by Beth Yarnall
I didn’t know how my brother hit a homerun every single time, but he somehow managed to have steadily, increasingly beautiful girlfriends. One after the other they just got more and more stunning. Alice had to be the top of the pinnacle with her gorgeous long red hair and ivory complexion. This was only the second time I’d met her—which was a new record—and I could’ve sworn she’d gotten more beautiful since the last time I’d seen her.
Super Agent went slack-jawed and glassy-eyed. I hit him in the stomach with the back of my hand. “This is Clive,” I told Alice, glaring at my soon-to-be ex-boyfriend. “He’ll be sleeping alone tonight.”
“Hi.” Alice gave Super Agent about a second of her attention, then turned back to me. “I’m so glad you’re here, Maggie. I’ve been so worried.”
“Yeah, I got that. When was the last time you saw him?”
“Tuesday morning. We were supposed to meet for dinner after work, but he never showed. The police let me file a missing person report, but there hasn’t been any news.” Her eyes got all watery, and if it was possible I hated my brother a little more for it.
“Is there anything missing from the apartment?”
“A suitcase and some clothes.” She swiped at the tear running down her perfect cheek. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“No, I don’t think you do. Unless you’re wondering how Miguel is going to eat and wipe his ass with two broken arms.”
She laughed. “You sound just like Miguel.”
“That’s not going to win you any points with her,” Super Agent pointed out to Alice. “When was the last time anyone heard from or saw Miguel?”
“I’ve pinned it down to five p.m. on Tuesday when he left his office,” Alice said. “The last person to see him was the security guard as Miguel walked out the door. He hasn’t been seen or heard from since.”
The one thing Miguel loved most in this world was being seen and heard from. A slow, insidious slip of dread snaked its way through my chest. Call it twin-tuition, call it a gut feeling, but I believed Alice. Something bad had happened to my brother.
“You can’t be serious,” Super Agent said.
“As serious as the butt-kicking Miguel’s going to get when I see him.” I’d asked Super Agent for the teeny, tiny favor of putting Miguel on the FBI’s missing persons list. I batted my lashes at him. “Pleeeeeease?”
“You really think there’s foul play here?” Super Agent obviously didn’t.
“Yeah. I kinda do.”
“Fine.” His gaze dropped to the front of my dress where cleavage ran free. “You’re lucky you’re so darn sexy.”
“And you’re going to get extra lucking for saying that.”
Super Agent moved to the desk in the corner of Miguel’s bedroom. We’d promised Alice we’d go through Miguel’s things to look for clues she might have missed. I was sorting through Miguel’s closet, which smelled faintly of him, reminding me of the last time I’d seen my brother.
He’d stopped by to ask me if he could borrow my car for a few days with some excuse about his tires being too bald to make the long trip he intended to take. I think he knew I’d just washed and gassed it up. As usual I gave in to him. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t blame him for it. There was just something about his smile and the way his gaze moved over your face, taking everything in like a search beam. He’d let his hair grow long, nearly to his shoulders and it had tickled my nose when I’d hugged him goodbye.
“Thanks for the loan of the car, sis.”
“Just don’t crash it.”
He started down my front walk and then turned back. “Do you think I could ask one more favor?”
“You always do.”
His laugh was off center, tilting toward self-deprecating. “Yeah, I guess I do.” He glanced down at my car key in his hand, then back up at me. His expression bothered me, but I couldn’t put a finger on why then or now. Maybe because it was so unlike him as was the favor he was about to ask. “Take care of yourself, okay?”
“Yeah, sure.”
The morning sunlight picked up the burnt red in his dark hair and bleached his blue eyes nearly white. I was struck by how much he looked like our dad, and it made my chest hurt.
“I was wondering how your brother managed to get Alice, this house, this life,” Super Agent said, drawing my attention back to the here and now. “He’s got no discernable income and a rap sheet as long as my right leg. Not to mention the fact that he’s a con man. She seems—”
“Too good for him?”
