Secured by the SEAL

by Carol Ericson

  The caller had been right. She had to find Tatyana’s baby. That baby seemed to hold the key to everything.

  She fingered the hospital band in the front pocket of her jeans. And now she knew exactly where to start—Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

  Stepan joined her behind the bar and elbowed her in the ribs. “You do good job, Barbie.”

  “Thanks.” She laced her fingers together and stretched them in front of her. “I’m going to take off now. Are you going to Mila’s party at Rage tonight?”

  “In my dreams.” He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Girls only, just dancers and waitresses. You going?”

  “No, I’m going to get to bed early. Have a good night.”

  “Enjoy hot date, Barbie.”

  She snorted and slid out from behind the bar. Grabbing her purse from a chair, she waved.

  Outside the club, she rested her back against the door and scooped in a deep breath of garbage-scented air. What was that bracelet doing there?

  She pushed off the door and tripped as a man emerged from behind the Dumpster, her nerves still raw. Calvin had appeared after all.

  As the raggedy man shuffled forward, her heart dipped. A different transient had taken Calvin’s spot, a younger man.

  “Sorry, I thought you were someone else.” She held up her hands to the homeless man planted in front of her.

  “You lookin’ for Calvin?”

  She glanced over her shoulder at the back door of the Tattle-Tale. “Well, sort of. Do you know where he is today?”

  “He don’t come here in daytime.” The man tugged at the dirty cap on his head. “Do you wanna know where he crashes during the day?”

  Britt eyed the rough hand thrust at her, palm up. She dug into her purse and pulled out a ten-dollar bill. She waved it at him. “Will this tell me?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She tucked the money into his hand, and it disappeared into the capacious folds of his coat, draped over his slouched form in the seventy-five-degree heat.

  “He’s in the park down on the corner.” He jerked his thumb to the right.

  “There’s a park on this street?”

  “That patch of grass and trees near the freeway on-ramp.” He tapped his temple with one finger. “You know Calvin ain’t quite right in the head.”

  “Are you saying he’s dangerous?” Britt took a step back from the cloud of alcohol fumes emanating from the man’s pores. This guy seemed a lot sketchier than Calvin.

  “Nah, just don’t know what business you’d have with him.”

  “Business? I wouldn’t call it business.” She pointed to the end of the alley. “That way and then left toward the freeway?”

  “That’s it. Can’t miss it.”

  Britt heard a click behind her and spun around. She stared at the metal door leading to the club. “Was that door open?”

  Her homeless guide hunched into his coat. “Nope.”

  “All right, then. Thanks for the tip.”

  She exited the alley on the other side and got into her car. She drove up the street to the so-called park with its scrappy patches of dried grass and bushes that dotted a trail to the area beneath the on-ramp.

  She parked the car and gripped the steering wheel, puffing out short breaths as she watched a man duck under the canopy of trees by the on-ramp. Calling this a park was generous. It looked like there could be a homeless camp beneath the freeway, away from prying eyes.

  Maybe if she just stood on the sidewalk and yelled for Calvin, he’d come out to meet her. She didn’t think she wanted to see what inhabited this particular urban gathering place.

  After debating the wisdom of visiting a homeless camp, Britt grabbed her cell phone from the cup holder and opened the car door. She could get 911 on speed dial if she had to.

  Putting one foot in front of the other, she marched toward the edge of the sidewalk. She cupped her hand over her mouth to make her voice heard above the roar of the freeway. “Calvin? Calvin, are you in there?”

  She held her breath, listening for an answer. Several seconds later, she stepped onto a patch of grass, rough with pebbles scattered through it. “Calvin? It’s Barbie. I—I have something for you.”

  Britt jerked as something crashed through the bushes, and a man stumbled into the clearing from beneath the pillars of cement. Calvin, his jacket ripped and bloody, staggered toward her and keeled forward.

  Her heart rattling her rib cage, Britt launched forward and dropped to the ground beside him. “Calvin? What happened?”

  He sucked in a wet breath, and a line of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. Up close, she could see his battered face and split lip. She put her hands on his thin body to feel if he had any other injuries or if any blood was seeping through his clothing.

  Calvin coughed and strangled out one word.

  “What?” She put her ear close to his lips. “What did you say?”

  He rasped, “Nothing. I know nothing about Lee-Low.”

  Britt caught her breath. Childlike, Calvin had just admitted he did know something about Leanna.

  She whispered, “What don’t you know about Lee-Low, Calvin? I won’t tell anyone.”

  His cloudy eyes shifted over her shoulder and widened for a split second—right before a boot landed against her ribs.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Back from the warehouse and ensconced in the luxury of his hotel suite, Alexei tapped Send on his phone and blew out a breath. He’d just secured proof positive that the Belkin crime family had taken delivery of a shipment of weapons—none that they needed to run their little empire here in LA. These weapons could start a war or two, and as much as the Belkins destroyed any area they inhabited, they counted on the niceties of society to keep selling their drugs and women to any wealthy takers.

