by Lee Kilraine
He stood at the window staring out into the darkening sky, but all he saw was the hurt and confusion on Mira’s face when he’d suggested she should disappear. His gut clenched at the pain he’d caused her and at the thought of her leaving.
“Kaz, you should have told me you were stuck working with Jones. What a douche.”
He’d been lost in his thoughts and forgotten his brothers were in the office helping him. Damn. Pull it together, Kazimir. He turned his attention back to the room. Paxton and Quinn sat on the couch, helping him track down leads on the laptops he’d handed them a few hours before.
“Yeah, well, he’s in charge of the case and I don’t have a choice.”
“Before the douche arrives, tell me what’s going on with Mira.” Paxton shut his laptop and focused his gaze on Kaz. “You two have a fight?”
“Why would you think we’ve had a fight?” Kaz moved to study the note cards he’d pinned to his bulletin board on the wall opposite his desk. He was looking for a pattern in how and where the Russians were swapping out different front businesses for money laundering. “Nothing’s going on.”
Paxton rolled his eyes while Quinn stayed focused on the laptop in front of him.
“That’s why. Because nothing’s going on.” Paxton leaned forward, his elbows resting on the computer. “Don’t forget . . . I know you and Mira had something going on. So what gives?”
Kaz shoved his hands in his pockets, jiggling his keys and refusing to think about what had happened between himself and Mira four days ago. “It’s not going to work out.”
“Funny, because a few days ago it was working out fine.”
He knew Paxton was talking about the virtual reality; the conversation he’d mistakenly been privy to.
“Hell, Kaz, you’ve been fascinated with Mira since she showed up and did that sexy Elvis impersonation.”
That got Quinn’s attention. “Was it that good?”
“That hot, and not too shabby on the Elvis songs either.”
Damn, he and Mira had grown to know each other so well that the Elvis impersonation felt like it had happened a year ago. But also, it could have been yesterday. Their time together was passing swiftly—too swiftly. But all the research he’d done in the last few days had made one thing clear. He needed to help Mira disappear.
Ivan Prostakov was a two-bit player probably one step up from hired muscle was Kaz’s guess. The man had a long criminal history over the past fifteen years, but that wasn’t the problem that had Kaz worried. No, the real problem was the guy was a sadistic bastard. Crazy Ivan held grudges and was big on payback and revenge. He’d stalked and terrorized others before. He also seemed to take pleasure in hurting people. There was no way he’d leave Mira a target for scum like that. “I’m going to help her disappear. It’s the best way to keep her safe.”
“I’m not so sure about that.” Paxton shook his head. “He’s tracked her to three different cities and two states. He’s been at this for, what did you say, over a year? You know how hard it is to disappear. It’s easy to slip up, make one mistake, one wrong search, forget to hide your IP address, run a search for yourself to see if you’re covering your tracks, and end up accidentally lighting up your location like a marquee sign on Broadway.”
Quinn nodded. “And when one of those happens—you’re saying you want her all alone, trying to defend herself?”
“You don’t understand. Read the damn file I put together on him.”
“Oh, I think I understand exactly, Kaz. You live your life calm and cool. You calculate the odds before you do anything. If you don’t have total control, you get twitchy. That’s why you do all that meditation and even the kung fu—it’s all about you maintaining control and trying to control your risks.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about. Tell him, Quinn.”
Sitting back in his seat, Quinn crossed his arms. “Actually, Kaz, I agree with everything Paxton said. You rarely let go. Part of your problem is you’re so damn smart. You study things until you do them well.”
“Right.” Paxton jumped in. “But you’re so used to doing everything well, you aren’t as willing to take a chance on the things you aren’t sure about. Like relationships.”
“Mira and I aren’t in a relationship.”
“Really? Let me think what I’ve heard around the Grapevine recently. . . you and Mira have been seen at the arcade, catching meals at the diner, over at Coffee & Comics, you work out at the 24/7 together, y’all make it to chess in the park at least once a week.” Quinn looked over at Paxton, snapping his fingers. “What else am I missing, Pax?”