“I was going to say too smart to fall for his B.S.”
“You got all that from the optical groping you gave her?”
He stopped rifling through Miguel’s desk to glance up at me. “I’m a trained observer. It’s my job.”
“You’re also a dude with working dude parts. At least I assume they’re working. Not that I’ll get to find out tonight.”
“Nah-ah. We have a schedule to keep.” He checked his watch. “We’re already more than half an hour behind. But we can catch up if we leave soon.”
“Like I said, working dude parts.”
“I still don’t get why you think he’s missing. There’s nothing here that would lead to that possibility. No sign of foul play, no ransom note or phone call…nothing.”
I pulled my head out of the closet and closed the door. He was right; this was a complete bust. “You’re going to think this is nuts.”
“Coming from you? No doubt.”
“You just got docked an hour, buddy. No make-ups.”
“Aww, come on. You’ve got to admit that you live at the center of a vortex that seems to funnel nothing but trouble your way.”
He had a point. I seemed to be a magnet for messed-up tragedy lately. What with getting accused of murdering my ex-Arizona-state-senator boyfriend, nearly being murdered by an FBI-wanted transvestite, being the object of a stalker who’d killed my annoying coworker as some kind of tribute, and being on probation. But I was still docking him the hour for pointing all of that out to me.
“Are you done insulting me?” At his nod I continued. “It’s because of the twin thing. I can’t really explain it, but it’s like there’s this other part of me that’s not me.”
“Like a phantom limb?”
“Yeah, kinda exactly like that. Sometimes I can feel him, like that time when we were ten and he broke his arm. I got a really sharp pain in my arm in nearly the same place at the same time. Same thing happened when we walked in here. I got the feeling that Miguel is in over his head and that he didn’t just run, he’s hiding. He’s in some kind of trouble. I just don’t know what it is.”
“Okay, so who would know what he’s been into lately? Does he have any friends or associates? I can pull his sheet and see who he’s been in trouble with before.”
“Just like that? You believe me?”
“Yeah.”
“Congratulations. You got your hour back.”
We finished going through Miguel’s condo and even though I found all his hidey-holes—which really impressed Super Agent—we didn’t find anything that would give us a lead on Miguel’s whereabouts. We said our goodbyes to a teary-eyed Alice and headed to my apartment across town.
Once there, Super Agent immediately got on the phone and worked his FBI-Special-Agent magic to put Miguel on the FBI’s missing persons list and to pull up his rap sheet. He’d been right. Miguel’s arrest record was longer than anybody’s leg. I had no idea he’d been arrested so many times. Not all of the charges had stuck, which made Super Agent frown. It was kinda cute how he thought every arrest should lead to a conviction, or at the very least some jail time and parole.
Which was pretty ironic considering I was currently on probation without having served any jail time. We almost never discussed my reduced charge of disturbing a crime scene or the fact that I could be sitting in a cell for additional weapons charges. The gun had been registered…just not in my name. The police were such sticklers for that kind
of thing. But thanks to my helping the FBI capture the murderer of a state senator and an internationally wanted fugitive I’d only gotten two years of probation.
“There is one name that’s popped up a few times in connection with Miguel’s,” Super Agent said.
He was drinking coffee, his feet propped up on my coffee table as if he was prepping for an all-nighter. The thought of what Super Agent could do to me in a whole night made me want to forget my wayward brother and get to the part where he reactivated my dormant lady parts.
“Sergei Levkova.”
That name sent a chill through me, blasting away all my other thoughts. Talk about your past coming back to bite you in the behind. Sergei Levkova. I’d briefly thought to call him when I was mentally running through the list of my brother’s friends—his name was still in my cell phone. I’d transferred it into three different phones yet I hadn’t spoken to him in more than four years. For good reason. I’d put him firmly behind the door marked Only open in case of severe emergency or complete insanity.
“Why does that name sound familiar?” Super Agent asked.