  Those arms were meant for someone else, most likely in exchange for the raw opium Vlad could provide the Belkins from the fields of Afghanistan. Ariel had to see the sense in pursuing this connection—and had to see the sense in keeping him on the assignment. He’d already infiltrated the Belkins at the innermost levels.

  He watched his phone, but if he expected Ariel to respond immediately, it looked like he’d be disappointed.

  His eyebrows shot up when he noticed the time on his cell. He’d been surprised that he’d made it back to the hotel before Britt. Wasn’t she going to poke around the baby angle? She couldn’t do that over the phone?

  He’d declined to give her his cell phone number because he didn’t want it in her cell phone contacts, but he should’ve bought a temp phone so she could contact him.

  What he had done, without her knowledge, was install a tracking device on her cell phone, and after the attack on her last night, he felt justified. Now he felt worried.

  He called up the locator on his phone and cursed in Russian when he saw the pin in Hollywood, right near the Tattle-Tale. Why had she gone to the club? She didn’t even have a shift tonight.

  His pulse picked up speed. Unless she didn’t go to the club willingly. Who knew what that thug who’d had her around the throat told his bosses?

  He swept the keys to his bike from the TV stand and rushed downstairs. He secured his phone on the handlebars of the motorcycle so he could watch the locator app.

  When he rolled past the entrance to the Tattle-Tale, still closed, he drew his brows over his nose. The pin on the app had shifted, no longer located at the Tattle-Tale but still in the area.

  He gunned his bike and made a U-turn, following the GPS on the phone. When he saw Britt’s car parked on the street near the freeway on-ramp, he swallowed hard. Had she broken down in that old rattletrap she drove?

  As he rolled up behind the empty car, an icy fear dragged a finger down his back. Where had she gone?

  He parked his bike on the street and pulled his helmet off his
head. The muffled cries he heard had him sprinting toward the noises coming from the area below the on-ramp.

  He couldn’t see anything until he got to the sidewalk that bordered the grassy strip. And then what he saw fueled a burning rage in his gut, and he flew at the man pummeling Britt, who was flailing her arms at her attacker and bicycling her legs from her position on the ground.

  Alexei tackled the man, gagging on the sour stench rising from his body. Alexei slammed his fist into the man’s face and had the satisfaction of hearing a distinct crack.

  Blood poured from the guy’s nose, and he spit out a stream of foul expletives as he swung at Alexei. Alexei stepped back from the punch and then kneed the man in the gut, bringing him to the ground.

  Britt tugged on his sleeve. “Let’s go. I don’t want to be here when the cops arrive. I just called 911. Calvin’s hurt.”

  “Calvin?” Alexei stomped on the man’s hand, the same hand he’d been using to beat Britt. He crushed it beneath his boot until the man screamed in agony.

  Alexei looked up to see Britt crouched beside another homeless man, his face bloody and broken.

  She whispered something to Calvin and then launched herself at Alexei. “Please, we need to get out of here to avoid questions.”

  The sound of a siren in the distance uprooted Alexei’s feet from the ground. “Meet me at the diner where we went the first night we met.”

  Britt nodded and jogged to her car.

  Alexei followed her the three blocks to the diner. She parked first and sat in the car. When he got off his bike, he approached the driver’s-side window, which she powered down.

  “Do you want to tell me what just happened back there?”

  “How did you find me?”

  “We’ll discuss this inside. You need some ice for your eye. Head to the restroom as soon as you get inside to clean up.” He reached inside the car and flicked some weed stems from her hair. “Are you all right?”

  She dabbed her fingertips across her face and gazed at the smears of blood on her fingers. “I’m okay.”

  They entered the diner, and Alexei grabbed a table in the back, next to a window on the parking lot, while Britt scurried to the restroom, head down, hair creating a veil on either side of her face.

  He asked for a couple of waters and kept one eye on the plastic menu and the other on the parking lot. He didn’t know what to expect right now. Why had two homeless men been fighting with Britt?

  She emerged from the bathroom with a puffy bottom lip and a red mark at the corner of her eye, but she’d cleaned up the blood and looked better than he’d expected.

  She slid into the booth across from him and sucked down half the water with a straw. Then she closed her eyes and rested the back of her head against the red vinyl banquette.

  “Do you want to start at the beginning?”

  She opened an eye—the one not rimmed in red. “How’d you find me?”

  “I put a tracker on your phone, but that’s not important. Tell me what happened.”

  “I went to the Tattle-Tale to find Calvin to see if he could tell me any more about Leanna. I didn’t expect anyone to be there.”

  “Who was there?”

  “Stepan the bartender.”

  “That’s just great. What story did you tell him for being there?”

  “I told him I wanted to check my time card. He believed me.”

  “As far as you know.”

  “I really don’t think Stepan is involved too much in the criminal activities.”

  “Did you check it and leave?” Alexei looked up and smiled at the waitress. “I’ll have a cup of coffee and a piece of lemon meringue pie.”

  “I’ll have a diet soda, whatever you have, and the grilled cheese sandwich.” She shrugged at Alexei. “I missed lunch.”

  When the waitress took their menus and left, Alexei stuck his fingers in his water, fished out a couple of ice cubes and wrapped them in a napkin. “Put this on your right eye, and maybe you can avoid a shiner.”