“The museum in Greensboro, heard you went to GamerCon together and to my knowledge, you’ve never taken a woman to GamerCon before. You’ve hit up the Planetarium. Hell, you’ve been seen at the new bookstore.”
Quinn shook his head. “I’ve got news for you. For two people not in a relationship, it sure seems a lot like dating.”
Paxton snorted. “A lot? Try exactly.”
Well, damn. His brothers were right. Kaz sat on the edge of his desk to think it through. He and Mira were dating. And had been for weeks. How had he not seen it? His heart stuttered and he rubbed his hand in a small circle over his chest in a vain attempt to get it to settle back to normal.
“You doing okay over there, Kaz?” Paxton watched with a grin on his face. “Heart palpitations?”
Kaz narrowed his eyes at his twin, who was enjoying this entirely too much. “Too much caffeine.”
“Right.” Quinn looked amused. “Yeah, I remember when I fell for Delaney. I had those caffeine heart palpitations a lot.”
“I’m telling you, this has nothing to do with a relationship. The deal is there’s no guarantee the Bureau will sweep up Prostakov when it all goes down. Now that I’ve crawled through the bowels of his past, there’s no way in hell I’m leaving Mira exposed to that bastard. I’m not willing to risk Mira’s safety. So back off.”
Paxton held up his hands in the air, palms out. “Backing off . . . as soon as I make my closing argument. You have a fourth-degree black belt and you’re a computer wizard. She’d have a better shot at staying off the grid if you were right next to her, guiding her. You have easy access to an excellent lawyer—that would be me—a local cop, and some reliable fed connections—and I don’t mean the douche. I’m simply suggesting you think really hard about what risk you’re really avoiding here.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
Mira stared at the closed office door for almost a full minute, trying to pull herself together and failing. So instead she threw herself onto her bed and let herself fall apart. She didn’t cry; she wasn’t a big crier.
But she did come up with a list of pies she’d need to get through this rejection. She’d been rejected before. Plenty of times, in fact. And she knew two things about rejection. Number one: pie helped. Especially coconut custard pie, but the whatever-she-could-get-her-hands-on flavor was fine too.
Number two: rejection had never—not once—never, ever hurt like this. Like her insides had been yanked out leaving a hollow shell—dark and empty except for a few leftover raw nerve endings zapping her like electric shocks.
Her common sense tried to talk her back from the edge. She and Kaz hadn’t made a commitment to each other. Neither one of them had made any promises.
And yet it felt like they had.
Making love with Kaz had been so much more than sex. It had been intimate and intense. Every touch, every breath, every stroke had been a promise. Like they’d absorbed each other, become part of each other. Like the ink of his tattoo permeated deep down into the skin. Intertwined. Two became one.
So why would he reject her now after how close they’d gotten? After what they’d shared not just in the bedroom but in the past few weeks. Had it all meant nothing to him?
Could she have misjudged Kaz like she had all the other men from her past? Was he like one of the computers he spent so much time with? Emotionless. Or should s
he throw herself into the dark void of uncharted territory and trust Kaz? Trust that whatever he was doing, it was because he cared about her. Trust that he wanted her safely out of the way and not just away and out of his life.
She’d never given a man her blind trust before. Maybe it was time to take that risk. Because she knew . . . that the only reason Kaz’s rejection could hurt her as much as it had was because she loved him.
It wasn’t the thought of heading out on her own again that rattled her. Not that she wanted to, but she knew she could handle that if she had to. She didn’t think she’d be able to live the rest of her life knowing Kaz was in this world without her.
Trust. She should think about it. Seriously think about it. Trust meant no turning back. Trust meant baring her most vulnerable self to someone. Like tilting her head and exposing her neck and hoping that person didn’t betray her. Like her father had betrayed her mother for years.
