I shut the door on that thought before it goes any further. The sex hormones must still be muddling my mind for me to even entertain an idea that insane. If I stayed, I’d be nothing more than Yan’s sex toy, I’m sure of that. Besides, even if I were willing to take this kind of risk, it’s not all about me.
Hanna needs me.
The thought of my grandmother steadies me, as always. I can’t afford to give in to this whim, to let attraction to a handsome killer distract me from my responsibility to the woman who raised me. She’d cared for me my whole life, and now it’s my turn to do the same for her.
“Goodbye, Yan,” I mouth silently, and tightening my grip on the sheet, I jump down.
Part II
6
Yan Colombia, Present Day
As is my habit lately, I pull out my phone to check my email. With all the shit that’s gone down in recent months, getting information in a timely fashion is key.
“Where’s Kent?” Julian Esguerra asks when Peter Sokolov—our former team leader and the reason for our current predicament—walks in, joining me, my brother, and our teammate, Anton Rezov, in Esguerra’s office.
“How should I know?” Peter retorts, taking a seat next to me at the oval table. I’m only peripherally aware of his presence, or that Ilya is crunching on a cookie Esguerra’s housekeeper brought in earlier. All my attention is on my inbox, where a message from our hackers has just landed.
“Isn’t he staying in the house with you?” Peter continues as I open the email.
“He was making the rounds with the guards this morning,” Esguerra says. “Looks like we’ll have to fill him in later. I have a call coming up.” A beat, then: “Any word from Henderson?”
“No, and I wouldn’t expect to hear from him anytime soon. We’re still”—Peter pauses, as if to check the time—“about an hour from the start of the deadline. I’m guessing we’ll have to make good on our threat with at least a few bodies before he realizes we’re serious.”
“All right,” Esguerra says as I skim the message. “I’ve already given our men the instructions on which hostages are to be killed first. Any word from your hackers?”
I look up from my phone. “Actually, yes. They’ve just tracked down the sniper for us—the one who shot the agent during Peter’s arrest.”
Peter visibly tenses. “Who is he?”
“He is apparently a she,” I say, reading more of the email. “Goes by the name of Mink and is from the Czech Republic. Hold on—the picture is loading now.”
“What about our doppelgängers?” Anton asks. “Any word on those fuckers?”
His words reach me as if through a wall of water, the roar of my heartbeat thunderously loud in my ears as shock and fury twist my guts. I’ve always prided myself on maintaining a cool head, the tight leash I keep on my emotions often fooling people into believing I don’t have any. But there’s no reining in the volcanic rage building inside me.
On my phone is a face I never thought I’d see again—a pale, pretty face framed by short, spiky white-blond hair. The photographer caught it in partial profile, and if there were any doubts in my mind about the woman’s identity, the tattoo of the hummingbird on the side of her neck and the piercings studding her delicate ear would’ve dispelled them.
The sniper who shot a SWAT agent during Peter’s arrest, setting off the firefight that resulted in the deaths of his in-laws, is none other than Mina, my pretty waitress from Budapest.
The girl for whom I’d obsessively searched for days after she ran off.
“What is it?” Ilya demands, and I tear my gaze from the screen to find my twin frowning at me.
If I try to speak, I’ll explode. So I just hand the phone to him, letting him see.
His harsh face freezes. “Her?” He looks up, jaw flexing. “She is Mink?”
Peter grabs the phone from Ilya and examines the picture with a confused frown. Of course, he doesn’t see what Ilya and I see.
He’s never met the deceitful little bitch, nor come dozens of times to the memory of fucking her.
“Who is she?” he asks, looking up at me and my brother. “How do you know her?”
I force the words past the knot of rage in my throat. “It doesn’t matter.” I snatch the phone back from Peter, fighting the urge to break his fingers in the process. “I’m sending men to capture her. She may know where Henderson is.”
“It does matter,” Esguerra says as I furiously type an email to those of our men who are in Europe, scouring it for traces of Henderson, the former US general who’s Peter’s—and now our—greatest enemy. I send them the hacker’s file on Mink/Mina and direct them to capture her alive.
We not only need to question her about Henderson, who’s apparently her employer, but I have an interrogation of my own to conduct.
“Who the fuck is she?” Esguerra demands when no one replies to Peter.
“We met her in Budapest,” my brother explains grimly as I send off the email and look up. “She works as a waitress in a bar.”
Anton, the fucker, is staring at me with dawning recognition. “Did you sleep with her a while back?” he blurts out. “Is she the one Ilya was pouting about when we were in Poland?”
I almost plant my fist into his bearded face. Only a lifetime of self-discipline keeps me still, my fingers squeezing the phone so hard it’s bound to leave bruises on my palm.
My brother can’t control himself nearly as well. “I wasn’t pouting,” he growls back, murder in his eyes. “But yes, he”—he jerks his thumb at me—“fucked her.”
My vision speckles with red, the rage inside me boiling out of control. Pivoting to face Ilya, I slam