  Britt pressed the makeshift ice pack to her face. “I was at the club for more than a few minutes. Stepan corralled me into helping him.”

  “You stayed there with him? Alone?”

  “He was okay after a few of his clumsy attempts at flirtation. I think he just does it because it’s expected. He really doesn’t try that hard.”

  “Go on.” Alexei circled his finger in the air. “How did you get from helping Stepan in the Tattle-Tale to being some transient’s punching bag?”

  “Remember that first night when we saw Jerome return to the club and duck behind the bar, out of the camera’s eye?”

  He’d never forget that night when he’d met Britt. “Yeah, of course I remember.”

  “I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to get down there and see what was so important. I haven’t been able to get behind the bar yet during one of my shifts.” Her knees, bouncing beneath the table, knocked his. She must’ve found something, and she was dying to tell him.

  “And?” He hunched forward.

  She rose up slightly from her seat and pulled something from her pocket. She tossed it on the table between them.

  He ran the pad of his thumb over the curled-up piece of plastic, reading the words printed there. “It’s Tatyana’s hospital bracelet from Cedars-Sinai. So, she had that mystery baby in the hospital. You found this beneath the bar?”

  “It was in one of those metal lock boxes, but it wasn’t even locked. It was just in there with other junk, but Jerome must’ve known it was there. Maybe he found it at the club, but what would it be doing there?”

  “I doubt Jerome found it.” Alexei scuffed his knuckles against the stubble on his chin. “He wouldn’t keep it at the club. He might’ve discovered it in that box. He wouldn’t want to take it to tip anyone off, so maybe he went back to take a picture of it.”

  Britt bounced in her seat. “I never thought of that. Of course, he took a picture. During the staged mugging, his attacker stole his phone. But that doesn’t explain why the wristband was there in the first place.”

  “I think it’s obvious.” Alexei steepled his fingers and peered at Britt over the tips. “Tatyana must’ve been at the Tattle-Tale wearing her hospital ID.”

  She crossed her arms, hugging her body. “Why would they have her there after she’d just given birth? What did they do with her?”

  “I don’t know, but now we know where that baby was born.”

  “I hope...” She pressed her fingertips against her lips. “I mean, they wouldn’t kill a baby, would they?”

  “Your female caller told you to find the baby. It sounds like she knew what she was talking about, and she wouldn’t have you looking for a dead baby, would she?” He grabbed Britt’s hand and chafed it between his. “Finding that bracelet was great, but that doesn’t explain the attack on Calvin and you.”

  Britt paused as the waitress delivered their food.

  As she cut her sandwich in half, she said, “I finished up my work with Stepan and left out the back. I saw a transient, and I thought he was Calvin at first and said his name. He wasn’t Calvin but said he’d tell me where he was—for a price. So I handed him a ten, and he directed me to that area by the on-ramp.”

  Alexei rolled his eyes. “You thought it was a good idea to pay a homeless man for information and then head to an obvious homeless camp under the freeway?”

  She brushed her fingertips together, sending a shower of crumbs onto her plate. “I was going to stand away from those bushes and call Calvin out to me.”

  “Didn’t work out that way, huh?”

  “Calvin did come out of the bushes, beaten and bloodied, and fell to the ground. I went to him, and out of the blue he said he didn’t know anything about Lee-Low.” She took a big bite of her sandwich, and after she swallowed she dabbed a napkin
against her mouth. “Which of course means he does know something about her.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. He knew that’s what you were going to ask him about. Maybe he had a moment of clarity and was telling you the truth. He knew Lee-Low from the club, she was nice to him, you were nice to him and you reminded him of Lee-Low.” Alexei flicked a dab of meringue from his pie and sucked it off his finger. “How’d the other guy get involved?”

  “While I was trying to help Calvin, the other guy attacked me. Kicked me in the gut for starters.”

  “Was he with Calvin? Did he try to rob you?”

  She dropped her sandwich on her plate. “The Belkins sent him, Alexei. He was the same guy I had talked to in the alley.”

  The dread that had been building in his gut reached up and grabbed him by the throat.

  He’d suspected Britt’s run-in with the transient had something to do with the club, but he’d been hoping it was random. No such luck.

  He shoved his plate away, the tart lemon now sour on his tongue. “How did they arrange that? The Belkins must’ve paid the other transient to beat up Calvin, or they had one of their henchmen do it, and then they had him lure you to that spot by the freeway.”

  “That’s what I thought as soon as I realized who was attacking me.”

  “It was Stepan.”

  “Wait. What? How do you figure? Irina was the one who saw me with Calvin.”

  “But Stepan is the only one who saw you today. When you got there, he probably called Irina or Sergei and put out the word. They beat up Calvin as a warning and ordered the other transient to attack you. Do you think Calvin’s going to make it?”

  “I think so. I didn’t see any mortal wounds, and he was talking to me. The beating I took, while not—” she dabbed her fingers high on her cheekbone beneath her eye “—pleasant, wasn’t life-threatening either. What was the reason behind that?”