Well, that was idiotic really. Kaz was nothing like her father. Kaz didn’t need to control others to feel important and powerful. When Kaz was young and weak he didn’t find someone weaker to prop himself up. Even when he was physically weaker, he’d already had a strong personality like forged steel. It was because of that inner strength that he turned to introspection, dedicated study, and hard work. He didn’t need to control others when he was in total control of himself.
Could she make that leap? Her heart pounded at the thought. The blood whooshed through her head so loudly it drowned out all other sound. You love him, Mira. Okay, she was going to jump.
She sat up on the bed and took a deep breath. Okay, so far, so good. Grabbing up the legal pad she’d gotten from Kaz’s kitchen, she sat on the bed with her pillows propped up behind her and recorded all the red flags she’d planted in her head from the account books of Ivan’s company.
After three hours of recalling the mental photographs of ledgers and Excel spreadsheets, Mira had a few pages of figures, suspicious payout accounts, and a stabbing headache. Looking over what she’d written, it didn’t seem like much, but one small piece of information might lead to something bigger.
Gathering the papers, she decided the sooner she got them to Kaz, the sooner he could utilize them. After the year Ivan had put her through, she would love if her information helped to put him behind bars. Ten to twenty years would work.
Mira hesitated outside Kaz’s office door. This time it wasn’t closed but open a few inches. It sounded like Quinn and Paxton were still in with him, along with another voice she didn’t recognize. And Kaz of course, whose voice always made her feel like warm, sweet honey flowed through her veins. Except this time. Because this time Kaz was speaking Russian and it turned her world sideways.
She backed up against the wall next to the door to steady herself. Closing her eyes and counting, she brought her heartbeat back to normal. This was silly. She’d heard Kaz speak a few languages over the past few weeks. So what if one of them was Russian? It was a coincidence. She moved back toward the door, placing her hand on the doorknob, when she remembered something. Something Kaz had said. He didn’t believe in coincidences. Darn it. That had her up against the wall again when a man stepped out of Kaz’s office, shutting the door behind him.
“Hello. You must be Mira. I’m Agent Jones with the FBI. Would you mind pointing me in the direction of the kitchen? I need to brew a pot of coffee.” He offered a smile and ran a hand down his face. “It’s going to be a long night.”
Kaz’s connection. Right. “You can head back to work. I’ll brew it and bring it in.”
“Actually, I volunteered to make the coffee so I could take a break. How about I come to the kitchen and help?”
“Oh, sure.” Mira led the way into the kitchen and started on the coffee, measuring the grounds into the basket. “I get it. I don’t know how Kaz stays so focused for so long. He’s like a rat terrier with a bone, isn’t he?”
The man’s face stiffened up. “He is. I’ve known him for eight years and I’d agree he’s tenacious all right. Sometimes unyielding bordering on mulish. I don’t think he knows how to give up.”
Huh. Mira wouldn’t use the word mulish to describe Kaz at all. She felt she knew him pretty well, but was it possible she didn’t? Of course she didn’t or she wouldn’t have been knocked on her butt three hours ago when he’d out of the blue decided now he’d help her disappear.
She filled the carafe with water and dumped it into the coffeemaker, flipping it on to brew. Turning back to Agent Jones, where he stood leaning against the counter looking at her. “So how do you know Kaz? It seems odd the FBI wouldn’t have their own in-house computer security consultants. I guess you hire consultants like everybody else?”
“Is that what he told you he does? Ha. That’s funny.”
“Why is that funny?” She frowned over at him.
Jones shook his head. “Computer security consultant. Hacker. There’s a blurry line there, isn’t there? No, Kaz is a well-known hacker.”
A hacker? Her world rattled like someone grabbed her by the front of her shirt and shook her. “Kaz never mentioned that.”
