy and don’t call any more attention to yourself. This wasn’t supposed to go down this way.”

I followed the SUV and crossed the intersection. “Are you a snitch?” Because that SUV hadfedswritten all over it.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. Five minutes later, the Chevy pulled into an alley and I parked right behind it.

Three men emerged, but betrayal smacked me hard when I recognized one of them. I couldn’t trust anyone anymore.

My neighbor Phil stood right in front of the van. But he wasn’t looking like the software salesman. He was in black tactical gear.

I glared at him and got out of the car. “I take it you’re not a network security vendor.”

“Sorry for this, Sloane.”

“Who the fuck are you? Fed?” My gaze swept to his other companions. One was in a suit. The other was dressed similarly to Phil.

“Phil is fine.”

“Fuck you.”

“Listen, Sloane, you’re on limited time. Grigori is expecting you at the Venezia Tower.”

“You bugged my phone?” How? “What else did you do?” Oh my God. He would know about Dom. The familiar turmoil in my stomach started. I clapped a hand over my mouth, barely keeping down the tacos I’d eaten for dinner.

“I’m sorry.” And he really looked apologetic, but it could all be an act. After all, he fooled me. “I cloned it. But I was under orders from my superiors.”

His words went in and out of my ears like a faulty radio because I was drowning in the sea of repercussions of Phil being a fed. The outing at the pub. That was in December. That was the only time he would be close enough to clone my phone. Oh. My. God. I didn’t care about Grigori, but the catastrophic consequences to Dom terrified me.

I could only manage more than a whisper. “If you want me to ghost Grigori, you better have new identities for me. My brother. And…and Harriet!”

“No. We want you to go through with it.”

“Then I don’t understand. If you want me to hand over evidence, you must know I never leave a job with it.”

“We know that.”

I glared at Billy, who had gotten out of the van and was standing motionless, letting Phil do all the talking. There was time to interrogate my brother later.

“And you’re very thorough about it. You don’t even leave traces of it in your vehicle.”

I narrowed my eyes. His meaning clear. He’d broken into my van.

“We lost contact with our informant and we have a feeling the Russians got to her, so it was a break when they called you.”