Here was the part where I could stare at the ceiling, whistling, or I could come clean.
He grunted. “That’s why.” He turned his laptop so I could see the screen, his FBI-Special-Agent gaze scanning my expression like a laser lie detector. “He shows up on your arrest record too.”
Sergei Levkova had contributed to more than my arrest record, but that was something I couldn’t discuss with Super Agent.
“We used to hang out,” I hedged.
He eyed me some more and I was pretty sure he knew I was hiding something. “Did you know he and Miguel own a business together?”
“No.” There was a reason why I didn’t keep close tabs on my brother and an even bigger reason why I wouldn’t follow whatever he and Sergei had cooked up together.
“Vasili Investments. It looks like it’s some kind of investment brokerage firm that boasts high returns. Hmm.”
He clacked away on his keyboard some more. I was at the edge of my seat now with the feeling of leaning over my own grave. I sent a frantic, fruitless prayer that he wouldn’t dig too far into Sergei or my relationship with him. That was a Pandora’s box that should never be reopened. But I knew enough about Super Agent to know he wouldn’t stop digging until he had all of his questions answered. And the man never ran out of questions.
I popped up out of my seat and tapped my bare wrist. “We’re behind schedule. I should’ve been naked and finding religion an hour ago.” Unzipping my dress, I started for my bedroom, hoping some skin would make him forget all about my brother and Sergei. I turned back and looked at him over my bare shoulder. “I’ll be in the bedroom assuming the position if you’d like to join me.”
My dress slid down the rest of the way to pool at my ankles. I kicked it at him, hitting him mid-chest. He practically threw his computer across the room and leapt off the couch, chasing me until we hit the bed. We landed in a twisted pile of limbs, struggling to rip each other’s clothes off. And then he kissed me and I forgot all about Miguel and Sergei.
By the time we were completely naked and rolling around on the bed I couldn’t remember my own name. Everything went out of my head except what Super Agent was doing with his hands and oohhhh…his mouth. His glorious, glorious mouth.
I woke up with Super Agent’s warm body pressed against my backside, his arm around me, and his leg over mine. It was like even in sleep he kept me tethered to him as though he was afraid I’d slip away. Which was ironic because that was exactly what I intended to do.
Wiggling like a deranged belly dancer, I was able to work myself free without waking him up. I’d worn him out pretty good so it was little wonder he slept so hard. I managed to find the dress I’d worn to dinner with Super Agent and went into the bathroom to put it on. How I looked was going to be important. I couldn’t exactly waltz into the club in my flannel PJs with my hair giving Medusa a run for her money.
Satisfied with how I looked, I tiptoed past a still-snoozing Super Agent with my high heels in hand and made it out of my apartment. I couldn’t have come up with an excuse for why I was leaving right after melting the sheets with Super Agent. Not one he’d buy anyway.
The club was in Phoenix, which was only twenty minutes from my Scottsdale apartment, but I sweated the whole way, wondering if Super Agent was going to wake up pissed off and catch up with me. I’d left my cell phone at home on purpose. Mostly because I didn’t put it past him to use his FBI-Special-Agent skills to track me like the dog I was. The guilt was killing me, but I couldn’t get it out of my head ever since Super Agent had said his name that Sergei was involved in or knew about what my brother was up to.
And I knew just where to find Sergei at one forty-five a.m. I pulled up to the front of EGO, the nightclub Sergei had opened just before we split up, and handed my key to the valet. There was still a line of people waiting to get in even though last call was in fifteen minutes. I sashayed my way to the front and was relieved to find Billy working the door.
He did a double take when he saw me. “Maggie?”
“Yup.” I jutted out a hip and propped my hand on it like I still garnered the VIP treatment. “I’m here to see Sergei.”
He shook his head, no doubt remembering the way my last call with Sergei had gone down, and lifted the velvet rope to let me through. “Good to see you, sexy.” I was sure if I turned around I’d catch him checking out my ass, but I was too cool to find out.