“No, ma’am. It’s standard operational procedure not to reveal too much information when cultivating a source.” Shoving his hands in his pockets, Agent Jones shrugged. “I doubt he’d want to jeopardize his chance to get back with the Bureau. Hell, he’s smart. He might even have plans to skim a little something to fund his game designing.”
“He’s not cultivating me as a source.” Kaz was using her? She shook her head. No. This man had it all wrong. “There are ethical hackers. It’s a very valuable skill today.”
“I agree. But we work with Kaz for his ability to connect us to the . . . unethical side of things, if you understand my meaning?”
She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes on him. “I’m not sure I do. What are you saying? That Kaz is a criminal?”
“I saw your face through the door when you heard him speak Russian. That scared you, didn’t it? Maybe you even wondered if he was connected to this case a little closer that he’d let on. We get information from insiders all the time. It’s really the best source.”
Her hands shook as she grabbed down four earthenware mugs. This guy had to be messing with her. Except why would he? He didn’t know her at all. What would be the point?
“Kaz brought us details about Prostakov only an expert could. Or someone on the inside.”
She stared at the man and couldn’t get a read on him. His face said he was telling the truth, but her gut said not to trust him. The fact that her gut had steered her wrong every chance it could when it came to men didn’t help. “Would you mind getting the tray from on top of the refrigerator?”
“No problem.” He smiled at her warmly but there was something about his slick toothy smile that rubbed her the wrong way. Reaching up, he grabbed the tray and handed it to her.
Setting it on the counter, she loaded on the mugs, the coffee carafe, and the sugar bowl before looking back at the agent. “I’m confused why you’re telling me this if you two have been friends for eight years.”
He shook his head slowly. “I never said Kazimir Cates and I were friends.”
This whole conversation was weirding Mira out and she needed to escape to replay it in her mind. She picked up the tray and shoved it into his hands. “Here you go.”
The agent nodded at the papers she’d placed on the counter. “You want me to take those to Kaz?”
“No.” She picked up her papers, folding them in half and then half again. “No, thanks.”
“Thanks for the coffee.” Agent Jones turned and headed out of the kitchen and back to the office. He paused in the doorway, turning back to Mira. “You seem like a nice gal. I simply think you should know what you’re getting in to.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
For the second time that day Mira threw herself on the bed and lay staring up at the ceiling. She was literally dizzy with warring thoughts winging around her head, slamming into each
other—and her heart.
So much for trust. A few days ago she had been basking in the afterglow of lovemaking with Kaz and today that afterglow had been doused with a bucket of ice-cold reality.
None of this whole situation made sense. None of the facts were falling into place.
What had Agent Jones said? Kaz was an insider. What did that mean exactly?
Part of the mob? A black hat hacker who hacks for profit whether legal or not? She knew they existed because Kaz had told her about them.
What were the odds? He’d told her mom his name was Russian, so why did hearing him speak Russian literally slam her back against the wall? Too much like Ivan? Or did it give credence to what Agent Jones had hinted at?
It would address the one nagging question she’d been avoiding since Kaz had asked her to write down what she remembered. Had he been using her all this time?
Because after their last night of lovemaking—after he’d asked her to write down any accounting information on possible front companies she remembered—Kaz had pulled back. Pushed her away really. He’d withdrawn into his solitude and left her feeling like she was floating all alone in a small lifeboat on the vast ocean. Right where she started.
Maybe Kaz was right and she should disappear. In fact, why was she even still here? Now that she had learned so much about staying off the grid she didn’t need to stay here and let Kaz or Ivan or even Agent Jones make her feel scared and miserable. Heck no. Her car was fixed and sitting out at the curb ready to take her far from here.
She got up and retrieved her bag from the floor of the closet, swinging it up and open on the bed. Next she grabbed all her clothes, shoving and cramming them into the soft-sided suitcase. She was so over men.
If she could, she’d move to that island Wonder Woman lived on—the one with only women. She didn’t need a man. She had a VR headset and she knew how to use it.