The place was pumping as loud and hard as my heart. And it was packed. I didn’t get why Sergei would go into business with Miguel when he already had a successful venture like this.
I found Sergei holding court in the VIP section surrounded by women as usual. Another bouncer stood between me and the answer to my brother’s whereabouts, but unfortunately I didn’t know this one.
“I’m here to see Sergei.” I did the hip-jutting thing again, giving Built of Blocks a bored look.
“You and every skirt in club,” he said in a thick Russian accent.
“Tell him Maggie’s here.”
“He know no Maggie.”
“Really?” I moved the left strap of my dress and pulled it down to reveal the tattoo I’d had done during my time with Sergei.
Built of Blocks’s thick eyebrows jumped up his forehead. “Pardon. I did not know.” He motioned me into the VIP lounge.
More than one mistake marked my body, but this tattoo symbolized more than a drunken night gone wrong or a whim I couldn’t shake. This one had branded me as Sergei’s. He wore its match over his heart. They were of his own design and my forever key into his world.
I strolled up to the booth where Sergei lounged with a blonde draped on one side and a brunette on the other and waited for him to notice me. The only way to get Sergei’s attention was to not demand it.
He picked up his glass and shot it straight back. That’s when he saw me.
“Myshka,” he breathed as he set his glass down with a thunk.
I’d caught him by surprise. He wouldn’t have used his term of endearment for me if I hadn’t. His little slip had every head at the table turning in my direction.
“May I have a word?” I asked with more confidence than I felt.
“Leave,” he said with a wave of his hands.
They slid out of the booth one at a time, passing me with interested looks and flat-out curiosity. The blonde’s jealousy raked over me like claws. I’d have punched her, but I could tell she was just too stupid for me to put out the effort.
“Sit,” Sergei told me in his lightly accented English. “Can I get you a drink?”
“No, thank you.” I eased into the booth, keeping a respectable distance. “Do you know where Miguel is?”
“I am fine. How are you?”
“Fine. Miguel?”
He made a rude sound and finished off the rest of his drink. We eyeballed each other for a moment. Normally when I run into someone I’ve gone ou
t with I wonder what I ever saw in him. Not true of Sergei. I remembered exactly why I’d been with him for as long as I had. Setting aside his big, tall, blond, hot Russian-ness, he was charismatic in a way few people are. With him I’d lost all commonsense, the ability to form a single original thought, and my virginity.
“So it’s true,” he said.
“What?”
“He was smart enough to skip town, but not smart enough to do it without Kostya’s money.”
“What are you talking about? How would Miguel get ahold of your uncle’s money?” Kostya was more than Sergei’s uncle, he was as mobbed-up as you could get. If what Sergei was saying was true, my idiot brother didn’t just steal from a mobster. He stole from the mob boss himself.
Sergei got the attention of a cocktail waitress and held up two fingers. Shoot. This meant he was about to tell me a story I didn’t want to hear.
He ran his dark gaze over me, no doubt taking in what had changed about me while also cataloging what hadn’t. He reached out and moved the strap of my dress, revealing the tattoo, his tattoo. “You still have it.”
“Don’t you?”
He lifted his shirt, giving me an eyeful of sculpted abs and my tattoo atop his perfect pec. All too soon he covered it back up. “It’s good to see you, Maggie. You look good.”
“Thank you. So do you.”
The waitress deposited our drinks. Sergei picked up his glass, prompting me to do the same. He clinked his against mine.
“To Miguel.”
I took a sip of what I knew to be the very best tequila on earth. It had always been nothing but the best for Sergei.
“I helped him start up a new investment firm,” Sergei began. “I didn’t realize he’d turned it into a Ponzi scheme until after Kostya had invested a large sum of money and Miguel had run off. I started getting phone calls from my uncle three days ago, asking where Miguel and his money were. I love your brother, but he’s an idiot. Kostya’s looking for him. God help him if he’s found.” He downed the rest of his drink.